Ryan Englin is passionate about supporting growing businesses, particularly in blue collar industries, to build amazingly productive companies by hiring the right people.
Growing up, he saw his own father working 12-hour shifts and weekends as an owner/operator, witnessing firsthand the struggles that these companies have in hiring quality frontline employees.
Ryan was determined to help them find a better way. His company, Core Matters, provides coaching and training on attracting, hiring, and retaining rock star employees. Using his proven process, the Core Fit Hiring System, small and midsize businesses learn how to start hiring better people, faster.
With almost a decade in the business, Ryan has helped business owners achieve their goals by hiring the right people.
Follow Core Matters on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why is recruiting so hard?
- Why can’t companies find good people?
- What can someone do to hire better people?
- What are “passive” job seekers, and how can I find them?
- How does someone keep a good person once they hire them?
- I’ve had a bad experience hiring. How can I make sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes?
- What is a “Rock Star” employee, and how can I find one?
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Core Matters. Mr. Ryan Englin. How are you, man?
Ryan Englin: [00:00:32] I am fantastic.
Stone Payton: [00:00:34] Well, it is a delight to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions. I’m sure we won’t get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks? Man.
Ryan Englin: [00:00:54] You know, our mission is to help entrepreneurs understand that there is a better way to run business so that they have the time to focus on the things that they that matters most to them. And, you know, I grew up in an entrepreneurial blue collar family, and I remember my dad telling me I’m doing this to provide a better, you know, better opportunities for you kids and to give you guys the things we didn’t have. And I see entrepreneurs do that all the time. And then the 18, 20 years goes by and they’re like, Well, the kids are grown now and all the things that were really important I didn’t have time for because I was so busy, so focused on growing this business.
Stone Payton: [00:01:31] Well, that’s a little bit of the history, but what is the full backstory, man? How did you land into this line of work?
Ryan Englin: [00:01:40] You know, like I said, I grew up in an entrepreneurial blue collar family, and I did like any good son would do, and told my dad, I’m not going into the family business. So I went to college route, I went to corporate, and I just was like, This isn’t me. So eventually became an entrepreneur and I wanted to work with contractors that were making it happen. And so I ended up working with a lot of home service contractors, you know, those HVAC technicians and plumbers that that keep everything working for us. And, you know, a couple of years into it, they were all struggling with the exact same thing. They didn’t have enough people and as many leads as I could generate for them, as many opportunities I could generate for them in a marketing world, they still couldn’t find enough people. So it was in an act of desperation, insanity, whatever you want to call it. I said, You know what? Maybe I should help these guys hire front line people. And about seven years ago I did that with resounding success, and it was so much more fun. It was so different that I just said, This is what I want to do. There are so many people that don’t know how to recruit, that don’t know how to hire because no one ever taught them. Let’s create a coaching and training company where we can teach them how to build these systems and processes and attract, hire and retain the best people that are out there.
Stone Payton: [00:02:57] Man, what a noble pursuit and an important calling. Why is recruiting so hard? I mean, it’s hard for all of us, those of us in the professional services arena too. But and especially for these for these folks, you think.
Ryan Englin: [00:03:11] You know, there’s no one real easy answer. But I will tell you this. The biggest shift that I think people need to make when it comes to recruiting is realizing that recruiting is not an HR function. Recruiting is a marketing function. And when you recognize that and you start treating it like marketing, recruiting becomes a whole lot easier.
Stone Payton: [00:03:34] What an interesting frame to put on it. So in your experience, if you if you put it in the in the marketing function, it’s easy is probably not the right word, but more practical, more more cost effective, more efficient to find. I’m quoting here good people.
Ryan Englin: [00:03:55] Yeah. You know, if you think about it for a second, when it comes to recruiting, what’s the first thing most people do? They they put a job description up on a job board somewhere like indeed. Or something. And they wait for people to apply. Well, that job description is an advertisement for an opportunity to join your team. But they’re all boring, they’re all dry, they all look the same. What is the one of the biggest rules in advertising? You’ve got to stand out. You’ve got to be different. You’ve got to get noticed. And so many people think, well, I just put the same boring job description up there and it just doesn’t work. No one wants to work anymore. It’s like, Yeah, but you look like everybody else and you’re not. Let’s make that ad really stand out. Let’s make it pop, let’s make it so people go, I want to be a part of that team.
Stone Payton: [00:04:42] I love it. So you’ve been at it a while now. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun for you?
Ryan Englin: [00:04:52] You know, the thing for me, being a coach, being a trainer, the thing that just lights me up more than anything is people that are willing to make this shift and watch someone be coachable and go through it and transform not only their business but their personal life, because they go, Wow, now I’ve got people I can trust. I can grow the team as fast as I want, whenever I want. I got time for the things that are really important. I get to travel more. I get to spend more time with the kids. I get to work on these side projects. When I see that happen. That that’s. That’s why I do this every day.
Stone Payton: [00:05:23] So you’ve had the benefit of coming up in that entrepreneurial environment. Have you also had the benefit of one or more mentors along the way to kind of help you navigate that terrain of being in business?
Ryan Englin: [00:05:40] Oh, absolutely. I love mentoring. I think there are people that have been to the mountaintop that I want to climb. What better way to get to the mountaintop quickly than to go find someone who’s already done it? Absolutely.
Stone Payton: [00:05:55] And emulate those those behaviors, those disciplines. I mean, it really can sort of remove some of the friction and shrink the timeline if you’re willing to do that and seek them out. In my experience has been in our world, I’m sure it’s the same in yours. These people, they want to help. If they genuinely want to turn around and help other people grow and maybe save them a little of the heartache that they lived through, don’t they?
Ryan Englin: [00:06:20] Absolutely. You know, it’s funny that you bring up mentoring. It’s one of the principles we actually teach our clients is to implement a mentoring program for new recruits. And taking someone who’s seasoned on the team, not anything super structured or super overwhelming, but bake in a relationship for them when they’re on a new team. You know, Gallup has an engagement survey that you can go take for your team. It’s called the Q 12, and it’s all about how well your teams engage. And they found that if your team members, if someone on your team says, I have a best friend at work, that’s one of the questions. Do you have a best friend at work? If they say yes to that question, there’s a more than 80% chance that that person’s engaged just based off that one question. And when you create a mentoring program and someone who’s been there who can show them the ropes, you build that relationship that often blossoms into a friendship. And it just makes it so much easier to start recruiting when you’re able to do something like that.
Stone Payton: [00:07:14] I’ll bet. All right. So let’s talk about the work in my world. I would call it the engagement cycle, but early on, like if we were engaging you to help us or if I ran an HVAC company or something like that, especially the early stages of that relationship, what does that process look like as it unfolds?
Ryan Englin: [00:07:33] Yeah, So once we realize that someone wants to make this shift, I mean, that’s the biggest thing. If someone just says, Hey, I know what to do, I just need to do more of it. That’s often a challenge or a hill we can’t die on. But for someone that says, Yeah, I’m ready to do something different, we work with them directly for 90 days. And what we do is we work on all of their recruiting processes and systems, get them built, get them implemented, and then we teach their team how to run them on their own so that they’re not stuck having to work with us all the time. And they’re going to be better at it than we ever will because they’re living it every single day. And so we teach their team how to do it inside of that 90 days. And then after the 90 days. Now let’s start looking at onboarding and retention and all these other things. But now we’ve got a steady stream, high quality applicants coming in. We can turn that dial up anytime we want. We can fill every open position. Then after that we can say, okay, now let’s start working on how do we retain them, how do we engage them, how do we get them more productive?
Stone Payton: [00:08:32] Well, I’m glad you brought up retention and I have some questions around that. But before I go there, I’m always interested in the the the sales and marketing thing, man. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you? How do you get the opportunity to even have conversations with prospective clients?
Ryan Englin: [00:08:52] You know, the work that we do is actually been described by many people I know is disruptive. It’s a different way of thinking about it. So most people don’t wake up and say, Hey, this core matters. I want what they got. They don’t think about it. You know, there’s not a lot of people out there that are training and coaching and how to do this differently and really get successful, be successful at it and get really great results. So the number one way people learn about me is by doing shows just like this and getting the message out there because so many entrepreneurs, they want to learn and they they invest in, they’re learning, they’re reading books, they’re listening to podcasts, they’re they’re going to webinars. And so we found that’s the most successful way to get this message in front of people.
Stone Payton: [00:09:32] All right. Let’s talk about hanging on to him. Once we get we get a good one. How do we keep a man?
Ryan Englin: [00:09:39] You know, here’s the thing. And the studies show this Looking for work is one of life’s most stressful events. So think about that for a second. This is on the same list as death of a loved one. Divorce, relocation looking for work is on that same list every single year. Looking for work sucks. It’s not fun. People don’t like it. So if you’ve got somebody who is leaving you, that means they were looking for work somewhere else. That means things were pretty rough for them. Because they’re willing to go out and say that stress of looking for work is less than the stress I’m dealing with here. And I’ll tell you, over the last three or four years, we’ve seen it because so many people have struggled. What’s the first reaction over time for everyone? And we’re burning our people out. And as much as we recognize it and much as we know we’re burning our people out, we need to step back and say, Hey, you know what? Maybe we need to take on one last client. Maybe this year isn’t going to be as big a growth year because we need to preserve the health and the quality of our people. But if you think about that for a second, people leave when the stress is so much that looking for work just seems pale in comparison.
Stone Payton: [00:10:50] So what are you finding? And I’m making the assumption that you are finding some patterns. What are you finding to be common, repetitive things you see over and over? Mistakes both on the the recruiting, the development, the retention. I bet you see some of the same patterns over and over early, early on in your work with a client.
Ryan Englin: [00:11:09] Yeah, absolutely. You know, everybody says that. Everybody just, you know, everybody wants to make more money. I can’t afford the people that are out there. And the reality is most of our clients have a story, multiple stories, in fact, where they’ve hired someone who took a pay cut to come work for them. It’s not about the money, but the money is an easy answer to the problem, right? It’s much easier for an entrepreneur to write a check and just say, I’m going to pay $3 premium an hour. Then to take a step back and say, Hey, maybe I have a company culture, maybe have a leadership team, maybe I have a lack of training and development for my people, Maybe I should change those things. It’s much easier sometimes to just pay the extra hourly rate, but when you do that, you only get people who are going to come to you for more money and leave you for more money. And we’re in this market cycle where it’s all about competing for how we can pay, you know, who can pay more faster. And so if they were to take a step back and say, what is it that people want out of a work relationship, I mean, it’s really what it is.
Ryan Englin: [00:12:12] This is all about relationships. These people are giving up time with their friends and their family, the things they do for fun to come work for you. So how do we mirror what they’re giving up and create it for them here? How do we have a better company culture? How do we make sure that they’ve got good training and development, not just professional but personal development? How do we create an environment where they can have friends and have fun here? Now, I’m not saying that we just make it so that nobody works anymore, but how do we create those opportunities for them? And I already mentioned the mentoring program and that’s a great way to do that, is to create opportunities for someone to create connection at work. Makes it a lot easier to come there and stay. And when you got friends at work, you’re going to be a lot less likely to leave.
Stone Payton: [00:12:54] Well, I got to believe if you create that environment, the word will get out on its own. But particularly my dad used to say it’s a poor dog that won’t wag his own tail. If you if you get out there to let people know about that environment, finding people can quickly become people. Finding you.
Ryan Englin: [00:13:11] Yeah. You know, a big part of what we do is how do you become attractive to good people? Because so many times people say, I can’t find any good people. And I’m like, If you’re not attracting good people, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, Am I attractive to good people? Do people know about the cool things that we’re doing? Like we talk to companies all the time. I’m like, Where’s that on your website? I just had a call yesterday. He’s talking about all these things that they’re doing that’s different than the industry. I’m like, Where’s that on your website? He’s like, Yeah, it’s probably a good point. I probably have it out there. People don’t know. You have to brag and get credit for the things that you’re doing and when you do that, people are going to come to you. You’re not going to have to go looking for them anymore.
Stone Payton: [00:13:49] Well, it’s an excellent point. And I think that paired with a with a strong, compelling origin story, you know, in my line of work, I get to hear some really interesting origin stories, how things got started. And I would think as a prospective employee, if I looked into an organization and I heard their origin story and then I heard what you’re describing here about the environment, I got to believe that would that could be very compelling.
Ryan Englin: [00:14:16] Absolutely. We got a we got a client that we worked with last year. And, you know, they when we started asking them about all of these stories and I think you bring up story like, oh yeah, this this person, you know, has this story on how working for us impacted their personal life. This person we help buy a house. This person got out of debt. This person was able to retire a millionaire. Like they have all these stories. And when we started collecting all these things and we sat down the I remember the owner of the company looking at me, he goes, You know what? That’s what I want. I want a company where every single person that interacts with us has a story to share. All right. I want some powerful stories to share. And so that all of a sudden became more of their vision for how they drive the company forward.
Stone Payton: [00:15:01] Yeah. Okay. I want to get some tactical advice. It’s one of the benefits of doing this for a living. Guys, if you want free consulting, get yourself a radio show. They may not always give you the answer, but you could. You could try. But no, I got to confess to you, Ryan. Well, I think I do a pretty good job in this platform of conducting an interview. I think I’m probably the worst interviewer on the planet when it comes to conducting an interview for someone to come and work with us. And I know one of the traps. I’m at least self-aware to know that one of the traps I fall into is I just have a tendency to, I don’t know, just believe in them too quick and I don’t know, maybe hiring my own image. Again, are there some some things that you share with your clients to help them do a better job in that part of the process?
Ryan Englin: [00:15:54] Yeah, interviewing is my favorite part of the process. Like once we found good people and they’re applying, once we’ve automated the process so that we can keep up with volume, how do we interview them, make sure that they’re they’re the right people. And I’m going to do a quick little plug here. I’m going to give my website later, but all my website, you can download a copy of my book about how to hire the ones you won’t want to fire. And in that book, I outlined some very on point tactics, things you can go do by the end of the day to help with your interview process. But let me let me share this. When it comes to interviewing, what I usually see happen, and this is the biggest mistake people make in interviewing is the employer feels that they have to sell themselves. And so what happens is and I’m not kidding, I had I had a client that had me this year. Here’s my interview process. Spend 25 minutes bragging about how awesome we are. That was step one. Well, here’s what happens. You brag about how awesome you are for 20 minutes. You sell yourself and then you start asking questions. And guess what? You just gave them all the answers to the test. So they tell you everything that you want to hear and you’re like, This is amazing.
Ryan Englin: [00:16:58] And you hire them and they don’t work out because what we need to be doing is we need to be focusing on them, selling us. If we want higher quality people joining our team, we got to make sure they’re high quality during the interview process, and that means they have to sell us. Now good employees. They don’t interview a lot. Right? They’ll work five, six, seven years, one place, and then say, okay, it’s time to move on. The ones that are interviewing all the time, you don’t want to hire anyways because they’re got a new job every three months. But the ones that are really good, they don’t interview well. Because they don’t do it a lot. And so what you need to do when you’re interviewing is be there for them and help them through this process, Guide them with questions, just like you’re doing here with me. You’re interviewing me today and you’re asking me questions to guide this conversation. Same thing we need to do. There is ask them questions to guide them through the answers that you’re looking for, so that you create a really great conversation and you can make a really objective decision as to whether or not they’re a good person to hire.
Stone Payton: [00:18:00] Well, I’m glad I asked. I think that’s helpful because I think I resemble that remark. I think I probably babble on about how great and wonderful and how Business RadioX is going to solve world peace. And then he got. So I want to solve world peace, you know, when do I start? Oh, that’s funny. I got to hear more about this book. I got some questions about content and structure and that kind of thing. But a broader question, when you were I want to talk about the process of writing a book in the first place, because a lot of our listeners feel like maybe they have a book in them. Did did parts of the book come together much more easily than than others? Was the whole thing a struggle? Was the whole thing a breeze? What was that process of writing a book like for you?
Ryan Englin: [00:18:44] Well, I’m going to give you two answers because the book I mentioned, how to hire that ones. You don’t want to fire that book I wrote just out of an opportunity that I saw with my clients. I was coaching them through the same thing. It’s real short. It’s about 60 pages. That book just kind of flowed out. It was done and it was really easy. But I am now in the final stages of writing a much bigger book that goes through our whole process about a year and a half into it. And that book, there were parts of it where I realized going through the book that some of it just came out. It was easy. And then there were other parts. I was like, I teach people this stuff, but I don’t know how to articulate it in a way that it’s going to make sense in a book. And it required me going back to the drawing board on some of the things that we teach and some of the things that we do. And, you know, here we are a year and a half later, and it’s not because that’s how long it takes to write a book. It’s just there were some parts that were just real sticky. And when I shared it with with test readers, they were just like, Ryan, I am so lost what you’re doing here. But you know, the thing that I’m learning now, having gone through this when I write my next book, is that plan up front, knowing that the journey that you’re going to take the reader on from start to finish, just spending the time doing that, I wish I would have done that more. I think it would have been a lot easier to do the book.
Stone Payton: [00:20:00] Well, and I got to believe the blood and sweat that you are putting in by what you’re describing. I got to believe coming out of that, that if nothing else, and I’m sure it’s going to have a marvelous impact on a lot of folks, me included. But if nothing else, I bet it helps crystallize solidify for you the ways to articulate your disciplines, your processes, your methodology. I bet you I’ll bet it makes you more effective coming out of the writing process.
Ryan Englin: [00:20:32] Oh, undoubtedly. I provide a better service to our clients because I’ve been through that process. Yeah, no question.
Stone Payton: [00:20:39] All right. Totally on a different track here. You’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. You got a lot going on. You’re staying busy. And I’m interested to know outside the scope of this work. Your work? What, if anything, do you have a tendency to to nerd out about, like, something totally different where you sometimes you just dive in neck deep, whether it’s a hobby or something like that. You have a tendency to nerd out on anything outside the scope of your work.
Ryan Englin: [00:21:08] I mean, we only got a few minutes left in the show. Where do I start? But, you know, I got little kids at home and so any chance I get to do anything with them? But I tell people there are two things. I’ll get out of bed before the sun for golf and fishing. And so any opportunity I get, in fact, I’m actually my wife and I are talking about moving across country so that we can actually be in a place where I can golf and fish more. Mostly fish, because out here there’s just not a lot of places to go fishing out here in Arizona. I love those things. And then, you know, with my kids, you know, I look at that and say, Hey, my job is to prepare them so that when they’re 18, they’re ready to leave the house and ready to go. And so any opportunity I get to pour into them, you know, we study the Bible together. We we have great conversations. I mean, the little kids, six and eight. And any chance I get to spend with them is is a time when I get to geek out.
Stone Payton: [00:22:03] Yeah. Also always interested to know I often frame it up what’s on your nightstand but kind of getting at where what are you reading? Whether it’s blogs, books or studying for your own growth and development. What are you reading these days?
Ryan Englin: [00:22:21] Well, I already mentioned the Bible. Read that as often as I can. Great wisdom in there, great stories in there. And, you know, it’s the thing is, is almost everything that I read translate into how I can do my to my business better. I mean, at the end of the day, I’m in a relationship business. I’m helping companies find better employees. And it’s all about communication. And my wife and I, we read a lot of communication books, you know, marriage, communication and how men and women communicate different. And so much of that is able to to translate back in. But, you know, one of the one of the books that I really love, reading is love and respect. And it’s just about how people communicate differently. I can use the exact same words my wife uses and means something completely different.
Stone Payton: [00:23:11] That is so true and challenging. That’s true to Peyton House, too.
Ryan Englin: [00:23:18] Yeah. So so so those are some of the books that I’m reading. And then, you know, as far as a business book goes, one of my favorite is Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss.
Stone Payton: [00:23:26] Hmm.
Ryan Englin: [00:23:27] Negotiating book. It’s amazing book. I’ve read it a couple of times. Probably one of my favorite business books.
Stone Payton: [00:23:33] So I have with my youngest daughter. We decided we’re going to call it the Daddy Daughter Book Club, but she recommended one that I’m enjoying. What does it costing you not to listen? And and it goes well beyond just the active listening stuff, which is good. And I’m really enjoying that. But I’m also enjoying reading the book along with someone else or one that they’ve recommended, and in particular because it’s my daughter. But I do think even if the content is coming from someone, maybe even especially of someone outside your arena, you can often that different perspective on disciplines and thought patterns can can often that can really make a big difference.
Ryan Englin: [00:24:16] Mm hmm.
Stone Payton: [00:24:18] So, yeah, I’m. I’m enjoying that as well. All right, before we wrap, I’d love to leave our listeners with just a handful of pro tips when it comes to any of this marketing and recruiting and developing, retaining and look game. The number one tip is, you know, reach out and have a conversation with Ryan or someone on his team. But between now and then, maybe some things they could be reading, doing, not doing that, you know, just a couple of actionable things. They can start moving on.
Ryan Englin: [00:24:50] Yeah. You know, we we spend a lot of time working with our clients on front line employees. Those are the ones that, you know, you’re probably paying them hourly, high turnover. You need lots of people. And that’s really our focus is helping them there, because once you’ve done that and you figured out the front line, the other stuff becomes so much easier. I would say that there’s two things that everybody needs to do right now. Number one is get really clear. I mean, crystal clear, just like you did when you met with your marketing company to find out who your ideal customer was and figure out who is the best type of employee for you, how do they behave? What do they believe? What do they do for fun? Get really clear on who that is, because when you do that, it’s going to make it so much easier to do. Step number two. Which is right. A better job ad. Get rid of what HR wrote and write it like a commercial. Give it to your marketing team and say, Hey, make this sound engaging, make it fun, make it compelling, make it so that someone would actually want to apply here.
Ryan Englin: [00:25:57] Our job ads are much longer than what most companies do, and we just delivered a job ad to a franchise brand and we got the reply and they’re like, Can I apply here? And it was like, This is us. But I’ve never heard it articulated this way. I’ve never heard it described this way. So get really clear on who you’re writing those ads for and then write a better ad and give it to your marketing team. Say, have fun with it, make it exciting, make it compelling. Forget You know what? Here’s the thing. If I if I’m an electrician or if I’m a customer service rep or a sales rep, I know what those people do. You don’t have to tell me all of the stuff that I have to be able to do. That’s in the in the new higher paperwork. Right. Let legal handle that stuff. But in those ads, tell me why I should come do it for you.
Stone Payton: [00:26:51] Man makes all the sense in the world, especially when you say it. No, it makes perfect sense. I just love putting that marketing frame on it. And I’m going to we’re going to take your counsel here at the Business Radio Network, and I’m sure a lot of our listeners will as well. All right. What is the best way for folks who are listening to this to to connect with you, tap into your work, maybe get access to that tool that you mentioned earlier in the conversation and maybe have a conversation with you, man, whatever you think is appropriate, website, LinkedIn, email, that kind of stuff.
Ryan Englin: [00:27:23] Well, I am an easy guy to find LinkedIn especially, but core matters dot com. Go to our website. We’ve got hiring tips, we got resources, we’ve got downloads. We just launched a brand new 14 question takes less than 2 minutes survey. You take this and you get instant results on where you need to focus most in your business that you can start, attract, hire and retain the best people. Everything’s on our website at core Matters.
Stone Payton: [00:27:51] Fantastic. Well, Ryan, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. I appreciate the insight to perspective and keep up the good work. Man. What you’re doing is important and we we sure appreciate you.
Ryan Englin: [00:28:06] Thank you.
Stone Payton: [00:28:06] Stone My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Ryan England with core matters and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.
Olivia Smith, Transformation Expert, founder of 
