Wanting Out Loud: The Permission Slip Every Woman Needs

Episode 381

Host: Karen Yankovich

[00:00] The Flinch Test: Three Sentences About Wanting

Karen: I’m going to say three sentences, and I want you to notice what happens in your body: I want to be rich. I want to be known. I want to be powerful.

Karen: Did you feel a little flinch? That tiny voice that went, you can’t say that out loud? Maybe you even looked around the room, even though you’re alone in your car. Maybe you wanted to give this a softer edit for me — well, she means she really means she wants to help people. She means impact. No — I mean rich. I mean known. I mean powerful. And I said it on a microphone, on purpose, where you and everybody else can hear me.

Karen: Here’s what I want you to understand before we go one more minute in this episode: the flinch you just felt is the entire subject of this episode — probably even this show. The taboo was never the wanting. Every human being on earth wants money, wants to matter, wants to say, in their own life, I did that. The taboo is that a woman said it out loud, without apologizing for it first.

Karen: So this is not a teaching episode. I’m not going to give you a framework today. Today is a permission slip. By the end of this, I want you to be able to say the thing you actually want, plainly, out loud, in your own voice — without dressing it up as something more acceptable first. This is Good Girls Get Rich. I’m Karen Yankovich. Let’s say it out loud.

Karen: So let me tell you where I believe that flinch comes from — because it’s important you know it’s not yours. You didn’t invent it. It was installed in you. Nobody ever sat a little girl down and said, don’t want things, that’s too obvious. What we got instead was much quieter and much more effective: we were taught to want quietly — to want, but never let the wanting show.

Karen: Think about how this actually sounds in real life. A woman doesn’t say, I’m great at this and I want to be paid what I’m worth. She says, I just love the work — the money’s not really the point. A woman doesn’t say, I want to run this. She says, I just want to be helpful wherever I’m needed. A woman doesn’t say, I want people to know my name. She says, I just want to make a difference — I don’t need the credit.

Karen: I want you to hear this next part clearly, because I will not let this episode get misunderstood: the love is real, the wanting to help is real, the generosity is real. None of that is the problem. You’re not too good. Your goodness isn’t a flaw. This entire show is built around one idea — that loyalty, generosity, and caring deeply are strengths. They’re some of the best things about you.

Karen: The problem is never the helping. The problem is the disguise. We take a completely legitimate want — I want money, I want authority, I want to be recognized — and smuggle it past the world wearing a costume so nobody catches us wanting it. “I just want to help” is often a true sentence wearing a disguise. Both things are true: you do want to help, and you also want to be paid, seen, and to have a say. That second list is the one we bury.

Karen: A while back, in what’s now the Visibility Salon, we had a Zoom call at the turn of the year, and I went around the room and asked every woman what she wanted out of the next year. Every single woman — I let it happen before I called it out — every single woman named an impact goal. Not one named an income goal. Here’s the thing: big impact goals need big money. It’s okay to say that. We tell ourselves burying the money piece is humility.

[04:21] The Good Girl Tax: What Silence Really Costs You

Karen: We tell ourselves it’s classy not to talk about money — that the right people will just notice how good we are and reward us without us ever having to be so crass as to ask. Big impact goals need big money, and I am here to tell you: silence is not humility. It is very, very expensive.

Karen: Here’s what it actually costs you. If you’ve been a longtime listener, you know where I’m going, because it’s the same place I always go: the scoreboard of this show has never been followers, never been likes. It’s calls on your calendar. Contracts in your hand. Real conversations with real people about real work and real money. And you can’t get booked for what you won’t name.

Karen: Nobody books a call with a woman who won’t admit she wants the work. Nobody hands money, a title, or a microphone to a person who keeps insisting she really doesn’t want any of it. The world takes you at your word. So when you spend years saying, oh, it’s not about the money, I just love helping people — the world believes you. I believe you. And then it acts accordingly. And then you sit there wondering why the people who say it out loud keep getting picked, when you were the right choice.

Karen: That is the good girl tax, paid in silence. You don’t lose the seat, the spot, or the contract because you weren’t qualified. You lose it because you never said you wanted it — and someone less talented and more shameless did. So we’re going to fix this silence. Not by making you someone you’re not — I’d never want that. I want you to be exactly who you are, and I believe that’s where the richness comes into your life. Good girls get rich. But we’re going to fix it by letting you say three things out loud, one at a time, easy to hard.

Karen: Permission Slip #1: I want money. If you’re at a place where you can say this out loud right now, do it. This is the warm-up — the one with the most cover stories, the one we make excuses for the most. It should be the easiest one to catch yourself doing. I’ve done this on this show, and when I catch myself, I call myself out.

Karen: Listen for the deflections — they’re so familiar. You’ve probably said one this week: It’s not about the money. I’d do this even if I weren’t getting paid. I don’t want to come across as greedy. As long as I have enough, I’m happy. Two things can be true — of course you do the work you love. Do the work you love! That’s the whole title of the show. Do what you’re good at, and the money comes in. Of course you’re not in it purely for the cash. But notice how fast you reach for those lines — before anyone even asked you to defend yourself. That’s the installation talking. That’s years and years of conditioning, making sure you apologize for wanting money before the wanting even fully forms.

Karen: So here’s your permission. Try this: I want money. Not “enough.” Not “to be comfortable.” Those are the shrunk-down, apologetic versions. I mean money — lots and lots of money, specifically, plainly, in any amount you could write down. I want to be paid well. I want to be paid more.

[08:03] Permission Slip #1 (continued): Money — and Permission Slip #2: Power

Karen: I want the work I’m genuinely excellent at to translate into real numbers — real, big, fat, juicy numbers in my actual bank account — and I’m allowed to want that without reluctance. Say it out loud, my friend: I want money. Wanting money does not make you greedy. It makes you a person with bills, and goals, and a life you’d like to fund, and people you want to take care of. Maybe you want to take your family to Disney World. Maybe you want generational wealth. Maybe you want a big beach house where everybody can come. Greedy is a thing you’d actually have to do. It’s not a thing you are for simply naming a number.

Karen: You can be the most generous person in the whole wide world and still want to be rich. There’s no conflict there. The richer you are, the more you can do about helping all the people you say you care about. Big goals, big dreams, need big money. Period. I want money.

Karen: All right — moving on to Permission Slip #2: I want power. This one might feel a little harder. Money we can at least pretend is practical. Power feels like we’re getting greedy in a way that shows on our face. Here’s a test: think about the word ambitious. Said about a man — he’s really ambitious — it’s a compliment. It’s the reason he gets the stretch assignment. Said about a woman — she’s very ambitious — it feels like a warning. It comes with a raised eyebrow. It means she’s a lot. Watch out for her. Same word, completely different temperature, depending on who it’s aimed at.

Karen: So, of course, you learned to want power quietly. You watched what happens to women who say it loudly, and you translated it into something safer. You stopped saying, I want to lead this, and started saying, I just want to be impactful. You stopped saying, I want a seat at the table, and started saying, I just want to support the team. Impact and support are beautiful words — but they’re also very often power in a disguise, so the room doesn’t get scared of you.

Karen: Let me tell you what power actually is, because I think we’ve let it get vague and scary on purpose. Power is a seat at the table where the decisions get made. Power is the authority to set the terms instead of only ever accepting the terms you’re handed. Power is being able to say no, and having that no stick. Power is influence — your ideas moving things, your name carrying weight in the room. You are allowed to want those things. Not just the impact, not just to be of service — those come too. But underneath all of that: I want power.

Karen: Say it out loud. I want the authority. I want to be the one who decides, not just the one who executes what other people decided. I want my yes and my no to mean something, and I don’t have to soften that into I just want to help where I’m needed, so nobody gets nervous about a woman with an agenda. Wanting power doesn’t make you domineering — it means you’d like some say over your own life and your own work, which is the baseline emotional starting point for literally every man you’ve ever worked for. Nobody asked them to apologize for it.

[11:59] Permission Slip #3: I Want to Be Known

Karen: Here we are — the deep one. Visibility. I want to be known. If you’re like many of the women I work with, you’ve maybe never said this out loud to another human being in your entire life, because this is the one with the most shame loaded onto it. Listen to the voices: don’t be full of yourself. Don’t make it about you. Nobody likes a show-off. Who do you think you are?

Karen: That last one — who do you think you are — does the most damage, because it doesn’t attack what you want. It attacks your right to want anything in the first place. I remember when I first started writing LinkedIn profiles for people, and they’d say, oh my gosh, can I really say that about myself? People I used to work with are going to say, who does she think she is? So we learn to disappear politely — to do beautiful, excellent work and make sure it gets attributed to the team. To be the person everyone relies on, and no one can name. The most loved, the least known. And we call that being gracious.

Karen: Now — this is the thing I’ve built my whole career on, so I want to be very careful and very clear, because there are two completely different things here, and the word visibility deliberately blurs them so you can be ashamed of both. If you’ve been with me since the start of this series, you remember episode one, where we talked about vanity visibility — the counterfeit. The daily posting for the sake of posting. The posts that chase the algorithm, collecting followers and likes like a scoreboard, when they pay exactly zero of your bills. The hollow performance of being seen, where the metric is attention. That’s what the industry sells you and calls visibility.

Karen: The desire to be known is not that. Wanting to be known for real work you’re genuinely good at is not vanity — it’s one of the most legitimate hungers a person can have. It’s the real thing that counterfeit is impersonating. You don’t want to be famous for nothing. You want to be known for something. You want the people who need exactly what you’re brilliant at to actually know your name and how to find you. That’s not ego — that, my friend, is how you get booked.

Karen: So say this one — it might be the hardest, it’s the one you’ve maybe never said. Say it out loud, say it with me, say it loud and proud: I want to be known. I want my name on my work. I want to be recognized for what I’m actually good at. I want the people I could help to know I exist. I want to stop hiding behind the team, and let it be me — because it was me. Pretending it wasn’t isn’t humble. It’s just dumb. And it’s just that silence again, charging you the good girl tax. Wanting to be known does not make you full of yourself. Hiding doesn’t make you deep. You’re allowed to want to be seen for the real thing.

[15:37] A Story: When Naming the Want Changed Everything

Karen: I want to tell you about a woman — I’ll keep her anonymous, because she’s really a composite of women I’ve watched live some version of this pattern so many times. She was the one everyone relied on. Brilliant at what she did. The person other people quietly went to when they needed it done right. And every single time you asked her about her own ambition, what she actually wanted, out came the costumes: oh, I just love helping my clients, it’s not really about the money for me, I don’t need the spotlight, I just want to do good work.

Karen: And she was stuck. Not because she wasn’t good enough — she was one of the most talented people in the room. She was stuck because she had spent years telling everyone, including herself, that she didn’t want the very things she wanted most. And the world believed her.

Karen: So what changed wasn’t a strategy. I didn’t hand her a funnel. This is exactly why we build mindset work into the LinkedIn strategy work we do — all the strategy in the world doesn’t change this. What changed is she got quiet for a second and let herself finish the sentences she’d been cutting off her whole life: I want to be paid like the expert that I am. I want a real say in the work that I do. I want the people who need me to know my name. She said it out loud — first to herself, then to me. Their voices always shake the first time, because they’ve never let the words fully out before.

Karen: And here’s the thing I really want you to get, because it’s kind of the whole point of this episode: nothing magical happened. The sky didn’t open. What happened is that the want stopped being a vague ache she was ashamed of, and became a thing she could actually do something about. You can’t act on a want you don’t name. The naming is what turns the fog into a specific target — and that target is what gets us booked. The very first visible act of going after it is the naming itself.

Karen: So she started talking about her work like it was hers, and let her name sit on it. She told people plainly what she wanted to be hired for. And say it with me, because you already know where this lands: that named want became calls. Real conversations. Real work. Real money.

Karen: This is the whole point of this era we’re in — more visible, more powerful, better paid. I want there to be more wealthy women in the world. There has never been a time in history when women’s voices needed to be heard more. More money gives you more choices. More women with more choices changes the world. That’s not a slogan I made up to sound good. It’s just those same three sentences: I want to be known — more visible. I want power — more powerful. I want money — better paid. That’s what it sounds like when a woman finally says all three out loud and stops apologizing.

[19:27] Your Permission Slip (and Where to Practice It)

Karen: So here’s the part where I hand you the permission slip — and it comes with a dare, because I think you need one before this episode is over. I want you to say one of those three things out loud. Pick the one that made you flinch the hardest, because that’s the one you most need to hear in your own voice. I want money. I want power. I want to be known. Say it in the car. Say it in the mirror. Write it on a sticky note and put it where you’ll see it tomorrow. And if you’re feeling brave, post it online — say it where someone can hear you, because the saying is the first act of going after it.

Karen: There’s no version where you stay silent and somehow still get picked. If this feels enormous, I get it. There’s a voice telling you it’s too much — who do you think you are, settle down. That voice is the tax collector. You don’t have to obey it anymore.

Karen: And if saying it out loud in a room, or online, or in front of people feels like the scariest thing in the world right now — I’ve built a place exactly for that. Our Visibility Salon is full of women practicing saying it out loud, where the stakes are low and the room is on their side, practicing being seen before the big moments, so that when it counts, the words are already in their mouth. It’s a room where women say it out loud together and support each other while big dreams are happening. Visibility Salon dot com — come take a free week. It’s very inexpensive, about the cost of lunch per month.

Karen: So here’s where I’ll leave you. Next time, we’re going to wrap this whole arc up — I’ve been talking at you this whole series, and now I want you to see it in action with real, real-life examples. I can’t wait for you to hear it. But for today, your only job is one sentence. You know which one. Say it out loud. I’m Karen Yankovich, and this is Good Girls Get Rich. Go get it, girls.