Hello, Reader
Sit with me for a moment.
Imagine Netflix commissioned a documentary.
On why accomplished women keep settling for smaller rooms.
Episode 1 would open with the Director who has been doing VP work for four years and calls herself "not quite ready yet."
Episode 2 would be the woman who runs the entire operation but never puts her name forward when the promotion opens.
Episode 3 would be the founder who is too talented to still be earning what she is earning and yet somehow keeps agreeing to it.
Episode 4 would be the executive who has been in the same seat for so long that the chair has started to shape itself around her, and she calls that stability.
Every episode would feature a different woman. Same story. Same room. Same explanation.
"I'm not ready yet."
"When the time is right."
"I don't want to seem too ambitious."
"I'm just being humble."
And every episode would end with the same footage.
Someone else walking through the door she was still waiting to feel worthy of.
A few days ago, I couldn't resist joining the Instagram #Netflixdocumentaries trend. It made me smile at first. Then, it made me think...What if it was about the career story we keep replaying without even realising it?
If you missed the trend, here's my version.
Here is what makes this documentary so devastating.
Here’s what makes this documentary so devastating.
The women in it are not lacking.
They are respected. They are recognised. They have the credentials, the track record, the receipts.
The problem is not that they cannot do the next level.
The problem is that they have quietly agreed to keep operating one level below where they actually belong.
And they’ve been agreeing to it for so long that they forgot they were agreeing to anything at all.
Here’s the pattern I’ve watched for more than twenty years.
Accomplished women do not shrink because they are weak.
They shrink because shrinking was rewarded once, a long time ago, and the reward system was never updated.
They were praised for being helpful and mistook it for a strategy.
They were told hard work would be recognised and mistook that for a promise.
They were taught that the right rooms would find them and mistook that for the truth.
None of those things are true at the executive level.
Nobody sends you a memo when the rules change.
The next level requires a different kind of leadership currency—and many accomplished women are still trying to pay with what got them this far.
So the same behaviours that got you to Director can quietly keep you at Director for the next fifteen years.
The most painful line in this imaginary documentary would be this:
“I kept preparing. I kept building. I kept waiting. And when I looked up, someone with less experience was already in the room I had been quietly preparing for.”
Every woman reading this has either lived that sentence or watched a woman she loves live it.
Here’s what I want you to understand, because it took me a long time to see it clearly.
Settling for a smaller room is not a personality flaw.
It is a habit.
Which means it is also breakable.
The women who eventually walk into the bigger room were not born braver.
They did not get a special message from God that other women did not receive.
They did not wake up one Tuesday feeling ready.
They simply stopped waiting to feel ready before they moved.
They negotiated the small ask because they were rehearsing for the big one.
They built the relationships before they needed them.
They named their fee at the dinner table.
They started acting like the woman the next level required long before anyone offered them a seat there.
And one day, quietly, they realised they had walked out of the smaller room entirely.
Because they had grown into a woman it could no longer hold.
A question for you.
If Netflix made this documentary about the last five years of your career, which episode would you be?
• The Director who has been doing VP work.
• The woman who runs the operation but never puts herself forward.
• The founder still earning what she was earning three years ago.
• The executive whose chair has started to shape itself around her.
Sit with it.
Be honest.
Then decide whether you want the next five years to become another episode of the same show.
Because the alternative is real.
And it is closer than you think.
I have something I’m building specifically for women who are ready to stop being the subject of that documentary and start becoming the woman it should have been about.
More on that in the coming weeks.
Which episode felt uncomfortably familiar?
Reply with the episode number. No explanation required—unless you’d like to tell me more. I read every reply.
Talk soon.
Cheers To Your Next Chapter,
Coach FAA
P.S. Forward this to a woman you know who is living one of these episodes. She may have been waiting for someone to say it plainly. Let this be the moment..