The Other Paycheck

Most businesses believe loyalty can be bought. Pay people well enough and they'll stay, work hard, and lead well. Compensation matters. I'm not pretending it doesn't. But I've come to believe that healthy leaders get paid in two currencies, and money is only one of them.

The other paycheck is impact. It's knowing that what you do changes something real in someone else's life. I've watched people lead for less money than they wanted, for years, because they knew they were making a difference. And I've watched people with great salaries quietly fall apart because they couldn't point to anything that mattered.

I learned the most about that second paycheck from a frozen yogurt shop.

Spring break

We own Farmhouse Frozen Yogurt in Bryan, Texas. One evening last spring break, I wasn't in the store when a group of eight or nine teenage boys walked in.

Spring break looks different depending on who you are. Families with means are traveling. Other kids are home with nothing to do, while their parents and grandparents keep working. Those kids roam. They go to the movie theater, they wander Walmart, they ride bikes and scooters across town or catch a ride with whoever will give them one.

These boys were bored, and they took it out on my employees. Our shop was being run that night by a few sixteen-year-old girls. Three of the boys walked right past the Employees Only sign, through our kitchen, and into the serving area. They grabbed toppings they hadn't paid for. They crowded the girls, made jokes at their expense, and asserted their dominance over them. There's no softer word for it. They harassed them.

The girls called us. They didn't know what to do, and honestly, they shouldn't have had to.

The post

We have security cameras in both of our stores. I pulled the footage, grabbed stills of each of the boys' faces, and wrote a post on Facebook that same night.

I said plainly what had happened: they had entered our kitchen and gone into the serving area harassing our young female employees. I said I understood it was spring break, but they needed to find another way to have fun without trespassing and asserting dominance over our employees. And then I said what I actually wanted:

If their parents won't instruct them please send them my way. I'd love to help them become productive members of society. Maybe we can steer them in the right direction while they still have a chance.

I wasn't looking to press charges. I wanted to talk to them.

The post spread further than I expected. It was shared all over town, and a local news anchor passed it along too. Soon my messages filled up with people saying, "I know who that kid is." Then came the messages I was hoping for. "Mr. Castleberry, I'm his grandmother. We'd like to meet with you." "I'm his father. We'd like to come in."

Across the table

Not every boy came forward. But three did, and within two days the first of them was sitting across from me. One came with his dad, one came with his grandmother, and one brought a friend from school.

We sat down and talked, and the story was what I'd suspected. They were bored. So I asked the obvious question.

"You're fifteen. Why aren't you working?"

When I was their age, I was mowing yards and helping neighbors. My parents made sure I stayed busy. But not every kid has parents like mine.

"No one will hire us," they said.

"Have you filled out applications?"

"Yes, we have. But no one calls us back."

"If someone offered you a job, would you take it?"

"Yes."

So I offered one. I told them to meet me that Saturday, and I'd pay them a fair price to pressure wash our yogurt shops. I'd buy the pressure washer, the attachments, the chemicals, whatever they needed to get started.

Saturday

When Saturday came, one of those young men showed up, and he brought a friend from school. They pressure washed the shop.

At the end of the day I gave him the pressure washer. I told him it was his now, and to use it to build some discipline and work ethic.

Afterward I posted about him too. I wrote that he'd had the courage to sit down and have an honest conversation, that he was willing to take responsibility, and that between school and playing baseball he wanted to use his free time to earn money the honest way. I told our community that if they needed concrete or windows cleaned, they could message me and I'd pass along his number. What began as a negative situation had turned into an opportunity, because he had the integrity and courage to make things right.

He's been the one who keeps showing up. For eight or nine months now, at least once a month, he texts me with the date and time he'll be out to clean the shops, and then he's there. He is extremely faithful.

And it didn't stop with us. Shoppers from the grocery store nearby started walking over while he worked. "Do you do driveways? Do you do sidewalks?" He does now. That young man, who walked into my shop following a crowd, now runs his own pressure washing business, and he's earning more from those jobs than he ever earned from me.

What it paid me

I didn't get a financial return on that pressure washer, or on the hours I spent across the table with those families. On a spreadsheet it's a loss.

But I got paid. I got to watch a kid who everyone could have written off become someone his customers count on. I got to see my community get a little better, one driveway at a time. That's a sense of impact I could not have bought at any price.

Here's something owning those shops has taught me: owning a small business in your own town gives you a voice. When I talk to young people, they listen, and it isn't because I'm impressive. It's because I'm local. I'm not in an ivory tower somewhere. I'm at the counter. They can talk to me. That proximity is a position of influence, and most people who have one don't realize it.

You don't need a title for it. You don't have to be the mayor or sit on a board. A manager has it. A coach has it. A pastor, a parent, a neighbor who's outside when the kids ride by has it. The question is whether you're using it.

Where's your counter?

Leaders who only measure their compensation in dollars tend to run dry, because money can't refill the part of you that needs to matter. The leaders who last are usually the ones who can point to a life they've changed.

So here's my question for you: where's your counter? Where do you already have a voice in someone's life that you haven't used yet?

If you can't answer that easily, it's worth paying attention to. Two of the seven domains in the Leader's Health Check, Social & Community Health and Spiritual & Purpose Health, measure exactly this. Take the free Leader's Health Check and find out whether your other paycheck has been coming in, or whether you've been running on salary alone.