One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since leaving corporate and becoming an entrepreneur is that nobody is coming to save you. Nobody is managing your growth plan. Nobody is sitting in a room thinking about your next move. It’s all on you.

And guess what? That was also true in my corporate career – I just didn’t see it.

When I was a director, I believed that if I kept doing great work, the right people would notice and my career would move forward. I thought my boss was thinking about my development. I thought any training or coaching would be provided to me. I thought the system would work the way it was supposed to.

But as I stayed stuck, it started to become obvious that this wasn't the case. I asked my boss if we could get me a coach, and he agreed, but he chose the coach. He recommended I find a female mentor, but I had no idea where to start… and I never found one. The truth is, I ended up learning what it took to become a successful executive through trial and error, and many years of frustration. And I ended up doing it on my own.

Many women tell me that they notice that as they move up in leadership, the mentorship stops. Your boss now expects you to be the expert. But sometimes you still need guidance! You need someone to bounce a strategy off or to help you figure out what you're not seeing…

And the hard truth is that it's on you to figure this out.

When I left corporate and started my business, this became impossible to ignore. There’s no boss, no HR and no performance review cycle. If I want to grow, I have to invest in it myself. If I want to build a network, I have to go find one. If I want to get better at something, I have to figure out how.

And it hit me that this is exactly what I should have been doing in corporate all along. The women who move into VP and C-level roles aren’t waiting for someone to develop them. They’re treating their career like a business that they are the CEO of.

So today I want to talk about what it actually looks like to be the CEO of your career, because I think most of us were never taught to think about it this way, and that's not helping you get to where you want to go.

Let’s dive in…

Most women are employees of their career, not the CEO

Think about how you’re currently approaching your career growth. Are you waiting for your boss to bring up your next step? Are you relying on your company’s leadership program to develop you? Are you hoping that your annual review will include a conversation about promotion?

If so, you’re treating your career like you work for someone else. You’re waiting for instructions. You’re waiting for someone to create the plan, tell you what’s missing, and hand you the opportunity.

And if you're doing this, you're not alone. Many women around you are doing the exact same thing. It’s how most of us are wired. In school, we followed the curriculum and got rewarded. Early in our careers, we followed the path and got promoted. So it makes sense that we’d expect the same pattern to continue.

But it doesn’t. Especially not at the senior level. And there are so many reasons this strategy is going to let you down, but here are a few:

  • Your manager has a dozen priorities other than your development. It will never be as important to them as it is to you.
  • Your boss may not be the best person to mentor you, because they may have a very different background and lived experience.
  • Your company may not have leadership training, and even if they do, it may not be in line with your career aspirations.
  • Your goals and your manager's goals may also not be aligned – they might love having you in the role you're in now, and see no need to promote you.
  • Your manager or company may not know how to best help you fill the gaps you need to in order to perform at the next level.

So if you're waiting for your company to get you ready, you may be waiting a long time.

The women I see get stuck are almost always the ones who are waiting: waiting for clearer feedback, waiting for the right opportunity to share their wins or career aspirations, waiting for someone to tell them they’re ready… And while they’re waiting, someone else who isn’t waiting is getting the role.

What changes when you start thinking like a CEO

When you run a business, you don’t wait for someone to tell you where to invest. You look at the landscape, figure out where the biggest opportunities are, and put your resources there. You build relationships on purpose because you know they’re strategic. You invest in yourself and your skills because you know the return is worth it.

What if you brought that same energy to your career?

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

You invest in your own development without waiting for your company to do it for you. Most women I work with have spent years relying on whatever leadership training their company offers. And those programs can be good, but they’re generic. They’re not designed to close the specific gaps between where you are and where you want to be. A CEO doesn’t wait for someone else to train them. They find the best people to learn from, and they invest in them.

You build your network on purpose, not by accident. A CEO knows that relationships are strategic. They don’t just network when they need something. They build relationships with the right people long before they need them. If the only leaders who know your work are your direct boss and your team, that’s a problem. The women who move into VP roles are known and valued by multiple people on the leadership team, and they didn’t get there by accident.

You make strategic decisions about where you spend your time. A CEO doesn’t do everything themselves. They figure out what only they can do, and they delegate or drop the rest. If you’re spending 90% of your time on execution and 10% on your own growth and visibility, you’ve got the ratio backwards. The women who get promoted are intentional about protecting time for the things that actually move their career forward.

You own the conversation about your future. A CEO doesn’t wait for a board member to bring up strategy. They drive it. If you haven’t had a direct conversation with your boss about what it would take for you to be considered for the next level, you’re leaving your career in someone else’s hands. And your boss might be great, but they have a hundred other things to think about. Your career isn’t at the top of their list. It needs to be at the top of yours.

This is the lesson that changed everything for me

When I look back at my corporate career, the thing I wish I’d understood sooner is that nobody was going to hand me the playbook. I kept expecting the system to work, to tell me what was missing, to create a path. And the system wasn’t designed to do that.

The moment I started treating my career the way I now treat my business, everything changed. I got intentional about who I was learning from. I invested in my own growth. I built relationships that were strategic, not just social. I stopped waiting for permission and started driving.

I’ve seen this same thing happen with so many of the women I work with. The ones who make the fastest progress are the ones who stop being passive about their career and start running it like it’s theirs. Because it is.

On the flip side, I've known women who have talked to me about working together to get to the next level, but kept hesitating to take the plunge. They weren't sure whether they should invest if their company wasn't paying for it. They thought they may explore internal training options… and year after year, I see them in the same spot, still waiting.

Ready to start running your career like a CEO?

If this is hitting home for you, early bird registration is now open for the next cohort of ​Own Your Seat at the Table​, my exec leadership program for women who want to land that VP or senior leadership role and thrive there.

This is where we work on exactly what I’ve been talking about today: building your visibility, getting strategic about your career, and showing up as the leader you’re capable of being. You’ll also be surrounded by a group of ambitious women who are on the same path, which (as I’ve talked about before) makes a bigger difference than you might expect.

Not only that – my only goal is to help you show up as the best leader you can be and land that promotion. Trust me when I say that we are 100% aligned!

Early bird pricing won’t last long, so if you’ve been thinking about it, now’s the time.

And if you’d like to chat with me first to see if it’s the right fit, ​you can book a call here.

Until next time friends… ✌️💜

Katy