Executive Suite: Rob Basso, Freeport

Rob Basso, 42, owner of Advantage Payroll Services, started small.

How small? "It was just me and my mother printing checks," he said. It was 1996, and they were working in a basement storage room of a Syosset office building while they waited for their suite to become available.

The pair started with zero customers but eventually got enough business to grow their first-year revenue to about $110,000. Today Advantage is housed in a Freeport building that Basso owns and has 46 employees, 3,000 clients and annual sales of $10 million.

Basso, who graduated from Hofstra University with a degree in history-education, was "going to take the world by storm by being a social studies teacher." But the author of "The Everyday Entrepreneur" ended up on a different track.

Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?

I was always interested in fending for myself. From a very early age, I had a morning paper route in South Jersey, outside of Philly, where I grew up. I'd get up at 6 o'clock in the morning. I'd fold all the papers and get on my bike. I did that for about a year and half when I was probably 12 and 13. That gave me the work ethic and consistency, and it gave me money in my pocket. Since my parents were divorced, my mom raised three boys. We just didn't have a lot of money to go around. So if I wanted something, I had to get it myself. When I graduated college, I rented three ice cream trucks and got three people to drive them. That was my real first entrepreneurial experience.

How did you get into the payroll business?

I decided to stay on Long Island. I couldn't find a teaching job. I was working in a deli in an office building, and I wrapped my resumé in the sandwiches. I got several job offers. I took a job with a health care firm. I was 21 years old. A week before I was supposed to start, they called me and said, "We have budget cuts. We can't hire you." The HR manager who hired me felt so bad. She said, "Listen my husband runs a regional payroll service company. Would you like to interview with him?" I'm like, "I don't even know what a payroll company is." But I went to the interview. And that's how I got started in the business.

How did you build your business?

I literally knocked on hundreds of doors a week. I made hundreds of phone calls every single week and tried to convince people that we would be a more personalized service. Fortunately, there were enough people over that first year to keep us afloat. Then we slowly got a reputation in the marketplace. In 10 years we had about 1,500 clients. It took us another 10 years to get 3,000 clients. That's where we are today.

What services do you provide?

We provide payroll: printing checks and [paying] payroll taxes; human-resource services; time and attendance solutions -- tracking people coming and going from a facility, and Affordable Care Act solutions.

How much of your business consists of helping your customers comply with the Affordable Care Act?

Over 10 percent of our client base is required to file [the forms], and that would put it at about 300 customers that we are helping with ACA compliance. What that consists of is monthly consulting calls because they don't understand it. It's not because they are not bright people but because they are busy running their businesses. It's also gathering the data. People look to the payroll company to have all the information, but we don't house all the information that the government is actually requesting. We don't necessarily keep track of who's a full-time equivalent. So we had to program all this into our system. The system will automatically look back to see what your full-time equivalents are, if you've reached the threshold of 50 full-time equivalents.

Are you optimistic about the economy?

Overall I am. We've also noticed an increase in the check counts. So when we see an increase in the average check counts year over year, we know that means that people are hiring. If people are hiring, generally things are doing better.

CORPORATE SNAPSHOT

NAME: Rob Basso, president of Advantage Payroll Services in Freeport

WHAT IT DOES: Processes payrolls, provides human-resource services and helps with Affordable Care Act compliance

EMPLOYEES: 46

REVENUE: $10 million