Tom Golisano and Paychex: How Small Business Payroll Became Big Business
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, before Paychex, small businesses had limited options for handling payroll. Many owners managed it themselves, while others paid for services designed for much larger companies. Tom Golisano saw the gap and set out to offer a simpler way to manage employee payroll and meet tax obligations without unnecessary cost.
He began with a small group of clients and a clear vision of how payroll services should work for smaller employers. That approach grew into Paychex, a company built on making payroll outsourcing accessible and reliable.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.0 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:17.1 | And up next, an American Dreamers story. |
| 0:19.7 | And the series is brought to us by our great |
| 0:21.6 | friends at Job Creators Network who work hard every day to help small businesses become |
| 0:26.7 | big ones by fighting for policies that make it easier to do just that. Today Alex |
| 0:32.9 | Cortez brings us a unique American voice. |
| 0:42.4 | Okay, I was born at an early age in Rochester, New York. |
| 0:46.2 | We're listening to Tom Galesano. |
| 0:50.4 | My father was from the old country, Sicily. |
| 0:52.2 | My mother was born in the United States. |
| 0:55.0 | I had an older sister and older brother. When I was in high school, my mom and dad had their financial difficulties. |
| 1:00.0 | They had to go through bankruptcy. |
| 1:02.0 | My father, after World War II, went into a business converting coal furnaces to gas and oil furnaces. |
| 1:10.0 | And my older brother, Charlie Charlie also worked for my father. |
| 1:14.6 | Then he got called off to the Korean War. |
| 1:16.6 | And unfortunately he didn't come back. |
| 1:18.6 | He was there three days, was put up on the front lines. |
| 1:22.6 | And he was with a company of men that was attacked by a battalion of Chinese and didn't come back. |
| 1:30.3 | So after that event, my father's business kind of went to hell. |
| 1:34.3 | He went to work for a macaroni company that was based in Rochester as a salesperson. |
... |
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