In this solo episode, I talk about one of the most underrated career moves for women leaders: getting in the room where decisions are made. Whether it’s executive meetings, board discussions, leadership retreats, or high-level masterminds, being present in these spaces can completely change how you think, lead, and grow. I share lessons from leading a billion-dollar business and from a recent retreat in Nashville where I intentionally surrounded myself with entrepreneurs who were further along than I was.

In those moments, it’s easy to feel intimidated or like you’re the least experienced person in the room—but I’ve learned that feeling doesn’t mean you don’t belong; it means you’re expanding. Too often, women wait to be invited into these spaces, when the real barrier is a permission gap, not a skills gap. In this episode, I explore how advocating for your seat can expand your thinking, strengthen relationships, increase visibility, and ultimately help you see yourself as the leader you’re becoming.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

The “Room” Matters More Than You Think

High-stakes decisions don’t happen everywhere—they happen in specific rooms: leadership meetings, strategy sessions, retreats, and boardrooms. Being present in these spaces exposes you to the thinking, language, and relationships that shape big outcomes.
Audience follow-up → Ask yourself: What’s the room where the decisions that impact my work or industry are actually being made?

Discomfort Is a Sign You’re Expanding

Lori shares her experience at a Nashville retreat surrounded by entrepreneurs who were further ahead in their journey. Instead of shrinking, she recognized that the discomfort meant she was in a room that could stretch her thinking.
Audience follow-up → When was the last time you intentionally put yourself in a room where you weren’t the most experienced person?

Stop Waiting for Invitations

Many women assume that if they’re meant to be in the room, someone will invite them. Lori challenges that belief and encourages leaders to advocate for themselves and ask for access to the conversations that matter.
Audience follow-up → What room could you ask to be included in right now?

The Permission Gap Is Real

The barrier for many women leaders isn’t capability—it’s permission. Too often we wait until we feel completely ready, polished, or qualified before stepping forward. Leadership requires claiming space before you feel 100% ready.
Audience follow-up → Where might you be holding yourself back by waiting for permission?

Relationships Open Doors

Being in the room isn’t just about the meeting—it’s about the connections that form around it. Proximity to decision-makers and peers expands opportunities, ideas, and collaborations.
Audience follow-up → Who in your network could introduce you to a room you want to be in?

Drop the Polished Persona

Lori emphasizes that showing up authentically—without the pressure to perform a perfectly polished version of yourself—creates stronger connections and deeper impact.
Audience follow-up → Where might authenticity help you connect more powerfully with leaders around you?

The Room Changes How You Lead

Exposure to bigger conversations expands your strategic thinking, confidence, and sense of possibility. Once you see how decisions are made, you begin to think differently about your role and your potential influence.
Audience follow-up → How might your leadership shift if you regularly participated in higher-level conversations?

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode:

• Lori’s Nashville retreat experience with entrepreneurs further along in their journey
• The concept of the “Permission Gap” in leadership
• The importance of executive rooms, board discussions, and leadership offsites in shaping strategy and opportunity
• The mindset shift from waiting for invitations to claiming your seat
  
  

✨ Reflection Prompts:

• What is the high-stakes room you want to be in?
• What’s one bold ask you could make this month to get closer to that room?
• Where might comparison be showing up—and how can you reframe it as evidence of growth?
  
  

🧠 Who This Episode Is For:

• Women leaders ready to expand their influence
• Executives and entrepreneurs who want greater strategic visibility
• Professionals who feel stuck outside key decision-making spaces
• Anyone ready to stop waiting for permission and step into bigger rooms

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation

• Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori: loripine.com

🎧 Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast

⭐️ Leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show

📲 Share this episode with someone who’s navigating pressure and wants to do it with more grace

Transcript

Hi, I am Lori Pine, the joy CEO, and welcome to the Joy CEO podcast. I am so glad you're here today. I want to start by asking you something. I want you to really sit with this question. Is there a room at work that you have? Yet been in a boardroom, an executive meeting, a secret circle where all the decisions are made, the high stakes presentation, where the real decisions are made.

A seat at a table where people are around. You would just see your brilliance and know the contributions you make to the organization. Not just the tactical deliverables you make on a daily basis. A room where you would finally be visible in a way that you know, deep down you are so ready to be seen. If something came to mind, hold onto it [00:01:00] because we are absolutely circling back to it in this episode because we, today we are talking about that room.

What it does to you when you actually get into it and what it quietly costs you when you're not in it, and what has to shift in you before you'll actually let yourself walk into that sort of a room. I just got back from Nashville. I've been talking about it here on the pod and on my social media, and it was a room that stretched me and.

I really think I've been really transparent with you about that so that you know, like I had butterflies, I had this whole moment with Gary, the bellman at the Conrad Hotel in Nashville, and you know. This room for me was this retreat, but I know what it's like for my corporate life to get into those high stakes rooms.
I know what it's like to get into a room where you're [00:02:00] leading a billion dollar business and you're having to report on that business to very senior level executives, and so. I wanna talk to you about that today and how we transform as women, as leaders when we have a seat at those tables. So if you are new here, welcome.
I'm so glad you found this podcast, this community, this group of women leaders, and to my people who keep showing up week after week. I just love you. Thank you for coming back with me. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Today, by the end of this episode, you are gonna walk away with three things. One, why getting into these high stakes rooms at work is the most underrated career move that you can actually make.
What it will do for your confidence, your visibility, and your belief in what is possible for you. [00:03:00] That is the unlock number two. Why keeping you outside of the rooms you belong in is really the a deterrent. And I'm gonna tell you, it is probably not what you think it is. And number three, the shift you need to make now in how you see yourself, how you show up before any of those doors are gonna open for you.
Let's get to it. Okay, so you know the room that I'm talking about. Maybe it's the executive strategy meeting that you're always briefed on, but you never actually are allowed in. Maybe it's the leadership offsite where all of the fancy executives go, where the real vision and the real KPIs of the company are de determined and decided.
And you always find out about it after the fact. Maybe it's the board presentation where someone else is [00:04:00] carrying your ideas into the meeting and representing you. Maybe it's a customer meeting and it's really highly visible and it's a project you've been working on behind the scenes, and you don't actually get to represent your ideas to the customer.
Maybe it's something cross-functional or a conversation happening two levels above you, but you're absolutely qualified to be a part of the conversation. You know the room. You have been circling it. Here's what I want to say to you right now before we go any further. You are not circling that room because you're not ready.
You're circling it because nobody told you. You are allowed to want it and what it took to actually access it so that it is absolutely permissible for you to position yourself to be in that [00:05:00] room. That advocating for your own seat is not boastful. It is not arrogant, it is leadership, and getting in the room is not about luck.
It is not about waiting to be discovered. It is actually a strategy, a career strategy, and it is one that women who are already in those rooms have actually figured out, usually not because someone handed them a seed or tapped them on the shoulder and said, Hey, I think you'd be great at this. But actually because they were done waiting for the invite, that was never going to come their way.
Okay, so let me tell you what I observed on this Nashville trip and how I want to translate this into what you might be going through about getting into one of these high stakes rooms. I was in a room with 13 other entrepreneurs, and it [00:06:00] was led by a woman named Julie Solomon, someone who's built an eight figure coaching practice.
She's brilliant, she's dynamic. She's also very warm and heartfelt, and she hugs you when you walk into the room, which totally speaks to my love language when somebody hugs me, but she doesn't talk about. It was so easy and I just snapped my fingers or waved a magic wand and all of a sudden, you know, I just had this successful business.
No, she talks about like, you know, it, it, she's done some hard work and. The women in that room were significantly further along than me, which is why I put myself in that room. Some of them have massive platforms, massive followings, thriving businesses, audience that honestly, I dream about. But there was a moment when I could feel the gap [00:07:00] between me and them when my brain started to catalog.
Like all the things I haven't done yet that they have done. I want you to notice something about that feeling, because I'm sure you felt it too. You get into a room and you start comparing yourself to other people, and everyone around the table seems a little bit more certain than you or they, they know how these meetings operate, so they're more confident because they've done it before.
But here's the thing. In a room where people are dropping all these numbers and they're making all these decisions, and they're throwing out all these ideas, it's not that we don't belong in those meetings, it's just that we are new at being in those meetings. And so we are learning and the only way you can learn is to learn to be comfortable being [00:08:00] uncomfortable.
And that's gonna take a minute because that's how we get to grow. So here's what I saw in Nashville. Every single woman who was sitting in the room, all of them who were further than along than me was in that room to figure something out. She didn't have it all figured out. She was there to learn something new about her business.
They hadn't stopped investing in their own growth just because they were succeeding. No, they paid the same amount of money I did to get into that room to learn something that they needed for their business, and they were in the room precisely because they take them themselves and their businesses seriously, and they put their money where their mouth is.
That's what getting into these high rooms at work does for you. Your baseline will move when you are in rooms where big decisions [00:09:00] get made. It grows your thinking. It grows all of the optics that you have. You start seeing things in a much bigger perspective. You see the strategies, you see the whys you are, you start to understand why some of the tactical things that have been asked of you fit together in a much bigger picture, and that really grows you as a leader.
And so what. Would've felt daunting in the beginning will start to feel like you are growing into the leaders who have been at the table for a longer time than you. You will become visible in a new way. And so when you leave that room and you go back to your division, your group, your team, you are gonna lead differently.
And it's not just as like a brilliant [00:10:00] executor or a brilliant manager or brilliant team lead, but as someone who's going to think at the level of the organization's future, and that is a game changer, that is different. Than who you were before you ever got into that room. And those are the sorts of things that can't necessarily happen outside of those rooms.
And trust me, I know this from personal experience, you will learn things that can't be talked. They can really only be experienced and. It gives you an opportunity to watch other senior leaders act and respond to hear questions and answer them and to gauge how they are thinking. And to see that played out in real life really changes your own [00:11:00] perspective.
It changes how you respond back to your own team, and it's critical for your growth and your development, your own composure. As a leader, so I really want you to think about it. You'll, you'll learn things like how those senior leaders hold the room, how they pause before they respond, how they are able to ask questions, clarifying questions, and how they're able to make much more strategic high level decisions as opposed to what might feel sometimes as like.
An erratic or anxiety filled impulse decision, and that is what grows us as leaders when you're in those rooms too. This cannot be understated. You build relationships and [00:12:00] those relationships open doors because they have real substance. Those opportunities don't necessarily come through job applications.
They come through human connection and relationships really are the key to unlocking. Almost every door in life, people can advocate for you if they know you, if they work with you, if they hear your thoughts, hear, hear how you're approaching the business, they can sponsor you. They can bring your name up in rooms that you're not yet in.
You can meet them in the rooms that you're brave enough to go into now, and that is such an advantage to your career. As we move along in the episode, I really want to talk about what I walked away with in Nashville, and I'm sharing it because it belongs to you as well. It's [00:13:00] this realization that it's easy to present the most polished version of ourselves, the best version.
And quietly protect the kind of in progress, you know, girl version of ourself that's still figuring things out. Now, I try to be pretty honest with you and the women I coach like that this has been hard and this is a work in progress, but it's easy. When you're leading a team to want to project that, the reason you're leading a team is because you've figured things out.
But this woman, Julie, who led this retreat in Nashville was really clear that. She built something from nothing and she brought in this guest speaker who is a [00:14:00] publisher of books and specifically female authors, and she gave this version of like. Do you wanna hear the story of the woman who had such a perfect life and accomplished everything and lived happily ever after?
Or do you wanna hear the disastrous version of her life and how she overcame and went on to triumph something really difficult. Of course we were all like, yeah, let give us the juicy side. Tell us the stuff she overcame. Tell us how she overcame it. We all want to know that. I think that's why everybody's so attracted to Mel Robbins.
I mean, for a million other reasons too. Right? But she tells you that she was $800,000 in debt and that she overcame it. We, we don't wanna know just the polished versions, so. You might ask though, like what's appropriate to share in a corporate environment and what's not, [00:15:00] and I'll just say that you don't have to have it all figured out.
You don't have to have all the answers. That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself. You can just be real. You can just be you and be authentic. The one who has navigated life, you've navigated some hard things. You've taken chances to get where you are today. You've sat across from the difficult executive.
You've probably had the difficult manager, and you've held your ground and you're still standing at the end of the day. So. Ground yourself in that version of you and let more and more of her be seen, because that version of you is very relatable and that version of you is likely to be welcomed as opposed to that version of you [00:16:00] being a liability.
She just may be your greatest asset and here's. A little bit more truth. When you get into those high stakes rooms, the people already in them are not looking at somebody who's perfect and performs perfectly. They're looking for somebody who actually has something to contribute. That's the truth.
Somebody who thinks differently and who will bring a perspective that may challenge the status quo. Because that's how disruption and innovation actually can change the trajectory of an organization, especially if the organization is in a bit of a rut or isn't quite sure what direction to go in, or sales are slumping or outside influences are affecting the bottom line.
Disruption can be [00:17:00] helpful. Okay, so let me ask you the same question that the room asked me. What version of yourself have you been presenting at work and what version have you been protecting? And if you weren't afraid, is there a version of you that you would share a little bit more freely? Let's talk honestly about what keeps brilliant women outside the rooms they belong in, because it's rarely what you think.
It's usually not a skills gap, not even a networking gap, because we know how to network like a freaking boss, though we tell ourselves that we don't have the connections or we don't know the who or what have you. It's really a permission gap. It's giving ourselves permission. It's a voice inside you that says, I'm not ready.
I, I can't do that until I do this. [00:18:00] And that's the lie. If you are waiting until you're more experienced, if you're waiting until you prove yourself a little bit more, if you're waiting until someone notices you and extends an invitation, well, you could be waiting away the best years of your career. In the meanwhile, the invitation is not coming.
It's up to you to seize the moment. So don't think it has anything to do with you being ready or not. It's whether or not you are raising your hand and advocating for yourself. Are you speaking up? Are you being bold? Are you making it known that you are ready? That you wanna be in the room, that you want the next level promotion, and here's why you're ready for it.
Someone in the room has to know that you want to be there, and that's on you to tell [00:19:00] them. Critical, critical differentiation. So the move is yours to make. And it might look like asking your manager directly. It might look like that in your monthly one-on-ones or quarterly, one-on-ones, however you do that.
And what would it take, what would it take for you to start volunteering to be in one of those high stakes meetings? Maybe your boss is gonna be away on vacation, and you could be the sub in. Maybe it might look like building a relationship with somebody else who's already in a different meeting. Maybe it could be a project that you get assigned to.
It might look like investing in a program or a coach or a retreat or a space where the level of conversation expands you and challenges you and broadens your thinking to an entirely different level that is [00:20:00] beyond your current thinking, so that you are ready to arrive and ask for more. Do more. Be more.
I. Wish I had, had a coach when I was back in my corporate life. It, it really is one regret. I, I feel, because I really didn't know about coaching until after I left my corporate job, but I think I would've been a much better leader had I had a coach. And I share that just so transparently and honestly, I feel like.
I did get into some of those rooms, but I had some blind spots and I could have really worked through them much, EAs much more easily had. Somebody been coaching me and telling me like, Hey, your swing's a little off here. Your stance is a little off there. Why don't you hold the bat a little bit differently and hold on.
You got, you know, a fastball coming towards you and you're not paying attention. That would've been really, [00:21:00] really helpful and it would've been worth the investment because I could have improved, you know, my annual raise. I could have improved my bonus by having those performance indicators. So something to think about.
I do believe that the women who get into those rooms are not necessarily the most qualified. I say that because I've been in some of those rooms, but they were decided and they were intentional and they made their aspirations known, and that's what they had going for them. So what are you going to do?
And are you ready to make that sort of a decision for yourself? So let's bring this all home. Let's wrap this up. I paid to go to Nashville. I flew there. I sat in a room that stretched me. I felt so outta my league in the beginning. I had butterflies. I had the whole mo moment with Gary, the bellman, [00:22:00] and then I felt something really open up that I hadn't been able to access on my own.
It was a permission, a clarity, a new way of seeing what I've been carrying and what it's actually worth. And when I left. I had so much energy and excitement that I couldn't put a price tag on that. So your room might be an executive leadership meeting, the board meeting, the strategic initiative, the projects, something that's gonna put you in front of people that will significantly change the trajectory of your career, this high visibility access.
You've been eyeing it, but you have not yet crossed that threshold. Now is the time, and if you're feeling anything like I felt in my corporate life, or I felt in [00:23:00] going on this Nashville trip, like there's a gap, there's a stretch. There is a moment that was going to open up inside of you. You will feel all of that and it will feel uncomfortable.
Your job is to learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable because the room will do something for you that you cannot do for yourself, and I cannot stress that enough. It will recalibrate you to believe what is possible. It will show you. Not in theory, but in your actual body, you are going to feel it, that you belong there.
And once you know that and like really know it, it like in your whole nervous system, you're gonna know, never, ever, ever wanna go back to playing small. You are gonna know things now. You're gonna see things. Now you're gonna. Befriend people have mentors [00:24:00] that that won't want you to ever go back to that.
So here is permission from me to you. Stop waiting to feel ready. You may never feel ready. Stop waiting for someone to give you the invitation. The the invitation is yours, and stop presenting like this polished version of yourself and protecting the real version of you. Just decide that you are ready and figure out the move that is going to get you closer to it and make that move not someday.
Today, today, this week, ASAP because your brilliance and your acumen and your experience, they all deserve a room that is worthy and just waiting for them. So it's time for you to get in the room. Thank you so much for being here with me today. If this episode [00:25:00] stirred something in you, if a room came to mind right at the beginning that you cannot stop thinking about, I want you to treat that as information, that is data.
Don't let it stay a feeling. Let it become a decision. Take action, think, decide, act, and if you are navigating what it looks like to lead with more joy, more authenticity, and more of your real self in your corporate space that you're in this. Joy, CEO World was meant for you because that's exactly what we do.
Come find us. Come to my website. Until next time, lead with joy. It is your greatest leadership strength. I am so glad to be doing it with you. I'm Lori Pine, the joy, CEO, and I will see you next week. Thanks for listening to the joy CEO. I hope today's conversation left you feeling seen, stretched, and a little more grounded in your own joy.
If something [00:26:00] resonated, be sure to hit subscribe. Leave a five star review and share this episode with someone walking a similar path. And if you're ready to take this work deeper, connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram at Lori Pine, or head over to my website, lori pine.com, to learn more about coaching retreats and how we can work together.
Because joy isn't just personal, it's powerful. And when you lead with joy, you don't just rise, you bring others with you. Until next time, keep leading with heart and don't forget to claim your joy.