If you’ve spent your hard-earned money to purchase this book, I think you deserve to know a little about the person who wrote it and how he came by all the business wisdom and advice it contains. Unlike many books on the market, none of what I’ll tell you in these pages is theory. I’m going to share with you what I learned when, with $3,000 and a credit card, I took a basic business idea and turned it into one of America’s largest and most profitable corporations.
My goal is to help you do things the right way—the first time. When you review the table of contents of this book, I hope you say to yourself, “This stuff is important to me and my business.” In Built, Not Born you won’t find buzzwords, wild promises, unnecessary information, or hyperbole. What you will find is solid business advice that, if taken, will make your life easier and help you become more successful. I’ll also tell you the stories behind how some of my key business beliefs took shape and describe the circumstances that led to my adopting them as my own successful business strategies.
The biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs is that most don’t have the benefit of over fifty years’ experience mastering their trade, fifty years of making mistakes and finding ways not only to correct them but also to ensure they don’t make them again. They haven’t fought their way through seemingly impossible challenges and dealt with idiots, phonies, and others who seem to delight in hampering their progress. It’s this experience that I bring to the businesses I invest in, and now to those of you who read this book.
In today’s ever-changing business world, where augmented reality (AR) is actually a thing, and there is an Internet of Things (IoT), I sought an old-school way of allowing you to invite me into your business: through the pages of this book. And incidentally, this book will never crash on you—no blue screen of death, I promise. Just keep turning the pages and I’ll be with you every step of the way. Of course, that’s not to say you won’t also hear me on a podcast in the very near future.
My advice will sometimes fly in the face of perceived business wisdom; in fact, it will often question standard practices and defy the status quo. Throughout my life I’ve challenged the ways things are done in business, sports, politics, and philanthropy. Why? To increase my chances of winning in business and life while still offering a good deal for everyone. In this book, for the first time I’ll share my no-nonsense, sometimes contrarian, principles and business approaches with you: the ones that turned the son of Sicilian immigrants from West Irondequoit, New York, into a multibillionaire.
Built, Not Born will give you an edge. It will tell you how to turn the odds of success in your favor, improve productivity and profitability, reduce risks, and avoid the many pitfalls lying in wait for unwary and inexperienced businesspeople.
When I launched a small payroll processing company back in 1971, I had no idea it would become the corporate giant and industry leader that Paychex is today. All I wanted to do was make enough money to support my family and ensure that my developmentally disabled son would never have to live in a state-run facility.
The concept for Paychex originated when I was a salesman in the payroll processing sector for EAS (Electronic Accounting Systems), a competitor of the industry leader, ADP (Automatic Data Processing). Like every other payroll processing company, EAS targeted companies with fifty or more employees. At the time, it was an industry-wide belief that outside payroll services were viable only for large companies.
No one had ever thought to challenge that principle, and I love a good challenge, especially if it tests commonly held beliefs that don’t stand up to scrutiny. I started to question the reasoning behind why small businesses with fewer than fifty employees wouldn’t need our services even more than larger companies did.
I went to the library—that was how long ago this was, pre-internet—and discovered that approximately 95 percent of businesses in America had fifty employees or fewer. That was a huge market the company I worked for was ignoring. On my own time, I spent several months talking to small businesses and accountants and testing my financial assumptions. More importantly, I figured out a way to deliver payroll services to this market at a price these small businesses could afford.
Once I had proven to myself there was indeed a market the industry leaders were missing, I talked to my bosses at EAS. I presented my findings, expecting that they would support me in approaching this promising new market. Unfortunately, as much as I tried to sell them on my business concept, they didn’t share my level of excitement or optimism. No matter what I said, my bosses refused to believe the under-fifty-employee businesses were a worthwhile market. Their reasons included: “They can’t afford to outsource payroll,” “The profit would be too low,” and “Their accountants won’t like it.” Doggedly, I challenged their assumptions, but I was constantly faced with negative responses.
So, like many entrepreneurs before me, I decided to go it alone. I took what little money I had ($3,000) and the industry knowledge I had gained while working at EAS and launched Paymaster—a company now known as Paychex, which has a market value of $28 billion. In case you’re wondering about that figure, a company’s market value is calculated by multiplying its outstanding shares by its current market price.
Defying the status quo is what entrepreneurs do every day. I had spotted an opportunity, challenged an industry norm, and targeted all the “little guys”—entrepreneurs who weren’t worth the effort to other companies.
To many people, payroll processing doesn’t sound glamorous. On the face of it, it’s hard to be passionate about the payroll industry. But success doesn’t always depend on what you sell—it’s about the business itself. I was excited about the opportunity to build a solid business and earn good money. I recognized that small businesses and the entrepreneurs who ran them had nowhere to go if they wanted help with their payroll, except perhaps their local CPAs—and those people didn’t even like doing payroll. My passion came from providing a much-needed service to a very large, untapped market.
As a result, I uncovered and opened up a market so big that Paychex and its competitors have mined perhaps only 20 percent of its potential. Even though ADP had a twenty-five-year head start, Paychex is closing in on the market leader. Currently, Paychex provides payroll and human resources (HR) services to several hundred thousand clients and employs over fifteen thousand people. Who said there wasn’t a market?
Not long ago I was speaking at a conference, and during the Q&A period a woman asked me, “How many people have you had to trample on to get to where you are today?” My answer was, “None. I decided long ago that it was far better and more effective to bring people along with me.”
The question she asked is not an uncommon one. People look at me and see a multibillionaire businessman, so of course they believe I had to be ruthless—or unscrupulous at the very least. And when people look at a successful company like Paychex, many are tempted to think the successful businessperson behind it has an aggressive, step-on-people-and-claw-your-way-to-the-top-at-any-cost attitude, perhaps inherited money, or maybe experienced a healthy measure of luck. In my case, none of this was true. The first few years were tough, very tough, but I always focused on bringing people along with me rather than using them or taking advantage of them.
That said, I know of many businesspeople (and many more politicians) who have clawed their way to the top by being less than fair, taking little notice of the collateral damage they leave in their wake.
However, my answer to that woman was incomplete. Sure, I have always attempted to bring people along with me and to be fair and aboveboard with everyone I deal with, but I don’t believe that alone has helped me become the businessman I am today or has been entirely responsible for the success I have enjoyed. She made me think about my accomplishments and ask myself, What has been my approach or strategy? Is there something definable that contributed to my success? Did I have something I could share that would help America’s thirty million small business owners1 become more successful?
If so, what was it? Was there a magic bullet, or was it just luck? I’m not alone in thinking that luck in business is a myth. To adapt a well-worn quote, “Luck is when hard work meets opportunity.” But even that is too simplistic. A better answer is that I learned (sometimes the hard way) how businesses work, how they function on a day-to-day basis. I looked at how small businesses operated, and I studied their interior workings, the arithmetic, the relationships, and the mistakes people make. I questioned everything.
I’m never satisfied with the way things are just because they’ve always been that way. The fact is, I see things a little, or maybe a lot, differently than other people, particularly other businesspeople.
I made a business (and a good life) out of helping small businesses and entrepreneurs run their companies more effectively. With my customers I always felt that their business was my business. In this book I share everything I did to make it to where I am today. I share the things you can start doing today to turn your ideas and concepts into profitable, competitive, and thriving businesses where you can be in charge of your own destiny.
I discovered a long time ago that the lessons I’ve learned in business are applicable to other parts of my life. I found these principles useful during my political career, in my foray into owning a sports team, and even in my philanthropic endeavors.
Although in the corporate world I am best known for being the founder and current chairman of Paychex, I’ve been challenging the status quo for a long time—and not only in the business world.
In 1991, I cofounded a political party called the Independence Party, and I ran three times for governor of New York.
I bought the bankrupt and losing Buffalo Sabres hockey team in 2003 and turned around the franchise, both in terms of financial health and by transforming them into a winning team. I had watched the team play only three times before I bought it, and I wasn’t a huge hockey fan. But just as I did in business, I questioned everything about the way the team was managed, including entrenched strategies. I treated hockey as a business, not a hobby, which was an innovative and somewhat foreign approach to many franchise owners back then. It wasn’t long, however, before they sat up and took notice.
In terms of playing well, things really started going right for us in the 2005–06 season. We had one of the best lineups in the league, and we began to dominate the competition—we were faster and better than anyone else. We reached the conference finals of the Stanley Cup that year and again in 2006–07, posting consecutive fifty-win seasons. In that same season, for the first time in Sabres history, we won the Presidents’ Trophy. To add to our glory, we were among just five teams to make consecutive appearances in the conference finals since the lockout in 2004.
In 2006, I was personally asked by former president Bill Clinton to be the founding sponsor and underwriter of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). In that capacity I was honored to work closely with kings and queens, presidents, and high-profile activist celebrities. This was not a case of purely handing over a check and getting name recognition; I treated this global nonprofit enterprise just like a business. People are amazed (at the time some of his staff were horrified) when they hear that I sat President Clinton down and insisted we go over one of the CGI conference budgets line by line together.
Today, I split my time between working with the young businesses I’ve invested in since retiring from Paychex and running my family’s charitable foundation. Over the past twenty years I have donated more than $250 million to worthy causes. If you follow the principles and strategies outlined in this book you, too, may be able to spread the benefits of your success well beyond yourself and your shareholders.
I’ve been the primary funder of eight medical institutions, including three Golisano Children’s Hospitals, which have helped tens of thousands of patients regain their health and have saved many lives. I also established the first-ever global Leadership Award for Exemplary Health Care Services. And my global health work with Special Olympics (training medical professionals to treat Special Olympic athletes) led to me being recognized as one of Forbes magazine’s “Philanthropy’s Big Bets for Social Change of 2015.”
I am passionate about education, and I have worked with the Rochester Institute of Technology to make possible the Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and the Golisano Institute for Sustainability. In addition, I have been happy to support the efforts of many other colleges and schools, including St. John Fisher College, Niagara University, Roberts Wesleyan College, Ave Maria University, Nazareth College, Hartwick College of Oneonta, and Bishop Kearney High School.
As previously mentioned, today Paychex is worth $28 billion. It has more than 670,000 customers and more than 15,500 employees working out of more than 100 locations across the United States and northern Europe. In fact, one in every twelve private-sector employees in America receives their paycheck from Paychex. Although I retired fifteen years ago, I remain chairman of the board.
This is the book I wish I’d had when I was a young father with a wife at home and a son with serious medical needs, and I decided to start my own company. It wasn’t easy. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat. This book is dedicated to entrepreneurs everywhere, for whom I have nothing but respect, admiration, and affection. They are the backbone of the US economy. Be brave, be fair, act with integrity, and above all, always try to create a good deal for everyone.