The Confession: The Good Girl Tax I Paid Myself

Episode 379 | Good Girls Get Rich Podcast

Host: Karen Yankovich 

[00:00] The Promise — Karen Goes First

Karen: By the end of this episode, I’m going to tell you exactly how much money I made in the worst year of my career. And here’s the thing — it’s not a big number. I almost wish it were. A big number, a small, embarrassing number — I could explain that. I could spin that.

Karen: It’s worse than small. I’ve been doing this show for almost 400 episodes. I’ve sat across from women and asked them to open a vein on this microphone — to tell me the real number, the real fear, the thing they’ve never said out loud. And they do it. They trust me with it.

Karen: It occurred to me, getting ready for this episode and this next chapter of the show, that I have never once done it myself. So today, I’m in the hot seat. No guests, just me and a number I’ve been carrying for years — and I’ve never said it into this microphone. So this is me going first.

[01:10] The “Good Girl Tax” — It Was About Me All Along

Karen: A couple of episodes ago, I told you about Diane — a woman who did everything right. Built the expertise, did the work, was loyal, was patient, was good. And she got passed over anyway. I called what she paid the “good girl tax.” I said a line I want you to hold on to: “No one’s ever been charged for it.”

Karen: I told you that story like it was about someone else. But I need to come clean. The woman who did everything right and waited to be rewarded for it — I wasn’t really talking about someone else. I was talking about me. And hoping you wouldn’t notice.

[02:00] The Partnership That Cost Her Everything

Karen: Years ago, I co-founded a business with a partner — a second business on top of my own. On paper, it made all the sense in the world. Two smart women, complementary skills, a shared mission we both believed in. We were so unbelievably good together.

Karen: I poured myself into it for about four years. And somewhere in there — I can pinpoint the year now, looking back — it stopped working for me. The money wasn’t coming. The energy was going out and not coming back. My own business, the one with my name on it, the one I actually built — I was starving it to feed this other thing.

Karen: And I knew. That’s the part I have to be honest about. I wasn’t confused. I wasn’t blindsided. I knew it wasn’t paying me — and I stayed anyway.

[03:00] Why She Stayed

Karen: So why does a grown woman stay in something that isn’t paying her? I’ve thought about this a lot. It wasn’t bad luck. It was a choice I made over and over again for years.

Karen: I guess I stayed because leaving felt like a betrayal. Everyone knew about it, and quitting felt like admitting I was wrong. I kept believing that if I were just a little more patient, or a little more loyal, or a little more committed, it would finally turn around and reward me for hanging in there.

Karen: And here’s what it took me years to see — I want to say this slowly: there was nothing wrong with how loyal I was. Nothing wrong with how patient I was, how committed I was, how willing I was to go all in for something I loved. That’s not a flaw. That’s probably one of the best things about me. That’s the whole reason I’m good at what I do.

Karen: The problem was never that I was good. The problem was what I was being good to. I had all that loyalty, all that patience, all that staying power — pointed at something that wasn’t going to pay me back. Nobody made me stay. I want to be really clear about that. It would be really easy to tell the story as if it happened to me. It didn’t.

[03:54] The Number

Karen: I did this to myself. For four years.

Karen: Alright. I promised you a number. The last full year I was in that partnership, I pulled out my K-1. The income that business paid me personally — after four years of work — was negative $1,048. Negative. A minus sign.

Karen: I didn’t make a small amount of money. I paid out of my own pocket for the privilege of working in that business for four years. That’s the number I’ve been embarrassed to tell you. Not “I undercharged.” Not “I had a slow year.” I worked for four years and the result had a minus sign in front of it.

Karen: And here’s the part that still makes my stomach drop — because it’s the part that proves it was a choice, not a circumstance. That exact same year, my own business — the one I was neglecting, the one I kept putting second, the one that had my name on it, the one I barely had time for — made me $30,017. Same year. Same me. Same person. Same hours in a day.

Karen: One business I was loyal to paid me negative a thousand dollars. And the one I treated like a side project paid me thirty grand. So the money was right there. I just wasn’t looking at it.

[05:10] Walking Away — And What Happened Next

Karen: So I finally did the thing I was terrified would make me a quitter. I walked away. And I need you to hear what walking away actually was. It wasn’t me getting harder or colder or any less loyal. It was me taking all of that loyalty — every single bit of it — and finally pointing it at me, and my own business. The one with my name on it.

Karen: Here’s what happened next. I want to read these numbers to you in order, because they’re the bill.

Karen: The year I was splitting my attention: $30,000.

Karen: The year I focused — the very next year, same skills, same market, just me finally facing the right direction: $136,415.

Karen: The year after that: $173,061.

Karen: From $30,000 to $136,000 in twelve months. More than quadrupled. Not because I learned something new. Not because the market changed. Because I stopped spending me — my time, myself — on something that wasn’t paying me back.

Karen: That money was available to me the entire time. Every single one of those four years, it was sitting there, waiting for me to just turn around and claim it. And I left it on the table. Like a hundred grand a year, conservatively. Because walking away felt like failing, and I’d rather bleed quietly than be seen as quitting.

Karen: So that’s the bill. Four years. Six figures a year. And I paid every cent of it.

[06:45] Charging Herself — Out Loud

Karen: I’ve been telling you for the last few episodes about women paying the good girl tax — they do everything right and still come up short. And that no one’s ever been charged for it. But I want to amend that a little bit.

Karen: The thing I charge myself with was never that I was good. I was loyal, I was patient, I was generous, I was all in. Not one bit of that was the problem. The problem was that I aimed all of that at the wrong thing. I was good to the wrong business. And for four years it cost me a fortune.

Karen: I never once made myself sit down and look at that number. I just kept paying quietly and calling it commitment. So that’s what today is. Today I am charging myself — out loud, on this microphone. Negative $1,048. Four years. Six figures left on the table. I’m finally the one naming it.

Karen: Because it’s a tax — and if you never say it out loud, you just keep paying it. A number that you can say out loud is a number that can’t run your life anymore.

[07:57] Now It’s Your Turn

Karen: Here’s why I told you all of this. We’ve been doing a lot of solo episodes, and I do want to start bringing more women back on the show — real women, real reinvention, telling the truth about where they actually are. I’m going to ask them to do the hard things. The hardest thing there is to do on a microphone: to be nervous and real and say what you’re embarrassed by.

Karen: I realized I had no right to ask that of anyone else until I’d actually done it myself. So now I have.

Karen: Let me ask you the same thing. Just between you and me, before anyone’s listening. If you’re in your car, whatever — what’s your number? Not the one you’d say at a networking event. The real one. The deal you didn’t chase. The raise you didn’t ask for. The promotion you didn’t fight for. The thing you stayed in too long because leaving felt like failing. The money that’s sitting on the table right now, available to you, while you wait to be chosen.

Karen: You don’t have to say it to me just yet. Just say it to yourself, out loud, in the car, wherever you are. Because everything changes the day you stop paying that tax quietly and finally own it.

[09:20] The Real Meaning of “Good Girls Get Rich”

Karen: Good girls get rich — not by getting harder, not by getting colder or more ruthless or less like yourself. Not by stopping being good. Good girls get rich the day they stop pouring all that goodness into the wrong thing and start pouring it into their own lane — the work they love, the work they’re actually great at.

Karen: This is when the abundance shows up. It’s not a reward for becoming someone else. It’s what happens when you finally point all of who you are at the right thing. It showed up for me the second I turned it around. Thirty thousand to $136,000 in twelve months. That wasn’t me becoming someone else. That was the same good woman finally admitting she needed to move forward — and aiming it at the right thing.

[10:10] CTA — The Visibility Salon

Karen: So I went first. Now it’s your turn. And of course, if you want somewhere to actually take that turn — somewhere to stop doing this alone — that’s exactly what I built the Visibility Salon for. It’s where women like you stop pouring everything into the wrong thing and start pouring all that talent into their own work, out loud, where it finally gets seen and gets booked.

Karen: Your first week is on me. Check out VisibilitySalon.com. Try a week for free, get access to everything. And don’t wait until you’re 100% sure you’re ready — because that hesitation? That’s the tax. Just come. I’ll see you next week.