One Worker's Patience

A great worker story from this week is that of John D. Green’s. We’ve made a video to document John’s story, which will be on our website soon.

Last year I took John to meet the Mayor, who sincerely appreciated meeting him. I know so because after John told the Mayor his story the Mayor said with excitement, “I can’t wait to tell my wife!” 

John is a true Charlestonian. He grew up on the East Side and went to Burke High School. John served our country in the Air Force Reserves. Several years ago he was working as a driver when he was injured in an automobile accident while on the job. His left arm was injured and it kept him from his job. He had to get therapy and in the meantime couldn’t find work. John ended up unable to pay his bills, and, without any other options, ended up living at a local homeless shelter.

That was when he came to IES, hopped on a longer term job through the warmer months, and got back on his feet. He saved and saved in his Hope Fund, and when the ticket ended he continued to work part time through the slower months at IES (the winter), used his Hope Fund to subsidize his bills, and waited for the same job to start again with the spring. 

By this time last year that same job had already started, but this year there has been a slight delay in the work. Over the past few weeks John has been coming around the office a good bit, and I could tell he was a bit antsy. So when I visited my friends at a local carriage company this weekend, and they mentioned an opening for a greeter and that they would love to employ a veteran, I told them I knew just the guy.

John called me yesterday morning after his interview to say today would be his first day, and while he hasn’t given me a report yet, I’m sure it went well. If not, we’ll do our best to keep him busy; John’s the kind of guy we’ll keep as long as he’ll let us. But in the meantime it’s an honor to be a part of his effort to live the story written for him, and I really mean that.

I catch myself watching John’s video a lot because his story--like so many of our workers--means a lot to the staff at IES. We finished the video by asking John what his best advice for life would be, and he said this: “Patience. You have to have patience to endure a lot of things that you go through in life. A lot of things are not happening just right now. When I say right now I mean it’s at a pace that you have to be at peace with yourself, and able to understand that things will work out. But you have to see them through, you have to endure the process that you go through.”

When John talks about his story, and the things he’s endured, it makes me feel encouraged about my own. When he gives his best advice for life, I can’t help but think that’s pretty sound advice for my own. There’s certainly room In Every Story for patience.

This is Your Baby...Well, Sort of

This really isn’t my baby. People tell me that a lot, but it isn’t true. “You’re the owner.” No, I’m not. “It’s your organization.” No, it isn’t. “This is your baby.” Well, sort of.

There’s been a few brief times when it’s bothered me that I’m not the owner of IES, but by and large it’s a huge advantage. The purpose of IES, as a social business, has always been to benefit the lives of low income workers and use temporary employment as a means to self sufficiency. It’s always been about their stories, and believing that by improving their stories we’re improving our own. That’s it. That’s what IES is about. 

And by the way, it’s addictive.

The beauty of a social business is that the social purpose is the owner. I am not. I can not sell IES, nor will I ever be able to. I don’t know what that would even feel like. And there’s some major advantages to this.

This benefits the social purpose. All of our decision making places the purpose--not the founder, co-founder, board of directions, or shareholders--first. And that ensures that we become most likely to achieve our social purpose. We don’t have competing goals.

Another benefit is that running a social business really puts our perspective on the long haul. Short term profits and goals are of no importance to us. We can even take short term losses if it means increasing social good so long as we make up for it somewhere else. We aren’t slaves to profit, it’s a slave to us.

A final benefit is that as a social entrepreneur it focuses my vision on the long term as well. How can we make this world a better place is what I think about from a business perspective on a daily basis. That--for this season--I’ve been fortunate enough to make a living while doing it has aligned two basic human desires: To survive and help others. In a profit setting these interests can be in conflict, but not a social business. I now ask the question, “How can I do this the rest of my life?” Chances are I’ll sacrifice some money at different points in my story, but that’s okay. I’ll be just fine. I’ve started focusing on how I can live a manageable life that allows me to live social business.

I do believe transparency is important, and because I want other people to start social businesses, you should know that last year I made roughly $37,000 (this is also public information on the internet because we are 501 (c) (3)). It was the second year. Now, I have little perspective, but I don’t think many people will be jealous of that salary. At the same time I’m confident that over time it will be enough and grow so that IES in house employees can support a family and do the same things that other people want to do and achieve. It’s incredible to me that I ever considered not making the short term sacrifices and instead forfeit the long term gain of starting a social business. 

The flip side to the feeling that this “isn’t my baby” is that in fact much more is riding on IES’s success than a business that only benefits its owner(s). I feel as if there are people who we may not interact with for 30 years that depend on how we perform now. This creates immense attachment, dedication, and in that sense, yes, this is our precious, precious baby. I want it to grow and become all that it can be.

The Sweetest Canner in Charleston

(The reality is that I’ve grown distant from workers that have started with us since Darryl became Director of Operations. This, in my opinion, is a necessary tragedy. Necessary as it’s needed for IES to continue growing; a tragedy as our workers have taught me more in the past few years than my Furman education taught me in four. By my shortness of conversation, quick scurrying in and out of the office, and headphones in the ears in the back of the office, I’d guess that the more recent workers have no idea how much I care about them. As for the prior workers, every time Abu sees me he finishes our conversation with, “I love you mannnnnn!” I hope and wait to hear it every time, and I reply, “I love you too Abu.” I really do.)

Lester is the sweetest canner in all of Charleston. 

I think he has been working at IES for as long as IES has been around. I know he wasn’t the first worker, but it feels like he was. Lester has an omnipresence virtue about him. He fits where ever he is. Lester doesn’t have a phone, but it doesn’t matter because he always shows up.

Some jobs that we send Lester on he isn’t fit enough to handle. We try to keep that in mind with every job. If it’s inside cleanup, we can send Lester; if it’s hard labor in the sun, we better not. But Lester is the kind of guy we’ll keep as long as he’ll let us. He doesn’t cause problems. He shows up. He’s got a good attitude. He does his very best all of the time. Between us, I think he has to, because Mrs. Lester calls in from time to time to check on him. Make sure he’s coming to work. Sometimes on Tuesday’s Lester comes in saying, “She said I better pick up my Hope Fund today.” I think Mrs. Lester runs a pretty tight ship, not that I think Lester causes her any problems. He's very sweet.

Lester rides this green bike with a basket on the front and a bigger basket in the back. He always got a bunch of stuff with him. In Lester’s case, it’s mostly cans, scrap metal and the like. I see him a lot around town, up and down Meeting Street mostly. I bet you’ve seen him around too. I try to stop the car. “Hey, Lester!” I’ll yell. “Coleman needs you to work tomorrow!” Sometimes I can’t understand him very well, but Lester typically nods and that’s enough. 

I’ll never forget this one time on a Saturday when I saw Lester picking up cans. I was at a lumber store on upper meeting street, by some old abandoned warehouses. I’d  gotten mad and punched a dent in a door and so I had to buy a new one. I bought some paint and had the guys at the lumber store make a cut on the new door to the specifications. I was trying to stay in the shade on one of the hottest days of the summer, washing my sins away as I painted the door a snowy white, when I looked up and saw Lester walking his bike, picking up cans people must have thrown out of their vehicles into the grass on upper Meeting Street. It was hot. Really hot. But Lester was just moving, picking up cans, putting them into his front and back basket. 

“Lester!” I yelled.

He waved, and I kept painting, and the door felt just a little whiter. 

They say that canners calculate all costs in terms of the number of cans it would take to buy what they need. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is then Lester owes 1,500 cans (at 10 cents a can) in order to have enough money to reinstate his drivers license, and that's jus the initial payment. I don’t know how he came to owe this money, only that he owes it. 

We have a job that pays more than many of our normal jobs, but one of the requirements is a drivers license. So, IES is going to give Lester a micro loan. We’re going to front him the money for his drivers license and then have him pay it back in installments with a slight interest. It’s not that we want to make money from the loan, it’s just that we need to charge interest because that’s part of what creates the relationship that gives the loan its value--it's a sign of mutual benefit and respect.

What I’m thinking though is that we could document the experiment together. Many times people say that low income people aren’t bankable, that you can’t trust them to pay back a loan. I don’t believe that isn’t true with Lester because I’ve developed a relationship with him. At the same time I also can’t explain why he hasn’t got his driver’s license. Maybe it’s just because he has such an awesome green bike!

In any event, over the next couple of weeks I’m going to let you follow our experiment, fill you in on how it goes. Is Lester interested in getting his license back? Does he agree to the loan? If so, does he pay it back? Does the license benefit him? 

Lester’s the sweetest canner in all of Charleston. My hope is that Lester one day has a trunk to put his cans in, if that’s what he wants to do. Stay tuned for more!

Start Small. Start Soon.

In Muhammad Yunus’s “Building Social Business,” he says “it’s best to start small and start soon.” Amen.

Some Background: According to Muhammad Yunus a social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today. It is distinct from a non-profit because the business should seek to generate a modest profit but this will be used to expand the company’s reach, improve the product or service or in other ways to subsidize the social mission.

There are two Types of Social Businesses:

Type one focuses on businesses dealing with social objectives only. Type two can take up any profitable business so long as it is owned by the poor and the disadvantaged, who can gain through receiving direct dividends or by some indirect benefits.

Muhammed Yunus started Grameen Bank, which won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, by loaning $27 to a group of villagers to provide an alternative financing option from the loan sharks who were previously their only option. Eventually this concept, known as micro-lending, grew to billions of dollars and has helped millions worldwide--mostly women--bring themselves and their families out of poverty.

Many people have dreams to help others but believe that they don’t have the time, energy, resources or intellect to bring their dream to fruition. This, of course, is a huge flipping lie. Muhammad Yunus started with $27 from his own pocket. As he reminds us, the first desktop computer had 256 kB of memory, the first automobiles traveled at five miles per hour, and the first airplane flight lasted twelve seconds and covered all of 120 feet. 

Most of the time, the reason why great things start small and are incredibly difficult is so that other people can lay hold of this energy and make it their own. If Muhammad Yunus started with $27, you can too. It might feel like 5 fish and 2 loaves, but it may be all you need.

IES, as a social business, has been no different. It’s still small, but started even smaller. We took our first job with $3,000 under the condition that I, with two day labor coworkers, worked ten nights in a row at the Coastal Carolina Fair picking up trash. It took eleven different people to fill those two slots. But from that initial $3,000 we’ve started a social business that last year nearly grossed $1,000,000 and has added more then $100,000 towards our workers bills in addition to their wage.

We’ve found some major advantages to starting small and starting soon:

1. At least you’re trying. Thoreau says that if you “Pursue the life you’ve dreamed of you’ll find success in the most common of hours.” This has to be balanced with counting the cost before you start, but the point is if you can’t build the entire house right now, start with a smaller house you can complete. Building the smaller house will bring you satisfaction and confidence to try a bigger house. If you wait for the perfect time to build the large house, it will never come.
2. You find out what works and what doesn’t. If you start small, your imminent failures cost less than the lessons they teach you. If you wait till you have everything you need, one mistake can cost you all of it.
3. When you are the first one you have to do it all, it allows you to walk in each person’s shoes that comes after you. At IES, we voluntarily moved into a homeless shelter. Over and over people from that shelter come to our office and say, “you know what it’s like.” We’ve worked day labor, picking up trash, pushing a broom, and doing physically straining work. We’ve dispatched workers at 5 am and had to pick them up at 9 pm, spending the day in between trying to convince local businesses to use our social business to provide their labor needs. We know what it's like, and this makes all the difference in the world.

Eventually, our hope is that all of these small snow flakes add up into an avalanche, the same way they did for Grameen Bank, the desktop computer, the automobile and the airplane. If you have a big idea and don’t know how you’ll ever make it happen, I would try listening to somebody who has won a Nobel Peace Prize by starting with $27. START SMALL. START SOON.

For the Benefit of Others

Rejection is a hooker. Seriously. But it's a learning part of life. I just got a rejection letter for something I really wanted to and thought I had a good chance of being accepted to, and, well, it didn't feel good.

It happened half an hour ago, so let's talk about it.

First off, the real reasons I hate rejection.

1) Comparison. Do you know anybody that was accepted to this same thing? Or anything similar? You aren't as good of a person as they are. There, I said it. And not just that. You never will be. And not just that, not only are they smarter than you, but they're prettier too, they're richer, they have a better education and a better family (your family is nuts), they have a better car and their breath smells better than yours. You will never be Mark Zuckerberg. You probably won't even make it to Colonel Sanders. Their dad can beat up your dad.

2) I want to be accepted. Yes. Well, for whatever reason this one isn't especially appealing to me as I write it, but I'm sure it's true. I want to be in the club, and you do too.

3) I want other people to think I'm cool. I really wanted to be able to tell people, "Oh back in 2013, you know, that was the year I… (Fill in the blank with what I was rejected for)." And then they'll say, "Ah! I didn't know you did that!" And I'll reply, "Yea, you know, it's no big deal." But I'll just say that even though it was the biggest deal of my life so that they'll think I have even bigger deals up my sleeve (which I wouldn't). Specifically, I'd like people that rejected me in the past to know what they missed out on.

4) I want a good resume. You know, if you can pile a few of these sorts of things up they start to snowball (I'm guessing since I don't have any of these things on my resume as of yet).

But I think the greatest opportunity when you apply for something is the ability to learn how to accept rejection. Like really, think about it. If you can't handle rejection you won't apply for things worth being accepted to. If you can accept rejection, then you'll apply for more things, and you'll ultimately get accepted to more because of it. Don't put your tail between your legs when you could let it wag.

The genuine reason that I wanted to be accepted though is because I have a story to tell and I want to tell it for the benefit of others. That gave me the grace to deal with some of the more trapping but superficial reasons above. So, after the shallow punches to the gut delivered by comparison, acceptance and their cronies, I got up, brushed the dirt off, wiped a little blood from my nose and I hope to keep going. 

The beauty of an authentic, driven, purposeful mission is that no application process is required. Nothing is keeping you from it. You don't need anybody's permission. You can start any time you'd like.

The story of our lives speak for themselves. Practically speaking, nothing is stopping me from talking about every day what I'd hoped to talk about on a stage. Every conversation is an opportunity. Most importantly, nothing is stopping me from acting out what I want others to try, and that's the best way to gain some followers.

I wrote a while back that "I think there’s something to admire in reckless searching, when in fact, that’s ultimately what we’re here for…If you’re willing to search at a certain price, that’s almost inevitably what the story of your life will reflect." I take some comfort in knowing that if I never fail trying to find what I'm looking for, chances are I'm probably not looking for much worth finding. 

For the record, I can't get accepted without that creating it's own batch of problems too. My first thought usually is, "Humph, they must have not a lot to pick from."

The Story of My Life

One of my life purposes is to observe people. I'm very curious. I love observing myself just as much as other people.

I love observing dynamics between the opposite sexes. You can see it at Starbucks (where I am now), dog parks (probably going to need a dog), or bars. And people embrace it in different ways. The dinner jacket, the muscle T, flipping the hair over her shoulder, wiggling the shoulders and wiggling other things too. You decide on your best attributes and bring them to life, pick out your worst attributes and either hide hide hide them or make them better no matter what it takes. Darryl says its like when the peacocks fluff their feathers up: "you like what you see, baby?" For me, probably because of my age, I mostly see this setting in a loud bar or restaurant where I can't hear what a single person is saying (it doesn't take a loud bar or restaurant for this to be the case), but I imagine the same dynamics will be in play once I make it to the nursing home (where I think I'll do much better, because my personality will be a bigger factor then and I've never--in my 26 years--met an old lady that didn't love red hair). My grandpa lived in a nursing home before he passed away and used to infamously complain about the women's sagging butts. Hopefully he's not complaining about it now in heaven with all those perfect bodies floating around.

Identity, how we determine value for ourselves, is perhaps seen best on the surface by how we physically present ourselves and interact with the opposite sex, but this is hardly the deepest issue. The only thing I learned from my history major at Furman was that--whether it's as individuals, cultures, or nations--the things we use to determine our identity and measure our self worth WILL determine our every action. And when our identity creeps into odd places, thats how Tulip bulbs nearly crashed the Netherlands's economy because they had gained more value than a house, or Gandhi began sleeping in the nude with young women to prove to himself that he was pure, or the British set up concentration camps for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Kikuyus in the Mau Mau Uprising, less than 10 years after fighting the Germans from doing the same to the Jews. Yea, yea, yea, I know it's boring: All I'm saying is that I think identity is a complicated thing for all of us.

There's good news and bad news, at least for me. 

The good news is that I believe I get to decide what I will place my identity in. I get to chose the places I go, the people I surround myself with, the information I put into my mind and heart. If I don't like where my identity is, I can change it, sometimes within seconds. And when I read things like "The Gulag Archipelego," I realize that no matter how bad things get (the author lived in a concentration camp), nobody can touch my soul or the thoughts in my mind if I will them not to. This is great news; with so little that you can chose in life, where you place your identity is probably the one thing you have more control over than anything else.

The bad news is that there isn't really anything worth putting my identity in. Life in many ways is an experiment with identity, and where I can put it to find fulfillment. And, it turns out, there is nothing that lasts for more than a season. I mean, really, search far and wide and find something stronger than time. Culture's values change and shift, what was in today is out tomorrow. Wealth slips right through our clenched fists, and if he never leaves you, he will die. Anyways, I feel like this can't be a very popular paragraph, but I do feel like it's the truth. Especially, in our culture, we try to hide that things don't last for forever. I have never seen a person die.

For me, in college, my history major revived a dying faith, because I realized that the only thing worth placing identity in is something that accepts you for who you are and above all is permanent. Almost as if I'd been dragged unwillingly out of my bed to a place I'd rather not go, I realized there's only one thing that can fit the criteria to fulfill what the human heart longs for.

The fantastic news is that once you come to grips with it, it allows you to simultaneously love the things you once mistakenly placed your identity even more while also making it so that you don't depend on them, because they are only temporary reflections of the one thing that's permanent.

Anyways, this wasn't meant to be the next edition of Mere Christianity or anything, I'm just sitting in Starbucks looking at all the perfect people with their eyes darting around, my pair among the rest. By the way, my hair is thinning, it really is, which means I probably can't even count on being Mr. Popular even in the nursing home. Looks like I'll have to settle for a saggy butt. I'm sick of editing this, and I've been told a great attribute about a blog is that you just put it out there and it doesn't have to be perfect, so bam, the story of my life. 

The Greatest Things

The strangest thing happened today.

We were interviewing an applicant for our open position of staffing coordinator when I asked why he wanted to work at IES, and he said, "well, I've been reading your blog and…" 

Woah, woah, woah, wait a minute. Darryl and Jordan made their wise cracks, making fun of the poetry, the narcissism, and the seventeen followers (I love each of you, as if you were my own little ducklings). But then I got thinking to myself about John Wooden, and how he said that it took him 14 years at UCLA to win a championship, but that he knew he was a success long before that. For John Wooden, success meant achieving all that he could in each present day, and if he did that, no matter the outcome or his position in life, he told himself with unshakable confidence that he was a success. And so I thought maybe I should do the same; whether there's 17 people reading the blog (I secretly think there's more) or 17 million, what matters is each present moment.  And since right now I think my readership is at its highest peak (in the 17-20 range), I think I should tell you the greatest things that I can, and the greatest things I can tell you are things that have been told to me:

The single greatest thing that anybody has ever told me is when one of my mentors asked me, rhetorically, in reference to IES, "Derek, is it possible you'll make mistakes? No, it's certain." Oh my God, yes, God in heaven above, that took a greater load off my chest than has ever been taken. I made a deep sigh of relief even as I wrote that sentence, and again as I'm rereading it. I'm just not sure that there's anything nicer you can do for yourself than to allow your heart to try the things it begs you to try even if it means an occasional, okay, frequent, okay, nearly every day mistake. Learning allows you to move as close to perfection as we humans can actually get. Perfectionists, on the other hand, want to be God. They can't get out of their seat without loosing their perfection. They live fearful lives strapped to electric chairs just waiting for somebody to pull the switch, or they are exactly like Natalie Portman (which is a good thing) in the Black Swan (which is very, very bad).

Another mentor told me over breakfast at IHOP that when you take a risk it's like crossing a river to a beachhead, and when you get to that beachhead you can see all the things that you couldn't see from the other side. The trouble of course is the courage to cross, and I know that to be true. If you want to read a fantastically fascinating book, try Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. He's a psychologist that won the Nobel Peace Prize for economics, and his basic premise is that we think we are rational when in fact we make emotionally based decisions nearly all of the time. An example is that if you were to flip a coin and tell somebody that if it's heads you will give them $75 but if it's tails they must give you $50, the rational person would take that bet all day because over time they will make money. Unfortunately most people don't. Because people tend to be more motivated by the pain of potential loss than the pain of missing out on potential gain. Being scared of losing what you have is eerily close to being a perfectionist, in which case see above.

A final mentor told me that the Buddhists say the greatest gift you can give somebody is the gift of honesty. For better or worse, I believe that's true. That if I can just bear my soul, that the soul in each of you will recognize a friend, and together we can move forward. That if I can just have the courage to admit my flaws, weaknesses, and ugly spots, that whether or not you can admit yours too you'll feel better about both of us. I don't think success requires anything more than being honest. If your a painter, paint your little heart out, if your a dancer, dance with a ribbon, whatever you do, do it honestly, and I think other souls will recognize the honesty in your soul and appreciate it. I just don't think it's any harder than that.

The greatest thing is life to me is that every good story has conflict, and the best stories happen only when it seems they are almost nearly over. I love how in life things can change from the deepest sorrow to the greatest joy in seconds. It doesn't matter if it's when Rocky finally beats that Russian's a** in Rocky IV or when the disciples finally catch enough fish in their nets to sink the boat; or when Jadaveon Clowney nearly rips the head off a Michigan Wolverine and picks up the football with his forearm. It's really all the same. Just when the day seemed like it was over it wasn't. Somebody refused to give up. The worse things get the better the story. And that's why I believe in Christ. I can only believe in something that addresses death, which seems like it's going to be a real downer, and says, "wait, no, there's a fumble and Jadaveon Clowney has the ball!" This fits with my heart, with the way I see the world going around. It resonates with my soul.

Do I think it's possible that Jadaveon Clowney and Jesus have a lot in common? You better believe I do. (This would make a great T-shirt by the way.)

Knowing that--no matter the conflict--we will overcome, that's what builds our faith, making us in words of the prophet Jeremiah "like trees planted along a riverbank" that "are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit." The fact that I live in a world where underdogs win on a daily basis, where things consistently happen that shouldn't, where things become possible only because of the people that won't stop believing in them, is enough. In my most satisfied moments I can be grateful just to be able to breathe the same air these people breathe and live in the same world they live in. What else is there; what else could be better? And how can I become like one of them?

Well, I don’t know the answers, but I feel like making mistakes, crossing the river to beachheads, and being honest are at least some of them.

Goodnight.