Brian Escobar has spent over 26 years in payroll, running operations for companies with as few as 1 employee and as many as 10,000, across multi-state and multi-country environments. HowPayrollworks brings that experience to the businesses and people who need it: practical, plain-language, and grounded in cycles he has actually run.
He has built payroll functions from nothing, including multi-state tax registrations and onboarding a company's first W-2 employees, stabilized operations that had lost their controls, and led implementations and conversions across more payroll systems than he can list, including isolved HCM, UKG, ADP, Paylocity, Paychex, Gusto, and QuickBooks Payroll. His multi-state work includes the states that give payroll professionals the most trouble, among them California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. His experience also covers the areas most training skips: acquisition integrations, 401(k) transitions, benefits administration, and the compliance problems that only surface in live operations.
The work has produced results that matter to the business, not just to payroll. He built a payroll function from the ground up that grew to more than 3,000 employees across 100 locations and absorbed more than 50 new locations through acquisition without adding headcount, and delivered over $6 million in savings through system implementations, 401(k) overhauls, and vendor consolidation.
He is formally trained in payroll, holding a payroll certification from Queens College in New York alongside a BBA, magna cum laude, from Briarcliffe College, with continued study in federal and state payroll law. He currently advises client organizations on payroll operations, compliance, and system implementations.
Why he teaches
Teaching is not new territory for Brian. He has taught with CareerLearning for four years, built and delivered training inside corporate environments, and co-hosted more than 200 episodes of a payroll podcast, explaining this work out loud to an audience of practitioners.
He teaches because the work does not stop at the federal line. Most payroll training covers federal law and leaves people to figure out state requirements on their own, which is where the real exposure lives. His material is built directly from federal law, IRS guidance, and state regulations, and it comes from cycles he has actually run rather than from a syllabus. He has made most of the mistakes he teaches people to avoid, and he says so.