Meet Charles Read | Founder of GetPayroll

We had the good fortune of connecting with Charles Read and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Charles, what is the most important factor behind your success?
I heard the following maxim many years ago: “There is no traffic jam on the extra mile”. That maxim is how we (My wife and I) designed the business to run from the beginning. We always went the extra mile for our customers and later for our employees. We knew and it was confirmed to us over and over through the years that our competitors would not do so. Did we sacrifice short term profit in doing so? I am sure we did. But our turnover in clients and employees has always been much lower than quoted statistics from our competitors and the marketplace as a whole. We think that makes us more profitable and life a great deal happier than the alternative.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a midwestern boy. I grew up in Iowa. After high school (I graduated early at 16) I was not interested in college. I worked at several jobs for most of a year and joined the United States Marine Corps at the age of seventeen. I serve four years including almost two years overseas and a combat tour in Viet Nam.

After leaving the military I found that my military skills (I was an IBM trained computer programmer and systems engineer) were not valued since they were military. I went to college finishing my BBA and MBA in two and a half year and sat for and passed my CPA exam on the first sitting while still in graduate school.

I spent the next fifteen years in the corporate world. large companies, small companies, turnarounds, startups and more. Great experience.

When I finally realized my political skills were not adequate to get me to the top of a company my wife and I decided to open our own company. That was more than 30 years ago, I have no regrets about doing so.

A dozen years ago or so the IRS was getting particularly obstreperious so I decided to go back to school. I took the courses and sat for the United States Tax Court’s exam to be licencined to practice in the Undited States Tax Court without being an attorney. This allows me to represent my clients in Tax Court which has been very useful to counter the juggernaut of the Internal Revenue Service.

Later I served three years on the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council, meeting with the IRS repeatedly. This was to advise them and consult on areas of business and taxes from a tax preparer and businessman’s point of view rather than the insular view from within the IRS.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
DFW is a wonderful place. My wife and I moved here originally in 1972 and have left and moved back repeatedly over the years.

There is of course sports: The Dallas Cowboys football team (America’s Team); the current World Series Champion Texas Rangers baseball team; the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.; and the Dallas Stars ice hockey team. There are minor league, college and amature sports as well of every type depending on your preference. The new AT&T Cowboy Stadium and the Rangers new Globe Life Field are worth the trip on their own without a game.

The food scene in Dallas is incredible. Anything you want. My favorite steak house is III Forks, Chris Vogeli is the proprietor and an old friend of my wife and I going back 40 years. Don’t forget to go to Reunion Tower with an incredible view of DFW from almost 500 feet in the air. Wolfgang Puck has a wonderful restaurant there at the moment. But there are other wonderful restaurants more than you can ever go to.

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is a relatively new addition to downtown Dallas and should not be missed. The Crow Museum of Asian Art is a favorite of mine. For history buffs the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealy Plaza is a must for Kennedy assignation cognoscenti. Of course Dallas has it’s own Presidential Library – The George W. Bush Center.

One overlooked attraction is the Great Trinity Forest recognized as the largest urban forest in the United States.

And don’t forget the Ft. Worth Stockyards, and the State Fair of Texas at Fair Park,,and, and, and!

You will never run out of things to do in DFW

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The person who made it all possible was my wife, Ruth. Without her support, encouragement and love the company would have never succeeded.

A shout out to Michael Gerber., author of “The E-Myth Revisted”. That book gave me the outline of how to make an entrepreneurial business work. I buy it buy the dozen and give it to clients that are struggling with organization issues. It is required reading for every new employee in GetPayroll.

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