™ Activate Your Leadership from the Inside Out.
You didn’t lose your power. You’ve been giving it away.
It happens in 30-second windows. Here is what one looks like.
You are in a meeting. You have something to contribute. You feel it forming and you start working on it.
Not just thinking about it. Working on it. You are crafting the sentence in your head. Trying it one way. Trying it another. You want it to land clean. You want it heard the first time. You can almost see the slide forming behind your eyes, the one slide of the one thing you want to say, refined and right, the way you have refined every important slide for every important meeting for years.
Until it is perfect. Until you are ready.
The conversation moves on. The moment passes.
You missed it. You were still preparing.
That is one kind of 30 seconds.
Here is another kind.
You are in a meeting and you do say the thing. You say it three different ways across ten minutes. The room moves past it each time, the way water moves past a rock.
A guy two seats down says it. Not your version. Just the gist. Close enough that no one would call it different, and the room hears it. Stops. Considers. Picks it up. As though he had just put it on the table.
The credit goes to him. You feel it land, that quiet drop in the chest. The defeat of I just said that.
And there is no way to address it that does not make you look like a complainer. Aren’t we all a team here? You can already hear the tone. You can already hear the unsaid words behind it: are you being sensitive? Are you having a hard day? You know the costs of saying the thing about it. You have done that math before.
So you don’t say it.
The conversation moves on.
You don’t replay either of those 30 seconds consciously. You don’t have to. The body keeps the receipt.
At 8:40pm, scrolling LinkedIn while reheating leftovers, you see a post about claim your seat at the table. The same quiet drop in your chest. Again.
Those are the moments where you give yourself away.
Not the meeting. Not the guy. Not the room.
The thing you wanted to say, still being made perfect in your head while the conversation moved on.
The silence you held on the credit-going-to-him because you had already done the math.
The “I’m sorry” before a sentence that didn’t need it.
That is the unconscious bias that the work on women in leadership keeps trying to fix from above. It does not get fixed from above. It gets fixed in the 30 seconds.
Most of the work on women in leadership will not say this out loud.
That 30 seconds is the work. Not the year-long leadership-presence program. Not the next 360. Not the next coach. Not the next book. The 30 seconds.
That is where your leadership is being decided.
That is where this program operates.
No other program operates in the 30 seconds.
This program is for you.
The Senior Manager who has been running on full output for years. The Director who has been told she is almost there. Same woman, two job titles. Both showing up here.
The one who steps in. Figures it out. Keeps things moving. Handles what others drop.
The one who has been told she is doing a great job for a decade, and watched the promotion go to the man with half her receipts.
The one with the workbooks from training and development programs on her shelf, or the stack of executive coaching debriefs in the desk drawer, or both.
The one with the contradictory performance review that said “too aggressive in some communications” and “I’d love to see more conviction in leadership presence”. Both. In the same review. Three pages apart.
The one who read her review three times in her parking-garage car. Engine off. Two questions sitting in the air with her, the same two questions that come up at 8:40pm, the same two questions that come up the night before review, the same two questions she has asked for years without ever getting an answer that holds:
“Will I ever be enough?”
“Am I crazy?”
You are not crazy. You are enough. The questions are not the problem. The questions are the only two questions the system you have been running can ask, and they cannot be answered inside it.
You have just never had any of this named in plain language by someone who was not also trying to sell you a confidence program.
Let me walk through what is actually happening, because it matters that you see it before we go any further.
Years of conditioning have trained your nervous system on a single equation: more doing, more output, with less and less support equals success. Year after year of do more with less. Year after year of being the one the room reaches for when the deliverable is on fire and the budget is gone.
You did not pick up that pattern because you were broken. You picked it up because the system was structured to reward it. Every quarter you produced more with less, and every quarter the bar moved up. The conditioning is not personal. It is structural.
The intellectual track: the model itself is wrong.
You have been working harder inside a frame that was designed to extract more from you than it returned.
More effort applied to the same frame just makes you more efficient at running yourself down.
The emotional track is harder. Because the version of you who learned to deliver under that pressure is also the version of you who got promoted, who paid the mortgage, who put the kids through everything they needed. Letting go of that pattern feels like erasing yourself. The output and the identity have fused. You cannot separate the woman from the drive that built the career.
But you don’t have to.
That is not the work.
The work is not to take yourself apart. Not to invalidate who you have become.
The frame that has been running you down also forged real capability. The skill, the strength, the grit to deliver under fire. Those came out of running on full output for years. You earned them. They are yours.
And it is exhausting you. Both can be true at the same time.
The work is to take a stand for yourself. To recognize the woman you have already become and stop handing pieces of yourself over to the room in the moments where you have been giving them away.
What you are reclaiming is not your power.
It is yourself.
You are not power-deficient. You have been giving yourself away piece by piece, and your power has been leaking.
And there is a difference between those two diagnoses that changes everything about what the work is.
You bought the books. You took the programs. You leaned in. You did the inner-critic work. You went to the executive presence training. You applied the techniques. You implemented the tips.
You did not just consume the material. You worked it, rigorously, in real meetings, in real conversations, for years. You did the work all those programs told you was the work, and you did it in good faith.
And still, on Tuesday at 2:47pm, the “I’m sorry” starts forming before a sentence that doesn’t need it, and you do not know why it isn’t working.
And at 11pm, lying awake, you replay the meeting beat by beat looking for the move you missed.
Here is why it isn’t working.
Every program you have tried, every one, has been operating in the same frame. The frame of proving.
Lean in: prove yourself harder, prove yourself the way the room expects, prove yourself in a room that wasn’t built for you. Executive presence: perform a version of yourself the room recognizes as powerful. Claim your seat at the table: prove that you should be at it. Inner-critic work: manage the internal voice so you can perform better in the room. Confidence coaching: build a feeling that lets you show up the way the room wants. Personal branding: architect a persona the room will respond to.
Six different vocabularies. Six different programs. Six different price tags. Identical mechanism.
Each one assumes the same thing: that what is yours has to be granted. That the room confirms whether you are the woman you say you are. That the work is to do better in that confirmation.
You have been excelling at this for years. The performance reviews say so. The reputation for getting things done says so. The fact that you are the one the room reaches for when the deliverable is on fire says so.
And still, the promotion goes elsewhere. The dream assignment goes elsewhere. The recognition that should follow the work does not follow it, at least not in the form you have earned.
That is not because the system is broken. That is because the system is functioning exactly as designed. As long as the source of your power is the room, as long as you require the room’s confirmation to know you are the woman you are, the room controls whether you rise. And the room has every reason to keep an excellent prover in the proving role. You are too valuable as a workhorse to be set free to soar.
That is the invisible governor. It is not a glass ceiling. It is a structural feature of running your power on outside-in fuel. The fuel is always rationed by the people who control it.
You cannot win this game by playing it harder.
Your power was never anyone else’s to grant.
This is also why the two questions in your parking-garage car will not resolve. Will I ever be enough? cannot be answered, because the arbiter has every reason not to declare you enough. Am I crazy? cannot be answered, because the math (excellent work + no commensurate reward) does not add up, and the proving frame has only one slot for the error: you. The questions are not weakness. They are the only two questions the system you have been running can ask.
There is a different move. It is the move Fire Up Your Leadership™ was built for.
From proving to standing for.
From outside-in power to power from the inside out. From a source the room can revoke to a source the room cannot reach. From waiting to be recognized, to standing for the woman you have already become, and from that ground, leading.
Mandy was a Senior Manager when she came to FYL. Listen to what she actually said. “Fire Up Your Leadership gave me the clarity and confidence to stop waiting to be recognized, and start leading like the VP I was ready to be. One month later, I landed the job.” The load-bearing phrase is stopped waiting to be recognized. That is the proving exit, named in her words. The work was not getting recognized harder. The work was stopping waiting. Standing for herself instead. The VP role was always available to a woman who did not need it to be validated.
Listen to what Lori said, also a Senior Manager when she came to FYL: “Susan helped me remember what it is that drives me and rediscover the power of MY leadership style.” The load-bearing word is MY. Not “her power.” Not “claim her seat.” The power of her leadership style. Internal source named in her own words. The proving frame had her trying to lead in a way that was not hers. Standing for herself let her recognize the leadership style that was already hers.
This is what the work actually is.
You did not lose your power. You have been giving yourself away: in the “I’m sorry” before a sentence that didn’t need it, in the “may I?” hand you raised instead of saying the words you had ready, in the silence the third time you said the thing the room only heard when a guy said it. Moment by moment. Piece by piece, for years. Your power has been leaking.
The work is not to claim power you do not have. There is no power to take back.
The work is to take a stand for the woman you have already become, and from that ground, stop giving the next piece away in the moments where you have been giving them away.
What is yours is not the power. What is yours is you.
A few labels that need to be retired here, because you do not have time to keep fighting phantoms.
You don’t have an imposter syndrome. Most inner-critic work locates the problem inside your head: a feeling to manage, a voice to negotiate with, an internal dialogue to fix. You have done that work for years. It did not change the meeting at 2:47pm. Because the meeting at 2:47pm is not happening inside your head. It is happening in the room.
The voice in your head is real. It is not the work to fix. It is the signal that the moment is starting.
You don’t have a confidence gap. The confidence frame asks you to build something you do not have, before you act. The work runs in the other direction: standing for the woman you already are produces the action, and the confidence is what you feel on the other side of having taken the stand.
And the system is real. The bias is real. Neither one is what you can do anything about at 2:47pm on a Tuesday when the “I’m sorry” is already forming. You cannot change the system in the next 30 seconds. You can change what you do in them.
The false labels have been training you to fight phantoms. Name the work correctly and you can finally do the actual work.
The work is done in the moment. The work is what your body does the second it feels the “I’m sorry” forming. The work is who you stand for the second your body would otherwise hand the next piece over.
You do not need to do more. You simply need to lead differently.
That is what leading differently actually means. Not a posture. Not a mindset. Not an identity you grow into over the next three years.
A practice. Moment by moment.
When the “I’m sorry” starts forming before a sentence that doesn’t need it, you have 30 seconds to take a stand.
When the room hears a guy say what you have already said three times, you have 30 seconds to take a stand.
When the words are ready and your hand starts to go up small, you have 30 seconds to take a stand.
Each one is a choice. Give away another piece of yourself. Or take a stand for yourself.
Inside that window, two things are true at once.
One: what you need is already in you. You have led under fire long enough to have the receipts. The capability is not gone. It has been overridden by a reflex you trained without knowing you were training it.
Two: the reflex made sense once. It is now running in the wrong context. The fear that taught you to defer was protecting you in a chapter that has closed. It just does not know the chapter has closed.
The work is to bring back online what is already in your body. To stand for the woman you already are in the moments where you usually hand yourself over. To say the words you have ready when you would otherwise stay silent. To stop the “I’m sorry” before a sentence that doesn’t need it.
You will see it the first time you catch yourself about to defer, and instead, you don’t. The reflex reaches for the “may I?” hand. You feel it reach. And you say the sentence anyway.
And then, sometimes that same week, sometimes a few weeks later, there is another moment. Quieter. Less dramatic. More important.
You are reading another contradictory performance review. Or sitting in another meeting where your point gets handed back to the room by a guy two seats over.
And the question does not come up.
Am I crazy? Does not come up.
You see what you see. You trust what you see. You know you are not misreading the room. You know the math is not adding up because the math is rigged, not because you are reading it wrong.
The two questions stop running. Not because you talked yourself out of them. Because the system that generated them is no longer running you. You can trust yourself. You are not crazy. You never were.
That is the visceral signal that the shift has fully landed. It is not a thought. It is not a belief you talked yourself into. It is something the body knows before the mind names it. I can trust myself. I am not crazy.
When that signal lands, the work becomes effortless. You do not have to remember to take the stand. You take it because there is nothing else to do. You are standing for yourself, and you are not giving yourself away anymore. The body shifts first. The behavior follows. That is how you know the work has landed.
That is what FYL is built to do.
It is not the inner-critic work you have already done. There is no voice in your head to negotiate with, no permission to grant yourself, no internal conversation to manage. The work is in the moment, in the body, in the room, not in your head.
Different work entirely.
Look at what the women who have done this work have said about it, in their own words, not in marketing copy.
“Fire Up Your Leadership gave me the clarity and confidence to stop waiting to be recognized, and start leading like the VP I was ready to be. One month later, I landed the job. Two years later, I became President.”
— Mandy Kroetsch, President, Crimson Midstream (Senior Manager when she did FYL)
After she became President, Mandy hired Susan to bring the same work to her leadership team. Her reason, in her words: “I want my team to have the benefit of the kind of leadership coaching I had.” What that tells you about the work is not what you might do later. It is what Mandy thought of the work after she had lived it.
“Susan helped me remember what it is that drives me and rediscover the power of my leadership style.”
— Lori Zipes, Command Chief Engineer (retired), Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (first woman Command Chief Engineer across 10 warfare centers; Senior Manager when she did FYL)
“The stand I took for myself as a leader and for my value has fueled both my confidence and my business growth.”
— Olivia Lee, Business Coach, HR Expert, Host of The Power of WE Podcast
“Even without a typical leadership title I could prove myself as a successful leader through my actions.”
— Teri Cross, Communications and Content Strategist, Ingram Micro
The work was not earning the title before leading. It was leading without it. By the end of FYL, Teri was at ease with not chasing the promotion. Not long after, it arrived anyway.
“I very quickly started stepping out of my comfort zone by speaking up rather than tolerating (my usual MO) situations that weren’t working for me and others. I am so much more confident in my value, and my ability to have effective tough conversations that create a win-win.”
— Michelle B., Head of Marketing
“My confidence has really grown from taking action that produces new levels of results.”
— Rachel Brill-Meckler, Director of Learning and Wellbeing, AEON
“It’s like building muscle memory, the tools become a part of how you think and how you work naturally vs. constantly having to refer to a piece of paper.”
— Rachel Brill-Meckler
These are not testimonials of outcome. They are testimonials of what the work actually is.
The stand I took for myself. The load-bearing phrase is not the stand. It is for myself. Olivia did not take a stand for power. She took a stand for the woman she already was. From that ground, not from a new identity she had to build, but from the one she stood for, the rest followed.
That is what the work is. That is what these women are describing.
You have read every kind of testimonial. The aspirational ones. The before-and-after ones. The ones where the woman is finally living her purpose. You have learned to discount them, and you were right to. They were promising you something you would have to become.
These do not promise that.
These describe women who took a stand for who they already were, and watched the room respond to her differently because she was different in it. Not a different woman. The same woman, no longer giving herself away.
Watch the speed. Mandy did not transform over a 24-month leadership arc. She landed a VP role one month after FYL, for a position she would have never gone after before. Michelle did not slowly cultivate a new self. She very quickly started stepping out of her comfort zone. That speed is not magic. It is what happens when the work is seeing, not reinvention. There is nothing to prove. There are pieces to stop giving away. The shift takes weeks, not years, because the woman was always there.
You can run the diagnostic on yourself before you ever apply.
If a program promises transformation, into someone you are not yet, that is the acquisition frame. If it promises a stand for the woman you have already become, and the behavior change that follows naturally from that ground, that is what FYL is.
Listen for whose language they are speaking: the program’s, or their own.
These women are speaking their own.
One more thing, and this is different.
This is not a testimonial. It is evidence the work integrated. Not shelf-help. So integrated that her own language now expresses the distinction in a way I had not generated myself. For me, this is always the proof that my work is working: when a client teaches me something I had not yet seen about my own teaching.
Inside the program, a woman was asked “What is power?” She answered, in her own words, on her own time, with no template:
“Power to me is internal liberation. It is owning my voice, trusting my decisions, and using my strength to uplift others while building the future I want.”
— Charlotte Williams, Health Administration Graduate Program (FYL 2.0 Pilot 2026)
Read that sentence again. She did not get it from a worksheet. She did not borrow it from a book. I never said this in this way in the program. These words were hers. Generated entirely by her.
Internal liberation. The inside-out frame in two words, and she got there before I did. Owning my voice. Trusting my decisions. Stand and Voice in her language, not mine. Using my strength to uplift others while building the future I want. The forward orientation that arrives on the other side of the work.
Not a phrase. A whole sentence in her own voice. Proof of the work landing all the way down.
Here is what Fire Up Your Leadership™ actually is, in plain language.
It is a 12-week activation. Not a course to get through. Not more content to consume. The work happens in the meetings already on your calendar this week, in the real moments where your leadership is actually decided.
It opens with a 1:1 call with me. Before you touch a single module, we get clear on the pattern running in your specific work. We name where you have been giving yourself away, one moment at a time. And we name your first Growth Edge: the place between your comfort zone and your potential zone where stepping forward is the work for you right now. You do not start cold. You start in a conversation, with me.
From there, the work meets your life. You move at the pace your real week allows. Some weeks you push. Some weeks a fire at work or a sick kid takes the time, and the design absorbs it. This is not a cohort. No class dates. No curriculum to keep up with. No performance pressure. It is private. Yours to do, yours to talk about however you choose.
By the end of twelve weeks, you will have at least three Growth Edges named, and a working practice of stepping forward when you would have held back or hesitated. Not as a one-time act. As a capability you carry.
That is the design.
A note on who I am, briefly, because you should know who you would be working with. The full CV is on the About page. Here is what matters for this conversation.
I am Susan Mazza. I have spent 25+ years working with leaders: Fortune 500 executives, US Navy DoD, Avenues: The World School (a 10-year client partnership), women running multi-million-dollar departments and women running their own firms. I coached an executive team that added a billion dollars to its company’s bottom line. And I have coached the woman who was running three functions on Senior Manager pay, getting passed over for the title two years running, until she stopped waiting for it. She has the title now. I am the founder of Random Acts of Leadership™ and the creator of Leading Made Simple™ and the Leadership in Action System™, the body of work that FYL operates inside. Inc. Magazine has named me a Top 100 Conference Speaker and a Top 50 Leadership Innovator. Trust Across America has named me one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in trustworthy business behavior.
That is the credential side.
What I also want you to know: I have lived the pattern I am coaching out of. I spent two years inside a consulting firm working harder than I thought possible to prove I belonged there, and watched myself become exhausted, disconnected, and capable on paper while running on empty in the body. I gave my power away in 30-second windows for years before I had words for what I was doing. I was the prototype for the work, and I have been refining it ever since.
I am not the senior woman who arrived at this material from a textbook. I am the senior woman who lived inside the leak, named it, stopped giving herself away piece by piece, and built the program I wish I had been able to buy at 38.
The work is rigorous. The voice is direct. The relationship is partnership.
That is who I am.
If anything on this page has named what you have been living, the next step is a conversation.
This is not a sales call, and it is not a discovery call that becomes a sales call after fifteen minutes. It is a fit-at-this-moment conversation: 30 minutes, you and me, to determine together what the right next step is for you, whether or not that step is FYL. By the end, we will have an answer we both arrived at. Not a pitch you have to deflect.
I run these as mutual decisions. I am evaluating whether you are ready for the work. You are evaluating whether the work is a fit for what you actually need, and whether I am the right person to do it with. Both of us walk in clear-eyed. Both of us walk out with an answer.
If we say yes together, I send you the agreement and the strong-start call gets scheduled before we hang up. If either of us says not yet, we say not yet, and you walk away with a real read on what the right next step actually is, even if it is not FYL.
Either way is a real outcome.
Here is what you are protected from on this call: the call you regret booking, the program that’s wrong for you, the “fit” that wasn’t really there. You will not be sold to. The work does not work that way. I am committed to doing the work with the women who are ready to do it, not to filling seats.
There are two steps to get to the conversation.
First, the reflection: five questions, your own words, 15 to 30 minutes of honest thinking. Not a questionnaire. A place to get started. If the questions don’t feel worth 15-30 minutes of your time, that is real information. The work is going to ask more than that. Better to learn now than after we have started.
Second, the calendar. Submitting your reflection unlocks my actual availability. You pick a 30-minute slot. I show up to the call with your reflection already read, the pattern already noted, and a real working hypothesis about whether the fit is there.
If you are at the point on a Sunday at 9:14pm where you have read this page twice and the question on the table is whether this is another disappointment or whether this is actually different. The fastest way to find out is to apply, schedule the call, and let us decide together.
Here is the other answer to that question. Next Tuesday at 2:47pm, the “I’m sorry” either starts forming again before a sentence that doesn’t need it, or it doesn’t. At 8:40pm scrolling LinkedIn, the day either lands in your chest like a delayed bill, or you have stood for the woman you already are. The 30 seconds either go the way they have been going, or they go differently. Both are answers. Only one of them is yours.
The reflection takes 15 to 30 minutes, because it is a place to get started.
The conversation takes thirty.
Either way, you walk away clearer.
Two ways to start a conversation.
If the page has named something, but the FYL Conversation feels like a bigger step than where you are right now, you do not have to be ready for that step to be in conversation with me.
You can also just ask me a question.
Not as a workaround. As a real second door. I read every one. I answer every one personally. There is no funnel behind it. The question goes to me, and the reply comes from me.
Pick whichever door is the honest one for where you are today.
A real question, in your own words. I read every one. I reply personally.
Not sure what to ask? Try one of these:
- Is FYL right for someone who’s already done a lot of this work?
- How is this different from what I’ve already tried?
- What does the 1:1 strong-start call actually look like?
- How do other women fund this, does my company sometimes pay?
- Something else entirely, your question, your words.
A 30-minute fit-at-this-moment conversation. We decide together what the right next step is for you, whether or not that step is FYL.
15-30 minutes of honest thinking. Five questions. Your own words. The reflection is a place to get started. Not a questionnaire. Submitting unlocks my calendar.
I show up to the call with your reflection already read, the pattern already noted, and a real working hypothesis about whether the fit is there.
I am not trying to fill seats. I am committed to doing the work with the women who are ready to do it.
Request an FYL ConversationI read every question and every reflection before I respond. I look forward to reading yours.
— Susan