When starting your business, it can be challenging to get it all right in terms of hiring your first employees and ensuring that their payroll is processed correctly, meeting all your tax responsibilities, or at least getting it set up so there are no surprises on tax day. For the new entrepreneur, it can be overwhelming. If this is you, the latest episode of Small Business Matters is just or you. We are in conversation with CT Mobley, ADP’s Divisional Vice President of Small Business Services. We talk about the great resources ADP has to offer, and what they will be focused on during their sponsorship of National Small Business Week.
Gary Stockton: Hello and welcome to a special National Small Business Week episode of the Small Business Matters podcast. As an official Small Business Week sponsor, ADP is a key partner of Experian, so I’m thrilled to invite CT Mobley. He’s the Divisional Vice President of their Small Business Services Group. CT welcome.
CT Mobley: Thank you, Gary. Glad to be here.
Gary Stockton: Thanks so much for coming on, could you get started by just sharing a little bit about your current role there at, ADP and some of the things you work on?
CT Mobley: Sure. So my role here at ADP, my title is the Divisional Vice President of Small Business Services and Diverse Markets. And I often tell people that our job in my channel is to create the connective tissue between corporate social responsibility and the bottom line. So another way to frame that up is to think about how we continue to lean into doing the right thing, without impacting the bottom line, without it actually having an ROI; it’s very hard for any corporation to continue to do those types of altruistic efforts if there’s no real impact. And I would offer those communities that need that impact. We have to create ways to make sure that we maintain that connectivity.
Gary Stockton: So again, we’re celebrating Small Business Week. We know that you guys are going to be there. What kinds of activities are going to be taking part in there?
CT Mobley: I think some of the things that are important for us, and I think important for the audience to understand, is that more than 800,000 of our 1 million clients are small businesses. And these are the small businesses that trust ADP as their payroll provider. And what we try to do is make it easy for them, to do more than just offer a paycheck. Our clients and what we try to put forward in the information we try to share with them is that they can benefit from our health insurance and retirement plans. So at ADP we like to say we’re with you from hire to retire but we also wanna make sure that employee perks are available, discounts, and all that kind of good stuff
We also try to ensure that we stay current with them and infuse powerful technology and data for them to make informed and accurate decisions. As an example, we provide smart tools that AI and machine learning power to flag potential errors before they happen within what we do.
And again, I think that’s all a part of our larger strategy to make sure that folks are not just surviving, but they’re thriving. So all of the implications that come across in the life of a small business we try to highlight those things and create sort of those aha moments for them, before the unfortunate scenarios that we often see happen. And so, as it think about Small Business Week, we’re trying to push that information forward and leveraging all of our resources and partnership relationships to do so.
A guide to early-stage business success
Navigating the path to survive, thrive and grow
This guide, created by ADP® and Experian, will help you navigate the path to early-stage business success. We will provide you with practical tips and strategies for hiring, retaining and paying top talent, building business credit, and maintaining a strong credit profile. By prioritizing these key areas, you can set your small business on the path to survive, thrive, and grow.
Gary Stockton: And a lot of these businesses are new. New businesses are opening at a high pace, with a 2023 monthly average around 44% higher than pre-pandemic levels. And many of these businesses are being started by new entrepreneurs. How is ADP supporting these emerging businesses?
CT Mobley: Yeah, it’s a great question, and I would tell you, its central to what we do, right? I’ve been in this space for the last 10 years, and I would tell you that the small business growth that’s been happening has been happening over the past 10 years.I think once you peel the onion back a little bit, you start to realize that a lot of that growth was always happening in the underrepresented group space. And when I say underrepresented group, that means the Black or Latino or Asian, Women, Veterans, LGBTQ+, Disabled, all of those communities, they’ve been driving this train. What happened during the pandemic and the growth you’re discussing now is that the Great Resignation actually turned into the Great Reassessment. And we started to see people who had day jobs but maybe couldn’t go into the office, make some decisions about what they were doing.
And as they made those decisions, we started seeing exacerbated growth in the past two or three years. And again, when you peeled that onion back, you began to see it was underrepresented groups that were driving it, more precisely, women and women of color have been the tip of the spear.
So for us, as we approach the market, we’re thinking about those pitfalls. What industries are they in? And how can we support them? How can we give them the know-how? Again, going back to that aha moment, folks get into a business, and a lot of times, I think about the younger generations or younger folks, and sometimes they have, they’re fearless. They’re ready to run right at it. I have two millennial kids myself, and neither one of them has ever really had a job. They both run their own businesses, they always have. They’re successful at it, but I remember going through their business plans with them. And I wonder whether everybody has somebody they can go through a business plan with and have some expertise to lean on.
What we try to do at ADP through the diverse markets is create that subject matter expert and that shoulder to lean on that place to get the information and learn things you didn’t know and help them. Things like coaching them on, taxes and compliance. We see a lot of it. As you mentioned, there’s been a lot of growth. But 40% of those businesses that were coming on were also failing. They weren’t getting to the finish line. And so the idea is, okay, so let’s make sure that they know, go into every situation with their eyes open and are able to as I said before, not just survive, but thrive. How do we get ’em past that 18 month mark?
Gary Stockton: Yeah.
CT Mobley: Even with our partners, we’re asking questions like, tell me the average tenure of a member. And I wanna know if it’s three years that, you know is the lifespan of a startup business in this organization, how can we change that to 60 months?
Gary Stockton: Yeah.
CT Mobley: How can we change it in five years? We want to ensure that we’re moving the middle of the bus and not just those top-tier performers. And that really means giving them more and more information to do better.
Gary Stockton: Yeah.
CT Mobley: So we try to share as much information as possible, as I said, around taxes and payroll and hr, how to hire even. You can gather information from the Experian and ADP ebook now that you’ve opened the business.
Gary Stockton: That’s right. I was going to mention that, around resources, we partnered on a new ebook for new entrepreneurs and or someone who’s formulating and starting their own business.
CT Mobley: Absolutely, if you have a chance, definitely grab the ebook. But, think about the content; it’s really talking about that journey. Once you start the business, what happens next? And what are the key things that are important and pivotal to your success? One piece of that is people. As a person who’s managed teams for a long time, I like to tell all of my leaders, the most important thing that you can do is recruit, right? Getting the right people on the team.
Gary Stockton: So, what advice do you have for small businesses out there hiring their first employees?
CT Mobley: Yeah. I think one of the things that I would tell you to be most mindful of is the tax implications, the withholdings, all of those things that you don’t necessarily consider when you’re thinking about the day-to-day tactical aspects of whatever you’re doing. For example, if your job is making cupcakes and you need somebody to help, you know, mix the batter, then you’re probably not thinking about what kind of tax withholdings will happen here and how do I make, get those folks compliant? I think many of the questions that we see mainly with new business owners, are differences between a 1099 employee and a W2 employee, and what does that look like?
We try to demystify some of that stuff and if we can take that off their plate altogether so they can do exactly what they want to do. For example, if you want to make cupcakes, we want you to be the best cupcake maker ever. And we want to take that backend heavy lifting off the table for you.
It is, it can be complex. There are legislative changes that are happening all the time that do impact small businesses. All will affect you whether you are a solopreneur or have 50 employees. And so understanding how to navigate those things are where we are subject matter experts and where we try to lean in the most.
Gary Stockton: It’s great advice. And, of course, ADP can be there to help you as a new business owner do the payroll correctly and all the correct withholdings.
CT Mobley: Sure.
Gary Stockton: Well, CT, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. Have a great week at National Small Business Week, and folks, regarding the ebook, we’re going to leave a link to that in the show notes for this episode so that you can find that on our website and CT, thanks so much for spending some time with us today.
CT Mobley: Thank you so much, Gary.
