Jason Taylor 0:00

Welcome to this edition of the People's Playbook Podcast. I have to tell you, I'm pretty stoked today. I got Gary Palmer on with us today. And Gary is the founder, he's a chairman, president and CEO of Pay All Payment Systems, and he's done so much in the financial tech world. So he is a true entrepreneur who moves fast. He's been able to build real big companies. He's been able to merge and sell and get people to kind of believe in what his beliefs are. And he is a true innovator in the business. So with that, I welcome Gary to the pod. Welcome, Gary.

Gary Palmer 0:32

Jason, thanks for having me. Your introduction is far too kind, but thank you so much for your kindness.

Jason Taylor 0:38

Yeah, my pleasure. So let's get right into it, Gary, because you know, when you and I have chatted, man, you have an energy. And I think that's why you and your companies have been so successful. Because I'm a big believer that energy is contagious, right? And the the speed of the speed of the pack moves to the speed of the leader. And, you know, you absolutely move. So if we look back, you built some, you know, category defining companies for decades now, right? So that's kind of your gig. That's kind of what you do. What have you learned about building the team before building the business?

Gary Palmer 1:10

There's no higher priority. There's no more important decision than having the right team. Full stop. Nothing else matters except having a great team. And have you brought a lot of those people from original teams to new teams along the way? I have. In fact, it's crazy. Before I began starting companies, I was an executive in a large uh fortune, you know, 100 company in the U.S. And as a young manager in that company, I was assigned a couple of MBA students. And one of those MBA students has been with me, and I think every company but one over the last 30 years, if you can believe that. No way. Unreal.

Jason Taylor 1:48

So you you have that reputation, people want to follow you. Let's talk about that for a second. So, what did you learn in that, in that top 100 financial company? Like, what did you learn about leadership and what did you learn about leading teams?

Gary Palmer 1:59

Technically, that one wasn't actually a financial services company. It was a retailer at the time that was number one in its category. And I joined them as a district manager in training during the height of their success. And that company taught me great process. It taught me great structure and organizational control, as did my the company before that. And in fact, there was a great deal of training around human resources, how to interview, how to uncover the dimensions of applicants and ensure those things intersect with whatever the culture is you're trying to hire for. And I give those large public companies that I worked for early in my career kudos for instilling that great process around interviewing and hiring people.

Jason Taylor 2:51

Yeah, it's so true. I worked for a massive company as well before I, you know, got the entrepreneurial bug and started doing my own thing. But man, do you ever get an education from those big companies, right? They they don't spare, you know, any expense to say, hey, we want to one, get the best people, but it's at the same time, we want to train our people to be the best. And they don't, they're not cheap on that at all.

Gary Palmer 3:15

Jason, you're right. And I'll I'll add this to that, that while those those companies have processed and are methodical in their approach, there's a human element at the very end that I didn't learn until later in my career, which was now when I hire someone, the final question I ask myself is this would I hire them to work for me and would I want to work for them? And at the end of the day, when we go through the process, that's the ultimate question I ask before we decide to hire someone. And we still don't get it right. And there are all sorts of reasons why that happens, but we're getting a far better, far better outcomes now than I did 10 years ago or longer. You got some scars on your body along the way from some of those hires, I assume, right, Gary? Absolutely, ranging from small bad decisions to big bad decisions. Yeah. And some of it, you know, it is a bad decision. And some of it, you we just have to be honest. Not everybody we interact with are nice or good people. And you can't always uncover that in the beginning. You hate to feel that and acknowledge that about the world, but it's it's unfortunately it's a true statement.

Jason Taylor 4:21

Yeah, absolutely. How big have you built the team now that you've because this was a startup that you've scaled up and whatnot?

Gary Palmer 4:27

So how big is the team now? Well, Payo's still very small. We're still around 60 people. And and the reality is I have a rule that we'll never get more than three levels deep between me and a customer. It'll just never, ever, ever happen. And as a technology company, the majority of our folks are in technology or in client-facing roles. We don't have very, very small admin or overhead. My belief is that everybody has to be focused on putting points on the board, helping customers in an individual way, more so than keeping score. Yeah, I love that.

Jason Taylor 5:02

And actually, 60 isn't a small company. 60 is a lot of people and personalities to manage. And I actually like how you like to, I know what you're saying. You're saying based on the size of the business, 60 may not, you know, seem like a lot, but it is a lot. And if you can get the most out of those people and just know how to inspire them and how to actually pull the strings that you need to pull, they it's it's amazing what we can do and how efficient we can actually be.

Gary Palmer 5:25

Jason, you're right. But I want to draw very uh, it's interesting. I had a conversation with my head of HR this morning and we were chatting about some of my key direct reports. And there's a very important point here, which is if we hire people that are more like the sun, that are generating power, generating light, generating energy versus people that need constant attention and follow-up and coaching to be productive, it changes the dynamic and the culture of a company. So I am adamant about hiring people that are more self-generators of energy and light versus those that need to consume it.

Jason Taylor 6:03

What an absolutely amazing comparison you just said there. You're looking for proactive. You're looking for somebody. Hey, I don't want to have to tell you to get up in the morning. Get up in the morning, but I want to tell you how, you know, you should take lunch. You know, move fast. Yeah. Well, I have to remind you to take lunch along the way, right?

Gary Palmer 6:18

Hardest thing in a company, certainly an early stage company, is figuring things out and figuring it out fast and with the minimal amount of disruption or distraction to others. Now, you have to use good judgment, and there are times when we need to get a partner to help make a decision. But if you've got people that are constantly waiting for direction or need help and figuring out every little problem, no way can the company scale. It just won't work. Yeah, we need them more than they need us, for sure.

Jason Taylor 6:46

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Gary, in one of our conversations, you said to me, you said one employee can actually strengthen or, or a big or undermine an entire company's culture. Can you go into that a bit more? I just want to know your feelings on how do leaders make culture real at every level.

Gary Palmer 7:04

You know, for me, and and I know this word is overused a lot, but it's something for me that is important, and that is me being straight and authentic with the folks who work for us and being consistent, whether I'm dealing with my investors, the board, managers, or customers. There should only be one version of Gary, and that's the real Gary. And I think that employees are really clever at identifying people that are fakes or that have a different face with one audience versus another. And I have to tell you, when I hire people and when we have great leaders inside our company, that's also a character, characteristic of them as well. They're authentic from beginning to end. The second part of it is that they're able to elevate the needs of their customers. And that customer can be an internal customer, an external customer above their own comfort zone or above their own short sort of view of themselves or their desires for their career. Yeah. If we can all be authentic and authentic around delivering for our customers every day and are able to figure things out, there's very little that even a small company can't do. And you can really, it's really a deciding factor or a determining factor between those companies that blast off to great success versus those that don't.

Jason Taylor 8:23

Yeah. So well put. In our last conversation, you were we were talking about leaders and how they respond when they mess up matters, right? More than what they actually say. If you're looking back at your career, which has been incredible, what mistake most changed the way you lead today? So looking back, and I'm sure you've made some mistakes along the way. What's that one mistake that you say? Wow, that changed the way I look at leadership or the way I lead people?

Gary Palmer 8:50

Early in my career, I was 21 years old. I'd graduated from university a year early. And before I turned 22, I was a regional sales manager over seven hotels, if you can believe that. These weren't fancy hotels, but nevertheless, they were still hotels. And one of my one of my employees was in his 70s. And he had been in sports. He was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And I'll never forget one day when he dropped me off at the airport. He said, Coach, it's good to see you come, but it's even better to see you go. And I have to tell you that's great. I I was shocked. And I said, Listen, before I fly, let's go and talk about this. Yeah. And and he spent an hour really, and he did it in the most precision way, like a surgeon with a knife, describing how he recognized I was authentic and that I was intense and I was a perfectionist, but he described how that was being interpreted by others. That there were elements of my style, elements of how I spoke, elements of how I managed people that were abrasive, and they were not going to lead to the effect that I wanted with the conversations. Yeah. I've never forgotten that. Now, candidly, Jason, I still am very self-aware of that. I still struggle with it because I'm tall, I've got a deep voice, and there are some, you know, physical attributes and characteristics that I have to be mindful of. And anytime I hear myself speak, whether it's on a podcast or something else, I hate it because it's not, I'm not always coming across the way that I want. So I'm very conscientious of this. And I have to tell you, it's something that's important to me because if I believe everything I just have we've opened with about working through people and with people, how we communicate with people, how we bond with them, how they interpret us is going to leverage or is going to determine how much we leverage we get out of that relationship. So that was a very early lesson, and it's stuck with me even to this day.

Jason Taylor 11:03

Yeah, I have to tell you that is one of the most self-aware things I've heard leaders say. Because I work, oh well, you know, Gary, I work around the world with leadership and engagement and how to hire right and how to inspire people and all that on your team. And when I ask somebody if they're they're self-aware, usually the answer is yes, I'm self-aware. I know what, I know what my strengths are, I know what my blind spots are. And, you know, that's not true self-awareness. And and true self-awareness, there was an actual study done on it by Tasha Yurik. She was a Harvard business professor, and she she did a study over five years with over 5,000 participants. And her study found that, you know, 95% of us think we're self-aware, but in fact, only 15% of us are, right? But what's the but there? So what is true self-awareness? Everybody thinks exactly what I just said. I know my strengths, I know my blind spots. True self-awareness is I know my strengths, I know my blind spots, but you just capped it in. I know how those affect you. So the way I speak to Gary Palmer could be totally different than the way I speak to Sally Smith, because maybe Gary could take it a little more direct. Sally needs me to be a little softer at the tone, or Jimmy across the hall needs me to tone it down a bit, right? So it's just how do my behaviors affect you and how can I adjust to really be a truly self-aware leader? So well done. When you said that, I was just like, wow, he is in tune with with, hey, and you just you even just said it. You know, I'm tall, I have a deep voice, right? I have to be aware of how I come across. And I could be coming across sometimes as, wow, he's this guy's really intense, but I I know when to tell it back.

Gary Palmer 12:40

You know, when we, if we really are being honest about what our objective is, and that's to get a great result, we're trying to delight a customer, we're trying to have a positive impact, then it's not about how important we are, or did people do they think we're smart, or do they did they recognize that we had a better way of doing it? It's about teaching them and enabling them to deliver that, not just once through a painful lesson, but in a way that sticks with them, and then they can repeat that and they can become more effective, not only in their own job, but how they interact and communicate with others. And this is so important, and it's something, again, I have to be very conscious of it. And it's it's something that I work on every day.

Jason Taylor 13:21

Very, very uh cool the way you put that. So I want to talk about just um challenging right now. So, and what I mean by that is so you you spent you know your career challenging the status quo, right? Of how sectors or industries are certainly doing something. That being said, how do you create a culture where people in your company feel comfortable challenging you?

Gary Palmer 13:45

I don't know exactly how I do it, but there's no shortage of it in my company. And uh and uh what I love is it's both on one-on-one conversations and with groups of people that are very comfortable coming to me with their thoughts. Now, what I would like to say is that perhaps the reason why people are comfortable with it is that I don't think I'm perfect, or that my answers are always the best answers, or my strategies are always the right strategy. I would, in fact, I would dare say that anyone who's ever come to me to challenge me, if they've been thoughtful, if they've been careful in their argument, and if it makes sense, I change. Unfortunately, Jason, and I'm sure you've experienced this, uh, you know, when you're a CEO, when you when you get in in environments with a lot of other CEOs or founders, or in some cases people that are very wealthy, there is a view that I'm right. I'm always right, and and my words are gospel. You know, Jason, my biggest fear is being wrong. Yeah. That's my biggest fear. Whether it's about business or politics or life, I genuinely am challenging and re-challenging key assumptions, key ideas, key beliefs frequently. And so in business, that concept applies. And so I welcome people that come to me with fresh ideas. In fact, there's very little that frustrates me more than people who literally copy-paste what I say without the nuance necessary to apply it to a specific situation or their what they're dealing with. And I want people to take what I do and say and make it better. And I want them to come back to me and challenge things that I say that are wrong because it happens.

Jason Taylor 15:35

Yeah, absolutely. So you're in the game of building high performance teams because that's how you kind of make your company thrive and get to, you know, the promised land. What matters to you more than an impressive resume? So, what is it that you look for other than the resume?

Gary Palmer 15:51

It's really hard to figure people out from a resume.

Jason Taylor 15:54

Yeah.

Gary Palmer 15:54

Uh early in my days at my first company, I remembered we had some applicants from fancy universities that were incapable of communicating clearly in an email. And we had some folks who didn't go to a fancy university or in some cases had dropped out of school. Yet they had this ability to listen carefully to what was being said, process it, and then respond to it in a way that was appropriate. And so this whole process of looking beyond the CV, the beyond the resume, is about having a conversation with people, asking great or thoughtful, open-ended questions, and in some cases, even giving them a test, uh, but have it on the fly and see how they do. You know, and the other, the other thing I keep coming back to is that their nature, their presence is the one that I want to work with every day. It's not that I necessarily am going to work with it every day, but understanding they're gonna be interacting with a lot of other people, whether they're employees, customers, prospects, or partners, and I got to be sure that that person is a real person, not just something that's on a resume.

Jason Taylor 17:03

Yeah, absolutely. And it's hard. So, because you're right, sometimes people look great on paper, but you actually have to see it in action to see how we're actually gonna work together after decades of building companies. What do you hope people who worked with you say about what kind of leader you were when you actually say, I'm going off to the beach right now, I'm done, you know, I'm out of here, guys? Like, what do you hope if they said, hey, listen, working with Gary or for Gary, you know, here's what I would say about Gary based on my working relationship with him.

Gary Palmer 17:36

Well, first, I'm never gonna ride off to the beach. I I it's just not, I mean, I'll be working to the I mean, I love, I mean, to me, work is more fun than fun.

Jason Taylor 17:44

Yeah.

Gary Palmer 17:45

But what I want people to say is he gave me a chance. Yeah. He taught me how to do it better, and he and he rewarded me for my great results. That's what I want people to know is I'll give anybody a chance. If anybody's willing to work hard, they're willing to demonstrate our culture, our shared values, which are on our website under Pay All Life. And if they're willing to really put themselves on the line every day for their customers and their team, I'll give them a chance. And I don't care about their CV. I don't care about their age, I don't care about their race, I don't care about their religion, I don't care where they went to school, I don't care about their family, I don't care about any of this. Everybody comes to us with who they are. And now it's what are you actually gonna do for the customer and for the company to make a difference? And I want to find people that will that will make a difference every single day. And anybody who works for me is gonna know they've been given a fair chance.

Jason Taylor 18:35

Yeah. If you had to say, hey, here are the top three things that are absolutely crucial for me if you're joining PayOll. What are the top three things that like are part of the PayL's values and core principles? What do you say, hey, this is the three things I look at?

Gary Palmer 18:50

The first one is they have to be folks that are willing to take initiative. Okay. I really you cannot stand around and wait for someone to tell you what to do. You have to be able to see it. You have to be able to read the room and understand where things are and be able to get things done. The second part is you have to have good judgment. You're not gonna have perfect judgment. Sometimes the information is imperfect, but judgment means you're using the data you have and you're making the best decision you can. And if you make a mistake, you learn from it and you're gonna recycle that into the next decision you make. And the third is that you're gonna be accountable to yourself and to others for the results that you do. You're not gonna hide in a corner, you're not gonna wait for someone to come to you, but you're actually, and you're you're not gonna blame others when you make a mistake, but you're gonna be accountable for it. And it's not to punish yourself, but it's really to say, I did something, I did my best, and I'm gonna learn from this the next time if I didn't, if I didn't succeed. Yeah.

Jason Taylor 19:46

Let's talk about accountability for a second. Why is that so hard for people to be accountable? And people will always tell me they're accountable, but when you actually challenge them on something, it's amazing how they dodge that or they point a finger or they try not to make eye contact with you, right? So why is accountability such a such a difficult conversation on teams?

Gary Palmer 20:05

I'm not a shrink, Jason. I'm not entirely sure, but but my theory is part of it is that I don't know if because of families or how the education system has changed and people have gotten all these awards for participation, that we have this inflated view of ourselves.

Jason Taylor 20:21

Yeah.

Gary Palmer 20:22

And we are sure we did it right. I remember we we had an employee in her mid-30s, and when I coached her, she was struggling on the phone, not making eye contact, and it was a really difficult coaching. And reaction was, I've never been coached before. I've always gotten the top acknowledgement from my bosses in every employment review and and every session. No one's ever coached me before. I can't even process that. How do you get to be in your mid-30s and you have a self-view which is, you know, I'm perfect. And how dare you identify these things about me that aren't exactly perfect? I've been coached my entire life. Some has been very uh hard and tough to swallow, some has been kind and gentle, but that feedback is something that's really important. And the ability to process that feedback is something that uh it seems like it's being harder and harder for folks to accept.

Jason Taylor 21:21

Yeah, I I think it's a generational thing too, Carrie. So, you know, it's funny because let's go back to what you said earlier in this in this conversation. You were leaving, and they he said, Coach, you know, it was great to have you here. It's even better that you're leaving, right? And you didn't just take that, you said, wait a second, let's go have a coffee. Let's go have a coffee because I want to and I think that's such a a strong leadership thing to do when you said that, because you could have said, Yeah, yeah, chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, and and got on the plane and laughed, but it obviously resonated with you and you were you were, you know, saying, Hey, we need to have a conversation about this because I don't want that to be my impact. So tell me what happened. And then you adjusted. Because of it. And I do find, to your point on you know, participation awards and whatnot, I do think, and I'm not saying in a bad way, but society in general has become a little softer. And I'm not saying that in a bad way. I, you know, I believe that we, you know, I believe in helping others and being altruistic and leaving more on the table than you take. I believe in all that stuff. But I don't think it's wrong sometimes to just say, hey, I think you could have done a better job. Or I think, you know, maybe you you handled that. It was, it was great the way you what you did, but could we have done it a different way? Right. And I don't think people should be frowned upon on sometimes calling somebody out on that stuff.

Gary Palmer 22:38

You're absolutely right. And, you know, it's not popular. It's not popular with media, it's not popular with, you know, HR specialists in some companies, it's not popular in in the books to actually say these things out loud that as human beings, we're not all the same. Yeah. There are some that are high performers, that are very self-aware, and that are naturally curious and always growing. And at the other end of the spectrum, there are some who are just, you know, lazy. And it's not popular to say that, but it's the fact. It's just like there are good politicians and bad politicians. I used to think that all judges and all lawyers were, I held them in high regard and were an incredible, like they lived in a rarefied planet. Well, guess what I found? There are good judges, there are lazy judges, there are great lawyers, there are great doctors, and there are doctors who shouldn't be in an operating room. Sure. In every part of life, we have to be honest that there are different caliber of people. And it's it's it's just how it is. And yeah, maybe we become too soft or unwilling to call that out or acknowledge it, but it doesn't change. It doesn't change the fact that they're at the lower end of that spectrum. It just means that we are, if we ignore that, we ignore it to our own peril, if we hire and surround our people, us ourselves with those people under the illusion that we're all the same and we're all good, we're gonna make mistakes. And this is why I also feature, and I talk to my team about this often, is that not only we are a company based on merit, I really gravitate toward overachievers, those that go far beyond what I expect. And they don't do it because I asked them to. They do it because it's who they are, it's in their culture. It's back to this idea that they're generating power, they're generating energy, they're trying to make a difference for the universe around them. They're not trying to suck energy out of it.

Jason Taylor 24:33

Yeah, I love that, Carrie. I think that's that those are wise words. I'm gonna ask you one more question before I let you go because you've been more than generous with your time. If you were looking back and you had to give a young Gary Palmer a piece of advice and just say, hey, young Gary, I want to give you this one or even two pieces of advice. What would that advice be based on what you've learned and all your kind of paths that you've taken along the way?

Gary Palmer 24:59

Don't be such a perfectionist a-hole with people that are struggling.

Jason Taylor 25:05

That's again self-aware. I love that. Gary, with that, my friend, thank you for the conversation. There were so many nuggets in here that people are going to take out and listen to and and whatnot. I thank you for your time. I thank you for being a really good forward-thinking leader, trying new things and actually getting uh, you know, people of all generations to a different place based on thinking differently. So thank you for the time today.

Gary Palmer 25:30

Jason, thanks for having me. I don't do many podcasts. I prefer to live in the shadows and be anonymous. It's just my character. But getting to know you over the last several months and understand how you think and how you operate, I felt a certain kinship too, and I'm delighted to be a part of it. Awesome. Thanks, Kara.

Jason Taylor 25:47

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