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Some of this is textbook basic. People are motivated by money, power, and self-actualization. So, if you take more money out of the situation, then you can empower (e.g., promote) the person, but I’ve heard people say that you’ll never get someone to take on more responsibility without more pay. — Considering I’m an example of the contradiction of that, I definitely don’t believe that’s always true.Praise. Good job. — I really appreciate what you do here. — One of the best things that ever happened to this company is when you put in your application.That kind of stuff works. Just be telling the truth if you say it. — None of this really seems like tricking people, so perhaps I’m not being faithful to the question. That said, I don’t think you have to trick people in order to motivate them.That’s not to say I’ve never been tricked myself. — Give people more power, more authority. Empower them, even, to be able to contradict you, in front of others, when you’re the boss. Accede to their demands. Let them run certain facets of the business with almost (or complete) autonomy. — Increase their pay. When they come to you with novel ideas about their compensation, agree to it without even really thinking about it. Let the person write his own paychecks.Require that the person be productive. Set goals and let him jump over them. Reward him for doing so with more money, more power, and more autonomy (which is a more direct form of self-actualization than praise).Then, when the person has doubled or tripled sales, cut his pay back down to be commensurate with that of most other employees, and keep the super-functioning business unit for yourself. Drink his milkshake.A year before, you were saying that the profits are really both of ours. Then, abruptly change that to you work for me; the profits are all mine.That’s a trick. I wouldn’t say that I fell for that once; I considered that job like an internship, and I’d heard the man say, concerning others: “Jared, I didn’t start this company to make other people rich.”No doubt, it is possible to trick people, but then again, some people are gullible, and business is business.My favorite story that involves not being able to increase the pay of a great worker in a direct sense has no tricks in it. That is not to say that a person with a certain mindset couldn’t read this and then find something bad in it. I know that’s possible, because one of this guy’s coworkers pointed one out in front of me, and according to how you think about it, you might agree with him.Anyway — a bit of backstory. This guy, whom I’ll call Harry, showed up to me wanting to put in an application as a commercial driver. I was the manager of one of the two ready-mix concrete plants in town, and I was CFO of the mother corporation, which was a general construction company.I had just walked out of the main office door, headed toward my car, when the receptionist told the guy that he should talk to me, as I was the person who could hire him. He came up to me and stated his wish to come on as a driver. — I started in explaining something that I’d said so many times I could do it in my sleep. That we did haul in materials from quarries, but that all drivers would have to be cross-trained to drive concrete mixer trucks, which were very different from tractor-trailer combinations. You had to know stuff about concrete. These trucks were dangerous. It was tough wor……At about that moment, I actually looked at the guy, and he was wearing the company hat of my competitor. — I asked, “You already know how to drive a mixer truck, don’t you?”Of course, he did. And, he had the next-up level of commercial driver’s license (CDL) which allowed him to drive the combinations. He was 60-ish; fit; good health; lots of experience. Had gotten fired from the other plant for safety violations.I was more interested now. Asked him what types of safety violations; they were minor in my opinion. I was friends with the manager of the other (local) plant, as I was with other regional plant owners. My direct competitor had just gone through a series of mergers and name changes, and heck — they were firing plant managers. That led me to ask Harry, “Who fired you?”It was the area manager. I told him, “If I were that man’s boss, I would fire him.” — A few months later, the area manager’s boss did fire him.I hired Harry. He was great. Quickly, he hit the wage ceiling, and the best I could do for him was to give him the most opportunities to work overtime hours. — He would take them.The other thing I could do, and did do, was get to know him. You can ask a guy about his family — things that are not really your business, and that aren’t necessarily (or at all) related to work — and, if he wants, he can answer. Harry did.He said that he currently lived with his wife at his mother-in-law’s house. After getting fired at the other plant, the only work he could find was a 30-hr/wk janitorial position, which paid minimum wage. By the time he got to me, he had put in so many applications, which turned up nothing, and he was about ready to give up. — He meant on life, by the way.It was not about giving up on looking for a better job.His mother-in-law told him he was worthless. His wife and he had no privacy. — Even though he had a better job, his situation was still not ideal.He told me about how he’d worked at the local brick plant in his younger years, and told me a story about knocking out the future (as in, the current) mayor pro tem. The head man had said afterward, “Harry — you’re a great guy, but I’m gonna have to let you go.”He used the man’s name. The man was the brother of my grandfather, so I knew him. — After that, Harry had gone into the Army, and when he got out, my great-uncle gave him another chance at the brick plant, and he had dreamed since then of having a brick house of his own for his family.In addition to the two hats I’ve previously mentioned, I also was the manager of our portfolio of real estate for lease. We were trying to get out of residential rental properties, but we still had one house.A brick house.The previous resident had left it in horrible condition and absconded in arrears of rent. The house had been empty for over a year, and it’s amazing how quickly nature tries to reclaim what we’d call “improvements” to its land.I’d showed the house to an investor from Houston, who arrived in a Mercedes SUV; designed clothes; European accent. When we walked into the house, a cat ran out. — I told him if he bought the house, I’d throw in the cat for free.His buy offer eventually being too low, he went back to Houston and the cat kept the house.The cat was even worse at paying the rent than the previous owner, whose quick departure included ripping out the exhaust pipe for the dryer and, in the process, opening the door (the dryer hole) for the cat to move in.I told Harry that one of the fun parts of my current job was that pretty often I had the opportunity to do right by people/help people; by that, I meant giving good service to customers. And, pretty often, I could do things that offered people a better lot in life.I could hire people and rescue them from janitorial Hell.I also had a vacant 2BR/1 bath brick house. We’d been trying to sell it, but I could ask my boss if he’d be interested in changing strategies and going back to renting it out. If Harry would like me to.He was, but he concerned about his ability to pay for it. — I was concerned about the state of the interior of it.The house wasn’t in a bad neighborhood. The best way I can explain it is that getting to the neighborhood was funky. — You had to drive through (this was in town, not far from one of the public schools) desolation and abject poverty, and then you turned left and a landscaped enclave of a couple of streets of relatively small, but nice, homes appeared.I’d been unable to sell it for a reasonable price, and this had been going on for a year or two. — One time, a lady came into the main office and inquired about an ad for it I’d put in the paper, and then she said, “Wait. Are you talking about where P.B. lived? — AWWWW LORRRD. She was a filthy person. Nah. I’m not interested.” — About-face. She left.I knew my boss didn’t want to be in residential rentals. Leasing out commercial properties to large corporations involves, monthly, opening a mailbox. — Residential involves short-term leases; in-person rent payments, which often are late. Despite having an office, ours was a construction business office, not really set up for the kind of interactions common to people who live in the properties, as tenants, with their landlords. — That was one chief complaint of my boss, and he was right.However, this was different. Harry worked for us, so verification of his employment was trivial. If he allowed his rent payments to be deducted from his paychecks, then collecting rent became less tedious than walking to the mailbox.This may seem simple for a business case, but it really highlights what a business executive does. — I told my boss, the CEO/President of the corporation that the company was paying insurance and property taxes on this house; despite being a general contractor, the interior of the house was just getting more and more decrepit; fixing that would still cost money, because materials are not free and even if you think of labor as like overhead in this situation, it still costs opportunity.If he could make an arrangement, as so far described, with Harry, with no lease agreement necessary — just make his continued residency contingent on his continued employment with the company — even if the rent received was just enough to cover our expenses, it’d be a two-fold deal.The property breaks even.I can motivate and reward Harry for his work at the concrete plant without any extra cash outflows.It was a short presentation, and it was persuasive. — I doubt that one of the company’s drivers could’ve made a persuasive case to the man to rent him the house. — The bigger residence, which we’d just sold, was ruined internally (including broken windows) by a former disgruntled employee. When he left, he left a dog inside, which defecated everywhere and tore everything up. — This was not the first time my boss had entertained an employee living in one of his properties.When a CFO also has a proven successful operations role, he or she moves out of the I know where money is and money isn’t stereotype, because he brings in money; he doesn’t just count it. — In retrospect, it doesn’t surprise me that I ended up managing a real estate portfolio, either. It’s a similar cost-center/profit-center fusion.This C-suite position is trending toward the CFOO title, signifying being some form of chief of financial (back-office) operations and general (front-of-house) operations. — You are over accounting; you make financial decisions and recommendations; and, you sell things.In any case, the driver might fail. If I made the recommendation, it was more likely to stick, because of how immersed I was in the success of the unified corporation. If what I recommended turned into a failure, then it would reflect badly on me. — The driver really has nothing to lose except a dream.My boss told me to tell Harry he’d pick him up after work that day and take him to go see the house.Harry was offered an opportunity, and I’m not sure that everyone would have accepted it. He would pay below-market rent, which would be deducted from his paycheck each pay period (pro rata).Except for a few major repairs, which the construction company would take care of, my boss would pay for materials only, and Harry would be expected to provide the labor to refurbish the house.And, if he ran into any problems — like the doorknob is broken, or the toilet is acting up, etc. — all those things that suck about residential rentals — he would be responsible for those.My boss didn’t want to be bothered with those details. — In practice, when those inevitabilities popped up, Harry came to me for payday advances to take care of them.And, if he got fired or quit, or ever failed to make a rent payment, then the arrangement would cease and the house would be sold.Even though it was never stated, it was somewhat implicit that the house (and his “lease”) would not be sold so long as he continued being a valued employee.Harry took the deal. He moved his wife out of her mother’s house into a brick house — and, it was theirs.After they’d moved in, I asked Harry if he’d mind if I went over to see what they’d done to the place, since I knew how it’d looked before they moved in. — This was not some sort of landlord inspection.He’d just been talking about how grateful he was, and how proud they were of it.He said sure; that his wife would be home a couple of hours before he got off of work, so I told him to ask her if she minded if I came over to look at what they’d done. He called her and she said sure. — She worked as well, but her work let out earlier than his.That afternoon, I drove over and knocked on the back door. His wife (a well-appointed lady) invited me in, and I felt like I had walked into — you know — if you were to go to rent an apartment, the complex would have a show apartment for you to see the potential of what you could have? — Yeh.Everything was clean. — That, in and of itself, — I knew — had taken a bunch of work.She had arranged furniture in a way that made the relatively small home (it was around 980 square feet) seem big. She even invited me to look at their bedroom.I went into business for this kind of stuff.She was so proud of what they had, and she wanted to show off. — Now, Spanish language is my minor, so I feel it necessary to point out that there’s a good kind of pride (American [EE.UU.] interpretation), and there’s the cardinal sin version of pride. — Her pride and her showing off was the good kind.The American dream kind.Because I bought tens of thousands of tons of sand every year from a particular quarry, the owner of the quarry would send us two boxes of ribeyes every Christmas. — I left the house and went back to the office to get four steaks out of the freezer and brought them over to Harry, who was just about to get off work.I told him how gracious his wife had been and how proud I was of what they’ve done and how glad I could’ve been a part of it. — The steaks didn’t cost me anything; they were a gift from our sand people (he drove trucks to the sand quarry, so he knew who they were better than I did), and I figured his family might appreciate a nice steak dinner.Didn’t cost me anything. In fact, the rental house was costing him something.He reported back that his wife had seasoned them, put some taters and onions with them, and cooked them in the oven, and they were delicious.I can’t help myself. I didn’t tell him, but I thought — She burnt them up and took all the moo out of them.But, I’m not going to judge their choice of steak internal temperatures.They appreciated it. — Prime ribeye steak dinner was not their usual meal.The first time I got some free steaks from that quarry, I felt pretty special, too.Now, I had to be very careful not to show favoritism to any one person. That didn’t mean I had to employ trickery. — The construction foreman took steaks, and I gave them away to people who worked in the office.Even with two boxes, a dozen (I guess?) steaks each, there were not enough for everyone in the company.It’s just another example of something that costs nothing, and is like additional compensation to people who work for you, but would not, in my opinion, qualify as reportable income to them.The rent Harry paid was reportable income for his employer. — I don’t know where on Form W-2 you report free steaks.This question addresses a real, difficult to effect problem in business. It’s about motivation. As a paid employee of the corporation, I got paid to do all of this. So, that is a cost. However, it was a business expense, because retaining Harry on the payroll was pro-business.He increased sales, customer retention, and internal efficiency. — This means the state got more sales tax revenues from us, and the IRS got more income tax revenues from us.