What does it take to build a heart-led business that truly thrives? In this episode, Charles Read, a trailblazing CPA, shares how Marine Corps leadership principles shaped his journey to create a company where people come first. From groundbreaking policies like “take what you need” bereavement leave to the bold transition to a virtual business model, Charles reveals how empathy and innovation drive success. As he prepares to hand the reins to his employees, this conversation is a powerful testament to building a legacy that values people over profits.
🎧Tune in for a powerful conversation on leadership, compassion, and creating a business that thrives by valuing people over profits. Listen to this episode now to discover how leading with heart can change everything!
Key Takeaways from this Episode
- The essence of a heart-led business
- Marine Corps leadership applied to business
- The significance of going the extra mile for clients and employees
- The practicality of a benevolent bereavement policy
- Transitioning to a virtual business model
- The process of selling the business to employees
About the Guest
Charles Read is a CPA, U.S. Tax Court Practitioner, Vietnam War veteran, and the founder of GetPayroll. With over three decades of experience, he’s a trusted expert in payroll services, guiding businesses through complex tax challenges. His leadership, honed by military discipline and tax expertise, has shaped a legacy of success and service since 1991.
Additional Resources
- Website: www.getpayroll.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/charles-j-read-cpa
- X: https://x.com/getpayroll
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Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.
Speaker: 0:01
Welcome to the Heart Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let’s go. Let your heart guide your business journey.
Tom Jackobs: 0:36
Ladies and gentlemen, take a seat and tweet a greet for our nimble number night. The chuckling Charles J. Read, a heroic Vietnam vet and former IRS advisory council member. Who crunches cash calculus and tax tasks with charisma and charm. It’s not all dollars and cents with Charles. He’s mastered at making payroll a parade. So butter your earbuds as he shares the heart throbbing hustle behind his brainchild, Get Payroll, right here on the Heart Led Business Show. Charles, thanks for joining me.
Charles Read: 1:11
Tom, thanks for such an interesting introduction. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Tom Jackobs: 1:17
Absolutely. That was a, one of the more tongue twister of introductions that I’ve had. Thanks for being patient as I went through that. The first question that I always like to ask my guests is what’s your definition of a heart led business?
Charles Read: 1:31
And you know, that’s, I’m an accountant. I’m a CPA. We’re numbers people. So, I got into business with my wife and my wife was very much of a people person. So, it was her influence that in the beginning that created a lot of what our business is and became. And so a heart led business is, you know, you can define it in itself. You mean from your heart, but it’s one where you value things other than just analytical things. It is, it’s very much amorphous. It’s not easy to quantify particularly hard for an accountant, but it is being in tune with your people, both your clients and your employees.
Tom Jackobs: 2:10
Nice. So that in tune with the clients and the employees what all is entailed with that? Cause I, you know, we hear a lot of the corporate mumble jumble about, you know, people first and things like that, but what does that really mean, especially for you and your company?
Charles Read: 2:23
You accomplish the mission at whatever it takes. That’s the first goal. Then you take care of your men. And only after you’ve taken care of your men do you take care of yourself. So, if there’s ever a time paychecks have to be shorted, it’s mine. If there is a benefit available, it goes to my employees first. Not to me. My job is to take care of them, not to take care of me first. And that makes a great deal of difference. Then you apply that to your customers as well, to your clients. You bend over backwards for your clients. One of my favorite sayings is there’s never a traffic jam on the extra mile. If you go the extra mile for your clients, you will stand out because your competitors won’t. So, that’s taking care of your employees and taking care of your clients. For instance, our bereavement policy is you take what you need. I’m not going to say you, you have to do it in three days. One of my ladies here she ended up being the person responsible. Her father died and she was responsible for everything. It took her several weeks to get it all done. We just paid her. I didn’t even think twice about it. Replacing her. The cost of paying her for two weeks was a fraction of the cost of replacing her. So, why be stupid about it? Yeah, will some people take advantage of it? It may happen. But if you’ve got good people, it’s not going to happen often. So, it’s profitable to do so.
Tom Jackobs: 3:41
Do you then say about the philosophy of paying yourself first, like that’s, you know, a lot of accountants or financial folks talk to business owners about paying themselves first before paying everything else out. What how do you balance that versus you know, thinking of the employees first and paying the employees first?
Charles Read: 4:01
Well, if you pay yourself first, then you’re not going to have any employees, so you’re going to be very limited in the size of your business. If you don’t take care of your employees and put them first, because they are your most important asset, okay? You can’t do it all. If you want to be a sole entrepreneur, and a lot of accountants are, they just have an office and they do the work. That’s fine. Pay yourself first, okay? You know, stiff the landlord. Fine. But if you’re going to employ people, you have to take care of them. Otherwise you’re going to, the morale is going to suffer. You’re going to have high turnover, which is training costs and replacements and bad hires and all the other things that go with it. We haven’t had to hire anybody in, I think five or six years now. We just, we don’t have turnover. Because we take care of our people. They’re paid well. I mean, they’re not the highest paid people probably that you can find, but they’re paid well. We have good working conditions. We don’t allow politics to be played. It’s a good, happy, friendly environment. We’re very understanding. You know, you gotta go home and take care of the kid, you go home and take care of the kid. Michael, my, my videographer, wants to come in and explain, Oh, his wife called, he’s got to go. I said, Go! You know, your wife called, she needs you, go! I don’t need any explanation, tell me later! Just go! You know, family comes first. It always has, it should. If you try to tell employees that the business is more important than their family. First of all, it won’t work. Second of all, you’re an idiot. And third, they won’t respect you. And fourth, morale is going to suffer. Fifth, turnover is going to increase. So, how much more mistakes do you want, you know, in doing that, in forcing them to choose the business, your business, over their family? Yeah, right. Good luck with that.
Tom Jackobs: 5:37
Yeah, exactly. So, why don’t we back up a little bit and just tell us a little bit about your current business.
Charles Read: 5:42
We provide payroll and payroll related services to small and medium sized businesses around the United States. We are probably the smallest of the national services. We’ve been in business a third of a century. We started in 1991 in December, it’ll be literally 33 and a third years. So, we’ve been around for quite a while. But we provide payroll and payroll related services, HR, helps with benefits handbooks consulting and so on. Our unique selling proposition is compliance. I’m not only a CPA, I’m a U. S. tax court practitioner, which means I can take my client’s problems that the IRS creates to U. S. tax court without involving an outside attorney if I need to. There’s about 200 of us in the country that are allowed to do that, that are licensed that way. And I, as far as I know, I’m the only one in the payroll industry, but I may be wrong on that. So, we can do things that our competitors can’t and won’t do. So that makes us very unique.
Tom Jackobs: 6:37
So, you know, from the leading that you do clearly sets the tone for your company and how well you take care of your employees. How do you, as a leader, how do you set that tone?
Charles Read: 6:48
You care about them. I mean, literally, you care about your employees. They’re, they become friends. I mean, my right hand person, she’s been with me 25 years. I mean,
Tom Jackobs: 6:58
that’s awesome.
Charles Read: 6:59
you know, I employ her daughter. I know her grandbabies. Her oldest granddaughter is 13. So, and she used to play in here when she was a baby. So, you know, we’ve not really set up a formal one. We’ve had an informal daycare here off and on for many years. And if they need to, you know, if they need to bring the kid in, they bring the kid in. You know, hell, I’ve got five. They’re all grown. So, you know, I understand that, you know, being a parent’s not easy. Michael just had a baby. You know, I’ve met his wife. I’ve, I think I’ve met the baby, but I’m sure over the course of the next couple of years, maybe he’ll be in here a bunch. They always are. So, You gotta care about your employees. They’re not just numbers. They’re not bean counters. And, you know, you can call me a bean counter if you want. Make that mistake that it’s all numbers and that doesn’t work. The best way to destroy a company is put a real bean counter in charge, in my opinion. I’ve watched American, I’ve been a critic of American business management for many years. More than 50 years and most American business management is rather poor at best. And bean counters make terrible managers for the most part. If they’re not tempered like, like I’ve been by having a wonderful wife that was very much of a people person and taught me a lot of it. She was one of my saviors when we started in business because she was much better at hiring people than I was. There’s only one time I overruled her and I regretted that. Both personally and professionally. Because after that hire failed, she never did let me forget it. But you know, that’s life.
Tom Jackobs: 8:26
That’s funny. Well, so what are some of the policies that you have in place then that solidify that relationship between the employer and employee, that creates such a great atmosphere where people are sticking with you for 25 plus years?
Charles Read: 8:40
Well, the bereavement policy is one you know, and you take what time you need off. We’re we track certain of it because of tax purposes. Because if you are sick or you’re taking care of a kid we can get a tax credit for that. And I have taught my, all my clients how to do that. It’s 45 s under the IRS code. A lot of people don’t know about it. So we track it for that purposes. But, you know, I don’t worry about it. We don’t have the office has to be manned, but we don’t have hard and fast schedules to in a lot of cases. People work from home, particularly since COVID. We all work from home during COVID now. I don’t think anybody’s in all but one spend some of their days at the house, which is fine. We’re probably going to turn into a virtual company here shortly and get rid of the office. technology’s changed. The world’s changed. We provide them with training. We provide them with the best equipment and best software we can get a hold of. We send them to conferences and seminars and other things. We talk to them. We listen to them. We treat them more like family than employees, and I’ve worked for major companies before I started my own. You know, I worked for Texas Instruments and J. C. Penney’s and other people. So I’ve seen American business management up close and personal. And I won’t put up with most of what they put up with. I’m very much of a fan of Tom Peters and his books. And he emphasizes the whole idea of hiring good people that can do wonderful things. And it works. It’s worked for a third of a century.
Tom Jackobs: 10:05
Yeah, I mean, that’s amazing, and it’s a real testament to the, you know, the longevity of your company is a testament to taking care of people at such a high level. I’m curious, though, like, Early on, or maybe in cycles as business does go through cycles. there times where, you know, cash was tight and you’re like, Oh, I might have to let somebody go or where you were really forced to make a decision. And that decision, it was, you know, between the heart and the head and, you know, obviously the heart probably won out, but how does that, how do you kind of mix that together and help kind of move the business forward without selling out your heart.
Charles Read: 10:48
Well, we’ve had to make tough personnel decisions at times over the years. We’ve never been in a situation where we’ve had to lay people off. Now there’s been times I’ve taken a salary cut. And But we’ve been very careful about hiring people and making sure we have adequate revenues before we, we add the headcount. And that makes for some long hours sometimes. In the beginning, there were nights I’d be working until, you know, midnight. As an entrepreneur you know, 80 hour weeks are to be expected from an entrepreneur. But when you hire good people, You don’t hire jerks. You hire good people and you take care of them. They’ll put in the hours necessary to get the work done. And they don’t mind that because they feel like they’re part of the business and they are. I’m 70. I turned 75 next month. I’m getting ready to retire. I’m working on that right now. The business is going to the employees. I’m going to sell it to them at a substantial discount from what I could get from one of my competitors. I don’t want it to go to one of my competitors. I mean, you know, it’d be like going over to the dark side. I mean, ADP and Paychex call me all the time and want to buy it, and I just, I’m not interested. I wouldn’t do that to my clients, let alone my employees. So, I’ve got people trained up. My Operations manager has his EA and is getting his tax practitioners license and it’ll be able to do those things for our clients. So they’re going to be buying the business from me. It’ll just add a little bit to my retirement. It’s going to be a deep discount, because they deserve it. And they helped me build it. They, this is not done by me alone. I couldn’t be where I’m at in terms of size and revenue on my own. No, you can’t do it. I mean, look at any company. Tell the CEO of Texas Instruments he needs to do all the work himself. It can’t happen. Okay? Well, once you get above one person, it doesn’t happen. Once you start hiring people, you can’t do it all yourself. So your people are just absolutely critical. And they’re Your most important asset. I’m sorry. So I don’t know where I was going with that.
Tom Jackobs: 12:40
No, that’s great. And that’s such a, you know, I’ve heard of business owners selling the company to their employees and or creating some of those, programs for the employees to take over the company. Which is, it’s always refreshing. You know, you hear these stories of you know, business owners that sell their business for millions of dollars. And then, you know, the employees are kind of left unless they had stock options or what have you to kind of figure things out. On their own, go to another company or do something else. So where did you get the idea that to sell the company once you retire to the employees? And I mean, I think the real question there is how did they take that when you announced it?
Charles Read: 13:18
They’re very pleased with the idea. And that makes them more interested in getting the company more profitable because it’ll be more profitable for them. So they’re building their own future. They’re not building a job. They’re building their own business. And I get that feeling from them. So to me it’s just, it’s a win-win. It enhances my retirement. And it give it, it leaves a legacy. It’s my business. It’s my baby. I spent, you know, a third of century growing it. I don’t want to see it die. I don’t want to see it get consumed by. My arch competitor, so yeah, to me, it’s a lasting legacy, and it’s a plus for them, it gets them far more involved in the business, it increases morale, it cuts turnover, it increases efficiencies. It makes them think about what they’re doing and what are better ways to do things more profitable ways of doing things. That’s part of why we’re going into a, become a virtual business is one of my people who handles the bills looked at that and said, you know, we’re spending all this for this damn building when, you know, we work from home part of the time. Why don’t we sell the building or whatever. And I said, well, you know, I own the building. Personally, I built it here. And I’m going to turn it into, probably turn it into executive suites, or lease the thing out to somebody else. Which will help enhance my retirement. But, you know, they basically helped me pay for the building. Because it was paid for out of the business. So, they’re going to benefit and they want it to be successful. You know, when your employees want you to be successful, it’s hard not to be.
Tom Jackobs: 14:45
Yeah,
Charles Read: 14:45
Excuse me, I mean, you know, that’s a win for everybody.
Tom Jackobs: 14:48
Absolutely. So then talk to me then about the customers. So putting those, the customers first and how do you create that heartfelt relationship with your customers, especially with, you know, with a lot of people and myself included, what’s called payrolls. Thanks, sir. rather dry industry, so to speak. So how do you create that dynamic
Charles Read: 15:08
Well, when you’re in somebody’s pocketbook every two weeks, you hopefully become friends, okay?
Tom Jackobs: 15:14
Yeah.
Charles Read: 15:15
I have clients that have been with me for a third of a century. And I have the kids of people that I contracted with years ago, and the kids are now running the business, okay? Normally, if the business gets sold, they say, You know, keep Charles. One of my favorite clients, they’ve retired and I’ve picked up the business as they’ve sold it to their employees, basically. And Carol used to say, you know, she would get calls probably once a week from people who wanted to do their payroll. And she said, no, I’m perfectly happy. Then she would, they’d say, well, we can do it cheaper. And she’d say, I don’t care if you can do it for free. I’m not leaving Charles. She was also the one who would take letters from the IRS and just stack them up on the shelf until I’d come into the office one day, and then she’d hand them all to me. So But we were always able to solve her problems. You know, the IRS makes millions of mistakes a year, and people get hit with stuff that they can’t handle because they don’t understand. You know. It’s like putting a soccer player at second base in Yankee Stadium. They don’t know what they’re doing. So you got a businessman that’s successful and likes his business, handles his clients, makes money, you know, on and on. The IRS comes in and with some BS, they don’t know what to do. They’re not trained in it. We are. So we handle those clients, those things for our clients and they love us for it. And they happen, you know, 40 percent of small businesses get hit with a tax penalty every year. So, you know, our clients about every three, four years, they get one. And we solve it. Lots of times we solve it before they even know they got it. And that’s kind of what makes us unique. It makes us friends, and they just expect us to solve those problems, and we do. And you become friends with your clients. We’ve gotten big enough that I don’t know as many as I used to, but my staff does. My staff knows every client and talks to them all the time. Our clients can call and talk to the same person over and over about a problem and get the same person. It’s not a call center. So they can call and talk to Chris or Christy or myself or Pete or whoever and a week later call back and talk to the same person. That already knows what the problem is. So it makes a difference.
Tom Jackobs: 17:14
Yeah, that, that’s great. And you know, by put putting the employees first, they’re gonna put the customers first.’Cause a happy employee is gonna take care of clients. Client’s gonna be happy, they’re gonna refer people to you. The business just grows and grows. So, I mean, there, there’s a great case study. For having a heart led business instead of just looking at the numbers and just being that bean counter that just, Oh, you’re, you spent too much on you know, paper this year. So let’s stop using paper altogether. It’s just some of those decisions don’t make sense, right?
Charles Read: 17:46
Should be using 2. 3 rolls of toilet paper per employee per month. You’re up to 2. 4. You got to cut back on using it. Yeah, exactly. Look, I’m a bean cutter. I’m an accountant. I understand how all this works. But it’s a mistake to manage that way. You’ve got to manage using your heart. You’ve got to manage by loving the people that you work for and work with and cherish them because they are the most important thing outside of your family that you’re ever going to have as a business owner. And if you don’t take care of them, they won’t take care of you. And I’ve worked for some terrible bosses over the years.
Tom Jackobs: 18:21
Haven’t we all. So what is like one big piece of advice other than obviously taking care of the employees very well that you would give to another heart led business that might be struggling right now with making those choices between maybe selling out a little bit and because they need to make payroll next week.
Charles Read: 18:39
You’re going to fail. It happens. You’ve got the wrong product in the wrong market, or the wrong message. It happens. And I feel for those people and I understand it. I’ve seen it. It’s happened to some of my clients. So you start again. I mean, life goes on. It’s not the end of the world. Do the best you can. Take care of your people. Motivate them. Keep morale up. You’ll be amazed what can happen. If it comes down to it, sit down with them and talk to them. And say, hey look, I’m here. We’re going through some hard times. This is why. This is what’s happening. We need to do this or we need to close the doors. If you guys want to work with me and do this, if it works, in the end, you’ll get rewarded. If it doesn’t work, well, we tried. And sometimes you just have to be honest with them. Honesty goes a long way, rather than trying to hide it.
Tom Jackobs: 19:22
Yeah, that is so true. When you’re transparent about what’s going on in the business, employees really appreciate that. I mean, the 1st business that I had, I was just very closed off and I wouldn’t tell the employees and you know, we almost went broke in the first six months for a number of reasons, but once I changed that whole mentality, the business took off and, you know, it, it really helped out quite a bit, just having a different mindset when it came to, you know, the employees and sharing information with them.
Charles Read: 19:51
And one thing is, you think you may be hiding things from your employees. It’s like your children, you probably aren’t.
Tom Jackobs: 19:57
They know, everybody knows. Right. Cool. So, Charles, how can people learn a little bit more about your business and kind of the movement that you’ve created there with your company?
Charles Read: 20:07
We’re all over the web, we’re all over YouTube. We have a lot of educational videos and a lot of fun ones. My staff has a Good time making up some fun videos and some satires and so on and some takeoffs so we have a Godfather one and we have a 2001 a Space Odyssey one and we do a Halloween video every year and the last one with the IRS as the army of the living dead it’s kind of fun.
Tom Jackobs: 20:32
Great.
Charles Read: 20:32
So get payroll Well, I know the, I know, I knew the last commission. I don’t know the current one, but yeah we have fun with the IRS. But yeah, getpayroll.com. We’re all over the web. The phone number is 972 353 0000, punch one for payroll. And if you want to talk to me, just ask for Charles. If I’m in the office, I’ll talk to you.
Tom Jackobs: 20:52
That’s very gracious. I don’t think I’ve had anybody share their phone number on the show before, but we’ll link all that up into the show notes along with how to reach you on social media as well. So, Charles, this has been a great conversation. I love what you’ve done, especially in such a kind of a steady industry. I was going to say boring industry, but a steady industry as payroll is to create a really nice heart led business is really refreshing. So thank you for sharing your story with us and thanks for being on the show today.
Charles Read: 21:22
My pleasure, Tom. Thanks for having me.
Tom Jackobs: 21:24
Absolutely. And to our show listeners, thank you so much for listening and watching to the show today. We really appreciate it. So make sure what you’re checking out what Charles is doing and all that information is going to be down in the show notes. And then also, if you could do us a favor and share the show with a friend or family member that could use the advice that Charles shared with us today, that would mean a lot to us. Mean a lot to Charles too, I’m sure as well. So until next time. Lead with your heart.
Speaker 2: 21:52
You’ve been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.
