😏 The un-secret weapon I use every Friday

What's in this issue:

What's in this issue: 

• The weekly email framework that ended my 5-year promotion drought

• How to document your wins without feeling like you're bragging

• Why "keeping receipts" on your own work is essential (especially for us)\

The real talk: Every week you stay quiet about your impact is money left on the table—and I'm done watching us lose out.

Hey ,

Can we talk about something that literally cost me thousands of dollars? Being too humble at work.

I spent FIVE YEARS waiting for a promotion while watching peers with less experience climb past me. Five. Years. And you know what finally changed? I stopped hoping my work would speak for itself and started making sure the right people heard exactly what I was doing—loudly and consistently.

Today I'm sharing the exact framework that transformed how I advocate for myself at work. Because if you're anything like me, you were taught to keep your head down and work hard. Pero guess what? That advice is outdated, and it's keeping us broke.

The Weekly Check-in That Changes Everything

After learning this framework from a former Google exec (and adding my own twist), I've never looked at self-advocacy the same way. Here's exactly how to create your own paper trail of excellence:

The Framework: Every single week, send your manager an email with this structure:

• Subject: Weekly Check-in [Date]

• Opening: Any asks or deliverables (e.g., "Please review attached proposal" or "Delivered: Q3 planning doc as discussed")

• 3 Wins/Highlights from last week: Not just tasks—IMPACT. What moved the needle?

• 3 Priorities for the week ahead: Shows you're strategic and proactive

Make it a living document: Don't just send and forget. Create a running doc where you copy each check-in AND your manager's responses (or note if they didn't respond—that's data too). This becomes your performance review goldmine.

Use AI as your hype assistant: Feed your check-ins to AI quarterly and ask it to identify patterns, summarize key wins, and spot growth areas. It's like having a career coach who actually remembers everything you've done.

Frame impact, not activity: Instead of "Attended 5 meetings," try "Drove alignment across three teams, unblocking the launch timeline." See the difference? One is showing up, the other is showing VALUE.

Schedule it like a non-negotiable: Pick your time and protect it. This 15-minute investment pays dividends, literally. I block time at the end of my Fridays and schedule send for first thing Monday morning (:

Recuerda: This isn't about being annoying or needy. It's about making sure your contributions are impossible to ignore when promotion and raise conversations happen.

Real talk—I started doing these weekly check-ins from a place of mistrust. After FINALLY getting promoted (only took five years of waiting 🙄), I realized something: I never wanted to be in that position again. My managers hadn't been advocating for me because they didn't even remember half of what I did. And I was done leaving my career progression up to someone else's memory.

That first check-in email? My hands were literally shaking as I hit send. Part of me felt like I was being "too much," like I was breaking some unspoken rule about staying humble and waiting your turn. My inner voice (you know, the one that sounds suspiciously like every person who ever told you "no te creas mucho") was SCREAMING.

But you know what? My manager loved it. Actually thanked me for making their job easier during performance reviews.

Here's what really shifted everything for me though: I finally understood that other people—especially those who didn't look like me—were already doing this. While I was keeping my head down, hoping merit would magically translate to money, they were making sure every small win was documented and celebrated. They weren't smarter or working harder; they were just working the system better.

The moment that changed my whole mindset? When I calculated how much money my silence had cost me. We're talking THOUSANDS of dollars per year in missed raises and delayed promotions. Thousands! That's not just numbers on a screen—that's financial security, that's generational wealth I could be building, that's freedom I was literally giving away because I was too uncomfortable to advocate for myself.

And then during my recent layoff situation? These check-ins became my lifeline. When I needed recommendation letters and had to quickly prove my value for internal transfers, I had 18 months of documented impact at my fingertips. My manager could write an accurate, powerful recommendation because I'd been feeding her the data all along. Those "receipts" I'd been keeping? They literally helped save my career.

But here's what really gets me: I realized I was privileged enough to even BE in these spaces—spaces my parents could never access. They HAD to keep their heads down; it was survival. But me? I was pushed into these rooms to advocate, to take up space, to pave a better path. And by staying quiet, I was wasting that opportunity.

The truth that transformed everything: I deserved to make good money. Not eventually. Not after proving myself for another five years. Now.

So I made a choice. I decided that feeling temporarily uncomfortable sending a weekly email was better than feeling permanently undervalued and underpaid. Because at the end of the day, nobody else was going to fight for my worth—I had to be my own champion.

Now, every Friday when I send that check-in, I think about all the Latina baddies (really, ALL the baddies) coming up behind me. I want them to get their bread sooner than I did. I want them to skip the five-year waiting period I put myself through. I want them to know from day one that documenting and sharing your impact isn't bragging—it's strategy.

P.S. To every woman reading this who's been told to be patient, to wait your turn, to not rock the boat—your contributions matter TODAY. Your impact deserves recognition NOW. And yes, you deserve to be paid accordingly. The system isn't going to change itself, but we can change how we navigate it. One weekly check-in at a time.

_{¿Qué dijo? / What did she say?}
Pero - but
Recuerda - remember
no te creas mucho - don't think too highly of yourself