Stop Losing Money on Employees: The CEO Playbook for Growth

Hiring. Turnover. Talent. Profitability.

Most CEOs focus on revenue growth. Few realize that the biggest driver of profit is how well they manage their people.

In this episode of Unstoppable Success, Jaclyn Strominger sits down with DeeAnn Palin, founder and CEO of OnPoint Business Solutions, known as the “CEO Whisperer.” 

With over 30 years of experience across corporate leadership and business ownership, DeeAnn helps CEOs and boards accelerate growth, avoid costly people mistakes, and prepare for strategic transitions.

This conversation breaks down one of the most overlooked truths in business.

Your people strategy is your growth strategy.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The true cost of hiring mistakes and employee turnover
• Why most companies underestimate people-related expenses
• How misaligned teams quietly destroy profitability
• The leadership mistakes that create disengaged employees
• How to build an A-player leadership team
• Why values must drive behavior, not just sit on a wall
• The importance of aligning compensation with business strategy
• How to identify and develop top performers
• The difference between high potential and high performance
• How to turn your HR function into a growth engine

Key Insight:
People are not an expense.
They are your greatest lever for revenue and profitability.

This episode also reveals one of the most critical blind spots for CEOs.

 Turnover is not just a hiring problem. It is a leadership and systems problem.

From onboarding to compensation to leadership alignment, every part of your organization either drives growth or quietly drains it.

 Who this episode is for:

• CEOs and founders scaling their companies
• Entrepreneurs building or managing teams
• Business owners struggling with hiring or retention
• Leaders looking to increase profitability
• Executives preparing for growth or exit

Connect with DeeAnn Palin:
🌐 https://onptbiz.com

Take the next step:

👉 Book a strategy call Book HERE

Your business does not grow by accident.
It grows when the right people are in the right roles, aligned to the right strategy.

Transcript

Recording Started

Jaclyn Strominger 0:02

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success. I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger. And on this podcast, as you know, we hear from amazing leaders and influential people out in the marketplace. We hear their insights, their tips, their tricks, and all the things that have helped them be unstoppable and things that they can share with you. And today I have the absolute pleasure of introducing you to DeeAnn Palin. And let me tell you a little bit about DeeAnn. She is the founder and CEO of OnPoint Business Solutions. She is known as the CEO Whisperer. She helps CEOs and boards accelerate growth, avoid costly people mistakes, and prepare for strategic transitions. Very important. So many people forget about that part. With 20 years as a corporate executive and 12 years as a business owner, she brings a deep expertise in business coaching, fractional HR strategies to guide companies through sustainable growth and transformation. So thank you for being here, DeeAnn. It's great to be here. Thanks. Okay, so before we get into like I know you got your CEO of a company, but I'm always curious because a lot of where people are comes from where they've been. So share with a little bit about like what brought you where you are now and why this was so important to you.

DeeAnn Palin 1:21

Great question. It took me a little bit to come out of the closet on this one. I ran HR departments for 10, 12 years. And honestly, I hated it. And so I went back, got my MBA, got certified in change management, project management, and started running operations for companies for the next 15. And every time I looked under the hood at one of those companies, I saw people issues creating unbelievable stress on companies' expense lines and their ability to create revenue, retain clients, and frankly, the CEO's own wherewithal to want to keep running a company. And I left the Phoenix Suns in 2014, started on-point business solutions with the express intent of helping founder-led or PE-backed companies really figure out how to accelerate growth for their businesses through primarily the talent acquisition process, the talent management process, and everything that has to be aligned around that.

Jaclyn Strominger 2:39

So I love that. So I'm curious. So when you were at, you know, in HR and then you're in operations and you're you're seeing this, like what was like one big sign where you're like, oh God, they just don't get it.

DeeAnn Palin 2:52

Well, I the reason I didn't like HR was because it was so compliance-based, so yes, no, ma'am, so police officer-y, grim reaper-ish, and all reactionary. And when I got into operations and I'm managing PLs for companies and I'm managing expense lines, the thing that I kept seeing, you know, if we don't really measure as companies a lot of what it costs to hire, what it costs for turnover, what a B player leadership team can do to a company from an expense standpoint, if you don't allocate resources correctly, if you don't pay them right, if your benefit plans stink or don't drive the behaviors you want to accomplish in a company, all of that can really, really, really affect profitability. And for most founders, their ultimate pinnacle is selling a company or creating some kind of legacy outcome. And if you don't have the right profitability, you don't have the EBITDA. The EBITDA is the multiplier for what you get to keep in the bank. And so I often can find one, 2% to add to their EBITDA, which is a lot of money. And it and it drives, it's not just about the money. I mean, CEOs care about having high-performing team members, having fun at work, having customers that love what you do. It makes running the business fun when you have the right team aligned around the right things.

Jaclyn Strominger 4:27

Yeah, it, you know, it's so true. We're going to talk about alignment in a second, but I'm really kind of I'm when you know, you're sitting here talking about, you know, the cost of hiring, the cost of turnover. I mean, to me, that is that should be a huge like uh a number one focal point for a company. I mean, I think in the United States, you probably know the number, it's like in the billions of cost.

DeeAnn Palin 4:57

It's it's crazy. And I'll give you just one example. We had a service-based boots on the ground company that we support. It's a national company with 300 plus employees in 26 states, and their turnover was over 100%. And they they had to drop people, service business into different environments to actually do investigations. And what was happening is they're moving these people across city lines, state lines, putting them up in hotels, having overtime costs, having, you know, all these challenges with managing their bench, their turnover, their staffing overtime, just us fixing their systems, cleaning up their retention costs, tightening up their hiring and their onboarding. Conservatively, we save them 1.3 million in cost on the outrun. And you talked about recruiting or turnover costs in particular. For a line level staff, the cost is easily $6,000 a person for turnover. And you annualize that with $150,000, 200 frontline employees turning over in a given year, that gets to be pretty darn expensive. One executive can be three to $500,000 in turnover cost. And that doesn't include oftentimes the cost of a recruiting firm, executive search to hire and replace them, let alone just the brain damage on a CEO and everybody else carrying that workload, lack of productivity, customer and company brand. You know, it's it's pretty scary how expensive that is and how loosely we hold on to the importance of that.

Jaclyn Strominger 6:50

Yeah. So I want people to understand like this is such a huge cost and it's such an important factor. You know, people is so it's so important. So you're talking with the CEOs and you're working with their company and their teams. You know, I would say, I know, I would think one of the first things that you would need to look at is values, the values of the company and the values of the CEO and how they're bringing in. So how how do you start to fix this?

DeeAnn Palin 7:18

I usually work with the CEO and their executive team to create strategic plan that encompasses everything from their BHAG. Where do you want to be 10 to 30 years out? What do you need to accomplish in three years, financially, non-financially? What are your key capabilities? And part of that is what is your purpose of your company and your core values? And, you know, I'm dating myself saying this, but Enron had a set of values and we saw what happened to them integrity, teamwork. So it really is about making sure those values have behaviors aligned to them, that we know exactly what they look like in motion, and that a CEO and the organization would live or die by those values. You know, you hire and fire employees, you hire and fire clients and vendors and suppliers, and you manage performance and bonuses and outcomes of the business tied to those values. That's the only way they become real. And I will tell you, engagement goes up exponentially when you've got people that are aligned to what they need to do at the business, a leader that believes in them, and a set of core values that are aligned to their own personal core values. So all of that is so critical to success and productivity.

Jaclyn Strominger 8:40

Oh my God. I like you're speaking, like it's music's in my ears. But listeners, this is so important because I think sometimes I think we over we don't think about our values as much. We might think about our purpose, but we don't really hone in on values. And it is it's imperative to know the values that you stand for. So if you haven't taken the time to do a values assessment, just listeners, go ahead and do it. Do go do one. I'm sure we can. I have one. I'm sure DN has one. So, you know, we can make sure you got one for ready for you to do. So once you get the values in checked, okay, and then how do you get everybody else on board? Because, you know, as you said, your, you know, the team has to and the CEO has to live and, you know, die by these values. Yeah. So I mean, I can think about what happens, but I mean, how do we get everybody how do we get everybody on board?

DeeAnn Palin 9:42

I I will tell you the biggest impetus for positive or lack of momentum is around that executive leadership team. The first thing I ask a CEO to do with me is sit down and evaluate each of their executives on a four-box grid. Potential up one side and performance across the bottom. And performance is not just what they accomplish in their role, but how well are they living and governing those values for the company? And governing is a huge part of it. Are they allowing poor behavior just because someone's performing to be okay? You know, are they stepping on people's necks while they're hitting the sales numbers? That kind of stuff, you don't realize the collateral damage that poor behavior can have to a team and to customers and to the outcomes of the business. So the first thing I do is really assess do we have an A-player leadership team? Do we have a leadership team that is high performing, has each other's backs, and is governing and living and modeling those core behaviors? And then we do that talent calibration throughout the organization to really assess do we have the right idea and alignment around what performance is? Meaning, does every person live those values and are they high performing in the role that they're defined to?

Jaclyn Strominger 11:10

So I can see how easy that could be with like a smaller company, but how do you do with a company that's like 1600 people or thousands, you know, like more than multiple hundreds of thousands?

DeeAnn Palin 11:21

It's not easy. It's not easy. But I'll tell you.

Jaclyn Strominger 11:24

That's gonna take a long time. Yeah.

DeeAnn Palin 11:26

Well, it doesn't, it doesn't really have to. You know, a lot of companies over-define and over-process talent management. I really think if you can get people in a room together and really calibrate, and uh we do it with the simple, I've done it simply with a flip chart with four boxes, hand everybody a stack of sticky notes, and they put those folks up on the board and we talk about it and we move people around. And the leaders are taking notes about their own talent, getting feedback from each other about what other people observe. They get challenged by each other, and then we create development plans in those conversations for that group. That bottom left quadrant is they got to get up or out. They're on the hairy edge of not performing. And is it our fault or is it theirs? Have we given them a clear role? That top left is they're high potential, low performance. They're new to the job, they don't have the right scope and responsibility. What do we need to do to speed up their onboarding? That bottom right is those are our safe pairs of hands. Those are our solid performers. We just need to get out of their way and let them do great work. And that top right are our rock stars. What are we doing to support them, develop them, stretch them, expand scope? And when you get a leadership team owning talent like that, great things happen, right? And it doesn't have to be this horrible succession planning, you know, meet every two weeks, build these big, huge development plans and coaching. It really is about making those conversations come to life and your leadership team knowing it's their job to own and develop that talent.

Jaclyn Strominger 13:19

You know, I like what you said. Oh, you know, it's it's up to the leader to help own and develop their talent. And it's so important, own and develop. So much can happen when people actually do that. And there's so much that a that a person who's being developed will will take with them because it's means so much to them. So I'm curious of those people that are in that lower left quadrant, right? So when you're having these meetings, do you sometimes actually find that you know, you know, executive management team, a person is going to be like, you know what? I think that you know, Dean actually might be better over here. She's not performing great in this role, but you know, I've had a conversation with her. Maybe she would be better, like, you know, because I almost feel like that is a con that is one thing about leadership that people forget about. They might not be good in your department, but freaking hell, they're gonna be rock stars and Jaclins.

DeeAnn Palin 14:20

Yeah, that can happen. We use leadership assessments a lot for understanding the DNA of our team members, right? People are wired differently for different jobs. And so I've used DIS, predictive index, culture index, aptive. All of them are kind of derived from the same set of principles, but you can really see how someone's wired and what kinds of roles they can be most successful in. So definitely I think that's a good question. The other side of that is sometimes people don't want to make the tough call. And so they just move dead wood around. So it's really do they have great skill sets and perfectly aligned values, and we should evaluate and develop them into a different role. Or are we scared to make decisions or moving too slow on letting people be successful somewhere else? And I use those words very, very intentionally because, you know, oftentimes when someone's not performing, they hate it. They don't want to be there, they don't feel aligned. They're either from a skill set or a behavior, or maybe they and the leader don't work well together. Help them just cut them loose and let them be successful somewhere else.

Jaclyn Strominger 15:40

And again, that's actually a really key point. I I think that, you know, just to move this back almost like for somebody who might be a solopreneur, you know, this goes back to also, you know, if you are doing a task or something that you absolutely despise, that is something that you can say to yourself, I should hire somebody for that, right? It might be something that you need to do. Hire somebody for that role. Or if you have a client that you're just like miserable with, fire them. Fire the client, right? You're gonna be so much happier, and all your other clients are gonna be will totally appreciate that. So just kind of a note to think about, you know, on that on that realm. So, you know, I you know, something that you're saying just about about the talent, and I and I I pretty much believe this, but when you are aligned and they have that, what are just I mean, I guess, you know, share some of those key benefits because I I know some of them, but I think it's really amazing to see what happens at the company.

DeeAnn Palin 16:45

Yeah, when the team is aligned. Yeah. Yes. So, you know, when people are in that bottom left quadrant, I will tell you the first question I ask the leader of that person is do they know what success looks like in their role? Do they have the skills and the resources to be successful? Have you clarified and trained and developed the success for that role? So that is number one. And then beyond that, you know, you have to look at a whole team, whether it's the executive team or an in-tech department or team. Do we have all the right skill sets on this team? And are they aligned around what the objectives and outcomes are that they need to deliver? So often organizations hide financials from employees and from leaders. And there is, especially for a founder-based company, there's lots of reasons, and I know them all, why we don't want to share everything. And that's okay. But what employees need to understand is how they can contribute to increasing revenue or satisfaction for customers, or how can I really stay focused on what success looks like in my job and not create a bunch of expense for the company. You know, it's really what does my role look like and how does it drive success for the company? And we've got to get down to that individual level. And as an executive team, you know, I spend a lot of time working with executive teams on really understanding what's called a key function flow map. And that's deciding and looking at the whole pipeline from how many of what do we need from a marketing lead to an SQL to, you know, booking business? How many of what do we need to get through that pipeline to actually accomplish the revenue that we want? And if you've got revenue goals, you better be able to stream it all the way back to how many of what is it gonna take to get this? And then being able to get that executive team aligned and operating in synchronicity to accomplish that, looking at it every single week. What are the metrics that are gonna get us? How many of what do we need to create, develop, deliver, ship to get us the revenue and the profitability that we're seeking?

Jaclyn Strominger 19:25

I just love that you said that because it's so important weekly, like look at that metric weekly. Listeners, if you're not looking at your metrics weekly, start right now today, whatever day is that you're listening to this, start right now.

DeeAnn Palin 19:44

Look at your metrics. I would say first, make sure you have them set. Right. And very true, right? Yeah, first. Yeah, and let you know what the critical few are for the company because I so often I either see we've got too many metrics, and most of them are rear view mirror telling us whether that we failed or that we didn't deliver or that we did, instead of really what are those leading indicators and the metrics that really drive our business? You know, what are those five to seven company metrics that drive our business and tell us we're successful?

Jaclyn Strominger 20:23

Yeah, I like to call them the income-producing metrics. Yes. What are those income-producing things that we have to do? What are the goals that you are setting for the company? Look at them every single week. If you're not reaching them, I like I always use the terminology MMA, measure, monitor, and adjust. MMA, measure, monitor, and adjust. Go back and rinse and repeat. I would say tell everybody business is boring in the sense that you've got to keep looking at the same things, right?

DeeAnn Palin 20:53

Yeah, the monotony of it is what's important. You know, having the cadence of your one-on-ones, your team meetings, your monthly ops reviews, your quarterly planning meetings. You should be planning your business in sprints. And the cadence of that becomes so critical. That's how CEOs actually get to go home at night and spend time with their kids, is when they've got an organization and a leadership team that understands the cadence. They know what success looks like. They've got the outcomes measurement, they've got the metrics in place. CEOs can't carry all of that. Otherwise, you're just spinning plates.

Jaclyn Strominger 21:33

Well, yeah. I was just gonna say, yeah, you're we want to put those plates on shelves in order to do that, right? They nice stacked neatly. And and I love what you said about sprints. I again, music's my ears. I always talk about, you know, 30, 60, 90 days. It's 90 days. You have to always be looking at that. You know, that's why it's whether whatever your quarter is, those are things to look at. And plan by. You know. So you know, we've talked obviously, you know, talent, but is there something else that that you know when you're talking to CEOs and founders that they just are blind to besides talent?

DeeAnn Palin 22:18

I think there's there's a couple things. One, I will tell you it it fits in the talent category, but it's an expense line. You know, benefits and compensation are not an expense. They are a revenue growth leverage point. So if you're looking at your benefits and your process as a founder is my controller hired a broker, it might be my friend, it might be theirs. That's typically the case. And about 90 days before renewal, they're going out to bid and telling me I've got a 15 to 60% increase, and I'm writing a check and swallowing that pill, and I'm paying everybody what I think I have to pay in the market. And I haven't stepped back to that 50,000 foot and said, who is this company? Who do we serve? What do we do? And really step back and look at your total reward strategy and make sure it's aligned to your business strategy. Who are my critical employees? What is the makeup of my team? What behaviors am I trying to drive? What outcomes do I want or need? You have to think of your total reward strategy in those terms because you can create health and wellness plans that drive productivity, that encourage people to stay healthy. You can put dollars towards certain things that make it easy for employees to come to work and get healthy, things like telemed, things like, you know, smoking cessation, wellness. You know, if you really want a highly productive team that gets you the outcomes you need, you've got to look at what behaviors you're trying to drive. And same is true with compensation. It's not a one size fits all in terms of paying to market or above market. What positions do you have the biggest challenges serving your customers? What are those positions that could shut your business down if you don't have the best and brightest in? What are the ones that really cause you to increase customer penetration or revenue? And I'm not just talking about salespeople. I'm talking about the people that are delivering products and services. Pay attention to that flow of your product and service through the business and make sure that you're looking at your compensation plans to say, I can pay above market. I need to pay above market for this because it's one of our key capabilities. We've got to have the best and brightest in this function. Everybody else can be paid at market, but I need to pay above market for these two or three positions because they're so critical to our company. And then you've got to back into bonus plans and rewards. Benefits and comp should not be an expense line. It is a growth engine. It's the number one or two expense in most companies, are your payroll costs. Goodness gracious, don't let them be a reactive tactical thing for you. Make sure they're driving business growth.

Jaclyn Strominger 25:36

You know, I feel like you want to be able to say when you write that check for payroll and for your benefits, you want to be smiling because you know that you are helping every single one of your employees. And it's like, thank you for being here. Thank you for your service. Thank you for the job well done. And I love that you shared a reward strategy. Because I don't really necessarily think a lot of companies have that baked in.

DeeAnn Palin 26:04

Well, I'll tell you what I see a lot when we when we drop into a business, I see salespeople being highly compensated because it's easy, it's qual quali, quantitative, you know, and you do you want all that upside. And if those are critical employees, absolutely, but don't miss those that are building and delivering your services because sales can sail all day long, but somebody's got to deliver and make sure those customers are happy, right? So you don't want to miss the boat on really looking again at that key function flow, right? You're looking at who's selling it, who's delivering it, how satisfied customers are, what is our quality as a result. And it depends. I've worked in over 22 different industries. So, you know, it really depends on industry where those levers are, but you've got to get to the bottom of it.

Jaclyn Strominger 27:02

Yeah, no, I absolutely love that. And it's so important, you know, as you said, you know, sales can sell all day long, but it's the people who are actually working with the customers one-on-one. They're the ones that matter so much because that's where your retention stays. Like you don't, you could, you know, how many, how much does your team have to sell if you're retaining X number of clients?

DeeAnn Palin 27:29

And I I would say, Jaclyn, it's even more than that. You're exactly right. You've got the hunters on the front end of the business, your sales teams, you have farmers managing those clients. And you need to be looking at your business to say, how could I expand this customer, what we're delivering, how often we're delivering, how can I get referrals from them? You know, I think so often clients don't think about how they can farm their current clients. You know, even just looking, I'll give you an example. We have a client that works with hospital groups and they build their contracts hospital by hospital, department by department. And if if you look at how hospitals are run, there's usually hospital groups, right? So if you're looking, if your contract is directly with a hospital department in Phoenix, Arizona, that's one customer, one client. That hospital group might be made up of seven hospitals in 23 different areas, right? It and are you working that food chain is what I call it with the CEO. Right. Who is managing that larger relationship and those larger contracts to expand your opportunity? If you've got one thrilled customer in the corner of one hospital, man, work that food chain and build that relationship with the the hospital group.

Jaclyn Strominger 29:03

Right. I was like to say, build that relationship capital because you you're that relationship capital is it is gold. And you know, I actually just shared this the other day with with one of my clients basically saying, how you know the people that you currently know are the people that you should concurrently be building. Right. Right. You know, don't forget that you know you might, you've already, you already have them, you know, work with them. Build that build that relationship capital. It is so important. And you're talking about hospitals, and let me tell you, I see firsthand they are so many hospitals are a mess. I was gonna try to use a different word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're a mess. They're and and it's interesting because I feel, and you can you know, tell me what you think about this, but it's like sometimes I feel like the CEOs forget that the some CEOs are great with this, but some CEOs forget that the doctors and the physicians are one of their number one customers. They need to keep them happy.

DeeAnn Palin 30:16

Yeah. Well, and I'll also tell you, you know, I see this in engineering firms, I see this in any kind of company where you have trained specialists like doctors, like lawyers, like, you know, people that go to school for lots of years to be hone their craft, you know, those people don't usually have business degrees, right? They don't have experience running a business. And so making sure that if you're a hospital group, if you're a big engineering firm, if you're a law firm, any company, but especially those, making sure that you've got the expertise to run that business inside, right? I I'll I'll tell you, Jackie, I I have two girls. They're 21 and 24. And one of the requirements of me paying for their undergrad was that they had to have at least a minor in business because it's too much job security for me when people don't know how to set up and run a business. And, you know, I think it's so critical that you've got the right operational structure. All the things that we've talked about, right? Knowing how to set up a culture, knowing how to create profitability, knowing how to lead a team, how to align around goals, how to, how to manage customers and delivery. All of that doesn't happen on accident.

Jaclyn Strominger 31:42

No, it doesn't. And it's and you're right, it's so important to have that degree and and to understand the importance that business is in every is is is everywhere. And and you can take that wherever you go. It's so important. So Dan, you are such a doll. I love and just like loves connecting with you. I could talk to you probably all day about this, but what is the best way for our listeners to connect with you and get more of your greatness?

DeeAnn Palin 32:13

Our website is on point biz. So it's O-N-P-T-B-I-Z. You can connect with me there. That's a great space. We do a lot of work, fractional HR for companies. We do a lot of merger and acquisition work, helping companies look for and build value to grow and manage to find the revenue and profitability in the human resource function. So again, it's www.onptb-i-z.com.

Jaclyn Strominger 32:45

Okay, we will make sure we put that in the show notes. Listeners, please do me a favor, share this episode with your friends, business colleagues, because there is so many important nuggets of information here in this episode. And then do me the other favor if you haven't already subscribed, subscribe. And lastly, we have a brand new community on the school platform. It's the Unstoppable Success School Community or on the school platform. So go over there. That's the that link will be in the show notes. And please join us because we are making it free for the first hundred people. So thank you so much, Dan, for being an amazing guest. And thank you, listeners, for listening. Because of you, our show keeps growing every single month. And so I appreciate each and every one of you. I'm your host, Jaclyn Straminger. This is Unstoppable Success, helping you leap to your greatest success.