Partner Spotlight: PayUSA

Partner Spotlight is a new series designed to highlight the vendors that partner with ABA to offer discounted products, services, and business opportunities to ABA members. Each installment, we interview a different partner to learn more about their organization and why indie bookstores matter to them. 

PayUSA offers a powerful, scalable payroll processing tool to fit your business needs. Bookselling This Week spoke to PayUSA President/CEO Christian Hoyt to learn more about the company and Hoyt's love of indie bookstores. 

Bookselling This Week: Why don't you tell me a little bit about PayUSA’s origin? I understand your dad started it?

Christian Hoyt: My father was working for GE as an engineer, and he thought he wasn't getting promoted appropriately. So he started working at another company — a place called Sperry UNIVAC — and they wanted to move him. It became clear that in order for him to keep moving up in any of these corporations, he'd have to keep moving. My family had just moved to Pennsylvania, they didn’t want to move anymore.

So he went to a franchise fair and it came down to two things — a payroll service or a computer training company (this was 1969). The payroll guy convinced my dad. He said that you can sell payroll, and if you do a good job, you only sell once.

As irony would have it, one of my father's first clients is still one of our clients. That's 55 years!

But within six months of buying this franchise, the franchisor went out of business. But my dad was committed to it. The other people that had also bought franchises in the Philadelphia area were less committed, so they all gave their clients to him and he just went on from there. He made some mistakes along the way — he purchased a mainframe computer in 1980, right as the PC was coming about — but we persevered. We made it through some rough spots and here we are.

BTW: Wow, your first client is still a client! That is a heck of a success story.

CH: Yeah. That client was an engineering firm, ironically, and the founders were a family. As those people either retired or passed away, they ended up selling their business to the employees. That's why it's sustained so long, because succession over 55 years is not the easiest thing to manage.

BTW: What do you think sets PayUSA apart from the other payroll companies out there?

CH: One thing we do that's very different from our competitors is we have no sales force. All we do is focus on service. And because of that, we get referrals. All of our business comes from referrals.

It's a nice model, because I'm never concerned whether we are doing the best for service, because we only do service. It's just the way that it has worked out for us. I would say that the majority of my competitors are more interested in sales, and also the commission that's involved with that. So if you're selling without commission, and with no salesperson per se, you tend to sell what the client needs.

We see a lot of cases where a new client comes to us from a competitor, and we're like, “Hey, you got a lot of these extra things. And using any of these things?” And they say “No.” They were told they needed it, or they were scared into it, or there was some ploy that got them to buy products that they don't use. That’s just not the best way to do things.

BTW: That's amazing. I really like that, and I think our booksellers will too.

CH: I think it will hit home with them because they really care about their business. It’s a wonderful thing, and they keep going. I remember 15 years ago, everyone was saying, “Oh, Barnes & Noble is going to put all these little companies out of business.” And yet, in my little town in Pennsylvania, there's still an indie bookstore.

When my son was really little, he had done a project and we made it into a book. They were like, “We’ll put that book in our bookstore.” That's exactly what indie bookstores are, they're part of your family. And that's what we try to be like.

BTW: Is there anything that prompted you to partner with ABA and to start working more with bookstores?

CH: Well, PK Sindwani and I always had a good relationship. His bookstore was near my church. I'd go by after church a lot, and it was just cool. It was a place to sit down and read and relax and have a cup of hot chocolate. You could just see people flowing through that place all day. That's kind of Americana, right? That's where ideas get exchanged.

BTW: Are you a big reader? Any recommendations for us?

CH: When I was growing up, not at all! But now, I do really enjoy reading. In fact, we were in Nantucket, and the author Elin Hilderbrand was just out at a party we were at and we got to talk to her! They're about to do a Netflix special on one of the books she wrote called The Perfect Couple, so now I want to read that.

I’m kind of stuck on historical stuff right now. I just read the new Erik Larson book, and that was really good. It’s called The Demon of Unrest. It was about the Civil War, and it was kind of a historical narrative about Lincoln's first six months in office.

BTW: Is there anything else that you want booksellers to know?

CH: The first client will have the best deal. Let's put it that way. [Because our business comes from referrals] I'm trying to get that first client so that we can build connections.

Right now, ABA members are eligible for 3 free months of PayUSA, as well as a 20% discount on base prices thereafter. Interested members can visit the PayUSA partner page on BookWeb for more details.

You can learn more about PayUSA on their website!