Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Charles Read. Charles, welcome.
Thank you, Thomas. Pleasure to be here.
It is my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do. Sure. I’m a midwestern boy, grew up in Iowa after high school I joined the United States Marine Corps four years of service including two years overseas, A stint in in Vietnam as a combat marine came back. I met my wife married her, she had five kids When I married her, I claim insanity. I realised that veterans experience was not valued well at that time still isn’t. So I went to college, got my degrees, got my CPA. Went to work for large businesses and smaller businesses. then here 30 years ago realised I was never going to run a major corporation for somebody else’s corporation because I don’t have the political skills. I’m unwilling to stab in the back and throw him off the ladder.
So I said if I’m going to run a business, I’m gonna start my own. So I did. And 30 years later we’re here, we provide payroll services for small and medium-sized businesses around us. I think we’re in 48 of the 50 states. And we’re having a good time. Lots of fun clients. Lots of dealing with the IRS. Which is always a fun thing. Internal Revenue Service. So we work, we take care of our clients and we have a good time. There’s lots to follow up on in that introduction. But you say you said that you’re in 48 of the 50 states. I have to ask the are you are you looking to close those last two? Absolutely. We can do business. We’ve done business in them. We just don’t have any current clients at the moment Over the last 30 years. We’ve done a lot of things. We’ve had, we’ve had international clients, UK companies that have an American subsidiary that we do payroll for. We have other foreign companies that we do their American subsidiaries.
We send payments to foreign nationals through American banks. We all deal with foreign banks that so we do all kinds of things. Well. In the preparation for our conversation, I noticed that the Fox business interview, which was very cool. So from active duty to Working 9-5 one US marine turned CEO made the successful transition from the battlefield to the boardroom. Starting his own payroll company decades ago and making sure veterans round out his staff joining us right now is get payroll president and CEO Charles Reid and I wanted to ask, how did that come about? And how did you feel about it beforehand? It came out of the blue, they called us and said we’d like to have you on the show. I don’t know what triggered him. I wish I did because I repeated over and over and over again. And so early one morning we went down to a studio in downtown Dallas in a high rise office building and it was my first National one.
And I’m sitting in this room and up on the wall is the camera in a box. Down here is a video monitor that is a second delayed. So you can’t look at it because you’ll get confused of where you’re at. So I’m sitting in this darkened room staring at this box up on the wall trying to listen in my ear and answer questions from Maria, who in the middle of it got a coughing fit and her associates had to take over. But it was for, for a first national one. It was, it was interesting. It was fun. I’m glad I did it. I’m looking forward to more of them. Uh, it was uh, it was great and the whole idea of course was promoting veterans and hiring veterans being a veteran. I’m a great believer and I hire veterans when why can because I think that the, the discipline and the sense of mission uh, that you get being in the military translates very, very well to business and accomplishing business goals and business missions.
So I’m a great believer that that experience and that discipline is good. Yeah, well that’s actually one of the things that I did want to touch on is the, is the military experience. But I was going to ask, did you get nervous before the interview, But I’m kind of half hoping that you’re gonna say? Marines don’t get nervous for internet. Oh, I got a few butterflies. But again, you know after people have been shooting at you, you know, nothing else is quite as devastating as that first round that goes by your ear and you go, what am I doing here? So you are, Maria was not shooting at me. So I was very happy. I wish I was a little more polished at the time. Now having done a number of podcasts and interviews since I’m a little more at ease and a little more polished about things, but overall I’m happy to have done it and I’m very grateful to Maria for having me on. So did you get any business offers as a result of the interview?
And have people mentioned it in the way that I have today? Yes, people have mentioned it, they’ve seen it, it’s now a ways past. So it’s not as much on the, the minds of people, but we have it on our website of course. So yeah, people have mentioned it and asked about it and much like you and you know, I’m always glad she’s a nice person and then it’s a good interview and it’s a nice system. So I enjoyed myself. Good. Well you mentioned the military principles. it’s a, it’s a topic of interest for me. So and you did mention some of the discipline that goes along with it. But what would you say are the main benefits for through having a military career and then taking over to business? Well in the military, particularly the Marine Corps. We’re taught mission men. You you accomplish the mission regardless. The next consideration is your men. And then you come a distant third Much of American business.
The boss puts themselves 1st above their men, above the company, Above their employees or their men above the company above their clients. And that’s a mistake in my point of view. Your clients mm Bring your money. They pay you. I mean why would you why would you not consider them highly? But without your employees, you can’t do it all. There’s no way I can do everything. I would be totally lost. My staff doesn’t let me do payrolls anymore. We’ve moved on to newer systems and they refused to let me do payroll because they know I don’t know what I’m doing any more on that particular software, payroll and payroll law. I’m an expert but how that software operates, I’ve got operations people that handle that for me and I love them and I treat them well and their long term employees, we have a very very good staff. I think the shortest person, anybody in operation has been with me is like six or seven years.
Uh My right hand person has been with me over 20. I have a CPA. That works with me, she’s been with me. Well when she first came, her youngest was still in a carrier, her youngest baby, her oldest baby. he’s now got babies of his own. So that’s how long she’s worked with me so we like long term employees. And obviously you know it comes from the top down and whatever it takes to make the client happy we do and I support my people in that they go out of their way whatever it takes. You know now there’re clients we fire occasionally that want more than they’re willing to pay for. But that’s a rare thing but as long as our client we take care of them but I’ve got to have my people to do that. And that’s a military training to my you can have it in civilian life but the military really schools you in that is you’ve got to accomplish the mission at whatever cost and I think that translates very well to business personally.
Is it correct that the military or the marines they practice servant leadership and the example that I heard was like the highest ranking member gets on a helicopter last and they get when you get to the destination they get off the helicopter first. Is that in many cases that’s true I think one of my experiences of that that brought it home, we were at Guerrilla warfare school in Northern Okinawa, uh, two weeks school, but that we went to the Guerrilla warfare, uh, and we had a young lieutenant that was the company commander and we’ve been out in the field and they finally brought out hot chow, uh, brought out, you know, the trucks and they had a hot shower for us. We hadn’t eaten hot shower and hot food in several weeks, well several days and we all got in line to get fed. And he was the last one in line.
He made sure all of us got fed for he ate. That’s how it works. You take care of your men, your third, you’re not first or second, your third the mission, the men and then you and that’s leadership. So what would you say your mission is at the moment with get payroll. We provide our clients with a shield, we take care of the payroll and we shield them from the Internal Revenue Service and the various state regulatory bodies and everything else. We’re compliance experts. I’m a CPA and MBA. I’ve spent the last three years on the IRS advisory council. I’m a US Tax Court practitioner which allows me to represent clients in US Tax court without being an attorney. There’s a couple 100 bucks in the country. It’s a weird designation but it’s what I went after to better take care of my clients. And so we’re like auto insurance or home insurance, you may never need that particular skill set.
But when the IRS screws up or the state screws up, we fix it. We’re experts at this. This is what my expertise is and what I’ve trained my staff on, we solve those problems. We fix them. Hopefully you won’t need that, but it’s there at no additional cost. So why not? I mean if you could buy a car A and then you have to go buy insurance, you buy car B for the same price that includes the insurance, which would you buy? Okay. Pretty simple choice. Yeah. Really it is. I’m interested to know how you got from being a marine and going into your current profession. So can you tell me the story behind that? Um, after the core I went into service, I went to school and one day I’m a senior and I’m walking down the hall. It’s a spring day, sunny day and the concept of depreciation, which is revenue matching expenses and so on.
I’m thinking about it and it finally clicked in my brain instead of just understanding it on paper, I understood it really understood it and that’s when I decided to become an accountant because that really everything started to gel. Uh, and so I, I’ve enjoyed that and I spent many years doing accounting for other companies and doing turnarounds and other things. Uh, and then again in my early 40s, I, I realised that I had to start my own company if I was going to run one and my father had his own company. So it wasn’t a big deal to me, I thought so I was working for a franchise or as their CEO, oh and the board wanted them to diversify and get rid of the original office that they set up and this was a mobile accounting service. So I bought it and bam there, I was a year later, the franchisor went belly up.
Uh The president was having fun with one of the sales girls and some other things and it just, it fell apart, which was too bad. So we just ruth and I had started at my wife and we just changed the name and kept going. So I had a mobile accounting service that had to build in payroll service provider Over the years. We grew that here about 10 years ago I sold the accounting off to my partner who had taken on during the years and I kept the payroll because I’ve enjoyed it. And that’s the short story. So initially you just had a natural interest or an incarnation for accounting, Right? You know, I’m an analytical person. I always have been, I started doing security analysis at 12 you know, numbers and accounting numbers and analytical things have always been just something I’ve enjoyed. And I read a lot and I’ve always read a lot as I’ve been a voracious reader since I was in first grade or before.
My parents encouraged that. So all that combines to, you know, I’m an accountant with an intimate knowledge of tax law, particularly employment tax law and how it relates and how to deal with it. And it’s just it’s fun to me. I enjoy coming in, I enjoy dealing with the Internal Revenue Service, I enjoy jousting with them. It’s fun. I normally win, you know, I have a few losses over the years. Haven’t lost in tax court yet because I don’t take everything the tax court. But we take a power of attorney for all of our clients, which allows me to be their advocate. And so rather than send my clients to the IRS, I go to the IRS directly and they know they’re dealing with a professional. they know they’re doing with someone who’s educated, knowledgeable, experienced and they don’t give me the grief, they give clients sometimes. and taxpayers because I won’t put up with it. We had we had a case, It was a penalty, it was $95,000 is what had gotten up to and it was wrong, it was a mistake.
And it took nine years for me and I finally went to the Deputy Chief of appeals in DC. And I called Catherine, said Cathy, so and so we won’t call me back. I’ve been trying for a year that was the next step in the appeals process and she said okay Charles, I’ll have him call you. He called me that afternoon. We discussed it and three months later my client got a $400 refund instead of a $95 penalty, $95,000 penalty. Oh wow. It’s sometimes it’s who you know and how do you do it? So it’s just fun. I enjoy this stuff. On the one hand, that’s a great story. And on the other hand, it makes me think about all the people that have to pay that massive fine for no reason. The IRS in fiscal year 2008, 2018, excuse me, issued $13 billion dollars in employment tax penalties. Over half of them got abated. The IRS makes millions of mistakes every year.
They’ve got 100,000 people. They’re understaffed, they’re overworked. They don’t have the training dollars, they don’t have the training time. they’re dealing with technology some in some cases that dates back to the 1960s. Okay. They are woefully behind on technology and training and people, 40% of the i. r. s. employees are eligible for retirement in the next two years. They’ve got problems chuck Rettig who I know is the new commissioner. He’s working on him but you’re talking it’s kind of like the Suez canal. You get this great big ship and it gets stuck. It’s almost impossible to change what it’s doing and move it and get it back on course and chuck’s having a real tough time trying to get this thing and he’s working at it very hard. when I was on the council, I had lunch with him several times, so it’s fascinating to to be around it and see it and to work with it. But it’s a behemoth that has some real internal problems, budget being one of them, budget being two of them, budget being three of them.
But that’s one of the stories I tell anyway. You gotta know what you’re doing with them and if you don’t you are lost because they don’t care. I mean, some employees do and there’s nice people and there’s not nice people, but they’ve got procedures and if you don’t know what they are and how to deal with them and how to make them get on your pathway and how to correct them when they when they go wrong and so on, you’re lost, because they’ll tell you, well, this is the law I’ve got an ongoing case. It’s a repetitive thing with more than one client. And I talked to the National Director of National penalties about it. He said, no, no, the IRS shouldn’t do that. And I said, well they do. And he said, well no, they shouldn’t. I said can I use your name? And he said yeah sure I built up a tax court petition. Listen to all that enlisted him in there and quoting him saying that this was not a proper procedure. And every time I send that to the IRS instead of a tax court who’s ever the examiner and it looks at that make some calls I guess and abates the penalty and we’re fine. It’s amazing. It’s not a not a great reflection of government institutions, but even so well the government institutions don’t get me started. We’re just coming back to your story briefly. You mentioned that you started off in in a particular job rather than your own business and you’re when you’re back from the military. Do you remember your first interview where you were going to be an accountant? And what that was like? I remember my first interview I was a computer programmer in the military and assistance. Engineer trained And Experience IBM 3 60. And I am interviewed with employers of Texas. It was a workers comp insurance company And they were converting from 1401 2362 different old computer systems.
I had just done that working in this part of the team on rewriting the joint unified military pay system obviously a fiscal package right? And this idiot at the insurance company at the end of the interview told me that he did not think that my military experience applied to the business world, it’s the only interview where I’ve ever told the interviewer that he was an idiot because he was the company a few years later went bankrupt. And I know why because they didn’t hire the right people because their hr people were stupid. It was just it was it was just it ain he hadn’t had no business doing interviews or understanding computers or programmers or anything else and he should have been doing what he was doing.
But that was my the first one that I really remember when I was before I went that’s really what forced me to go to college. I said I’m not going to get respect from my skill set without a degree. And I had anticipated getting a degree in computer science. And you know what’s now IT. But it was a whole different process 50 some odd years ago but took a lot of county and finance courses because I liked it and I just it collected I became a CPA instead and don’t regret it at all. Well would you say that you see this is my perception, my perception is that military principles or I’m not sure if that’s the right word but I’m gonna go with it. That’s a sort after skill now for him employers to look for. Do you think that’s accurate across the board? I wish it was. I really, truly do. But working with veterans groups and I’m on the board of the north Texas, Veterans council.
There’s still a lot of discrimination against veterans and a lot of lack of knowledge because only about 2% of the population serves. Okay, So the other 98% really have no idea what the military does other than fight wars. Okay. so you get movies and you get tv shows and so on that don’t show the average enlisted man particularly as being intelligent, creative, intuitive, hardworking and so on. And so the perception of the military is not as good as it should be. Part of. It’s the military is not promoting that and part of it is people don’t understand and don’t look at it. That’s why Maria had me on her show. that’s why I’m on the Veterans Coalition and work with veterans because I believe in him, I hire him as we’ve talked about it, I think that the training and the discipline they get is so valuable.
But no, I don’t think most of the population understands what military training gives to us as veterans that makes us valuable in business. No, I don’t, I wish I did. It’s a shame it is disappointing very because you know, people sleep well in their beds at night because rough men are willing to do violence to protect them. We’ve done that. we fight the wars, we fight the battles, we protect the country. huh And our training is very valuable. Yeah, yeah. We know how to shoot a rifle. I’m an expert shot. Okay. But that wasn’t the main training. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s all that goes with it of being in the military is so valuable and translate so well to business, but a lot of people don’t see it. You encourage people to, or previous veterans to do their own business.
Yeah. Okay. And this is something I’ve discussed a number of times. Not everybody is suited to be an entrepreneur. Those that are should be. Uh, it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful thing. I love being an entrepreneur. I love the freedom it gives me, I love the sense of accomplishment. I love all that goes with it. I love being the master of my own fate. Okay, I think I grew up in a small business, I think it’s small business is wonderful. And if you have the mindset of being an entrepreneur, be one, even if you started as a side gig, started do it, grow it. Uh, you know, if I want to take the day off and take the day off now the work doesn’t go in, I have to make it up later uh, and work, I was on a panel and one of the questions was, well, what about work life balance for an entrepreneur? And I just cracked up, I started laughing, I said It doesn’t exist, there is no work life balance for an entrepreneur, Okay, it’s work, it’s work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the 1st 20 years I didn’t take a vacation and gratefully grateful.
My wife understood and worked with me in the business and we survived. That’s another thing. Working with your wife, my parents work together, I thought it was natural, it’s not so but entrepreneurship, starting your own business, being your own boss, if you have the right attitude is fabulous, I love it and I encourage everybody That can do it to do it now. There’s people that want security, they want the structure, they want to come in at 9:00 and leave at 5:00, have their two weeks’ vacation that they can plan out and plan their retirement, and go through life that way and that’s fine. Different strokes for different folks. But if you’ve got the entrepreneurial bent play with it, do it, try it have fun. slight change of pace I wanted to ask you about because it’s on your linked in profile that you’re a member of the Forbes business council.
I don’t know what that is. So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about it. I’ve played with that a little bit, it’s, it’s a group of individuals, it’s put up by Forbes magazine and their operation that puts business people with business people. And so we have meetings once we can discuss things and I write articles that are spread out throughout the group. It’s an interesting business group, but in this day of Covid, you’re not meeting face to face anymore. So it’s all virtual and that’s virtual is fine, but it doesn’t build the relationships that face-to-face builds. So we’ll see what happens. I’ve only joined in this last year with Covid. So we’ll see what happens over the next few years as we get back to meeting in person. Has your business changed much as a result of Covid? Yes and no. when we were shut down, obviously our people work from home, we set up all the systems to do that. And that’s changed is permanently in some ways.
Um Some of my people work from home one or two days a week now and we can do that because we’re not, we’re forced to get set up for it. So everybody has the phones that it rings at their desk and then it’ll ring on their cell phone or their house phone, they’re all interconnected, everybody has connections to the server from the house, all these kinds of things. So that has changed how we work in the fact that you know, we’re not always here, we don’t have to be we can contact our clients and keep up with them remotely, which is good, but as far as doing business. we’ve gotten away from cold calling years ago because it doesn’t work very well for marketing purposes. And we’re marketing on, we started marking on the net 15 years ago on the Internet. So marketing hasn’t changed much. The book came out, which my newest book, which is great. The payroll book here three years viewers.
The payroll book a guide for small businesses and start-ups, as payroll. And so Covid affected us in some ways, but in other ways. and I was very worried last March that it was going to destroy my business. The shutdown, we lost a couple of clients and a lot of them cut back restaurants particularly cut back massively, but they all stayed in business doing takeout and delivery and so on. And they’re now starting to pick back up, particularly in Texas where we’re located because they’ve dropped a lot of the mandates in isolation policies that probably didn’t work anyway. So Well, you segued nicely into the next question, which was about your book. How was how was the process of writing the book difficult? I’d come up with the idea because there was nothing in the industry. The that that was comparable.
The only real guide to payroll was put out by the American payroll association, The Peril source and it’s $600 One small business can’t afford $600 book. Okay. so I said let’s write a guide for small business. This is not designed for the Fortune 500 Fortune 5000. This designed for small businesses and start-ups to tell them what they need to do. It comes in three segments. and the middle segment being actually how you do payroll, how you calculated how you put the taxes in and how you come up with their pay. Yeah, but it goes through things like what entity you want to use. One of the laws. What is an employee, What’s an independent contractor? What taxes do you have to pay? Water tax penalties and how to avoid them and how to obey them. And then in the third section, things like what’s a PEO internal controls handbooks which are critical record keeping laws that you’re subject to, based on employee size.
So this is a this is 30 years of experience Distilled down to 95,000 words. And it’s designed, it’s not designed to sit down and read it. Okay. It’s a great cure for insomnia, frankly, but it’s there. You keep it on your shelf. When a question comes up, you look at it, you pick it, you check real good index. We had a professional index. It. I tried and after three days I gave up and hired somebody that was a professional index or and they did a great job. So it’s a reference book, 29 95 on Amazon or at the payroll book dot com. The fact that that title was available just astounded me. So we have the book, the payroll book, we wrote the book on payroll and we have the website, the payroll book dot com. What more could you ask for marketing purposes? So it really is a guide for small business and start-ups on payroll and Payroll Associated Matters take long to write it.
Two years. It was, you know, if you’ve never written a book, you know, it sounds like I just sit down and write a book, right? and then you have to edit it and re edit it and re edit it and have other people look at it. And it was Wiley is the publisher. they’re one of the major publishing houses in the US. They picked it up and we were very grateful for that. and they promoted it. And so it’s been a very interesting experience. I would write a book it right in the book. Yeah, there’s a lot of people looking for that information for sure. is there much this change for you based on, based on having the book? So, an example of that is, you know, you can say we literally wrote the book. Exactly, and we do that all the time. We’ve sent it out to professors, incubators start-ups and so on. It’s helping build market awareness of us.
It’s the book, we do interviews on it, we do podcasts on it. we promoted on a regular basis. We’ve got books we send out constantly. So it’s a great marketing tool. my name’s on the book, obviously I’m the author. Uh, we’ve got great endorsements, We have Over 60 reviews on Amazon now. It’s rated five stars. Uh, we can point and say, hey, this is who we are. You said it was like a business card is essentially um, here’s some valuable information and if you want more, come visit us at get payroll. Is that absolutely? I handed out? I keep a box of in the trunk of my car. So I always have one available. If somebody says something about payroll or what we do or something, I can get a book and hand it to him. That’s the best kind of business card. They do me no good sitting in the, in the spare office. Okay. They only do good out in the field. They may not do any good out there, but they don’t do any good sitting here.
So I think that I think you’ve highlighted a knowledge gap problem and I think probably you’re tackling it with your payroll book. But why do you think there is such a knowledge gap among business owners with payroll and also accounting because it is not their business, it’s an ancillary thing. It’s something they have to do, but their businesses, fixing cars, building houses, baking cakes, grooming dogs, manufacturing widgets, whatever, that’s their business. That’s what they love. Okay. And they need to outsource certain things and should, but when they try to do it in house because they think it’s cheaper. They don’t know what to do, they’re not trained in that, they’re not experienced in that, they don’t do it every day. Accounting is an arcane art as his payroll with full of laws and traps in the book.
I put lots of horror stories, don’t do this, this is what happens. And its accounting is the same way and all taxes are that. So I’ve got, When I went to college, I had 50, some odd hours of college county. Okay. And when I got to my first accounting job, I started learning accounting. It’s not your business, it’s not what you do, it’s not what you think about, it’s not what you live, it’s not what you experience. So yeah, there’s gonna be a knowledge gap. You know, I don’t build my own house, I don’t make my own clothes, I don’t make my own shoes. I don’t make my own car. I don’t build roads. I got my barely landscape, you know, I think somebody else moving on. These are not things I do and not things I want to do. if I want to work, I’ll come into a tax return. and I’ll make more money and be able to pay somebody to do other things for me. So because tax reasons, artwork to me, they’re fun. So people are going to do what they like to do and those things that aren’t, they get familiar with and it trips them up.
Hell we have a hard time keeping up on payroll loss as it is. Think of the last few years, they keep changing all the time. It’s one reason I’m not, I’m happy not to be an accounting is because I don’t have time for that. And payroll, payroll is a full-time job. So if your company builds widgets, you know, I have time to do payroll or think about it or keep up with it or study it or know the law, you’re fooling yourself if you think you can. Look, I used to carry a seven and 66 license and was a registered investment advisor and stockbroker. I now have a money manager that handles my money because I don’t have time to keep up in the market. I can’t keep up on that and keep up with payroll. I can’t do both. I know how, but I don’t have time. So if I’m concentrating on my business, there’re things I have to outsource because I can’t keep up on them and if you don’t do that. and you try to do it yourself to try to wear all the hats, you’re not gonna have the right one on at the right time and you’re not going to have them fit and you’re not gonna know what you’re doing and you’re going to make mistakes that are going to hurt the rest of your business.
Do you recall the biggest mistake that you’ve seen with payroll? We had a client that we picked up that then got audited for past stuff and he hadn’t been classified as employees properly. He’d been classifying some as independent contractors. And the US Department of Labor says 70% of businesses mis-classified employees. Either independent contractors vs employees or subject over time and not subject over time 70%. And he got audited by the state of California and it came this close to putting them out of business because the fines and penalties when they reclassified everything and told him all the money he owed and all the penalties, all the interest almost put them out of business. And there was no reason for it. Had he asked the right question of the right person? They said no do this. But he didn’t know enough to ask. He just when it’s on the way and this is what we deal with clients all the time, is we’re there to answer questions, were there to solve problems?
Were there to advise about payroll and payroll related matters. You know, I can’t tell you how to groom dogs, how to make widgets, how to build houses? Uh, that’s not my expertise. But if they got a question about payroll, if I don’t know it, I know where to go, find the answer. That’s a good one. So basically, um, nearly put him out of business just for classifying his employees with the wrong code. You’re still paying them, but the taxes weren’t flowing to the state on independent contractors and they wanted all the money and uh, they have the power to put you out of business if you don’t pay up. Uh, you know, it’s almost like a crook. He points a gun at you and says, give me your wallet, what are you gonna do? You get a man’s wallet is going to shoot you well with the government. Either pay up or you go to jail. I’m not, it might be better to get shot. Well, I think I recall I checked out the YouTube channel, which has got some great content. You like some of those commercials.
I want the Halloween, Christmas and so I like the short film. Yeah, the Halloween short film, but I particularly liked your one where they’re like short tips and one of the correct me if I’m wrong. One of them was about that topic of, um, perhaps it wasn’t, um, employees. Independent contractors. Yeah, but there was one about making sure that you’re recording their hours and then paying them appropriately. Absolutely. Have you got any approach to share with content creation? Because I think you’ve done some good stuff which people could benefit from that. When I when we do content creation, we do this as a group here and we look at what our clients want to hear, what they need to hear what they should hear and our potential clients. So we try to highlight things that may not make sense, they may not be familiar with. We just did one recently on s cheat and I talked to clients all the time and they don’t have no idea what a cheat is.
But if you’re if you send a payroll check and it doesn’t get cashed, you don’t get to keep the money. You’ve got to send it to the state in the UK. You have to send it to the king basically. That’s where the law comes from. Its goes back, you know 1000 years for property that didn’t decedent’s property that didn’t have an air, it has cheated to the crown. And that was in common law and it’s moved to the US. And anything property of that is not identified for a person hasn’t claimed it goes to the state. Most people don’t realise that I had a client who was appalled when she found that out. And she had tens of thousands of dollars every year in refund checks for her patients. Big imaging centre and had no idea that money had to go to the state and we had to get her lawyer involved and come to an agreement with the state to get a round of hot water. Uh, so it’s those kinds of things, whether it be as cheat or independent contractors or uh, statutory employees or other things that may be not everybody, but a lot of people need to know and they don’t know and you never know what, you don’t know.
That’s what will kill you is, I don’t know what, I don’t know. Now in peril, I’m pretty knowledgeable. I learn things periodically. Believe me, and things change. So I try to give them a short information with a little overview and then if they go, oh God, they can call me and we’ll solve the problem because I’m a problem solver. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s not designed to educate them on all the ins and outs of exactly what has to be done in their state and their particular instance but think about this and if you have this in your business, we need to talk, we’ve gone over some knowledge gaps. Are there any misconceptions around what you do that you get frequently? I’ll tell you the one that just tickles me pink. Well, you can’t do it for that price. I go, yeah, we can, we do it every day for that price. You do all this stuff, you can’t, you can’t possibly do it that cheap.
You know, it can’t be that expensive. Yeah, it is because we’ve got the people in the software and the experience and the systems in place and we can do payroll in two minutes. That will take you two hours. So yeah, we can do it for this price. And I get that constantly. And it’s just hilarious every time. Oh, you can’t do it that cheap, but you don’t take that as a feedback. Maybe you could raise your prices or you happy with the slogan of, you know, we’ll be able to look after everyone type thing. I would much rather, you know, I make a nice living. No, I’m not going to argue that, okay, I’m never going to be Jeff Bezos. I’m not sure I’d want to be, uh, mind having some of his money, but so it’s more important to me to take care of my clients and to give them a good deal. Uh, to be fair about pricing, um, rather than I’m not out there to nickel and diamond gouge people.
People take advantage of me. I’m an easy touch and I’ve got, my friends will tell me you shouldn’t do that. You need to be part of, knows about things. So when I go, no, you know, I don’t have any problems shaving in the morning. I can look myself in the mirror and no, I haven’t taken advantage of anybody. If I take advantage of people when I go to shave, I got to look at myself and I’m not going to like what I see. So, you know, I’m an old man. I like to be happy. I like to enjoy life. I miss my wife. She passed away a few years ago. But why would I want to cheat people and then be miserable? I’m sorry, it’s not worth it. I think the favourite quote for me; the episode is I don’t have any problem shaving in the morning as you can see well; I like it a lot, but I’m not sure I can use it myself because I don’t, I’m not that disciplined, I’m afraid with the shaving, have you got something to add perhaps that we haven’t touched upon that you think would be valuable to the audience.
Well, going back to entrepreneurs, there’s a couple of phrases that I use and that we believe in, and the first one being that there’s never a traffic jam on the extra mile. So if you’re in business, go that extra mile for your clients, they will be a very appreciative and it will be very unusual and they will remember you okay, because your competition won’t And then overall, General one, which I love, which is I’ve stolen from Bill Gates. Yes, people will overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. So go for the alcohol people, it works work at it every day. You may not make it in a year, but you’ll be amazed at what can happen in a decade.
Well, a very apt, profound place to end. Charles Read, where is the best place for people to find you?
At payroll.com. We’re on the web. Of course, the book is available at payrollbook.com and for your listeners and viewers, if they will enter in the discount code podcast, we’ll ship them a free book. That’s a lovely offer. Thank you very much for that. My pleasure and thank you again for the value. I think it’s been a great chat and I hope you had fun.
Thomas, it has been my pleasure. Thank you.
I’ll speak to you soon, Charles.