The Bracelet Story: Rewarding Good Behavior - a podcast by Ty Brown

In front of me right now I have four cheap, simple bracelets, and I want to tell you the story of how I received them. When I was at work today—and very busy—a young woman walked in, came over to the desk, and started talking to me. To be honest, I didn't understand much of what she said, but I did gather that she was from Thailand and that she’d only been in the country for a week. She opened up a binder, and inside there were bracelets, necklaces, and other kinds of jewelry. She had a laminated paper with her that explained the story of the pieces, but frankly I was too busy to really listen to what she was saying. The main thing I gathered is that she was from Thailand and was raising some money, and that she had jewelry for sale.

At first I was tempted to tell her I didn't have time, but I was immediately struck by this young woman’s work ethic. How many of today’s eighteen year old Americans would ever go cold-calling to businesses attempting to sell trinkets? You’d need to twist some arms—maybe even threaten jail time—in order to get the kids in my neighborhood to do something like that! It struck me how monumental it was for someone who didn't speak the language to walk into a store, look me in the eye, calmly explain what she was doing even though I didn't understand very well, and attempt to make a transaction. That’s pretty amazing!

Now, I speak a tiny bit of Portuguese, and just thinking about doing something like this in that language was mind blowing. What this young woman was doing amazed me. So I almost turned her away, but recognizing how awesome this was, I grabbed these four bracelets for my daughters. To be honest they’ll probably be broken within four hours, but it was less about the gift and more about rewarding the behavior that found its way to me. I just felt that this young woman needed to be rewarded. I’ll spend $20 to reward a work ethic lik

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