Is This You at Work?
We’ve spoken to thousands of women—young, mid-career, senior; corporate, nonprofit, and independent workers. We keep hearing the same things. Do these sound familiar? If so, this Playbook is for you.
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I’m exhausted
from proving myself.Perspective shift
You have nothing to prove. Time to show not tell.
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I want to be
taken seriously.Perspective shift
They don’t take you seriously because they don’t see what you want.
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I’ve hit a wall I can’t name. I’m stuck.
Perspective shift
You’re not stuck — you’re early.
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I need to get
through to my boss.Perspective shift
Persuasion is a highly ineffective path to influence. Get your ecosystem behind you!
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I care about this.
Why don’t they?Perspective shift
People care about what affects them.
You Don’t
Need a
New Boss.
New Boss.
New Team.
New Boss.
New Team.
New Job.
You Need New Tools.
This Influence Playbook gives you proven strategies used by thousands of women to change their own experience of work—and make work work for everyone.
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What’s Influence?
You hear “influence” and cringe. But hear this: It’s not about persuasion or personality—and it’s definitely focused on you. It’s how you wire the room. Shape the space. Lead toward a future worth being part of.
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The Ground Rules
Before you can even think about specific strategies, you need to memorize the basic rules of the game. Tattoo these on your arm if you have to.
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The Strategies
These are the secrets of influence.Strategies, stories, examples. Jump around, but don’t skip a single one. This is your power portfolio. It’s how to Work Like a Woman.
Learn how to build your influence engine here.
Real Women. Real Wins. Your Playbook for Influence.
The Influence Playbook isn’t theory. It’s built from women’s lived experiences, moments when they turned challenge into change.
Here are a few of their stories. The rest are waiting inside the Playbook.
Shayla
Childcare gaps, sick days, burnout. Shayla heard real problems; her boss just heard
whining. By mapping who was affected, she proved the system was broken and won a shift policy that worked for everyone.
Chelsie
Polarization grew after the 2016 election. Instead of arguing, Chelsie collected women’s stories. Her nonprofit reframed civic life, proving that empathy changes minds where logic can’t.
Jasmine
Leaders balked at a health van, calling it risky. Jasmine showed another clinic’s success with photos, stories, and data. Suddenly risk looked smart, and the board approved.
Naomi
Nurses hated the scheduling system but stayed silent. Naomi asked anonymously, “What’s one thing you’d fix tomorrow?” Dozens responded, forcing leadership to listen, setting change in motion.
This Playbook is for you. We created it because we know you’re done playing by rules that were never written with you in mind. You want more power as you lead, work, and move through the world.
The purpose of everything in this downloadable Playbook is simple: to put practical, proven tools into your hands. We want to help you make what matters to you … matter more to others.
Who are we? We are the founders of Bonfire Women, Inc., a company we created in 2019 because we saw what women wanted, and we knew what they needed—new ways of seizing and exercising power. Since then, more than 400 companies and 5,000 women have used the Bonfire curriculum. What you’ll find here is the single most powerful tool we gave them. And it’s here for you in a free, downloadable and shareable Playbook.
Inside you’ll find strategies, exercises, and success stories to help you frame your ideas, mobilize allies, change yourself, and influence the culture around you. These approaches are based on the experience of thousands who have already proven they work.
You’ll want to download this now, section by section or the whole shebang. You’ll use it constantly. Then share it widely. It’s how you’ll spark new conversations and define your own success.
Most of all, we want to remind you that influence is a verb. It’s not something you have, it’s something you do.
And like all things that matter, the Influence Playbook has many mothers. It was born from a research project under the auspices of the Omidyar Network, validated at Bonfire, and funded in this form by the Lumena Foundation.
So now that you know what you want, are you ready to go get it?
Then it’s time to Work Like a Woman!
Rachel Bellow,
Co-Founder
Suzanne Muchin,
Co-Founder