DeeAnn Palin left a senior operations role at Fortune-100 companies like Motorola and Target to start OnPoint Business Solutions, which provides fractional HR and CEO coaching to private companies. She says most CEOs treat HR as a cost center when it's actually where hidden value lives, directly affecting EBITDA and company valuation.
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Welcome to another CEO Wisdom Pod. We have Deanne Palin with us today. Deanne's a CEO and business coach. She does, uh, fractional HR services, HR strategy. She's a CEO Whisperer. Company is called On Point, uh, Business Solutions. Uh, she's been at that one for 11 years while being a chair of a couple of other organizations. So Deanne, welcome to podcast. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.
Hi, I spent about 20 years running HR and operations for companies and left a head of operations job at the Phoenix Suns in 2014 to start OnPoint Business Solutions. And, um, we work very closely with founder-led or PE-backed companies, helping them grow for scale and transact.
There you go. Um, how did you get here, right? Because you had some kind of, uh, you had a career in corporate, I would guess, right, before you decided to launch your own company. Tell me a bit more about that. I think your first one was Motorola, right?
Yes, I, I worked with a couple Fortune 100 companies— Motorola, Target— and then helped privatize a state agency into a fully rated insurance company, spent some time in operations at a few other large firms. I realized very quickly that HR was seen as a governance, as an expense center, and just really reactively managed at most organizations. And so went back, got my MBA and, and change management, project management certifications. And Started doing work with founder-led companies, coaching CEOs and working as head of operations or advisor, and realized that many, many challenges that companies were facing as they scaled for growth or prepped for sale were people and process related and very, very expensive and not always showing up on the P&L. So founders were wondering why their margins were shrinking, why they couldn't get the EBITDA or value out of sale that they wanted. And I work with my team, we've got 12 folks on our team, and work very diligently to help CEOs find value in their business and prep for sale or go through transactions and get to synergy quicker.
Right. And on point, why leave corporate? Why leave comfort and launch your own company? What happened there?
It's, it's a little crazy of a thing to do. I was a single mom raising 2 preteen daughters and needed to be with them for— they both traveled nationally for volleyball. And I was working 10, 12-hour days in corporate America and just not feeling the fulfillment. I wanted to do the work we just described. And so I Left corporate America, started OnPoint, and was able to travel with my girls and build that business on the side.
Did you offer from the get-go M&A services and executive coaching, or it was mostly HR when you started?
It, it actually was mostly operations when I started and CEO coaching. I did a lot of work with CEOs, um, serving as an advisory, helping them coach and develop and grow their executive teams and build the business. And I frankly had thought I wanted to be done with HR. And what I realized in that role was every time I lifted a hood, there were HR issues. And whether it was not having the right leadership structure, not having the right recruiting strategy, not managing compensation and benefits, all of the people issues. Are usually 1 to 2 of the top most important expense drivers for a company, but also can be the biggest limiters of growth. And the more I got into this work and the more times I saw it unfold, I realized we really had a special niche in helping businesses look at where this lost P&L is, you
