Welcome to our podcast. It's about payroll. We're your host Brian Escobar and Walter William Duncan III. Whether you're new to the payroll game or seasoned veteran, we have something for you. Welcome back folks to episode 118. It's about payroll. Today we have a special treat for everyone. We did a swap cast with the folks over at HR and payroll 2.0, Pete to the yakis, and Julie Fernandez. What an awesome episode. We really hope you enjoy. But before we get into it, it's a word from our sponsor. Summer has arrived and with it, the perfect opportunity to plan your dream vacation. Whether you're envisioning a relaxing beach getaway or an adventure packed journey, Time Track Go is hidden and sure, requesting and approving your time off is hassle free. Time Track Go simplifies vacation planning for employees with intuitive mobile app. Easily check available vacation time, submit requests and manage everything on the go. For supervisors, approving requests is as easy as a single click upon notification. Everyone deserves a break and Time Track Go streamlines the process for all. Start your stress fee vacation planning today with the 14 day trial at timetrackgo.com. That's T-I-M-E-T-R-A-K-Go.com. Or you can call at 888-321-9922. Happy vacationing. Let's go. And let's get into this swap cast episode with our folks over at HR and payroll 2.0. Here we go. Welcome everyone to another episode of HR and payroll 2.0. I'm Pete Tiliakis and as always, I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome Julie. Thank you very much. And I think people can already tell that we're doing something new and freaky special today. Yeah, we got guests and some folks I've been dying to have on. That's right. And not only are we probably, do we have guests, but we're in video, which we normally are not. Yeah. And we'll be talking, I think, about a whole concept that I have been oblivious to in the swap swapping, the podcast swapping. Yeah, swap casting. Yeah, so we are swap casting with the It's About payroll guys, Walton Bryan from It's About Peril. So excited to have you guys, man. Glad to be here. Thank you for having us on. Yeah, yeah. I got to see you. We got to meet for the first time at Paycon. I don't know if Julie, if you bumped into them, we did at the party. So we couldn't, we couldn't talk much. It was like a club, right? We couldn't, yeah, hang out too much. But it was great to see you guys, man. I heard it was your first time. I got a lot of questions about that. But yeah, so welcome. Thanks. How was the show, man? We're big fans. Likewise, the show is great. You know, one of the keys for us has just been consistency doing it every week when we started off. It was like two people downloading and, you know, me and me and Walt, you know, we were the same way, by the way. We were audio first and we went audio for 40 some odd episodes. And it wasn't, it wasn't until Gerard. Gerard told us early on, you guys need to do video. Yeah. And we were just like, Oh, no, like, it was a whole nother. What was like vulnerability that right? Yeah, taking off another clothing. Yeah. Y'all don't have to worry about the hair. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. I had to get ready before we got on this episode. I was like, I got to look good. We're going to have a video. Do I wear a hat? Do I not wear a hat? I don't know. Exactly. All those things. I swear it is a while. And this is cool. Congrats that you guys have done it. I think it will change the game for you. Yeah. You know, it definitely helps in getting the word out and folks like just seeing little clips and the content you can create from a long form video. I wish you all the best with it. Like it's so great to see other folks doing it. I've listened to your show and thank you. Like, yeah, Oh heck yeah. And then one of the things I got from listening to you guys is Peter's like high energy and like Julie's commas. Just like comes in and smooths you out. There's that balance. If you only do, if you only knew the storm that's going on in my brain, man, it is a payroll and HR future storms. What's going on in that, man? Good. Cause I got some good payroll and HR questions for you. Okay. All right. Well, first we always ask our guests a question. We asked them how they got into payroll, why they stay, but I want to start though and back up a little bit and I want to hear the origin story on your show, how you guys met. Like, tell me about that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. We met what 2016? Okay. Yeah. 2016. Yep. Brian was the manager at one of the places that we both worked and he, I had came in for an interview and he interviewed me and ever since then we kind of just clicked. That's cool. Yeah. Uh, we talked about a podcast back then. Yeah. But we just never, never materialized. Yeah. And a couple of years later we linked back up and we were like, Hey man, we need to go ahead and start this and just for real. And that's kind of where it started from. I love it. I love it. Hey, look, it just, yeah, you need is a little bit of an idea. And I, and I feel like I talk to people sometimes and they're scared, right? Like, I don't know. No one will listen. I'm like, just do it. Like, you know, just put one after the other out there and people will eventually come and they do. Yeah. People. I have a bit of the same story, you know, like we've always wanted to work together. We've been across the table from each other. We've been like, you know, almost at the same company and then not again at the same company or in the same space. And finally like, let's just do this. Yeah. Yeah. Julie has, Julie has negotiated. For those that don't know, Julie has probably negotiated at, at, um, TPI. They, they probably, if I, if I don't know the number, but I would say that of the deals that I worked on, the mega HR outsourcing deals at IBM and TCS that I, that I solutions, most went through 90 plus percent went through TPI for, for support. And almost every time I, we were, we were, um, we were working with Julie as the sourcing advisor. So that's why I call her the legendary Julie Fernandez. She truly is living there. There's a new world now. That's cool, man. That's cool. So look, I want to start with some, some, how'd you get in payroll? Why on earth do you stay? So, well, maybe we could, maybe start with you. Okay. So unlike most people, uh, I actually chose payroll. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are unicorn, my friend. You are. Yeah. So, so I, uh, took the ASVAP to go to the military. Okay. And, um, I had a few jobs to, based on my score, I had a few jobs to select from. And one of them was payroll. The other ones I really didn't appeal to me. I didn't really know anything about payroll at the time. Yeah. I was just like, you know what? That sounds like a great job. I like, I like numbers and stuff. So that's the job I chose. And that's kind of my, my, yeah, my story and what branch of service. I was in the Navy. Okay. I was in the Marines, man. I actually, uh, worked in the first shared service center in the Marine Corps, already in tight, you know, paid entitlement HR records, right? Um, and certifying people's, uh, pay. And so that's how I learned payroll as well. So interesting, uh, path we both, uh, yeah, but thank you for your service as well. I appreciate that. Wait, wait, wait, why do you stay though? Why do you say what the heck? I stayed in it because I found, I found that for me, it's the connections with the people. And at first, I didn't realize that, but as I got more involved and more, um, like, uh, more deep into my career, I realized that, you know, I, I loved being able to make sure that people are getting what they need, you know, and making sure that their, their livelihood is not impacted by anything that I'm doing. So there's a lot of power that's in being in payroll and HR. And sometimes people don't realize that. And so like, it's not about like control in the terms of power, but more so like being able to be impactful. So that's kind of why I stayed in payroll. And, and it's been, I've been able to have a successful career and ended up at this place now with Brian and with the podcast and doing our own thing and having everything that we have. So it's been a blessing that that's why I stayed with it. Well, thank you. And I'm probably, I appreciate you, uh, sticking around to be honest with you. The military probably helped with that. I, I know it's what kept me, kept me in the game. But, you know, what's funny is people, I think people think that payroll is just this repetitive, boring process. And the reality is there's so much action going on because yeah, the pace, the process happens every day. There's some things that change about it here and there. But the reality of it is, is the organization is constantly moving and like a shark, right? It's always swimming. It's always going somewhere and you have to be able to move with it. And I, I think that's what keeps payroll like action. It's action packed, if you will. So yeah, I love it. I love it. How about you, Brian? How did you get into payroll? Why, why on earth are you sticking around? Yeah, um, shoot, I guess back in '03, I think is where, right when my first daughter was born. So yeah, right, right about 20 years ago, um, right before that, I graduated from college. And I took the long way around, right? I didn't go right after high school. Yeah. Kind of worked first and was like, mmm, this, this is for the birds. I don't want to break my back. I was like, yeah, I was doing contracting work for my brother. So it has some entrepreneurial would help. And that's what got me there, right? I used to do payroll for my brother's business. But we would just had 1099 contractors, you know, that kind of just submitted their invoices. And I was like, Oh, how many hours you worked? And I cut the check to their business and, you know, called it a day. So I knew how to do math. And I thought that was payroll. And um, when I graduated college, I was like, crap, when I got to do something myself, I'm about to have my first child. And just kind of like, all right, you know, you putting all those keywords on your resume and on the searches that back and there was no LinkedIn yet. Um, it was just kind of, I think monster.com was the biggest. And right. And it was like one or two others. So it was like, get those keywords on your wet, your resume. And payroll was one of them. And a company called me gave me a shot at being a payroll coordinator. And the rest is a career. Yeah. The reason I stood really was because it's halfway through that career. I realized I was good at it. And there was, yeah, and it's like, it's found your calling. We're a special bunch, right? Like, you know, I realized we're good at, I was good at it. And like, we're unique in that manner. And, and that's what kept me in the game. And I think that's when, when me and Walt just kind of decided to double down and say, all right, we're in on payroll. And how can we build this, right? And we've been developing an app. We have an app for it. And that's what Oh, cool. Yeah. We're a long way from showing you. What's the app going to do? What's the concept? It basically manages exception payments. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. You know, interesting. Yep. But we've hit like roadblocks with developers and things like that. So we started the podcast and then the podcast kind of got took off and got some action in it. And we filled the gap, right? When no one was feeling the, I mean, look at, look at content now, and you look up authors, there's only two payroll authors right now. Yeah, that have written payroll books that aren't textbooks. And it's Anita Latink and Bart Manda. Yeah, yeah. And that's it. Right? So like, it's like, I would love to see you write a book in payroll space and Julie, like, and like Bart said, we all have a different angle and a different opinion to give on payroll. Yeah. So it's like, I can't wait till that content is filled. Like, we're helping fill the gap. Yeah. And I love being a part of that. And like, and Walt and I just found something where we didn't think we were. Yeah. And fell in love with that part of it, right? And yeah, yeah. It's kind of it's such a cheat code for us because like doing the podcast makes us better at our job, doing our job, good, makes us better at the podcast. That's great, man. That's great. Yeah, man. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. We're going about you guys. We want to hear, you know, our listeners want to hear about you all. Yeah. And you said that getting into a numbers thing can lead to a creative outlet, right? I mean, do you ever think? But yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Ladies first, Julie, what's your, how do you fall in? How did you stay? So I went to school and got a French major. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to do international business. And then when it was time to get a first job, you know, the guys that called me had a consulting, a benefits consulting, benefits administration consulting book and all they were really looking for were kids with the highest grade point averages who had a personality and who weren't, you know, meek or afraid to interact and could lead some stuff. And so I fell into that HR consulting group, essentially. And in the beginning, it was building shared service centers when benefits outsourcing was kind of an early thing. And nobody thought you could actually do that stuff in a shared service center capacity. So building things like the GM National Benefit Center and the GM retail, you know, really big, you know, for big companies. And very quickly, a lot of my colleagues stayed in that kind of benefit circle. And I carried it through to the folks that were trying to do HR and payroll and talent and other things in shared services. And about eight years later, I went to the advisory side and I've been working with client journeys ever since. So, so that's, that's how I got here. The legendary. Why did I say, you know, I stay because it's just such a dynamic space. As you guys were saying, whether you're talking just payroll or HR and payroll, there, there is nothing templatized about this. You, you know, you can't rinse and repeat the same stuff for every client. Everybody is in a different place. They get a different way to get to their efficiencies in their, their ideal state. And, and to me, that's like, you know, I have that ADD of being able, I want to take, you know, 80 journeys a year. And I just get to do that as an advisor and I love it. Yeah, that's awesome. How about you? Yeah. So me, well, my story is actually very public. Last year, well, last year, yeah, last year at Denver, I gave a speech keynote about my career. And actually, I spent my entire career trying to escape payroll only to find that it was my super power. It was like, you know, the fact that all the things great that were hitting my career. So yeah, so as you heard, I started in the Marines. I went in the Marine Corps and when I, I did the same thing, I took the ASVAB and I thought I was going to be a grunt like everyone else at 0300. It was the Gulf War. I just assumed, you know, that's what Marines do, right? I didn't know there was anything else in the Marines. And so I didn't speak to any other recruiters. I just, the Marines were the first one to talk to me. I thought, well, shit, if, if I'm going to do this, I might as well go the best one, right? So I did. And my recruiter looked at my scores. I'll never forget this moment. He changed my life. He said to me, he said, uh, he said, you're not, you're not going, you're not doing, you're not going in the grants. Like, you're not doing that. He said, you're way too smart. You're going to do something different. He said, pick from this list. And I didn't know any better. So I just put down three things and it turned out that administrative, uh, MOS was where I landed. So I, I was a service record book clerk in 0121. And what I did was is audited HR and data records, um, in what, what turned out to be the very first shared service center of the Marines. I had no idea what I was doing at 18. Um, I got out, uh, and I happened to go back to, um, back to Florida where my, my, uh, my grandmother was and what my family was. And it just so happened that the largest P E O in the United States was in my town. And I went to work for them. And I learned HR and payroll at scale against the P E O world. Many, many small and medium sized businesses went through transformation with different, um, new technologies we were upgrading to. And then found myself, uh, at the ripe young age of 20, I don't know, seven, uh, or so eight, um, leading payroll transformation and shared service design for the Walt Disney company and did that for about three and a half years before I went into like big, big transformation, like Deloitte, uh, IBM. Um, and then eventually found my calling really, and that's researching and advising and just championing this industry, man. So yeah, that's awesome. But I never would have, I would have told you, if you would have talked to me, um, along the way, I would have told you I'm just trying my hardest to escape this, right? I thought that I was being typecast and I'll never be a strategic HR leader. Uh, no one will take me serious, right? I even went and got an HR degree. I even got an MBA because I thought, you know, no one's got, you know, you look, let's be honest, man, payroll has been treated less than for a long time. It's still going on. I've, I've said this on this podcast. I'm payroll famous and I still feel it and I could show you ways it happens. Um, I won't mention those because I think it would out some things, but, um, but it's true. And, and that's a massive systemic issue in this, in this world that is holding a lot of organizations back and a lot of that is perpetuated by way of ignorance. And it's an ignorance, not in disrespect. It's an ignorance and not knowing. Uh, I'm thinking, like, okay, here's where I'm supposed to mild men or Julius. This is my show. Listen, I, if no, if someone's going to say it, it needs to be me and, and I don't care if it offends anyone because it's the facts. And if it, if it offends you, then you're probably treating payroll like shit and you need to stop because you don't understand what you're, what you're really missing out on. And, and it's, it's just insanity watching some of these companies do what they do and, and, and limp along with these payrolls. Uh, and then their people are burning out and they're stressed and, come on, man, it's just crazy. Meanwhile, there's this immense skill down there. Um, that's just being overlooked, you know, and, and data. Let's, you know, yeah, I'll shut up. No, no, no, no, it's a perfect segment. So box, I'm trying to kick him under the table and it's not really Pete. What I identify with that, Pete. Yeah. Same ideal, some of those same passions and thoughts, you know, talking points that you spoke on. Yeah. It's very real for us because there's been so many times where we, we haven't had a seat at the table when we should have had a seat at the table, right? Yeah. And so I totally agree with you. Yeah, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate what you guys do, man. Thank you for what you know. I think the time is coming, you know, the job, the role has evolved dramatically from the time when it was, you can run a calculator and calculate a rate times a pet, you know, rate times hours to something that is exception based and so focused on all the intricacies that can go wrong and not all the stuff that automation takes care of. And so it's been like, uh, you know, total flip flop of what you would think payroll is to what skills and capabilities people have to have today. And I just think it just, you know, the rest of the world hasn't caught up with the notion of what, what really has to get done to make payroll happen right. Yeah, you know, 2020 was, I think a real punch in the gut for a lot of folks that had weak BCPDR. Yeah. Yeah. I think what does that mean? The program, uh, business continuity, planning, or data recovery, right? I think there were a lot of companies that didn't take that serious and didn't have the infrastructure and got caught, um, and really paid the price for a lot of, in a lot of ways. So big wake up call for sure. You know what, as I look through, you know, so I really want to congratulate you and thank you for doing the payroll profession confidence index. Yeah. Like, thank you. Come on. How amazing is that for us as payroll folks? Because I, and by the way, this is like my go to when I need to talk about something on the show, we start the show with a pay news update. And if I can't find anything fresh in the, I go right back to this, it's so long, like that I'm going to have, I'm going to be on it for a while. Yeah. And not long in a bad way, long in a really good way, because it has such great information. And one of the things that I marked today was slide 10, 10 and 11, right? Or, or yeah, the one that was, well, the one that was talking about how supported what, where they are with technology, um, you know, they're cautiously optimistic about the future. And, and then there's another one about how like, leadership is bought into payroll or not, right? And we're still at that halfway mark or less than in our organizations, like being actually behind us. And, you know, it's, it's like exciting and scary all at the same time for payroll, right? Julie is laughing because you, right, you know, because it's like, wait a minute. Oh my gosh, look at all these cool things that are happening. But then you getting, and Julie probably sees it more than us that are kind of at one shop, where these organizations don't have it. And they're like, wait, what are you doing still? Yeah, I get to see every flavor of messed up you can possibly imagine and a lot of flavors of good too, or at least we hope it's good by the end. But oh yeah, there's so many ways that things can be ridiculous. Yeah, still, still facts and time sheets over somewhere. Like, you know, we have, I have vendors that I work with in some very long tail locations, you know, emerging market places where there's very small, or excuse me, emerging markets where there are small populations, normally of companies, footprints, and they will tell you often their biggest competitors actually excel. They're just replacing excel a lot of times. They're not really going up against anyone in that location. So that tells you something right there, man. There's a lot of, there's a lot of payroll getting processed on. Yeah, and it's exactly, exactly. We had not a technology poll, a year or two ago, and that was the number one thing. Excel, I use Excel, I use Excel, you know, so it's crazy with that. It really is, it really is, again, exciting and scary guy at Walt. Yeah, I kind of speak to what you were talking about, Pete, about how there's still that, that resistance to the change, there's still the resistance of doing things and status quo and keeping things as they were, because people don't, I don't know if they necessarily don't want to progress, it might just be to the point that they're just so used to doing what they've been doing for so long. Oh, yeah. Well, I think there's two big factors to it. Julie, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Number one, I think if it's scary, so don't mess with it, right? Especially if you're, you've seen a Julie, there's a lot of these organizations that bastardize something like a PeopleSoft and they are not going to let their hands off of it because they live this pain of customizing, if you will. And the other thing is, I think that happens, payroll pays a success tax constantly. And what I mean by that is, is they're put in a position to fail constantly. Here's the lowest, lowest options. Here's the least technology. Here's, here's no resources. We don't even know what you do. We think you bookkeeping. So we're going to give you minimal, minimal help. We are not going to invest in you. But then every week they pull the rabbit out of the hat and no one, because they go like, like electricity, they go the light switch and it comes on, there's no problem. There's no problem. So payroll pays for that. Well, what do you mean? You need another system. It's working fine. It's a success penalty in a lot of ways and it's a really, it's got to be a very miserable conundrum, you know, in an organization that's unwilling to put money into or just not even money. You read that report again, it wasn't money they're asking for, they're asking for education, they're asking for skill. Yeah, certainly technology would help, but just give them some help. They were losing a lot of people. That's a, you know, that's a whole other angle. But yeah, two big issues, I think. So I have some fun, you know, some fun ways that I see those as I go across multiple clients or folks that are asking about things and might become a client at some point in time. The first is, you know, we're so, we're so focused on getting things right, like 100% right in payroll. It's like our DNA, right? And so, so when you get a new process, a lot of times you'll find that they're still doing the old one, because they just want to make super, super, super sure, you know, and and so the process doesn't change or you keep shadow processes or in many cases, some of these large companies, you would be surprised. They move to their new cloud platform, but they're afraid, they're terrified of touching payroll. So they just have the old engines sitting back there and they connect it to, you know, a workday or an oracle as a name, your platform, right, your new cloud platform. And they have the legacy engine sitting back there, performing all the same thing with the same limitations, because it's terrifying to think about moving it, which is, especially when you don't understand it and you fear it, right? That's part of the problem. HR has to start coming to the table and understanding what payroll does, versus, you know, assuming that they know better than payroll and then have no clue what they're doing. And yeah, it just makes it work. And then the down down market. So one that I've come across very recently, which is just fun, all kinds of fun to explain why you might not want to do this, but you have a company that comes into maybe one of your smaller market, you know, technologies, like a pay, whatever, right, name your whichever provider. And the client has been used to using like just a document, like a form and a document workflow to do things. And they're, they don't, they're not ready, like they can't let go of that. So instead of taking the basic capability of tracking your employee demographic data and then having that flow through to paying them, you know, they, they bugger it all up and they do a whole bunch of things offline. And then somebody enters or keys it back into payroll, you know, to make it's like, why on earth would you ever do this? This is crazy. And it's a fear factor, right? Or, you know, if one thing is wrong and a payroll person can explain it, they're going to do it six different ways to make sure that is never wrong. Yeah. I had a leader ask me recently, how do you, so how do we get the payroll people into payroll? And the employees into payroll. And I was like, um, usually through the ATS, all the way at the beginning when their employee is entering for the application, this is employee self service. And that's where we're going to start them all the way at the ATS, all the way at that all the way through that. And it was just like, wow, folks are still doing that dual environment, like where they're putting somebody all the way and then payroll reenters them in payroll. Like, no, it's, it's not payroll. Like me and Wall, I've had that conversation so many times in the last few years that it's not two different systems. It's the same system. And then, look, I sing Anita's praise because in her book, she says it, payroll starts as soon as the HR change ad is made. As soon as that piece of HR info gets put in, that's when HR starts. Yeah. I mean payroll starts, right? Like, and we've, and again, I sing her praise. I quote her all the time because she articulated it so well, because it's not two different systems anymore. It needs to be one, right? And in some cases, right? And in some cases, it's the time system because they don't wait for the HR system, right? And so it's like, you know, occasionally I go, man, I better build this guy so they can log time and they don't even exist yet as an employee somewhere. It's like, yeah. Yeah. That's the best issue here. Times the heavy lift and a lot of companies. It's not really payroll. The gross to net or the gross to net's actually easy if you can just get the build, the build up taken care of getting people to put their time going through your CBA, whatever that is, compliance. So, yeah, very much. Or not very, very, very true. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to ask you guys about, I think it was Walt, right? Did you move to Atlanta recently? I recently did. Yeah. All right, ATL and right here, we got to get together, man. Let's do it. Yeah. And you got to come join Ainsley's group over at the payroll, the payroll, sorry, the payroll association here, chapter here. Sorry, I always messed that up. The greater Atlanta, I think it is or greater. I'm actually joined recently. So I just have to meet everybody. Yes. Yeah. All right, man, that's a great. Yeah. There's a lot of great payroll folks here. We got Jim Cole, the art payroll artist is in town. Ainsley, of course, Jen Cozier, the new head of the VP of product at Workday, lives here. She's potentially going to join, I believe. Yeah. I try to pop up every now and again. So yeah, we got to. Tell us you got to get involved. You got to get involved. Julie, are you in Atlanta too? You're in Georgia? I am not. I'm in Detroit, mostly, but then I'm just starting the snowboard thing down to the Gulf side of Florida. So I just got my kids out of the house. And so, congratulations. Taking some life back, baby. Yeah, I just moved from Ibsalani. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, man. Well, we got to get together. I'm in South Florida. There is no, but I'm in Broward County specifically. And I was just talking with Laurel at payroll org. Like we were talking about this at the conference. Go Panthers. She's probably so happy right now. Oh my God. She's probably like bursting. Shout out. Yeah, we tagged her on LinkedIn. We were like, whoa, we know somebody who's really happy. I bet she was living it. Yeah. Yeah. She we were talking actually was after we connected and we were talking about the chapter in Florida. And she's like, Oh, well, there's one in Miami. And I was like, whoa, I don't live in Miami. I'm like, I'm in Broward County, you know, and she's like me too. So I actually need to kind of keep connecting with her to see if we create a chapter in Broward and Palm County. Okay, because there's is just we're like in the chapter desert between Broward for real from between Miami and Orlando. There's like no chapters. The Everglades. Yeah, exactly. Everglades chapter. You need to do it. Yeah, doing payroll. Like, that's it. Yeah, I'm from Florida originally. I grew up there. Yeah, I was born. I'm born in Duvall and then grew up in Pensacola and then met my wife down in Sarasota Tampa, where. Kind of headed down to. So Julie's part, part Michigoni and part Floridian. I think we should go. Follow the weather gal for a few years. A chapter chapter lead is in your is in your future there, Brian, maybe. Yeah, for sure. It'd be a one for now, you know, but yeah, you and Laurel, I bet we can find you a friend or two. Yeah, we got a smile on Broward. Now, it does look great. I mean, this community here seriously in Atlanta is great. I've had so many great payroll meetings down. People who pop into town because of the airport or come through and we get to have lunches. So we got to get together sometimes, man. You guys had a great presence at the at payroll conference. Like with the hurts and stuff like it was they were deep. Like it was good. Oh, the blue. Yeah, they got and Jim did us some nice artwork with the peach and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. She's locked on. Hey, they were they were chapter of the year last year. I think they were runner up this year, a pair of man of the year last year, I believe it was. So that's crazy. She raised the bar. She got the bar very set very high. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, shout out to the man. But hey, I want to ask you guys about like, we talked a little bit about just the way things have changed, right? Since you started payroll, at least 10 years now, each of you, it's changed, right? I've watched it change in that 10 years, just studying and advising in that area. But like, what's it like now? I mean, what's the, what do you see and what do you, what gives you hope or get you excited, I guess, you know? Yeah. I mean, we've learned a lot through. So again, it's, it's, it's exciting and scary all at the same time, because we see now through the show, a lot of the technology in the pipeline, right? Yeah. But we also see through leaders we talk to and clients that we have and bought, you know, jobs that we work for, like the, the, the disparity of it, like it's not caught, you know, we're still using spreadsheets for some things where I talked to a recent leader that doesn't have time in attendance. They're just on paper still, like literally just using paper and they have a big enough, you know, group. I had a group, I had a buddy that was running a, that still runs a warehouse. And he's like, Oh yeah, we don't have direct deposit. My boss just calls it in. And I was like, what does he use like ADP? And I was like, dude, please get direct deposit. Like you got a call a tell your boss to call ADP and tell him you need direct of like, are you kidding me right now? And sure enough, he pushed the envelope and a couple months later, he's like, Brian, we're on direct deposit. I was like, well, thank the heavens, you guys folks were getting live checks. And I mean, it was a good amount of people like the business, you know, it's not for people. So we're seeing like, we're still living in two worlds, right? We're still living in this past that needs to get caught up while all this amazing technology is out and becoming available to us. So it's like, whoa, and exciting for me because I want to be part of the conversation of bridging that gap. I'm thinking like, I love the show names that you guys give your, your shows. I'm thinking, I'm just hearing your, you know, an episode that you guys might do on the payroll haves and the have nots, you know, that's a good one. I like that. Yo, I'm right now, still on that one, Julie, go right ahead. That's why I laughed at it out there. I'm thinking you'll get to it before beating I would ever know. Right. So you guys can hit on a lot of subjects too, man. I have to applaud you for that. You're hitting on like compliance. You're hitting on news. You're hitting on like leadership, personal development. I love it, man. I love it. That's funny. You said that because when we initially started, we thought that we were going to be limited in the amount of shows that we could do. We thought that there was yeah, payroll, right? He's going to run out. But at no point back to your question, like payroll's ever changing. The landscape is always changing. And as far as what I've seen change during my 20 plus year career is that I've seen a lot more manual processes become automated, which is great. Because I remember the days of like having the pool every once time sheet, printing, printing time sheets, going to the printer, going through hundreds and hundreds of pages, multiple clients, stuffing checks, doing all that, all that work. That some people are still doing now getting time sheets via fax like Brian spoke to earlier, all these different things now that are automated, which made it easier. And there's still more to come, right? There's still more things to come. AI is going to greatly impact how we process payroll. AI is going to help us catch those errors and identify those anomalies and those payroll issues a lot faster than we could. And so it's going to help us out. It's going to be those tools to help us, right? Yeah. So I'm excited about that. But I think I've seen it change the automation has been the biggest thing for me. And I think that another thing for me, personally, is that I've seen more payroll pros, like acknowledge who they are and accept that, Hey, this is who I am. I am great at my job. I should put myself out there more and I'd be afraid to that and speak up more on behalf of payroll. So I've seen more of that as well. And I'm glad that we're doing that in the payroll industry. Yeah, agreed, man. I think I've been saying this. Julie and I really we we led the executive summit. There was an executive session that they had for the first time. We're excited to hear they're going to continue to run it at payroll or Congress. Yeah, it was nice. It was about 50 or so executive level folks and several of the big four partners that came in to talk automation. Nick Day was in there myself. Julie, we kind of kicked things off. But one of the things I've been really trying to communicate to the payroll world is you have to start leading the organization and stop being led by the organization. And that's scary, right? And that's a skill. And that's not what payroll has been used to. But I think that's where the episode we did with Anne Marie V, where we talked about making your own table, taking your data, bringing a couple of data points that are very impactful to your to your direct leader and beginning to have a conversation that can shape from there. I think it's little little steps like that. That's how you're going to lead because if you don't, you're going to continue to be led around to what you're doing. You're not going to you do have to fight for yourself. And I'll be the first to admit, when I when I got into consulting, you know, longer term after after being a practitioner and after being in the vendor space as a consultant there, I realized I had to sell myself better, right? And I and one of the things that made me wake up to was how many skills I had developed as a payroll leader that I was just like, Oh, I know that. Oh, I did that. I got before. Yeah. And it was getting me on the projects. And I was I was thriving a lot better when I was able to articulate what I could do, because people don't always think of payroll. Oh, you can project manage. Oh, you can do this. Yeah, like we have to do it all. Like what do you mean? Yeah. And I got to know all of HR as the payroll leader, right? He's heard me say before, I just think that that makes payroll such a sweet spot for Gen Z, right? Yeah. Who likes to have their hands and everything. And you know, like, I don't know how we get the word out or how we convince folks. But if you don't want to do the same repetitive thing over and over again, that's what people think payroll is. But that's not at all what it is. And from payroll, you could touch so many different parts of the organization in HR or in finance. And you just have like, you're in the middle of this hub that you can navigate a career out. Yes. And I think that's what people who've been in it for a while start to really appreciate about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can do anything with this. I can go anywhere. That's right. Man, imagine, imagine all the badasses we have in payroll right now. Folks like you, folks like Laurel, folks like whatever, anybody name all of them. Max. Just go down the list of practitioners, right? Superstars. Yeah. What if no offense to anyone, but most of those people, because we ask on this show, and a lot of them have been on here, how did you get into payroll, why do you stay? Just like we asked you, most don't start here. They fall here. Yep. What if we were having the best town in the world start here? What if we weren't getting that? Like, what then, man, we would be, we'd be dominant, right? Well, we're all here. We'd take over the world. Oh, man. I can't get that from us. Yeah, get it. You can't, you can't, you can't do anything about it. This is natural energy. It's natural red bull right here. Zero caffeine. Zero caffeine. I love it. Just vitamins and wake working out. That's all. I love it. That's great. No, I'm crazy. We need this place because we need folks to feel that it's a, it's a community beyond any one organization or beyond any LinkedIn, that this is, it transcends all of that, right? And like, it's a community of payroll people. You know what, Brian, go to the, towards the last pages in the demographics and look at the, look at the demographics of the time that people have spent in payroll and tell me what jumps out at you on that slide. What's your biggest concern right there? Should, should be the biggest for everyone. Let me see if I still have it on you. Tell me if it doesn't jump right out at you as soon as you look at the demographics of how long people have been in payroll that took that survey. 700 people, 28 countries, five continents. Good sample, I would say. Not, not what we wanted. We wanted everyone. Not the penis memorized his own survey. No, I don't have it up anymore. You got to tell. Okay, I'll tell you over half of the respondents had more between 11 and 19 years of experience. And then the next level down was like the, the, the, I guess it would have been the up to 10 or something. So most of the practitioners out there are 10 plus years. Yes. Half are 20 plus years. I think maybe it was even bigger. We're Asian out. We're going to lose these people and they're not flooding into payroll, right? And then we're in the news telling them, oh, don't worry. We don't even need you or HR anymore because now we got AI. We'll see, you know, that's one of my problems with one of the commercials that they have out there. One of the P's has a commercial and there's no offense to the company. But I don't like the commercial because it's like, oh, you, the pay, you could do payroll. The employee does their own payroll now. Like what? No, this is not sending the right message. Hey, do they own payroll? I get, yeah, I get where they're going. And I think it is the future. But I think it's, you're right. The way they're presenting is a little bit interesting. They're still going to need one of us in the back looking as automated and right. And let's talk about that for a second. Like, where does everybody think payroll's going? Because I feel like for a long time, we're not going to give way to AI. And companies are not just going to say, hey, guess what, Walt, we don't need you anymore. AI, Walt is going to run it now. Like, that's not going to happen for a long time. That use case is great if I've got four employees and it's just me to business owners. It's not if I've got, you know, 50 people. And I've got, yeah, exactly or a hundred or whatever. It's that doesn't work. That doesn't work. Yeah. But hey, look, that that same, listen, they're going down the right path. They're building the right technology. Their marketing is just terrible. They're the same one that had Gwyneth Paltrow talking about employee experience. Oh my gosh. I don't know if she's ever had a job to even have ever been an employee let alone. Yeah. So we're about to get a celebrity eight mail now. I'm just having a little press. Hey, I'm down alone in this one. There's a lot of other people that you're a rebel, bro. This is the show more. Yeah. A rebel. I love it. It's funny that you said paint a glass, man. Nothing. It is what it is. You know, yeah, we actually did a show right, Brian, on, on that very talk about how AI was going to impact payroll. Yeah. And about how we're aging out. Yep. How we wanted to know how we could attract other talent into payroll. And you know, we even talked about from the education piece, right? There would be it would be nice if there was a degree program specifically for payroll. We were able to build that out. Yeah. HR has one. A lot of other people have. There's not even an associate's for payroll. And honestly, it could go down. They're doing that in Australia. We did an episode on that. The AWCC. I think it's a very bold, bold gold, what they want, the chief payroll officer and all that. There's a lot there to unpack. But I think they're trying really hard to change the attitude. If all that comes out of it is, a new attitude and culture towards payroll, as you're right, educated differently on their own credentials and given the ability to have a different point of view as a profession and an industry and not just a bookkeeping. It's a career. Sub-set of whatever. Now it has more power, now you can get more, have more conversations. We're not going to get all that at first, right? We won't get the CPO. We won't get everything we want. But let's just point in that direction, dream big. And hey, maybe we end up just moving forward two steps. That's great. That's something. That's it. I'm happy to stay as that conversation. We're coming up on time and we want to play this game with you guys that we have. I want to ask you one more thing though. One more thing. No, really. This is important. You had Bart on. You had Bart James Norman. Yes. Great book. I've read it. I digested it at Paywork and we had him on the show there. We brought him here. I think it's a fantastic book, much needed. Tell me your thoughts on just the concept of influence. How are you working on that? Do you feel you're good at that? Do you feel like that is a key piece of what you're going to have to do to kind of? Well, I think it, yeah. It goes to what you just said, right? It's not being led and we have to lead, right? And the things that we said are impact. We have to be able to articulate what payroll is doing, how it impacts the business. And I think one of the things is saying, "Look, when the folks who are watching the cash register realize that 45% of your revenue is payroll, usually 40 to 50% of your revenue, then the conversation gets like, "Oh, wait a minute. What do they got to say then?" You know, when you can kind of show ways that, "Hey, here's how we can save some money on that payroll 40, 50%, right? Then you really start to be..." Now you have that platform to be an influence, but you got to want it, right? I think that you got to want it. You got to really want it. And I think you said it very well, Pete. You got to stop being led and you're going to lead. Just do it, right? Sometimes it takes that initiative. It takes going ahead and just doing it. Going ahead and being proactive, instead of being reactive, right? Go ahead and speaking up instead of waiting to be spoken to, right? Go ahead and tell your boss, "Hey, this is an area. I ran this audit and this is where we're having some pain points. This is where we need to address." Now, if you're not a decision-maker, get a decision-maker, keep bringing it up. Well, Brian, what do you say? The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Keep bringing those things up until they're addressed. Or ROI or dollars to it and watch. People go, "Wait a minute. What?" You can say, "What?" "Oh, can you pull me another report?" Yeah. Come on. Let me tell my CFO about that. And then all of a sudden, you start having these different people. I figured that out at Disney, man, in our shared service center. I was very fortunate to work with some GE executives that were stellar. And they taught me ways of stakeholder management at a very young age where I was able to show them KPIs and we were moving the needle. And then they were inviting their friends, so to speak, their colleagues. "Hey, you need to come look at your basis." My costs are going down now because I'm working with Pete. And so, now they have a vested interest to want to help you help them. And then it makes you look like a hero while you're... So, yeah, man, broken those relationships. That's another great part of what I think we learned in that survey is how important payroll has to lean into their relationships and the executives are going to be the key to them delivering more value. I just talked about the partnership last week about what our key partner is in payroll. We partner with HR and finance, usually in that slide. Again, it's such a great amount of info there. So, we want to play this game with you guys. It's just fun. Again, it just gets us... Look, it's this or that. It can be both or neither one or the other. You make the call. I'm going to give you five and then we'll finish off with the last five. Okay, we go back and forth. So, I'm going to ask you five and both of you answer, you know, your own answers, right? Okay. Pretty easy. Look, softball, first one, coffee or tea? Oh, I'm tea. I'm tea. Yeah, okay. There you go. Apple or Microsoft? I'm an Apple fan. I'm an Apple geek. I'm a Microsoft girl. Fanboy all day. There you go. Excel or Google Sheets? Oh, Excel. Yeah, I'm still Excel. Yeah. Likewise. I was born 70s, 80s, you know. Me too. Me too. Me and myself, me and myself. Gen X. Last one for me. Me too. ADP or Workday? Ooh, they're both clients. Both. Exactly. Can I plug something together? They make up an excellent partnership, which they did strategically level up at Rising last year. I wrote about that. So, I'd have to say both. They're both incredibly great organizations and together they do great work. I heard that you heard that work they can do its own payroll now? Well, they always had payroll. They just mostly had US, UK, Australia. I always heard them in conjunction with ADP, like Workday. Oh, but ADP does the payroll. Services, services. Workday can certainly provide the tech. ADP will normally provide outsourcing services because what happens is, if you look at a number of the mid-market solutions like a day for, so UKG or any of the pays, services kind of come, compliance services, at least the tax filing, garnishment filing, that sort of stuff comes with your solution. So, Workday does not do services. So, they partner with Alight and CloudPay and ADP and give their customers more of a marketplace to pick from. So, yeah, but I'd say both, yeah. Well, so Pete's kind of given a little color to my answer because as an advisor, I am unbiased across the market. Some clients are going to work, you know, some situations work with one, some work with the other, but I will tell you both of them are top tier. Yeah, okay. Together you can do a lot of stuff as well. Last one for me, payroll or HRIS. Well, depends on the context, but I'm always, listen, I'm the writer, die for payroll, so, yes. I'm a both there. I get filling in both. But also a big fan of the HCM tech world. I do a lot of work and research there. So, I respect for everybody. We need HCM in order to give us our data, right? It's kind of like the Marines. We need it a ride. We need the boys and the Navy to give us a ride to fight. We need each other, man. HCM needs payroll, payroll needs HCM, man. It's a heartbeat. We're part of the same engine, hips. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I love it. I love it, man. Walt's got some force now. Yes. All right. Tacos or pizza? Man. I'd probably go tacos. Okay. Yeah. Fernandez. I had to go. I had to go tacos, don't I? You don't have to, but... I'm gonna do it. Okay. All right. My next one is science or math? Oh, science for me. I'm horrible math. Imagine that payroll, right? I'm horrible math. That's what I tell people. I'm gonna say math, but you all know of function languages and artsy stuff is more my game. Yeah. Got you. All right. Reality TV are documentaries. I like the documentaries. I like true, you know, stories and history. I like history a lot. So yeah, documentary. Okay. So when my husband's around, which is most of the time, it's got to be the documentaries, but if he has gone somewhere else, I flip on some trashy stuff that he would never watch. What are you watching right now, Julie? What do you watch right now? Oh, God. What are we watching? We're watching something. I don't know. It's always somebody fighting and things blowing up. It's got to be the guy. The guy stuff. I haven't been watching. They're all the same. All right. I walk on the beach or a hike in the forest. I'm a Florida boy. I grew up surfing. So walking on the beach all day. I mean, I appreciate the mountains, but walking on the beach. Yeah. I'm the opposite. I'm a Michigan girl. So hike in the forest. I love it. And then my last one is AI or people. There's more power in people, I think. Emotional intelligence will always trump any sort of technology, in my opinion, hopefully, hopefully. But I think, yeah, I got to go people. I think you've got to have people to make it all work, right? Yeah. People are necessary. But honestly, that's all the more reason why AI we should be talking about, because it's to dispel exactly what you were saying, Brian, about the commercials, that lead people to think something or that create this fear that somehow we're all going away and AI is going to do everything. So I feel like AI needs to be the thing we're talking about, but that's because it doesn't cut it on its own. You know, we can't do it without people. Absolutely. Nothing's going to happen, especially digital transformations. Like, you got to have, you got to, I even wrote that in the report, like, look, you can throw all the technology and AI you want at payroll, but you've got to have people managing your projects and M&A and org redesigns and just all the things that get thrown at you that are not processing the payroll, right? Let the AI do that, but yeah. So, well, I feel like I got to go back to one of your questions about what I'm watching right now. And I'm going to, again, out my husband in a horrible way. So I was at an event and we had this dinner where we brought a bunch of work people together. So I tell them, you got to be on your best behavior. You know, can't be talking about, you know, a lot of the super guy things that, you know, you get excited about. So they pulled the, what are you watching now? What series are you watching now around the table? And oh my god, he was struggling because everything he watches is, you know, is the same genre stuff. So he, you know, picks some benign thing that he really isn't watching at all. And it can't, and the next, it was me. And I said, well, I don't know what he's talking about, but you're watching Dexter. Oh my gosh. Dexter, yes. And he was a lot of people was like, so flabbergasted that I would out him like that. That's so funny. That's so funny. Oh my gosh. It is, man. This is a great show. Make it. Yeah. Oh, you don't watch the whole thing? I, I haven't, I just don't watch a lot of TV anymore. I feel like I just listen to more podcasts and radio. I mean, I do too. I'm hooked on podcasts. So, it's my learning. So, and even my, you know, comedy and just whatever if I go for a podcast. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Yeah. Was that it? Did we do all five years? Yeah. Did it. All right. Well, look, man, I think we're probably coming up to our time. I can sit here and talk to you guys all day. You get me. I know it. As you can get fired up. So we got to do it again. Man, I love it. I love it. I love it. We're going to, we're going to do it again. We're going to swap this out. We're going to put this on both shows. Yeah. Where can everyone find you? I'll, I'll make sure your links are there, but where are we going to find you? We're on everywhere. Podcasts are posted and YouTube. Yeah, LinkedIn, Facebook. Okay. All over the place. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Like this. Keep doing what you're doing. We appreciate you. Payroll needs you. And, and keep spreading good word, man. You guys are helping, you're helping people. And I hope we're helping people. I get great feedback. And that's what this is about, man. Just, just sharing what we know. And yeah, helping the community, man. Payroll. Yes. I payroll for payroll. You know, that's it. We love you guys. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right. Have a good one. Okay. Before we sign off, here are a couple quick things. Don't forget to follow. It's about payroll on LinkedIn. And it's about your paycheck on Facebook and TikTok. Thank you for being part of our payroll community. And thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Until the next time, keep learning, keep growing. And most importantly, keep going.
