Storefronts along Broadway near Leland Avenue in Uptown. Photo: Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Brooke Selis has spent the past year meeting Uptown business owners one at a time. Selis, who grew up in Birmingham, Michigan, represents Automatic Data Processing, the company most people know for payroll, in the neighborhood.
Payroll is only part of what she talks about. Her pitch to owners centers on compliance. Small businesses, she argues, are among the most frequent targets of Department of Labor fines, which makes it more important for them to have systems in place for wage rules, tax filings and human resources requirements that change often.
Many hats
Nearly every owner she meets, Selis says, describes the same problem: they wear several hats and spend too much time on administrative work instead of the thing they opened the business to do. Few of them started a restaurant, salon or contracting firm in order to become experts in payroll taxes.
Her clients range from businesses a few months old to ones that have been around for decades. The goal in each case is to strip out tasks that don’t generate revenue and to reduce the risk of costly mistakes.
Consultant, not salesperson
Although her job is in sales, Selis describes it as closer to consulting. She has said she has yet to find two businesses with identical needs, so she builds each setup around the specific company in front of her.
That approach depends on relationships, and she spends a good share of her off hours at local networking and community events. The idea is to become the person owners in the area think of first when payroll, benefits or tax questions come up.
She sees the arrangement as a mix of the structure and reliability of a Fortune 500 company with the personal attention of a neighborhood adviser. Working across so many business types has also given her a close look at the range of entrepreneurs operating in Uptown, from storefront retailers on Broadway to service firms in the office buildings near Lawrence Avenue.
Marcus Hadley covers business, transit and real estate in Uptown.
