The Integrity Tax

## Eighteen Months Ago I Walked Away

Eighteen months ago I walked away from a trajectory toward seven figures. I was building someone else's vision with my own hands and calling it mine.

I turned down $60,000 in severance because taking it meant abandoning two people I'd committed to protecting. We sold half of what we owned. I loaded four sons into a truck and drove across the country to start over.

The decision wasn't brave. It was obvious — once I stopped pretending to be someone I wasn't.

That's what I call the integrity tax. The spread between the cheap path and the right one. And if you're building something real, you're paying it whether you recognize it or not.

## What the Tax Actually Is

The integrity tax isn't a moment of moral courage. It's a line item.

It's the cost you pay every time you choose the right path over the easy one. Every time you hold your price when the room pushes back, you pay it. Every time you develop a person instead of replacing them with someone better on paper, you pay it. Every time you build something correctly instead of taking the shortcut that gets you to next quarter, you pay it.

Most founders see the tax and negotiate with themselves. They're not wrong that it costs something. They're wrong about what the cost is buying.

The founders who stay profitable when competitors undercut on price have figured this out: durability doesn't come from competing on price. It comes from holding a standard that makes price the wrong conversation entirely.

## Three Places You Pay It

**Vision.** The cheap path eighteen months ago was to stay. Take the severance. Keep building someone else's company and call it mine. I'd built the relationships, the income, the reputation — leaving meant starting from zero. But a foundation you don't own is a liability waiting to surface. You can feel it before you can name it. The right path costs more up front. It's the only one that doesn't crack.

**Commitment.** Staying was the path that would have required me to cut two people I'd committed to protecting. Leaving was how I protected them — and it cost me the $60,000 in severance I would have been entitled to under different circumstances. I forfeited it. That's not abstract loyalty — it's a line item. The shortcut was to stay, rationalize the exit on the people, and pocket the money. The tax was honoring the commitment when it cost me something real. People remember who kept their word under pressure. That reputation compounds.

**Pricing.** The clients who find you on price are the wrong clients — and wrong clients are expensive in ways that don't show up on the income statement until it's too late to fix. The pressure to close by cutting your price is almost always short-term thinking. Every discount trains the next client to negotiate. Every concession becomes the floor for the next conversation. Holding the line on how you work isn't a moral stance. It's a structural one.

These aren't separate decisions. They're the same decision made three different ways: build it right or build it cheap.

## The Shortcut's Hidden Invoice

The shortcut looks cheaper. It isn't.

Competing on price doesn't build a foundation — it builds a dependency on volume and a ceiling on margin. You're not growing; you're grinding. Every new client proves you're surviving, not winning.

Recruiting instead of developing sends a signal to your existing team: you're replaceable. That signal compounds. You might not see it on the P&L for two years, but you'll see it in the culture before then. People who feel replaceable protect themselves. They don't build.

This is different from cutting someone who's actively working against the vision. That's not a shortcut — that's the standard. The team that watches you remove a bad actor without hesitation trusts you more, not less. The tension is real: you develop people relentlessly, and you cut those who've earned removal without hesitation. Those aren't contradictions. The error being warned against is replacing people who are building for people who look better on paper — impatience dressed as optimization.

A structure held together by accounting convenience doesn't scale. It becomes a liability the moment anyone looks seriously — an investor, a partner, a regulator. The savings on the front end become the legal fees on the back end.

Every shortcut has a deferred invoice. The interest compounds.

## Nine Months of Paying It

[Episode 105: Waking Back Up](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uxCAdfra3MoV2cNuuy0Wy?si=43433b531207424d) covers the arc. For nine months after the walk-away — after the truck, the cross-country move, the reset — I chose character over financial security. The cost was real.

What I was building during that period wasn't visible in the income statement. It was visible in who I became and what clients I attracted afterward. The clients I work with now are people actively trying to help others. That filter only holds if I hold it when it costs me something.

[Episode 110: Are You a Christian?](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6IpBzWJ3CzPZ5zaPYNsiDv?si=b2628899f93942ce) draws the distinction directly: there is a version of integrity that is performed and a version that is paid. One is posture. One is cost. Most people are very good at the first. The second is rarer than we admit.

The tax isn't a one-time event. You don't graduate from paying it. Deferral has interest.

## What the Tax Buys

Clients who found you on price will leave on price. Clients who found you on integrity will refer on integrity. That referral network compounds in a way that discount pricing never can.

A team that watched you keep commitments under pressure will outperform the team you optimized on paper — because people who trust the organization they're in will raise problems early, take risks, and stay long enough to become genuinely excellent.

A direction that's authentically yours scales in ways that borrowed visions don't. The [steward model of leadership](https://jonmayo.com/steward-leader) depends on this: you're holding something on behalf of people who come after you. That responsibility changes how you build.

When I drove away with four sons and a truck full of what we kept, I didn't know yet what I was building. I knew what I wasn't willing to compromise to build it. That clarity is what the integrity tax buys.

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Most people try to change their results by changing their actions. New habits, new systems, new discipline. It works for a few weeks. Then gravity pulls you back to who you believe you are underneath all of it.

The intervention that sticks is upstream. Change what you believe about yourself and everything downstream shifts with it.

One practical move this week: name three decisions you're currently deferring because they cost too much to do right. Write down what each one will actually cost to fix later. That number is your integrity tax balance. It doesn't go away. It compounds.

The founders who pay it now aren't waiting for better conditions. They're building the only kind of company that compounds without cracking.

Whether that's worth the price is your call. But make it consciously.