323: How to land a promotion

Mistake that I've seen people make when going for a promotion is focusing on what projects do I have to do to get a promotion and they're like looking at it as a time bound thing like if I just do X I'll get promoted when really to get promoted you need to be demonstrating that you are operating at a higher level with your skill set and sure some of the examples of that an action will be specific projects but if you complete those projects and don't complete them in a way that shows you have evolved in the way you are. If you operate and that you're working at this higher level more strategic whatever it's going to take for your promotion then completing the project won't necessarily get you the promotion. It's not like a check box that you can just do it once and then it's done and you're promoted. Welcome to Design Life show about design and side projects for motivated creatives. I am one of your hosts Charlie. I'm your other host Pam Care and today we're going to talk about promotions. Everyone's favorite. Yeah you hear that word and you're like oh awesome this is going to be helpful for me or you hear that word and you're like oh maybe it's something you're struggling with right now or you're going through it perhaps with the new year coming up we thought it's maybe a good time to touch on this topic. I've also been doing quite a bit of mentoring lately like one-on-one mentoring with other designers and it's been a topic coming up in my one-on-ones with folks who are wanting to level up they're wanting to grow. Either they feel like they're ready for a promotion or they're actively trying to work towards it and they're hitting some sort of roadblock. I'm sure we can get into some more roadblock conversations later on as we dive into this topic and of course we'll always be sharing some advice with you as well. But let's do a little bit of a check in first. I think we took an intentional little break there for a bit on the show. We were both really busy so tell us Charlie what have you been busy with in the last month or so. Well not writing my book that's for sure. I felt like such a failure today Pam I have a call with my book coach scheduled every so often at certain milestones right? Because I'm doing this program for writing my book about marketing design and it was sometime in November we set up a call for Friday and December to like check in I was meant to have finished the draft finished my first like edit of that rough draft to check in on next steps. Okay and I was like look there is just no way that I'm going to be at that point by that call I don't want to waste my coaches time I don't always my own time and so let's just reschedule it for the new year and accept that this book program is going to take longer than we wanted. I was probably finding out more than I could chew by setting that deadline anyway knowing that this is a really busy time of year lots of social things going on but also just like work is wildly busy with 2026 planning and lots of moving parts there so I just find myself more tired than usual to be honest and so totally. I decided to reschedule that call and I feel really bad about it but that's okay. It's what needed to happen. You're sticking to your boundaries you know you're looking at some your prioritizing you don't want to burn out especially this time of year. True thank you for that reframe that's a very good point and I was on such a good role with my book so I'm really disappointed that I'm in this spot now but also kit closes for the winter break I have like New Year's Eve Christmas Eve to the New Year there we go. I'm tired did I mention that yeah I was like well you've got one night yeah one night off work yeah like a week in a bit right right. Like it ends up being a little bit over a week but we can a half or something like that off and so I'm looking forward to spending some of that writing and like trying to get back in a book head space because it's not working to do it in like 10 minute increments you know it's just not enough time to do into it. So that's where I'm at at the moment do you have a more positive update for us. Let's see what have I been doing the last month I've done a bit of travel so I went to Toronto and I hosted a workshop related to my course sort of around being a more strategic design. And it was awesome it was a paid workshop I had about 20 folks join amazing which was a great number of people honestly it was enough that we filled the room any more I think it would have been too many people to facilitate by myself. Well fam I think that we can say you sold out the workshop I suppose I suppose I suppose so that was awesome was the first time I did an in person it was three hours long workshop which was great. I would love to do it again I don't know if anyone's listening connected to like conference organizers or something I would love to give it again sometime in 2026 would be awesome. Yeah that was great I went to Toronto and I did that and I bumped into a lot of familiar faces like people who have been following me for years but I've never met in person or like friends that I've been connected with through the design creator community. And so yeah it was it was just really nice and I got to meet some some folks that I had been friends with online for a while so great time there and then I went to San Francisco for work which was you know also great in a different way getting to connect with my team members we had an onsite there. I had my black Friday sale for my course as well. How'd that go which was a lot of work but it was really great because this show is in the spirit of side projects and sharing things and all of that I ended up making I think it was just under 30,000 USD during my black Friday sale. Yeah amazing and this is now your new self-paced course as well right. This is my new self-paced course so like you don't have to be running the cohort that's incredible that's incredible fam. So that's a nice boost to get going into the Christmas season and end of year and kind of tying things off on a high. So I had low expectations honestly this passed my expectations in terms of sales I did not expect it to go as well as it did. We did some good tracking I think it ended up we had a like just just shy I think was a 3.9% conversion rate so like nice. Well visitors to the page yeah you can tell me Charlie that's a good rate but of like total visitors to my course page they're like 3.9% converted into a paying sale which from my brief research that I did is like not bad I think. Yeah all in all it went really really well it's my first time doing a black Friday sale so I had nothing to compare it to like no idea if it's like a good or successful result but I feel really good about it. That is a good result I think that it's been fluctuating the kit marketing site sign-up rate based on how we track the data essentially but like around 7% is what we aim for. 7 to 10 is where it's sort of it's depending on the page okay and that's a that's conversion to like a free kit account. Exactly that's the conversion to signing up for a trial an account of any sort and so it's not necessarily someone paying us yet. So to get 3.9% on a page where someone's literally handing over the credit card right there and there to purchase something that's fantastic you should be very proud of that. Okay good I got the Charlie Charlie approval. Yeah so I guess that's been keeping me really busy and then I actually am going on a plane tomorrow for evocation so I'm looking forward to like leaving all of my work behind literally and just having some downtime as we get into the holiday season. That's awesome. Well then let's talk about promotions and bring it back to work because it's really interesting that you said that you've been having a lot of mentoring calls recently where this has come up and I'm sure that we've got a lot of listeners thinking about setting goals for the new year and where they want to get to in their careers. We've talked about promotions a lot before on this show one because this show has been running for many many years and following us throughout our careers. But I think that you said something really interesting before we started recording this like we can approach this from a manager perspective of like what we want to see in team members who want to get promoted. And that's something that we can bring now to this that maybe we couldn't for five years ago which is exciting. So okay what are the main challenges that have been coming up in folks that you've been mentoring around promotions what a design is struggling with right now. Yes okay a few things I'm hearing one is let's say the designer who feels like they're ready for a promotion but it's not happening for whatever reason. That's a pretty common one the other bucket is the designer who wants to get a promotion so wants to work towards it but doesn't know how to. It doesn't know what to put there if it yep exactly and then I guess a few sort of common things I'm seeing and hearing is the job leveling framework is scattered. Some companies have it some companies don't so in terms of having a document or whatever just some sort of documentation around what is expected at each level right like the role and responsibility of a junior versus like a mid or a senior however that tracks. It's not consistent first of all across companies and then some companies don't even have it so that makes it extra challenging for folks who want to work towards this promotion or want to get a promotion. But there's no shared expectations around what that should be and then another challenge I'm hearing is size and scale of the company as well and I think that has a lot of different effects. For example I've spoken to a few designers there managers are not designers right so due to the scale of the company they might be reporting into product or they might be reporting into a more general people manager or an operations person. You're not having a dedicated design leader I think also makes it extra challenging. That's one thing I'm seeing and then another thing I'm seeing is you know there might be a headcount restrictions for how many designers can get promoted. So you know being told like yeah it's looking good but unfortunately you know there wasn't enough budget to go around for promotions this year or whatever that reason could be. So those are kind of the challenges I'm hearing and then I think designers feeling a little bit conflicted in terms of the advice of what to do in this situation or like they're trying to navigate this. They're trying to move forward but they're getting told different things either by different people internally or getting different you know advice from out there. And so I think they're just stuck and they're looking for some guidance on like what are the one to two things that I should be doing to kind of move forward in this. Yeah. Oh that's a lot and also all very relatable. Both Assa I'm remembering my IC career and like what IC is a manager too. All of those people who've been talking to they're definitely not alone in that for sure. Okay where do we start with digging into this? I feel like I think of promotions very differently now that I'm a manager compared to when I was an IC. Tell us more about that. Yeah the advice they give would be quite different. Getting promoted is all about demonstrating the value that you're bringing to a company and that you can bring like at a higher level. A mistake that I've seen people make when going for a promotion is focusing on what projects do I have to do like what do I have to do to get a promotion. And they're like looking at it as a time bound thing like if I just do X I'll get promoted. When really to get promoted you need to be demonstrating that you are operating at a higher level with your skill set and sure some of the examples of that an action will be specific projects. But if you complete those projects and don't complete them in a way that shows you have evolved in the way you operate and that you're working at this higher level more strategic whatever it's going to take for your promotion. Then completing the project won't necessarily get you the promotion it's not like a check box that you can just do it once and then it's done and you're promoted you know. I've seen things go wrong when folks focus on the like the specific check box items I have to do tick tick tick to get promoted when they're focused on that and not on the general skill building and truly understanding what it looks like to be operating at that higher level. Totally that was something that came up in a recent one on one I had actually is they said that they had received advice that they don't have to check box every single thing in the like little list of expectations and this designer was confused by that like you know there was sort of like it doesn't make sense to me like why have this list if you don't have to achieve the list kind of thing and I get it like inherently you see a list of things and you're like cool I'm going to go through them one by one and sort of achieve all of these things. I can see how that would be confusing but I agree with you Charlie on the point that it's not about check listing all of those items it's about you can totally have an area where you have a spike and a strength of a certain skill or you're really good at this particular thing maybe less so in this other item but you know it's more about like overall impact across those things rather than going through that list and achieving every single item that is listed out there. Yeah and even if you work in a company where promotions work more as a capstone then I can't remember what the other term is where like sometimes promotions are given because you're showing promise and that you could operate at this level so you're given the chance to be put into that role and sometimes in companies it works more that you need to be achieving the majority of those things in that list in order to move into it because you have to demonstrate you can do it. Right so maybe the first thing you need to do is understand how do promotions work at your company because it sounds like in this example it's more of a promoting for potential where they're saying you don't have to be doing all of them like if you're demonstrating enough promise will put you in the role and so that might be the first thing to understand you're right. I agree I think that is a good thing to understand and then it's sort of tying on to that is the expectations around sustained impact over time to your point let you just achieve a project and then expect a promotion like okay that's great you had that impact you got that achievement but often companies or hiring managers want to see that sustained impact over time so can you do that again or sort of what does that impact look like over a longer period of time rather than just being like one spike. So that's also something I think to get aligned around and to think about to when you want to start approaching these conversations about promotions I always recommend to start the conversation early because it's going to take time right. I wouldn't recommend its performance review season you go to your manager you're like hey I'm hoping for a promotion this season and they had no idea that you were kind of thinking about that as a goal or expecting that in the cycle that can be really surprising to a manager. So I think a minimum six month period to like start the conversation and work actively towards it with your manager is my recommendation and it kind of ties in to also what I want to chat about which is that this should be an ongoing conversation like the topic of growth with your manager they should be supporting you they should be giving you feedback it should be something that you know you're aligned that that's where you want to go and getting really clear and on the same page about what growth or what expectations they want to see in this period of time so that it's really clear for you where to focus your efforts and energy. Yes I agree with that but also I think that it should be on the IC to be bringing it up and showing us managers that this is important to you and you are like actively working on this. I've had folks before who say they want to get promoted and so I say okay pick out a couple of areas in the matrix of like the next level you want to work towards and let's talk about it they never bring it up again no action happens and so I'm like well that's on you you know in that situation especially as you get up to more senior levels I think that that's the case I think that in general across all things including working towards a promotion the more junior you are the more hands on support and like guidance you're getting from your manager and as you get up to higher levels you are more expected to be driving this yourself. Definitely I think that the manager is responsible for setting the expectations and I know that came up as something that some folks you've been mentoring have been struggling with. What advice do you give to those folks who are like it's just not clear to me what I need to get promoted I've been asking but I've been getting conflicting answers what do you advise them to do? Okay so yeah my first advice is to start that conversation but sometimes they've tried to do that and it's got to know where or they haven't been given clear advice. So then my next step is kind of what you started to bring up is okay well how can you be proactive about this so often I encourage them to start documenting or start thinking about okay what do I believe I need to do in the next six to 12 months whatever that time period is. Where do I want to focus what are the growth areas that I think you deserve a bit more effort. Proactively putting together almost like a proposal I guess or like a career growth doc right that kind of highlights okay here's my goal. Here's the things I'm already doing here's the things where you know they're still room for improvement or or I think our opportunity areas and then even taking it a next step and putting down some thoughts as to how you might take action on those things. So what are some things you could do so I know for example let's say that communication is an area that you have some room for improvement in. So how might you then turn that into okay well I want to run two workshops over the next quarter communicate the insights back to the team and like what a kind of trying to start to get tactical about actual steps or things you want to do to kind of improve in that area. And next step would even be like scoring yourself against those or like having some way to track that progress throughout that period so that you can get a bit aligned with your manager about how you think you're tracking progress wise towards that. In general I think it could look like anything the specifics of what is in this growth doc not as important as I think just being proactive and putting together some thoughts and some sort of proposal about where you want to grow. How you're thinking about doing that what support you might need or just getting aligned and on the same page that this is the right area to focus on. Yeah because why that's helpful is it means that when you go to your manager and you're saying what do I need to do to get promoted. The manager isn't starting from a blank page because especially if you're in a company where there's no matrix. The manager themselves has to figure out what it looks like and like let me tell you that can be really difficult and really exhausting. And that's one who has had to write many a matrix myself like from scratch it is hard to like figure out the nuance between levels. And so if you can come to them with thoughts on a paper that can be the starting point for a discussion. You might not nail it that's okay the point is you've made it easier for the conversation to happen and demonstrate that initiative as well. So even just by the fact of doing it you're probably yeah showcasing the kind of initiative that it takes to get promoted. I think too that some folks could add up in a situation where their manager despite them bringing something to them is still not engaging. And if that's the case I would honestly recommend like you do put in an earnest effort and try it maybe it's over a couple of months that you're trying to work on this with your manager and if they're still not engaging risky to say I would recommend you go to their manager to me that sounds like the manager is not being effective. Now I've been in a situation before where I've known that are like unified matrix is coming and I've had to say to my team I've never looked I can't do anything until we get this. We need to make sure that we're aligned with the rest of the company like we'll get there I promise but we can't move forward right now. If they're not giving you any sort of timeline they're not engaging in any way this seems like a problem in the company. And so I would recommend you speak to their manager or ops HR like whatever it is based on your company and see how you can get this figured out. What do you think fam is that like a bit of a risky thing to recommend? I think it's bold something I've done instead of that is gone to a peer of my manager so like another manager in the company. So rather than going skip level into like my manager's boss sometimes I've thought you know maybe I just need a second opinion or want some advice on how I can approach this conversation better with my manager. So maybe more of like a coaching approach or mindset and picked another manager at the company that's maybe a peer or whatever to my manager and kind of gone to them for advice and like hey you know I'm trying to have this conversation with my manager. Here's the things I've tried here's the things I've been doing any advice like how could I approach this better or what's your feedback on this? I've done that before and found that helpful to just kind of I don't know sometimes you just want a gut check of like am I doing this right or like am I on the right track? Is there a different way I could be approaching this? So personally I would probably do that first before doing the skip level thing. I could see that making sense. I probably did jump. Maybe you're in a really small company. Exactly. Maybe you don't have that or something or I don't know maybe you have a really good relationship with the skip level. I don't know there could be a lot of different dynamics at play but I do think it is a solution depending on the dynamics. Yeah and I think that what's important there that you just called out was that maybe you already have a relationship with another manager in the company. That's a really good point if like yeah that they can then give you some guidance. I guess what I'm saying with my spicy take is that you should advocate for yourself. If you're not getting what you need from your manager you should advocate for yourself. What I do like about your correction to what I said is that it could highlight if you are off track. And if you are like completely off base and have misunderstood the situation and like you're just not getting it and you go to a skip level. That could really hurt your chances of getting a promotion. That could. Yeah because then what might happen is the skip level could go to your manager and be like hey Charlie came to me and Charlie is like way out of touch with reality of what we expect. So it was really off base. Yeah. Yeah and it's not landing exactly and like maybe your manager would be trying to give it back and it wasn't quite landing with you. So I like that you're your edit for that reason because that could be the situation you know it can happen. We can misunderstand. I also want to touch on keeping track of your progress and impact right because I think we've probably all been there. It's performance review time. Suddenly you need to write like a self-reflection or like talk about the impact you've had over the quarter or the half or the year like however long that period is. I've definitely struggled with that where I have to suddenly recall and think back to like potentially 12 months worth of work and how do you talk about those achievements right. So I'm wondering if you have any tips for designers but like let's talk about it high level. I guess so any tips for you know it comes to that time of year. How do you set yourself up for success. What are some tips for being in a position where you can maybe easily recall the work you've done and how to talk about that work as well. Short answer to this is you need to start before it's that time of year. I think that you need to build a habit of tracking this on a regular basis. At kit we use lattice and we use the weekly updates feature and there's a question in there about impact that you had any wins you want to share. If your company has something similar definitely do think of filling those out not just like putting in a couple of little points to take the box and get the update done. But like think of it for your future self as well like your future self looking back on these what wins do you want to remember that you had so that you can record them in performance review time. And yeah if your company doesn't have a weekly update system like that just open up a note like an apple note works perfectly fine and make a set a reminder each week to jot down some things that you achieved impact that you had things that you're proud of. So the when it comes to that performance review time you don't have to sit back and recall it's all just they're documented for you. Yeah I've heard this concept be referred to as like a brag document or like a just a way to keep track of your wins right throughout the period and it's so much easier I think that the really key advice there's like make it a habit somehow right. So whether it's sort of like a weekly thing or it's like at the end of each project you write a little summary about it or something like a way to just keep track of your impact throughout that period. I also want to stress the importance of impact or outcomes like how did this serve the business or the customer right like if your bright doctors just about you that doesn't correlate directly to business impact right so like I did five projects last quarter. Okay sure five project sounds like a lot maybe in some companies but what was the result of those projects like how did that move the needle so getting a bit more specific about the impact or the outcomes of that work. I think it's also really important I don't know if I showed this but now last performance reviews at gusto someone at gusto created a like an AI wins collector and you literally like run this command and it scans all of our systems and will like automatically pull in your contributions from the period and so it'll highlight okay you did these initiatives he was kind of the result of those things or the outcomes of those things or it'll even sort of link to specific documents and things like that. It's not perfect like I then take that information and kind of you know massage that into myself reflection but it's a helpful for sure. Yeah for finding the things that's what I did last performance you your time we might be throwing into a different topic now because I think I was sure I didn't talk about this in a different episode but I took all my lattice weekly updates and like other notes that I'd made and put it into Claude and was like tell me which three wins I should share which three challenges etc and it suggested like you could talk about these ones. Very useful. But honestly you bring up a good point there about speaking about the outcomes and the impact because it's not only doing the work but the way you talk about the work can tell a manager that you're operating at the level to be promoted. Another challenge I've had with folks in the past as they particularly growing from like mid to senior I think is like them being really personally proud of the project like I did a good job I collaborated well and really proud of this end result. But the thing hasn't shipped yet and so you can't include that as an example of an impact that you had if we don't know what the impact is just because you like it doesn't mean that it's going to perform well you know yes you can have the perfect process the perfect like projects like doesn't matter if it doesn't impact the business you know like right. It depends if you were speaking about an example of your collaboration skills then maybe sure because that part has happened you collaborated and created the project but if we're talking about an impact you had on the bottom line of the business then yeah you need to know what that impact is before you can reference it. And I think the following a project through like that is demonstrating a certain level of ownership and like an understanding of the way that your work impacts the business and so that's important to us not just what you do but how you talk about it totally. And I think this also goes back to why it's worth having conversations and advance with your manager so that if you identify a growth or an opportunity area or you know you're getting aligned on expectations they can suggest or you can have a conversation around well which projects are going to have the most potential for you to achieve that thing or where are some high impact areas that would be worth your time or worth investing in. So I think if you don't have that conversation it's easy to get a little bit stuck in the day to day work or like the work you're talking about where it's like well it was a really fun project it was really great I collaborated in this way but the higher level big picture thinking or maybe the horizontal impact that needs to be seen. So I always find it's helpful to kind of know what my reports goals are so that when we talk about who's going to work on what or like road mapping items I can make sure that they are given opportunities yeah you can put them on that project yeah where they can actually demonstrate or excel in the skills that they want to grow in that's really helpful to like think about oh you know well we have this designer who's really on the cusp of this sort of promotion or looking for this next challenge they would be great for this piece of work. Like let's give them that and give them an opportunity to get stuck into that or to prove themselves or whatever. So I think that goes back to really aligning and having those conversations early. What about the reality where even if you are doing a good job sometimes you still can't get it from us. Oh yeah could be for the head count reasons you mentioned the beginning like it's just there's not enough promotions to go around could be yeah budget reasons that like yes you deserve we can't afford to give it to you could be that you've maxed out especially a smaller company on where there is room to grow in your role and that the company doesn't have a need for someone at that higher level without like growing the team or what do you recommend to people in that situation. It's really hard because often the circumstances are out of your control and you might be doing the work and you might even hear from your manager like yeah I don't have any advice for you no feedback like you're doing it but we just don't have the support for a promotion right now or whatever the reason is. I think it's then kind of a personal decision right how important is that promotion for you or that title if it's very important to you then you know maybe when a consider alternatives or think about what your other options might be maybe there's other ways you can be rewarded or recognized outside of a promotion. So I don't know could they give you more equity or a little pay rise that year instead or could you be moved onto the highest impact project at the company and be given you know be given a really cool opportunity. There are other ways to I think be rewarded that aren't necessarily a promotion but I also empathize and totally understand that a promotion is often the goal and the most impactful way to be recognized. So I think it kind of comes down to what you want out of this personally and are you still enjoying the work and if so then then great but if this is really a sticking point for you then I don't know perhaps it's worth considering what else might be out there. I agree I like your point about what is in this for you like why are you doing this because to go towards a promotion there could be many reasons like for me usually quite honestly it's going to be money related yeah give them money like I want to be growing income. But also it is about the responsibility of like having that seat of the table that next level of input in a project that's that's a big part of it too. And so think about what's most important to you is there a way to get it at your current company in a different form if a promotion isn't technically there. And if not I think you have to take agency over the matter and not just sit there and be like well they didn't promote me but be like I'm going to promote myself let me go out and look at what other jobs are out there. I know you did this fan we've talked about this before I did do this you made a move from Uber because you wanted to move up into a senior level. I was ready to move up yeah exactly so sometimes you have to make hard choices. Yup and I think it's really great example of doing what you needed to to get yourself at the level you wanted to be at totally sure would be easier to just get promoted with an Uber. But hey you made the move and it was great for your career. Yeah so a bigger picture thinking yeah I have seen it where it's like okay we don't have an opportunity for promotion right now but would you like to kind of take on a more leadership role on the team and maybe take on some of these responsibilities or it's kind of like almost becoming an apprentice or something at the next level where it's like not official but maybe you're given more job scope or responsibility could be another thing. I remember to back in my Uber days I wasn't given a promotion but they did give me an intern like I kind of became like the interns mentor. So that was like a compromise I guess of okay we're not ready to promote you right now but here's some additional responsibility right. You could use that as a way to prove yourself even more like take that as an opportunity or not as really up to you I think but there could be other ways to continue the momentum of your growth without a promotion if that's something you want. And I would be careful to end up in a situation where you end up doing all the work of a higher level without the pay coming anytime soon obviously depends on like the capstone versus promoting for promise or a potential approach that your company takes. Do what you need to do to get to where you want to go in your career I guess is the advice. Take care of yourself. No one is looking out for your career as much as you are you can have a really helpful manager who cares a lot but even they cannot care as much as you do about your career. Yeah even if we want to we just it's not our career. No and honestly I don't want to there's so many things to care about and I think that you should always be your own biggest support advocate. Well I hope this is helpful for folks yeah as I said this has been a hot topic in my one-on-one mentor sessions that I've been doing so I don't know if you're listening to this going into the new year hoping for that next stage of growth next year. How can you maybe start the new year with at least a conversation with your manager that this is a goal you have for 2026 perhaps something you want to work towards throughout the year maybe getting aligned around some growth areas sitting a couple of goals keeping track of that progress like these are all things I would suggest doing to start approaching that conversation. Make sure it's a ongoing topic that you talk about in your one-on-ones like often I hear from my mentees that yeah we talked about it once and that was kind of it or like it was brought up a couple months ago but they haven't really given me feedback since or they haven't really brought it up since like my biggest advice is like you should be bringing it up bring this up as a proactive topic of conversation in your one-on-ones so that you can keep the momentum going. Yep agreed. Set yourself up with goal of timeline maybe that you want to achieve this promotion by but yeah definitely bring it up to them and don't be afraid to bring it up either. I think that sometimes we can be scared to like raise a big topic like this without manager and feel like oh I'm gonna think I'm being greedy because I'm more money or like you know I don't know how to bring it up I promise you as a manager this is the most normal thing in the world we want to help you and so definitely don't be afraid to bring it up that you want a promotion. Totally well Charlie where can people go to hear more design life episodes. Head to designlife.fm there's probably plenty of other episodes there that can help you in your quest to like move up through the more senior levels of being a designer and so give them a listen. And if you have any specific I don't know challenges that you're facing in your career we always want to hear from you. You can email us [email protected] and tell us about your situation and we can talk about it anonymized if you want and yeah share some more specific advice. We always love to hear from you. We would love to hear from you and thanks for all the support we've had this year. This might be our last episode of 2025 perhaps. Wow. So just a shout out to all of our wonderful listeners and I still chat with people who tell me how much they love this show. Oh that's so nice to hear. Yeah so thank you for all the support and yeah we'll see you in the next episode. See you then. Bye. Bye. [Music]