Five Years In: What I Got Wrong, What I Got Right, and What Actually Matters About HR
HR risk is something most business owners don’t think about — until it’s too late. In this post, HR Allies founder Danielle reflects on five years of lessons learned.
There’s a version of success we all picture early in our careers.
For me, it was becoming a Vice President with a large team, a large office, and a seat at the executive table. I got there. I checked every box I had set for myself. And then, quietly, I realized I didn’t have another box to chase.
At the same time, the world shifted.
In 2020 COVID times, I was leading HR for a hospitality company with 4,100 employees. Within months, we furloughed and then laid off about 60% of our workforce. Employees were scared, angry, and uncertain. The ones losing their jobs were understandably devastated. The ones staying were worried they’d be next.
Others were frustrated (that’s an understatement) about returning to the office while the rest of the world stayed home.
And HR sat in the middle of all of it.
I loved my job. But that version of HR — absorbing constant emotion and doing it all under pressure and sorrow — wasn’t what I had spent my career working toward.
Around that time, I had a thought I didn’t expect: What if I tried something different?
So I did.
In November 2020, I left my corporate role. Six days after eloping in Las Vegas (yes, really), I turned on a very basic website and officially launched HR Allies.
The truth? I didn’t start it because I had some grand, strategic vision.
I started it to challenge myself. To see if I could build something on my own. To be my own boss. To create a schedule that felt like mine.
And if I’m being honest, I had a level of confidence that probably wasn’t entirely reasonable.
The First Year:
The first year was… humbling.
There were moments my debit card got declined buying a birthday card at Walmart. Another time, buying Halloween candy at Five Below. I went from being a company officer and making HR decisions for thousands of employees to screwing up my own email system, leaving me incommunicado for a week.
It was also lonely.
For 15 years, I had worked alongside sharp, funny, interesting executives and thoughtful, caring HR professionals. Suddenly, I had no coworkers. No hallway conversations. No built-in sounding board.
What I did have was a lot of time, a lot of networking, and a growing realization that I had underestimated almost everything about building a business — especially how hard it is to find clients.
And then something interesting happened.
I didn’t get calls about the work I thought I’d be doing — handling discrimination and harassment complaints.
Instead, I started getting calls from former colleagues at new companies:
“We don’t have an employee handbook. Can you help?”
“We don’t have a hiring process. Can you build one?”
“We don’t have any HR structure at all. Can you set it up?”
That’s when it clicked.
For the next few years, I built HR Allies around compliance, structure, and HR foundations. The work was steady. The business grew. And from the outside, it looked like everything was heading in the right direction.
But about four years in, I gave myself permission to ask a different question:
What do I actually enjoy doing?
The answer wasn’t “on-call HR support.” It wasn’t being available all day for routine questions or positioning myself as a Fractional CHRO to work on strategic HR plans.
What I realized I love — and where I do my best work — is stepping into high-stakes situations where something feels off, unclear, or risky… and helping business owners navigate it in a way that protects them.
Because over time, a pattern became impossible to ignore:
Most Business Owners Underestimate HR Risk:
Most business owners think HR is about keeping employees happy.
But it’s not.
It’s about protecting the business from mishandled employee situations that can quickly become financially, operationally, or legally risky.
Owners don’t know what they don’t know. And in the absence of clear guidance, they rely on instinct — reacting quickly, making inconsistent decisions, or avoiding difficult conversations altogether.
That’s where things go sideways.
Not because they’re bad operators. But because they’ve never had to think about how their decisions would look if they were reviewed by an attorney, a regulator, or a jury.
The HR Risk Mistake I See Most After Five Years:
Five years in, the biggest mistake I still see is this: Thinking you’re not “big enough” to need HR.
If you have employees, you have exposure. It’s not a matter of if issues arise — it’s when. And when they do, the way they’re handled matters more than most owners realize.
On a personal level, HR Allies has given me something I didn’t expect when I started:
Freedom.
The ability to work on projects that genuinely interest me. To hike on a weekday when the weather is perfect. To have lunch with people I’ve met through networking instead of rushing back to a desk. To cook dinner more often. To work remotely while visiting family across the country.
And, maybe most importantly, the ability to shape my work around how I want to live — not the other way around.
If I could go back and tell 2020 Danielle one thing, it would be this:
You’re going to figure this out. And you’re going to build a life that looks very different — and much better — than the one you thought you wanted.
Five years later, what I want HR Allies to be known for is simple:
Clear, defensible HR judgment in moments that matter.
Because HR risk isn’t about paperwork. It’s about how decisions look when someone else reviews them later.
And the businesses that understand that early are the ones that stay out of trouble later.
Smart operators don’t eliminate HR risk. They recognize it early — and handle it deliberately.
