How I Went From a PIP to a 64% Raise in Two Months

In fall 2025, I was put on a performance improvement plan.

If you've never been on one, a PIP is the meeting where your company tells you, very politely, that they're writing things down now. Most people hear it as the beginning of the end. I'd already been laid off once in my career. I'd recently been passed over for a promotion. So I understood exactly how that meeting is supposed to make you feel.

About eight weeks later, I was officially off the plan. Three days after that, I accepted a new offer with a 64% increase in total compensation.

This is how it happened, and what I'd tell you if you're sitting with a PIP (or a bad review, or a "let's revisit next cycle") right now.

First: I didn't treat it as a verdict. I treated it as a reflection.

I teach something I call the Law of Reflections. Your career reflects back to you how you see yourself. Your manager, your leadership, the hiring panel, your clients and your bank account are all reading the same script, and that script lives in your Creator Field.

So when I got that plan, the question wasn't "how do I convince them I'm good?" It was "what is this showing me about how I see myself at work?"

The honest answer: I was over-delivering and waiting to be noticed. I was proving my worth through output and hoping someone in the room would say it out loud for me. Nobody was going to. Not until I changed the script.

That's also why I knew jumping straight to another job wouldn't fix it. A new company with the same script running is just the same story with a new logo.

What I actually did

The work takes 100% of the energetic and 100% of the physical. Here's both halves.

The energetic work

• I turned my trained intuition on my own career and read my own Creator Field, looking for the root of why I kept being overlooked.
• I worked on my career self-image on purpose, every day: who I am at work, how I'm spoken about when I'm not in the room, what's normal for me.
• I rooted to new ingredients, the specific beliefs and feelings of the woman who is already seen, valued and paid.

The physical work

• I kept a Brag Book every single week. Every result, every number, every kind message. Not once a year when review season panics you. Every week.
• I sent a wins email. A clear, copy-and-paste recap of what I'd delivered, with numbers, and one clear ask. My manager forwarded it to leadership.
• I stopped waiting to be noticed. If a win happened and nobody wrote it down, it didn't exist yet. So I wrote it down.

None of this was dramatic. It was consistent. That's the part people skip.

What happened next

Two months after that plan, I had the 64% raise. And it kept going:

• At my next company I was rated Top, a rating given to 2 of about 100 people in my vertical.
• I went three quarters over quota in a row.
• Ten months after the first raise, I got another 61%.
• I was offered a Client Partner seat to stay. I said no.

The PIP wasn't the end of my career. It was the turning point.

If you're on a PIP right now

You don't have to decide everything today. But you can start here:

1. Start your Brag Book this week. Write down every win, the number attached to it, who noticed, and the skill it proves. Screenshot every kind message.
2. Get specific. "I helped with the launch" is forgettable. "I launched it two weeks early and it drove X" is not.
3. Ask what success looks like, in writing. Clear criteria protect you and give you a target.
4. Look at the reflection. Where else in your life are you being overlooked, underpaid or "next cycled"? It's rarely only at work.
5. Write her first. Who is the version of you who's already seen, valued and paid? How does she walk into Monday?

This is my story and my approach, not legal or HR advice. If you're dealing with something serious at work, get the right professional support too.

Start with the Brag Book

I turned the exact system I used into a free guide: a fillable Brag Book, real examples from my own career, career self-image ingredients, and my copy-and-paste wins email.

Get the free Brag Book →

And if you want me to read your Creator Field and find the script running your career, that's what my The Career Baddie Transformation is for.

Your wins deserve witnesses. ♡

— Megan