Why I Wrote The Brazen Code

I was fourteen when I learned that a girl’s ambition could supposedly make her less desirable.

I was a freshman learning to hurdle, and I was terrible at getting my trail leg over the hurdle cleanly. My knee was constantly scraped, bruised, and swollen.

One night after practice, my mom looked at it and said:

“Maybe you should quit hurdling. Your knee is getting ugly, and no boy is gonna want to talk to you.”

She wasn't trying to diminish me. She thought she was helping me navigate the world she understood.

Fortunately, I was fourteen and thought my mother had no idea what she was talking about.

What kind of boy was going to inspect my knees?

So I went back to practice.

I eventually won four state hurdle championships.

Years later, I understood what was really hiding inside that moment.

It wasn't about my knee.

It was one of my earliest lessons in a rule women receive over and over again:

Be ambitious. But not at the expense of being chosen.

Maybe your version wasn't about scraped knees.

Maybe you learned to soften your voice.

Downplay the promotion.

Wait to raise your price.

Make yourself indispensable instead of powerful.

Be impressive, but never intimidating.

I spent years bumping into versions of that rule.

I worked in investment and wealth management, where I learned how money, relationships, ownership, and access create power.

Then I became an entrepreneur.

And I discovered something even more disturbing.

Men I had known professionally and socially offered to help me with connections, business opportunities, and access. But some of that “help” came with expectations that had nothing to do with my work.

One married man I had known for eight years told me plainly:

“I can help you…but I want to fuck you.”

That sentence clarified something for me.

I could continue trying to gain access through networks whose rules I did not control.

Or I could start building something different.

But even then, I didn't write The Brazen Code.

I actually started years earlier.

In 2019, I began writing an empowerment book for female athletes.

I cared deeply about it. I organized events around the idea. I started building momentum.

Then the pandemic came.

My business needed me.

I told myself I would return to the book later.

I didn't.

And that became one of the most expensive lessons behind The Brazen Code:

Waiting feels harmless while you're doing it. You usually discover the cost later.

Years passed.

Then came the 2024 U.S. election.

I remember watching the results and feeling something move from disgust to frustration to clarity.

For me, that election became a line in the sand.

I had spent years believing that women's progress would continue moving forward if capable women kept doing good work, kept achieving, kept proving themselves.

That night forced me to confront how fragile progress can feel when you assume someone else will protect it.

And I thought about the book I hadn't finished.

The work I had postponed.

The things women keep telling ourselves we'll do when the timing is better.

I realized I was doing the very thing I would eventually name in the book:

paying the Hesitation Tax.

I wasn't willing to pay it anymore.

And the audience had changed.

I had originally wanted to write for girls.

Now I wanted to write for the women those girls had become.

Women with degrees, businesses, titles, expertise, ambition, and accomplishments who were still being told, explicitly or implicitly:

Wait.

Be patient.

Be likable.

Don't ask for too much.

Don't move until you're certain.

Don't make anyone uncomfortable.

Surely, if you keep proving yourself, someone will eventually recognize your value.

I no longer believed that was a sufficient strategy.

So I didn’t just want to write another women’s empowerment book.

I wrote a power playbook.

The Brazen Code became my answer to a question that had followed me from that track practice at fourteen through finance, entrepreneurship, relationships, business, and eventually the political moment that made waiting feel impossible:

What happens when ambitious women stop organizing our lives around permission?

I want more women raising the price.

Making the ask.

Owning income and assets.

Claiming authority before someone else validates it.

Building relationships that circulate opportunity.

Using money intentionally.

And helping other women become more powerful instead of treating power as a scarce resource we have to compete for.

Because I don't want the next generation of women to become more accomplished while remaining equally hesitant to use the power their accomplishments created.

That is what you are supporting when you buy, listen to, quote, recommend, or give someone The Brazen Code.

You’re helping move a different model of women’s power into the world.

So every time you encounter this book, I want you to remember one thing:

Waiting is not neutral.

The thing you're delaying because you don't feel ready enough, qualified enough, supported enough, or certain enough may be the very thing that changes your position.

I learned that lesson the expensive way.

I wrote The Brazen Code so you don't have to anymore.

United we rise. Stay brazen.

—Martise

Author of The Brazen Code

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If this story felt familiar, the book goes deeper into the patterns, costs, and power moves behind it.