Service Is the Strategy: The Serve, Document,Self-Nominate

Last Friday was a lot. I got the notification that Well Lived Society hit 50,000 podcast downloads. Fifty thousand. And then that same evening, I was at the MPA awards dinner, the Master of Public Administration program dinner, and I walked away with not one but two awards I genuinely did not see coming. This week it’s all about service.

All of that happened inside about 24 hours. I’m still processing it.

But here’s why I’m telling you this, and it’s not to show off. I genuinely don’t think these things happened randomly. I think there’s a framework underneath all of it, a specific set of moves that women in civic leadership can make, mostly quietly, that compound over time into opportunities, recognition, and real rooms. I want to teach you what actually made this happen and break it down so you can use it too.

Let’s Talk About What Actually Happened

There were two awards. They’re different, and the difference matters.

The first one is the Community Involvement and Volunteering Award. This one has three tiers: 25 hours, 50 hours, and 100-plus hours. I was nominated for the 100-plus hours tier. Here’s the thing: I nominated myself. It’s a form. You fill out the organizations, the hours, and your leadership roles. I’ll come back to that.

The second award is the First Year MPA Student Award. This one I did not nominate myself for. The faculty does that. The criteria includes maintaining a 3.5 GPA or higher, in-class performance, professional growth, demonstrated leadership, and personal character. My name is now on a plaque in the program’s main conference room. My husband was there at dinner. The people at my table leaned over at one point and said, “You’d better get ready to go walk up there.” I had no idea. That was one of those moments that takes your breath away a little.

At that same dinner, Peggy Merris was being inducted as an honorary member of Pi Alpha Alpha, the public administration honor society, which you become eligible for at graduation after maintaining a high GPA. Peggy is a former president of ICMA, the International City/County Management Association. She spoke about public administration as a service profession. Not a status profession. A service profession. And the first pillar of the Serve, Document, Self-Nominate framework is Serve, not because it sounds nice, but because it’s literally how everything else gets unlocked. You go into service, and the room opens.

So let’s get into the framework.

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The Framework: Serve, Document, Self-Nominate

I don’t think these awards happened by accident. I think they happened because of a pretty specific set of moves I’ve been making — mostly without realizing it was a strategy. Three steps. Not glamorous. No big title required, no fancy connection, no seat at a table you haven’t been invited to yet. Just consistency and a little bit of courage in places most people are too tired or too intimidated to show up.

Step 1 — Serve Before You Feel Ready

I want to tell you about a parking lot in Savannah. My Junior League chapter, I’m a distance member, which means I live about 45 minutes to an hour from Savannah, had an event coming up. It was a cookbook committee fundraiser, a joint event with the Garden Club of Savannah. The person who was in charge of logistics had an impromptu trip come up. So she called me and asked if I could help. And that help turned into: drive to Savannah early, meet someone in a dark parking lot, and haul tables into a venue.

I did it. I showed up. And because I went above and beyond the basic requirement, I got 2 points instead of 1 for that event. As a distance member, I’m now meeting what local Savannah city-limits members are required to do, even though it isn’t actually required of me. I’m exceeding my chapter’s expectations for the year because I said yes to hauling tables in a dark parking lot.

That’s the whole thing. That’s how it works. Service is how people really get to know you, your heart, and your character.

I’ve been the PR chair for my chapter. I’m now the Logistics chair. Those titles don’t stand out until you see my documented experience coordinating venues, organizing food drives, and managing event logistics in Savannah. That experience is on my resume and makes me a strong candidate for a board seat.

The title doesn’t matter at first. You need a yes and you need to be available. That’s it. For women in civic leadership specifically, this is the part that gets skipped. We wait until we feel ready, until we have the right credential or the right introduction. The rooms where decisions are made are full of people who showed up before they were ready and stayed anyway.

Step 2 — Document As You Go

The Community Involvement and Volunteering Award, the one I self-nominated for, required me to fill out a form. Organizations, dates, hours, and leadership roles. Three tiers, and I was applying for the top one.

I had the information. Most people don’t. Not because they haven’t done the work, they have, but because they never wrote it down. The service happened, and then it lived only in their memory, somewhere between “I think that was last spring” and “I can’t remember if I was actually in charge of that or just helped.”

Start a Google Sheet. Or a notes file. Something. One row per thing: organization name, date, hours, what you did, and whether you held a leadership role. That’s it. Because when the form comes, and it will, whether it’s a self-nomination form, a board application, or someone asking for your bio, you want to answer in ten minutes, not spend three days reconstructing a year’s worth of service from photos and email threads.

Because I documented each Junior League role, I could speak to it. Not just “I was involved in Junior League” but “I organized the logistics for a multi-organization fundraiser, managed volunteer coordination, and served on the state public affairs committee.” Those are different sentences. The second one gets you somewhere. How you frame your service matters.

If you’re not already using The Future You Journal, that’s the mindset companion to this step, looking at where you are, looking at who you want to be, mapping the gap. Documentation is the outer work. The journal is the inner work. You need both.

Step 3 — Self-Nominate Without Apology

This is the one that stops women cold. Every time. The community award form was there. I filled it out. I submitted it. I nominated myself. And I want to be very clear: that is not bragging. That is stewardship. You did the work. You know you did the work. If you don’t say so, no one will say it for you, or at least not the right people at the right time.

I was at the Capitol doing what I do in March 2025. I mentioned my background: the Borgen Project, where I was regional director about a decade ago, working on global poverty legislation. I just mentioned it in context. Landed myself a seat on the board for the following year, which I still serve on and love.

That’s it. That’s the whole story. I named my experience out loud in the right room, and someone responded. A new board seat at the college is happening the same way now, people are talking about me in rooms I’m not in yet, because I’ve been consistently naming what I do and saying yes when the door opens.

Go back and listen to the reputation-building episode. This is the same skill in a different context. The woman who fills out the self-nomination form is the same woman who mentions her experience at the Capitol, emails the board chair, says “yes, I’d love to be considered” when someone asks, “Do you know anyone?” That’s one muscle. And you can build it.

Self-nomination is not about ego. It’s about making it possible for the people who want to help you to actually find you.

What This Has to Do With You

These three moves, Serve, Document, Self-Nominate, aren’t about me being special or having an unusually eventful week. The week was unusual. The moves are not. They are repeatable. They are learnable. And they are specifically what gets women in civic leadership from wanting to be in the room to actually being in the room.

One organization. One yes. One Google Sheet row. That’s where it starts.

And Here’s What I’m Giving Away

I have been building something specifically for women who are ready to stop waiting for an invitation and start creating one. It’s called the Civic & Board Fellowship, and the June 2026 cohort starts June 1st.

Six weeks. Live Zoom, about an hour and a half each week. Real homework. A personalized roadmap you walk away with at the end. I’m capping each cohort at 10 to 12 women, and I have two cohorts planned. Lifetime access to the material. The goal is simple: every woman who goes through the fellowship leaves with the confidence and a concrete plan to land a board seat. Not “someday.” A plan.

And I’m giving away one full seat in the June cohort. Completely free.

The application is a Google Form on the lemonprice.co homepage and in the episode description. Applications are open April 27th through May 7th. Winner announced on the podcast May 11th. One entry per person, women 18 and older.

If you don’t win, your application still means something. I’m going to follow up with everyone who applied about enrollment. You are not applying into a void.

Just apply for the Civic & Board Fellowship. The form takes five minutes. And if nothing else, you’ll have clarity on whether this is your next move.

You’re the Reason This Week Happened

Fifty thousand downloads. I’m still sitting with that number. That’s 50,000 women choosing to spend time in this space, taking this seriously, wanting this for themselves. I’m grateful in a way that’s hard to put into words.

So here’s your one assignment from this post: start the Google Sheet today. Not this week. Today. Organization, date, hours, what you did. One row. That’s the whole assignment.

And then keep going. Because the framework is simple. The doing is where it counts.