Payroll: A Guide for Small Businesses and Startups With Charles Read

Charles Read  00:07

It was necessary to take that, at that point in time, you know, $10 an hour work that I was doing, instead of billing out at $100 An hour like I was that. So every hour she could take and do for $10 Allow me to Bill 100 made all the sense in the world and it worked.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:27

So good morning, and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. Today, I am joined by Charles Read, who is the CEO of GetPayroll, which was one of the national payroll companies in the US one of the smallest, but still one of the best payroll companies in the US. Um, Charles is a Midwestern boy, he's been sharing with me, and he is in Iowa. And he's got a quite an interesting backstory, because he actually started life in the Marines and sort of went from there. So, welcome to the show. Charles, lovely to have you here.

Charles Read  00:56

Debra, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:58

My absolute pleasure to hey, I would love for you to share the story that you've just shared with me with our listeners and share a little bit of what you're most proud of in your life so far.

Charles Read  01:06

Sure. You know, I grew up in Iowa and what the high school joined the Marine Corps. After the Marine Corps included combat tour, I was stationed in Kansas City. And the best thing I ever did in my life was I met and married my wife. She She kept me alive, she kept me on the straight and narrow. She was 10 years older than I was. I think she was herself a boy and raised them right. And we she had five children when I married her, like I said, was 10 years older. I claim insanity, but it worked. We were married for 45 years before she passed. So that's, that's the best thing I ever did in my life, bar none. After the military, I went to college, got my undergraduate and my graduate degrees, sat for and passed my CPA exam while I was still in college, went to work in the corporate world spent 15 years. So first company, out of college was Texas Instruments. huge multinational firm. Yep, spent the next 15 years in various corporations, small and large. Turn around startups, various industries, learn a lot of things got a lot of great experience, but realized I was never going to get to the top of a major corporation, I did not have the political skills, basically unwilling to stab people in the back and toss them off the ladder. So if I was, if I was going to run a company, I was gonna have to start my own. So Ruth, my wife and I, some 30 plus years ago, started her own company. And we're still here today I am at least having beat all the odds and survived the vagaries of the market for 30 years, we're still in business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:07

And so payroll, I mean, what was the impetus to get into starting your understand something about business, but why payroll, I suppose?

Charles Read  03:15

Well, the business started out originally is an accounting firm with a payroll sideline. The payroll was a good way to sell accounting. But about 10 years ago, I sold off the accounting practice portion to my partner. And he's formed a separate Corporation, he still offices in the same in our building. But I was tired of doing tax returns, after 20 years of them, and he was still younger and liked to do them. So he bought that portion of the business. And we kept the payroll, which I enjoy. And so we have been growing that rapidly ever since. And having a great time doing so it's it's a fun business. It's business to business. So you don't have consumer problems. You don't have all those that go with a consumer business. We only deal with businesses, effectively. Some are very small, one person, you know, we pay. In several cases, we pay household help for a couple or a woman or a gentleman that has one household staff, and we take care of their payroll. So it can be very small, but it's still business, not consumer. I enjoy the ability to deal with the Internal Revenue Service. I'm my specialty. I wouldn't became a US Tax Court practitioner, which allows me to practice in US federal tax court without being an attorney. There's about 200 of us in the country that are able to do that. It's kind of unique. So that's a lot of fun. Well, I have yet to lose a tax court case. I'm sure I will at some point but so far. We haven't lost any of them yet And that's how I like to take care of my clients, I got great clients, some have been with us for 30 years. And you know, at that point in time they become friends. They're not just clients. You know, a number of them, the old clients that came to visit Ruth while she was in the hospital with her stroke, and so on. So it's, it's, it's good people, it's a good industry, it's repeat business. They're here every week or two weeks or twice a month or once a month, they come back. So once we get them in, and we take very good care of them, they tend to stick around forever. In many cases, we're dealing with the children of my original clients, because they've taken over the business. And we're dealing with people who've bought our clients, businesses, and recommend us highly, so we keep doing business with them. So that's a lot of fun.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:51

Yeah. And so I mean, tell us about the journey of going from being human, first of all, coming from a corporate going into an accounting practice, and then shifting from from accounts, which is quite, you know, it's quite an interesting line of work. But it was a it was quite a specialized to work into more of a software type business. What was the how was that journey for you? And what are the little bumps along the way in terms of making those decisions?

Charles Read  06:16

Well, the move from corporate to personal to our own business, of course, you're an entrepreneur. And that's not for everybody. And there's some techniques and tricks you have to learn to be effective as an entrepreneur, one of which that I learned it took me a few years, and I got, I learned it with the help of a friend is to work on my business and not in my business. That's critical. It's just critical. It was Michael Gerber's, the E Myth revisited, my friend gave to me, and now I buy the book by the dozen and give it out to clients. And it's required reading of every new employee. That that was the key for me to success is working on my business, and building the policies and procedures, and turning it into a turnkey business as such, Michael's words, not mine. And so that that was the key in the journey is to do that. There are some other things hiring my first non revenue producing employee. That was a major milestone. And it worked out beautifully. Penny was wonderful, actually freed up. Penny was this was 2528 years ago, was secretary. But she also answered the phone, she did work around the office, took care of the files, did the typing, you know, answered the phone. And she gave great telephone. I mean, she talked to you once and she remember your voice, she knew who you were anytime you called in. And she made our clients feel very welcomed. And she freed up a lot of my time, and my accountants time, that allowed us to be much more productive than we had been without her. And that was a learning experience for me, is to hire that person to facilitate us being more productive. So that was that was a great step. I just

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:13

wanted to have a little bit further into that. Because I think it's often hard, isn't it when you start your own business to let go? And to have other people come in? And like you said, this was a non revenue generating roles, you sit there and go, but had this doesn't make any sense? How do I justify this expense? But um, obviously it worked out. And I think the reason it works out is if you can let go of that $25 An hour work that you don't doesn't add value to your, where you add value in the business, it can make a massive difference. So tell us a bit more about you know, how did you how did it work out? And how did you actually manage to let go?

Charles Read  08:42

Well, I knew I had to because there was too much going on. And you know, obviously it's an entrepreneur, you wear all the hats to start with. And you can see what that's done to me. So you have to start.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:56

But just a quick thing. So the viewer, the viewers who are not looking at the actual video, just that, you know, Charles hasn't got any hair, so

Charles Read  09:02

No, none. So I knew I had to start delegating. Being a Marine. I've learned leadership, different style of leadership in the military, but you were in that you have to depend upon your people. You can't do it all yourself. You can't fight a war by yourself. You can't run a business by yourself. So I knew I had to delegate and I started doing that. And bringing in professionals and then marketing people and she was necessary. Penny was necessary to take that, at that point in time, you know, $10 an hour work that I was doing, instead of billing out at $100 An hour like I was that. So every hour she could take and do for 10 hours allowed me to build 100 made all the sense in the world and it worked. And it was just It was wonderful. When she left us, she went to work as the executive assistant to the president of Mary Kay Cosmetics, which is a big international firm. So she was very, very good, we were very lucky to have her. So that was that was it just you have to delegate, you can't do it all yourself. And the faster you can delegate things that aren't your specialty, that you're not great at, the better off you are. You know, I don't mow my own lawn. Because mowing my own lawn to me as work. It's not a it's a chore, it's not pleasure, as it is to some people, I would much rather come into the office and do a tax return, which pays for the that that hour I do spending during a tax return pays for the lawn this week, next week, the following week, the following week, the following week, saves me six or eight hours of labor for one of my professional hours of labor. So apply that same thing with tasks in the office that that are worth to me that have to be done. But I can hire them done much cheaper. Hiring people is so important. And it's so critical. I like Warren Buffett's advice, hire good people don't hire jerks. And it works out and you hire good people, and you delegate it, and you give them the responsibility and the authority, you got to give them both. You can't give them the responsibility and not give them the authority to do the job. And another thing I learned, yeah, another thing I learned, and this one was a hard one to learn is, in doing a job, the result is important. The style is not I had to give up on doing everything my way, when it was not important. If the style of doing the job didn't matter, in some places it does, then I don't care how they do it, as long as they get the result that I would get. And they like to do it there. Wait, let them do it their way. That was a hard one to learn. It's just it's, you know, when you're the boss, you know, that doesn't mean you get everything your way. Sorry. I've, I've had bosses that want everything their way and, and they're micromanagers. And I've also seen them go bankrupt. So you know, it's you've got to trust your people, you've got to hire good people. You know, your job is not to hire the smartest person not to be the smartest person in the room, is to hire the smartest person in the room, or hire the best person in the room. Hire somebody who can do the job and do it effectively. That's what you want and get along. When we hire people, everybody in the office gets the interview. And anybody gets to veto them. If they don't fit the corporate culture, our corporate culture. They don't get hired. And if we make a mistake, and we've made a few over the years, they don't last very long. We don't we don't put up with it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:18

I love it. Okay, so, I mean, obviously, having everybody interviewed him was a fantastic idea, because I think that really does ensure that they truly fit into their culture. Is there any other tips or tools that you have around actually hiring the right people, because you know, you say don't hire a jerk get that. But sometimes people can come across very well in an interview. It's not necessarily how they behave, once they become an employee,

Charles Read  13:38

check references and check them effectively. Don't just send a letter or make a call to the references they give you because they're obviously going to be very good ones where they wouldn't give them to you. So when you call a reference from somebody, you say, Oh, hey, do you know anybody else that knows this person. And normally, you can get a name or two. And at that point, you call those people who aren't prepped as references. And that can be very, very effective. You check the background, we had a lovely young girl that we wanted to hire in an administrative capacity, not a payroll capacity. And we did a background check on her. And at the time, my secretary personal assistant, whatever, was married to a police officer, it locally who later became sheriff and he ran a background check for us. And turns out the young girl's boyfriend was known to pass bad checks. Well, we're a payroll company. We have all this information on all these people, their payroll, and their checks and their bank and all this information. And my secretary it's done. wanted to hire her? And her husband said, What are you stupid? No, you can't hire. So you got to know who you're hiring, you got to you got to you got to interview him, you got to check the background, you've got to vet them carefully. We're in a very sensitive business. I mean, if you're digging ditches, maybe it's not as important. But, you know, if they don't get along, and they're, they're, they're disruptive in the workforce. It's not going to work. So, you know, and, you know, in the, so you didn't really need to vet them carefully. Yes, it's worth your time in trouble.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:40

Sure. And you mentioned that, you know, as we all have in our in our careers, we've had some that didn't work out quite as well as we hoped they would. How do you deal with that kind of person in the organization?

Charles Read  15:50

You let them go? I don't like firing people. I really don't. And nobody, I've never fired anybody that didn't expect it. Okay. So I sit them down, I talk to him, I counsel them. We get it in writing. We obey all the laws, but we go well beyond what is required legally. Because if I can salvage somebody I want to. And if they're going to move on, against their will, they need to understand why. So I make it very clear. And I walk through, these are the things that you're you're doing that don't fit, and you need to change. And if you're unwilling to change, or unable to change, we're going to have to part ways. It doesn't happen in a day. But it can happen in a few weeks. Just depends on how severe the behavior is. But we've got to move them on because they're there. I'm not getting what I pay for. And my clients aren't getting what they expect. So that's not going to work. It upsets me It upsets the workplace, it upsets the the internal workings of the company, it upsets my clients cut, it's better to say the client, we're going to be a little late here, you know, you're gonna have to do things a little early or something. So we can get it out on time, rather than piss them off for no good reason.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:21

Okay, what are the other sort of challenges that you've had? Because when people people can make or break a company, it sounds like you've got a great team now who are all on the same page, you know, what they're doing good work that they do? What are the challenges have you had in that sort of 31 years of business? Because we know we get taught that businesses grow in a nice, consistent, steady way. But it's often not the case, is that fair?

Charles Read  17:44

Well, we've we've had, we've had recessions and we've had downturns, and we've had ice storms. I remember we had an ice storm here. And so UPS was supposedly running. So we put everything in the UPS box, and they didn't pick up. So the next day, we put it all in the FedEx box that day, FedEx didn't pick up so and we've had we've lost payrolls, we do a lot electronic now more so than ever. But there was a plane crash that destroyed several of our payrolls one time. So there's all kinds of little glitches, but probably the biggest thing was internal to me. I thought I could mark it. And we were growing, and it was doing okay. And we got, we're getting bigger. And then we gotten big enough that I said, finally, one day, okay, I'm gonna hire somebody to handle the marketing, we've gotten that big. And I hired in a marketing manager, a professional. And in two weeks, she proved to me that I couldn't market my way out of a paper bag. And my regret was that I didn't hire a marketing professional a lot earlier. Because I'd be a hell of a lot richer today. And the business would be a lot bigger, if we'd had done it 10 years earlier. So you have to know your own strengths. And you have to know them. You can't just assume them. You've well I think I can do this well, can you or can't you look at it and measure yourself against professionals in that realm. And if you don't measure up, hire one of them. I wish I had we could have afforded one a lot earlier, but we didn't and that it cost us a lot of growth over those years that we didn't have professionals in that spot. You know, I'm when it comes to employment taxes and the Internal Revenue Service and, and dealing with them. I'm, I'm an expert. I am a real real real expert in employment taxes. nationally. I've been on the internal revenue service advisors counsel advising the IRS. I'm a tax court practitioner, I'm a CPA, I've got my MBA, you know, I've got 30 years of doing this. I know what I'm doing. Well, you know, I thought I knew other things, too. And it turns out, I didn't know him very well. So, you know, that was my mistake.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:19

And I've got the converse story, because I actually am from a sales and marketing background. So naturally, I really do get sales and marketing and very good at it. I used to like doing it. But I thought I could actually do my own accounts. I thought, you know, why would I pay all this money to an accountant, I had an internal kind of, you know, intern bookkeeper, who was helping me out, we made such a mess of it, but it has taken us months and months, and lots and lots of money to kind of fix it all up again. So, you know, you've got, like you said, You've got to recognize what are you really, really good at? What do you enjoy doing as well as being good at it? And in reality, you know, that the finance the accounting, although I sit on boards, I understand financial papers, there's a difference between understanding it and actually doing it and doing it well. And so I've had to learn the hard way that never ever touching anything to do with accounts ever again. But it's a good learning. Okay. So tell us a bit more about payroll. I mean, it's, what does your company do in terms of helping people with payroll?

Charles Read  21:20

Well, we basically, a company tracks the number of hours and we provide software in many cases to do that, and tells us what pay rate the person is, and we handle everything else. We create the payroll, we create the checks or the direct deposits, we handle all the tax deposits, all the tax filings, all the interfacing with the Internal Revenue Service, and the state revenue offices and the state unemployment offices, and all the forms all the filings, any of the problems that come up, we fix. That's just, you know, our compliance is our specialty. We don't, we don't want the the clients talking to the Internal Revenue Service. Because they get emotionally involved. And this brought up brought home to me real, real real. Personally, here a couple of years ago, in the middle of COVID, the Internal Revenue Service screwed up on our company taxes. So being the expert that I am, I called up the revenue officer and explain to him where they'd screwed up. He said, Now, we didn't. I said, but you did. And here's what happened. He said, Now, I went, Okay, now wait a minute. And I'm hearing my voice rise as I'm talking to him, because I'm getting upset. And in the back of my mind, it's going, Charles, don't do this, don't do this. And I find myself yelling at this guy over the phone. And he proceeds to hang up on me and do nasty things to my accounts. Well, it took me about two weeks to get a hold of his boss because of COVID. And when I did, he said, Charles, no, that shouldn't happen, we'll fix it, and it all went away. But that's why I tell clients don't talk to the Internal Revenue Service. Because you're emotionally involved. Let me do it as the professional. But when it came to my own, I was just as bad as my clients are. So that's what we do for our clients is we eliminate that problem. The analogy I like to use is when I grew up, Pele, was the world's best soccer player may still live in them. You know, it's a wonderful athlete. But if you take pit, yeah, he's still alive. He had some medical problems here recently. That's I read about him in the newspaper. He'd been released from the hospital. But if you take Pele and you put him in a New York Yankees uniform, and you stick them at second base, he's lost. He doesn't know the game, the rules, what do you mean, pick up the ball with your hands, you know what's going on? So that analogy works. You take a businessman who's an expert at his business, he handles his business, he keeps his clients happy, he makes money. He's growing business. And now you say, okay, the IRS screwed up, fix it. Ah, he's Pele, a second base. You don't know what to do? doesn't know how to handle it the who to call, or what to do. We're experts. We know all the tricks. We've been doing it for 30 years.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:38

That's actually a great analogy. I love it. I believe you've written a book as well. Is that right?

Charles Read  24:43

I have the payroll book, A Guide for small businesses and startups. It's available from Amazon and at the payroll book.com. If any of your listeners are interested in us payroll, it's not UK or Australian payroll. We do have a comment on Amazon from with a one star saying what doesn't apply to UK payroll? Thanks. But if your clients can want to go to the payroll book.com and a discount code podcast, we will ship them a free book. Nope, no shipping, no handling, no nothing. As long as supplies last, they're welcome to one. And it's, it's, you know, 30 years of experience distilled down to 95,000. Words. And and this is a trick for any of your entrepreneurs that are considering writing a book. This is my fourth one. And on this one, I used a major publishing house Wiley. And they made it a much better book. They have layout experts, copy editors, indexers, all the things you need to really make a class book. Now, do I make as much money from the book as I would if I did it myself? No. But the point wasn't to make money. The point was to get us out in front of people. And so the better the book, the better we appear. So even if we made nothing off the book, I wouldn't be happy with what Wiley did for us in producing such a quality piece of work.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:18

And so again, it's about letting the experts do the expert work, isn't it? Because they know books? They probably they probably have been doing it for hundreds of years. And why would we think we actually know better than them? And yet, it's a human trait, isn't it? We just especially as entrepreneurs, I think I've been an entrepreneur my entire life as well running multiple businesses. And there's always things you kind of got on that I think I can do it better. And it's like, yeah, but is it really? Is it what you know, I talked about, is it really what you love doing? And are you really good at it. And if you if it doesn't fit into that category, let somebody else do it. And they may do it a different way, like you said, and that's always been my biggest challenge. I'm half Jim a bit of a control freak. And it's like, you know, soldiers, that's not the way I would do it. And I finally learned by about 10 years ago, I was running an event. So it's like, actually just let it go. As long as you get the outcomes that you require, does it matter how they do it? And that, as you said, it's a lesson that it takes a while sometimes, but when you get it, it's like, right now I'm really happy to deal I've got five things I love doing and that I'm really good at. And that's all that I do everything else, I get somebody else to do it, whether that's outsourced or somebody in the business, but I just don't want to be involved in things where I can't add real value.

Charles Read  27:25

Absolutely, yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:27

We share a lot of similar philosophies. It's wonderful. So anything else that you've you know, really sort of major that you would love to share with people that you've learned from your experience so far, then I'm going to ask you to give us three tips or tools as well.

Charles Read  27:39

Well, one of the things that I've learned, and I've basically stoled up the same from Bill Gates, is people will overestimate what they can accomplish in a year. And underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. It is a marathon, it's not a sprint, you're not going to be the unicorn, you're not going to be Bill Gates, you're not going to be Jeff Bezos, okay, just you're not going to, you're not going to play at the top of a professional sports league. You're not going to make you're not going to output Tiger Woods, okay. But you can do amazing things over time. If you just keep plugging away at it every day, every day every day. That journey begins with the first step and just goes on and is your long as you keep making those steps. It's amazing what you can accomplish what we've done in 30 years. Look, most businesses don't last for one out of 10 last 10 years. We're at 30 Plus now. That's incredible. But it's one day at a time. You know, you got it. You know, Sunday old baseball analogy. You know, some days you get rained out. Some days get canceled. Some days are doubleheaders, but you got to suit up for all of them. So, you know, come to work, do the work. Do it the next day and the next day and it's amazing what happens.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:23

It's interesting because Gino Wickman. I'm not sure if you're aware of Gino, but he wrote the book Traction. And that's the stuff that I teach people as the EOS model. And when he says the same thing, you know, you underestimate what you can do in 10 years, you overestimate what you do in a year. And so we have a 10 year target for our clients that we want them to focus on. But it's a it's a guiding light. It's a Northern Star. It's kind of the direction you're headed in. But what is more important is actually getting that short term stuff as you said, taking the steps every day, knowing what you need to do and consistency, consistency and laser-sharp focus pays off over time.

Charles Read  29:55

Absolutely. And it's just it's just doing the right things but do on them over and over and over and over and over and over and over. So yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:04

Perfect. Okay, I'm gonna ask you for three top tips or tools you can share with our listeners, what have you got for us, Charles, you've already given a lot, by the way.

Charles Read  30:14

Well, we've gone over, we've really gone over most of us, we've talked here, you know, obviously, work on your business, not in your business. As entrepreneurs, we tend to create a job for ourselves something we're good at, we can do it faster, cheaper, better, we were experts at it. That's why we become entrepreneurs. But if you want to grow your business, you got to work on it. So that that's, that's the biggest tip. hire good people. Know yourself, know what you're capable of, and what you're not capable of. And if you're not sure, figure it out, there's books, there's tests, there's vocational things that will help you determine where you're good and where you're not use them. Find out what your personality is, find out where it meshes. Find out where it meshes with other people in your firm and your industry. Because different people need to be treated different ways. That's a critical thing in supervising people, is you can't supervise them all the same way. And that's something we haven't discussed. But it's critical. You've got everybody's an individual. Dr. George Washington crane used to say this, he was a doctor and a lawyer and wrote a column for years, my parents cut it out and sent it to us kids, the four of us for years. And he said, the way to get along with people is to treat everybody, as if tattooed across their chest, it says I am important. If you treat them like they're important people, they'll respond appropriately. So management skills, if you don't have more of them, and utilize the management skills, I were in the in the Marine Corps don't work in business, I had to relearn them all. And, and that's one place my my wife was so important. She was a real people person. Everybody loved her. Everybody loved Ruth, her the biggest question she got in her life was why she married a schmuck like me. But you know, it worked for us. So the hell with them.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:30

That's awesome. Oh, there's so much good stuff in there. There really is. So I mean, a couple of the books that you mentioned, I mean, Michael Gerber, the E Myth revisited. That is a book as you said, if you haven't read it as entrepreneur, you've got to read it, that it's one of the most important books that I've read in terms of books. Knowing yourself, I mean, I think the idea of doing the tests and things but also, sometimes I find that just talking to people and having them feedback to you, how you behave or how they see you behave gets gives you a bit of an insight as well into yourself.

Charles Read  33:02

It does it in two ways. First of all, the people who aren't your friends that are work for you, they'll they'll give you feedback that may or may not be honest. But it tells you things how they see you. So if you want real, real, true feedback, you've got to talk to good friends or professionals. That will give you honest feedback because most people won't. Most people will tell you what they think you want to hear. And that's not what you want. So if you've got to go to a professional, counselor, a therapist, a business coach, do it. Find out what your strengths are, and run with your strengths. You know, shore up your weaknesses, like I finally did the marketing. Okay, shore up your weaknesses with experts, hire experts to do those things your weekend, spend your time on the things you're the expert at.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:04

I think that's absolutely really sad advice. And the last thing was, of course, as you said, you got to treat everybody as an individual but as important and it's not one size fits all when it comes to managing people. Hey, Charles, It has been an absolute pleasure to chat with you today. I've made lots of notes here and I'm sure readers got lots of value out of it. If people do want to talk to you, obviously, you are an expert in this field of payroll nationally across the US. So if somebody wants to get in contact with you, what's the best way to find you

Charles Read 34:32

GetPayroll.com is our website. They can contact us through there. My personal email is cjratgetpayroll

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:42

Perfect. And then of course the payroll books or the payroll book.com is where they can find that. And if they use the code podcast, you will send them in the US you will send them a free book for their small and medium sized business. Yeah,  Absolutely.  Charles again, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It's been an absolute A pleasure to meet you and I look forward to keeping in contact over the years.

Charles Read  35:02

Thank you Debra.