Never accept less than the love you deserve. Not ever.
If you’re new here — think of me as your personal dating and relationship coach, and this Substack as your playbook. Every week I give you one play to run in your life. Real strategy. Real talk. No fluff. I’m Amanda Carroll — dating strategist, former national radio host, and the woman who’s going to help you win at love the same way a great coach helps you win on the field. You study the plays. You run them. You win. Welcome to the playbook.
Let me tell you about a woman I’m going to call Margaret.
Margaret was on my email list for seven months. She read every issue. She listened to the podcast — sometimes twice. She mentioned me to a friend before she ever mentioned anything to me. By the time she finally reached out, she knew my framework better than some of my clients did.
When I asked what took seven months, she said the thing I hear most: “I just wanted to be sure.”
Here’s what I told her.
“Margaret, you’ve been sure for months. What you’ve been waiting for isn’t more information. It’s permission.”
The research was never what stood between you and the decision. The permission was.
The Thing Nobody Tells High-Achieving Women
You will research a decision into the ground. It has served you well — it’s how you avoid expensive mistakes at work. But there is a specific kind of decision where more research stops adding information and quietly becomes a place to hide.
You already know the framework makes sense. You already know you’re tired of guessing. You’re not gathering data anymore. You’re waiting to feel allowed.
And here’s the quiet part: you would give yourself permission to hire a business coach, a financial advisor, a trainer — in an afternoon, without a second thought. This is the one investment you keep treating like it needs a justification the others never did.
It doesn’t.
You don’t need permission to take your love life as seriously as you take everything else. You just have to give it to yourself.
Where This Play Was Born
I know this one because I ran it on myself.
At 34, newly divorced, I spent longer than I’d like to admit “thinking about” whether to actually get strategic about my dating life — as if a woman who built a career on decisive action needed special clearance to apply it here. The day I stopped researching and started running the strategy is the day everything changed. I met Sean within the year.
251 women have made the same decision since. Not one of them decided because she finally had enough information. She decided because she was finally done waiting.
Every woman who’s done this didn’t decide because she was certain. She decided because she was done waiting.
This Week’s Play
Decide.
Here’s how you run it.
Step 1: Notice what you’re actually waiting for. If the honest answer is “more information” — you don’t need it. You’ve read the emails. You’ve heard the story. You know.
Step 2: Register for the Win at Dating Challenge. Three days, live with me. It starts tomorrow — June 23 — and registration closes tonight.
Step 3: Show up tomorrow morning. That’s the whole play. The deciding is the hard part, and you do hard, decisive things every single day.
→ Register for the Win at Dating Challenge. ←
Three days, live. Starts tomorrow, June 23. Registration closes tonight.
If you’re ready, here’s the next step.
That’s the play. Run it.
You decide budgets, hires, deals, and direction without flinching. You are the most decisive person in most rooms you walk into. The only place you’ve hesitated is the one place you most wanted a yes.
So decide.
P.S. — Registration for the Win at Dating Challenge closes tonight, and we start tomorrow morning, June 23. If you’ve been reading these plays for weeks — nodding, saving them, waiting for the right moment — here’s the truth: your calendar will never clear. It never does. That was never going to be the thing that changed. The decision is. Save your spot here.
— Amanda Carroll