Welcome everyone to Norman Company.

I'm glad you can be with us today because we're in very good company with someone who's made a tremendous impact on our community.

A business leader, a philanthropist, a sometimes politician, and a sports enthusiast who also was a professional hockey team owner.

Most of all, someone who likes to be recognized as an entrepreneur.

Well, if you haven't guessed yet, I'm talking about the founder of Paychex and many other companies.

Tom Golisano.

Tom, it's a pleasure to have you with us here.

It's great to be here, Norman.

This is like old days.

You know, I remember being in the studio doing quite a few commercials, and I was running for governor.

That's right.

And we'll get to that.

But you're not running today?

No, I'm not running today.

I thought we might have had a scoop.

No, sir.

Well, you, of course, you're best known as the founder of Paychex, which is the nation's largest provider of human resource and payroll services to small businesses.

That was hard to say, but.

Well, you know, Paychex just went over three 730,000 clients in the United States, 730,000 companies that we are responsible for doing their payroll work.

And a lot of them, their human resource were you know, I'm not surprised by that because just even getting ready for this interview, every time I looked a a more recent interview with you, the numbers kept going up.

How big a company it was?

How many people you served?

How many people work for paychecks?

16,000 now across the country, 16,000 employees.

That's really one heck of a big company now.

Yeah, but that's not the only one, is it?

I was looking around and I happened to notice here and there you've.

You've started it.

How many companies?

At least 17.

Is that correct?

I think we're up to 19 now.

One just got subtracted from the list, though, of course.

And that was green light that had a transaction take place.

And I'm no longer involved in it, but it was a great ride with with a great company.

They're doing very, very well.

Well, it sounds like all your companies are doing pretty well.

Not all of them.

No.

I mean, you always have a bell curve of success.

And obviously we have some companies that have issues, but we work on them, try to get them all worked out.

Well, you also have been keeping busy the last couple of years writing books.

One about I kind of look at it and think it's, well, here's a guide to becoming a billionaire.

It's built, not born.

Which, of course, is what you're saying, is that you you make the company.

It's not it's not something that comes with the territory.

There's actually two important segments.

And the first one, you're exactly right.

We call it the jockey, the person running the company, the entrepreneur, the CEO, the person that is going to be in the end responsible for the either the success of the failure and the determine which companies we invest in.

We look very carefully at the jockey or the entrepreneur.

The other part of it, of course, is the idea.

The concept that this entrepreneur is presenting to us as an investment is very, very important.

We have to make sure there's a market for the product, that the product can be built or created economically so that there's enough profit margin to carry the company and so on and so forth.

Yes, we've invested in over 19 companies now and we're getting probably one or two requests the week that we take a look at.

But it's a lot of fun and I love working with entrepreneurs.

Of course I've worked with them off my life, but it's great, you know, I get the impression that that's what you'd like to be known as an entrepreneur more than almost anything else.

Well, I would not be embarrassed by that title or that name.

Yes.

And you are looking at maybe starting a new college year that would focus on that.

That's an entrepreneurial thing, too, although it will be a not for profit, obviously.

College.

Yes.

As you've probably been reading in the newspapers and magazines, so forth, the colleges are beginning to be concerned about several things.

One of them is their cost, what they have to charge the students to the number of people that do not eventually graduate.

That's a big issue.

I also have an issue with the calendar.

Youngsters go to school probably 32 or three weeks a year when they're in college.

I don't know what happened to the other 20 weeks, so I've got some ideas of what can happen with those other 20 weeks.

The reason the colleges and our even our public school system have been on that short schedule is the fact we used to be an agrarian economy.

We worked on farms and the children were expected to work on the farms during the summer.

And so consequently, they build public education and higher education around that calendar.

Well, guess what?

We're not in an agrarian economy anymore, and we have air conditioning, which allows us all new opportunities to expand the college curriculum.

In short, the time that youngsters could be involved in.

Well, we'll be keeping an eye out for that.

Okay.

And it's going to be kind of low key for a couple of months, but you'll be hearing a lot about it very shortly.

We'll look forward to that.

Okay.

And there's been a lot going on because we haven't had a chance to talk about in recent years.

I was wondering if you thought that maybe the current educational system was broken and that was why you wanted to start your own college?

I would not use the word broken at all.

Opportunity to improve it.

Yes, but not broken.

Certainly, it's so important to our economy, to our ability to maintain our standard of living.

And I don't think we would ever want to do anything to tear it down.

What we want to do is build it up and make it better.

Well, we'll be looking forward to hearing more about that and what happened over at Paychex.

So you're giving up being the man in charge.

And, Marty, music is moving on.

Well, you know, I reached a certain age and we're not going to say what that age is, but I thought it would be time for me to step down as chairman of the board.

I've obviously had that position for 16 or 17 years, and because I reached that age level, I decided I'm going to step off as chairman.

I want to remain on the board.

And the board had said, as the board of directors said, that's still okay.

We'd love to have me.

So that's what I'm going to do.

Marty's going to step out of his CEO role, become chairman of the board.

And John Gibson, who's been the senior officer Paychex, for a number of years, is going to take Marty's place.

Well, we'll be looking forward to hearing more about those plans to in the coming weeks and coming months.

You know, we have a high expectation for John Gibson.

We think he's going to do a terrific job.

But Marty's there also to guide them and to help them along.

Well, I know that you had held that the, I guess, chairman of the board title for a long time.

So I presume your it's okay for you to step back a little bit.

Yeah.

You know, it's it's a fun sometimes to sit in the middle of the table and still at the end of it and just be an observer.

But I'll always be a little bit more than an observer.

I think it's a you know, it's still very close to the business.

Enjoy it a lot.

Let's take a minute to talk about your autobiography.

So it's okay to call it that.

The Italian kid did it.

Yeah, the kid that sounds like the Italian kid did pretty well, but it wasn't easy, was it?

Well, it wasn't.

If I could spend the second talking about the title when I was 15 years old, I was accused of stealing a car, believe it or not.

And I lived in a suburban, a friendly, quiet neighborhood.

Not many cars were ever stolen in that area, but the owner of the car perceived that I was the one that took it.

And in defining the situation to the run, the police said the Italian kid across the street did it.

And I never forgot that because the police told me about that the next morning when they were questioning me.

Fortunately, I had a solid alibi.

There's no way I could have been near that car.

And so that was the end of the the problem.

But I never forgot that that happened.

And I thought when I was writing We a biography, I thought it would be a great parallel to tell you that it being he accomplished some things and a positive nature and he also was not guilty of stealing the car.

Yes, I've heard that story.

And it's in your book.

And, you know, I wondered how much of an impact it had on you, maybe to work even harder and to just show that guy up next door and maybe show up a few people.

Because the only reason this was even an issue was prejudice.

Because you were Italian.

That's why you said the Italian kid did it.

Now, in the 1950s, unfortunately, in Western equate where I lived, there was a level of racism dealing with Italians.

And you never kind of forget that stuff.

You know, you remember hearing all the names and all the accusations, all the connections to the mob and that type of thing.

And I heard it for a number of years.

Fortunately, it's gone now as far as the Italian community is concerned, but it does have an impact on you.

It does make you try harder, I guess you could say.

I developed a little chip on my shoulder.

And that wasn't the only circumstances, though, because we had family issues.

My father had gone through bankruptcy and during that as a youngster, I said, Gee, I don't want that to happen to me, especially when the guy came and took the car, okay?

I just didn't want those types of things to be in my life.

And then having Steven, my son Steven, who has a disability, knowing that I had to do well to be able to take care of him and that make him a ward of the state, if you will.

So all those things kind of make you work harder and think about it.

And now sometimes your family sacrifices a bit because you're always on the go and how it's moving.

But those were the things that drove me.

I wondered how how much they drove you, if that's why you were so receptive when you were approached about being a major donor to the hospital here, the children's hospital?

Well, the success because of paychecks is that achievement obviously leaves me in a situation where I had some resources and assets and what am I going to do with them?

I can think of nothing better to do with them than to give them away and give them to organizations like children's hospitals than.

Three of them now in organizations that deal with people with developmental disabilities.

You know, we have a family foundation that.

That's all they do is the developmentally disabled world.

That's true.

You've you've really made a big difference there And I again, I just wondered if having to go through that prejudice yourself, if it just made you want to succeed that much more?

I think it did.

I think it did.

Not the only thing, but one of the major things that I did that made me want to be successful.

I want to show you, you know, that type of attitude.

Well, you've done a little more than show people just locally.

You've been working with Tim Shriver and Special Olympics.

So how did you get together?

You remember the days of the Clinton Global Initiative, which I was one of the original sponsors of.

Tim came to the forum once in tember in New York City and looked me up.

We got together.

We talked over a cup of coffee and a Coke and whatever, and he impressed me.

First of all, as an executive, he's a very sharp, intelligent, well-spoken individual.

I said, Tim will be listening to how we can help.

But I said, You've got to give me a good purpose, not just here's cash.

You know, what are we going to do with it?

How are we going to manage it?

How are we going to measure success and so on and so forth?

And Tim, he just recognized those questions and said, we will answer all of those questions.

Well, he must have given you some pretty good answers because you gave them their largest contribution in their history.

$30 million.

Yeah, that's for the health program.

Norm, the youngsters that participate in the Special Olympics, a lot of them, a good percentage of them, have never seen a doctor.

They haven't been analyzed.

They haven't been diagnosed, examined for issues.

And some of the most common issues are eyes, ears, teeth, feet.

So what Tim did, he came up with an idea that next to the athletic events, the actual events, we're going to put up tents and we're going to get volunteer doctors to come before the sporting events and examine all the kids for these issues.

And.

We started doing it in 12 countries, six in the year, six in U.S. and six overseas.

And it worked extremely well.

I mean, there's just story after story of success as kids that couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't swallow all of those types of things and very economically and very efficiently, we solve those problems for those youngsters .

So Tim came back to me again and said, Tom, he says, It's working.

Here's what we've done.

Here's what we've accomplished.

Here's what we want to do.

I said, okay, let's do it.

Well, you've made a heck of a difference in the lives of a lot of people with disabilities.

And you mentioned your son, and I'm sure that was also a motivator.

And what we always say in doing the right thing, it was definitely a motivator in several areas.

One, to want to help other people, other children and other young people that have certain conditions like that.

And second, I didn't want them to become as much as possible wards of the state.

And I use that sort of in a negative way, not that the state of New York is not a good state to be ever a disability.

It is.

But the fact of the matter is, I didn't want my son and other people's children to be dependent on the state of New York.

I would rather create a situation where we could afford to do what we want to do.

And I think that's fair to say.

You have done that.

Fortunately.

Let's let's shift gears for a minute and talk about something you brought up briefly.

Politics very briefly.

Well, maybe very briefly, but you did form your own political party You ran for governor.

Was it three times?

Three times.

You must have had some ideas.

What was it that caused you to say?

I don't see in the Democratic or the Republican or whatever is out here right now a party that really represents what I think we should be doing.

Well, you have to go back and remember what it was like in the nineties.

The people of the country were very displeased, especially with Congress back then.

They think it's it's really bad now.

It wasn't that bad back in the nineties, but it was pretty bad.

Today, it's awful.

It's terrible as far as I'm concerned.

So we thought the opportunity for an independent party was the right time.

But unfortunately, in New York State, the two political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, had such strong foundations.

I would say entrenched.

Entrenched is a good word.

Entrenched.

It would be very difficult for an independent candidate to win.

Now, if you remember, Ross Perot had a really good chance until he made two big mistakes during his campaign that cost them costs.

And big time, if you remember.

Right, it was a three way campaign and he had 30% of the vote and there were still several weeks to go.

And it could have happened.

It could have happened.

But today, unless somebody comes along, that's an extremely strong personality and has the support of the independents in the state.

It's going to be very tough to ever have that happen.

Are you finished with you runs for governor?

Oh, absolutely.

Any other issues that you think that the state could be doing a much better job on or the federal government, for that matter?

Well, I feel very strongly they should keep us out of wars, and I worry about that with what's going on with Russia and with the Ukraine War is a terrible thing, and sometimes I don't think we've learned our lesson.

And sometimes I think we have politicians that take us in the wrong direction like Putin.

Well, I know that you have a special reason for feeling this way.

You lost your brother, who was a war hero in Korea, but still, what did you call it, fighting someone else's war?

Yes, and that's true.

I did say that I still believe it.

It wasn't someone else's war.

And my brother Charlie was killed in Korea.

He was there three days and they put him in the front lines and his 21 year old child, youngster.

And he was killed.

He did a very brave thing.

And he got the Bronze Star and of course, the Purple Heart.

But it's such a sad thing.

I, I still remember the night we got the telegram I was up in my bed was about 9:00 at night.

You know, today they don't deliver telegrams.

They send officers out to notify you if you've lost a person.

But you get a very cold telegram that says your son's been killed.

You don't see his corpse or his body for three months.

He was killed early November.

We didn't have him back in the U.S. until February.

So it was a very tough thing to watch, particularly my parents.

Parents are never the same when they lose a youngster.

At least I've seen them in several instances.

But it was a tough deal.

And now so I was resentful a bit about the U.S. government getting involved over there until I got an invitation to a ceremony at Whitehaven Cemetery.

And at that cemetery, it was a ceremony honoring fallen war heroes from the Rochester area.

But two of the speakers were from South Korea.

And they talked about how important it was that we were there, that we saved their lives, saved their country.

Modified me quite a bit in my thinking.

But I still resent the fact that we have wars and we shouldn't have.

Well, it was clear from reading your book that it really did.

It changed things in your family.

Yes.

And that that it also affected, I think, your political views for some time.

I believe it did.

Norm Absolutely.

Speaking of political views.

So how did you become one of the founding funders or supporters of the Clinton Global Initiative?

Oh, well, Bill Clinton got in touch with me and said he had this interesting idea for the public good, not just nationally, but internationally.

And I he said he invited me to his house for lunch and I said, all right, I'll listen.

So he presented this idea, which I thought was pretty ambitious, pretty innovative.

And I said I thought about it for a couple of days, and he was asking me to be the lead sponsor.

And as you know, with a few dollars.

And so I thought about it for a week and I decided I was going to do it.

And we had the first one, it was in September, I don't know, 19, whatever.

And it was a great occasion.

I we raised over a couple of billion dollars for various causes around the world.

And Clinton was really smart about how he did it.

He got donors to commit.

And had them come up on stage and sign documents and all that type of thing.

And then the following year, he invited them back and said, Did you finish your commitment?

What's been done?

Then they had the organization talking about what they did, the NGOs, non-governmental organizations.

And the thing just worked extremely well the first year.

So he decided to have it again, and I decided I'd be a sponsor again.

And I think his sponsor did it for seven or eight years and we accomplished a lot.

It's too bad it ended up taking a little bit of a bad rap.

And that's politics for you.

Yeah, I have heard people say it.

It it accomplished a lot and made a lot of difference in some people's lives, especially internationally.

Yeah, well, someone else who's had a pretty big impact on you is Monica Seles, your wife.

And I noticed that on your foundation, you've got a kind of a sub foundation now for animals, mostly dogs and cats.

Correct.

And she's a real animal lover, is that correct?

That is very true.

And Monica was very significant factor in me getting involved in expanding the foundation to cover.

We help a lot of organizations around the state to help improve the life of dogs and cats, and I think we probably influenced 15 or 20 organizations already.

Monica Sometimes she says, I like dogs better than I like humans.

She's just kidding, of course, but sometimes I believe it.

She's just a real lover of animals.

We have three dogs ourselves running around the house.

Yeah, we've.

We've had a few dogs over the years, and I have heard the same about who's who, who gets more love.

But one thing I've always wondered about is how you feel when you walk into a hospital where you've made such a difference, like the Son of Children's Hospital.

When your hand is on that door and you're opening it.

Do you get a feeling of accomplishment or that this is something that I really I'm glad that I was able to do in my lifetime.

It not only works when I put my hand on the doorknob, it really works.

Almost every week of the year.

Somebody will send me a letter, comment and phone, meet me on the street and say something great about the hospitals, what they meant to their family, how it saved their children's lives.

And you hear that and it's just overwhelming the feeling that you got.

Another instance, a woman came up to the street one day and said, You children, hospitals, Rochester is absolutely terrific.

They did this, they did that.

They took care of our child.

And then she said, and so child did pass away.

But I got to tell you, the hospital was great.

Now, that really stunned me because you have the bed ended like that and have you still feel so great about the hospital?

It's a great addition to our community, for sure.

You know, speaking of great editions, what do you think your biggest accomplishment has been all these years?

I mean, you might have to get out a big book, too, to help you pick it out.

But is there something that that you personally feel?

This was this was my accomplishment.

I can say something light hearted.

We won the county baseball championship when I was in high school, and I got the winning hit to win it, to win the final game for us to win the championship.

Well, I also heard that you were trying out for the Cleveland Indians.

Yeah, I didn't make it.

I had a strong arm, and I could hit very average.

And I was fast runner, but I couldn't hit for power.

And that's what baseball teams look for.

The greatest accomplishment, obviously, in my opinion, is, is Paychex, not only because what Paychex has become and its importance, but what Paychex has helped create on the side as a byproduct the hospitals, the universities, the colleges, so on and so forth.

So Paychex was it and knowing the livelihood of 16,000 employees is important.

That's a very important addition to I'm a believer that entrepreneurship is a key ingredient to any country's future.

And if we're going to stay ahead.

Competitively against the other people, against other countries around the world.

We've got to be smarter, more creative, probably take a few more risks.

And that's what entrepreneurs do.

And careers, basically self problems.

Okay.

Payroll processing.

Paychex.

We solved the big problem.

Okay.

And you think about any new product that comes out.

It's designed to improve people's lives.

So why would we promote that?

My, I haven't had it to about our public education at the high school level.

Why don't we teach capitalism?

It makes this world go around and makes us so enjoy our standard of living.

Why don't we promote it?

We shouldn't be downplaying it.

We shouldn't be badmouthing it.

We should be embracing it.

It makes our world go round and makes our world work better.

I would be remiss if I didn't give you the opportunity to talk about how important your family was to even just launching paychecks.

Your sister family was very supportive.

Gloria at the time was supportive.

She encouraged me.

She went out and got a job to help supplement our lifestyle as low as it was for the first four years, it was for four years before I was able to get a paycheck out of it.

My sister, you could say she was my biggest cheerleader.

Maria's older than I am.

She's 13 years older than I am.

So she's.

If I give you her age, you're going to know mine.

She's 90 is 93 And when things were the toughest financially.

I went to Marie and I said, Marie, I need some help.

She says, Financial.

I said, yes.

And she said, Well, I'm a widow.

And my husband's life insurance policy had $42,000 in it, and I put it in the bank.

He says, Take whatever you want.

Now.

She had three children of her own and.

Raising them by herself and financial effort that took.

But she had that much confidence in me.

And how could you beat that?

Well, you've you've thanked her in your books.

And so I just thought it was, you know, people ought to know that this just didn't happen.

You had family that that made the difference.

And.

Yeah.

For people who are, you know, trying to launch businesses, I mean, you've set a great example of of how a family pulls together and makes these things happen.

It's not easy.

Takes work and perseverance and creativity and initiative.

But boy, is it worth it if you succeed.

Before we wrap up, if you could change one or two things about Rochester, what would it be?

Fix the roads.

Fix the roads, fix the roads.

And now I'm spoiled because, you know, I spend half my year in Florida and we don't have the road problems that we have here.

Just there's so many still potholes.

And Monroe County, Rochester is a pretty good place to live.

But, you know, you can always improve things and it's a good place for people with disabilities, you know, because of the work you do with the Golisano Foundation.

Well, how about the support of WXXI?

You guys have been tremendous to this community relative to helping people with developmental disabilities.

Well, thanks.

We happen to agree with you on this, and we're glad that we can make a difference, too.

And thank you for helping us accomplish that.

So it's something that we all care about.

You guys have been terrific.

Very good.

Thank you, Tom.

We really appreciate that, too.

Let's end with a quote from Tom.

Be brave, be fair, act with integrity and above all, always strive to create a good deal for everyone.

Words to live by.

Thanks for being with us today for another edition of Norm and Company.