Ryan Englin

I grew up watching my dad run a plumbing company. Good guy, great at the work, terrible at hiring. Not because he didn't care — because nobody in the trades teaches you how to compete for talent the way corporate America does. The big companies have recruiters, employer brands, and benefits packages. My dad had a truck and a handshake.

That gap stuck with me. I spent years in corporate recruiting — learning the playbook that Fortune 500 companies use to attract and keep people. Then I walked away to bring that same playbook to the companies that actually need it most: the small and mid-size businesses in the trades, field services, and construction.

I founded Core Matters to help business owners build the kind of employer brand that makes good people want to work for them — and stay. Wrote a book called Hire Better People Faster to put the framework in people's hands. Started the Titans of the Trades podcast to have honest conversations with the leaders who are doing it right.

More recently, I co-founded FieldCon — performance management software built for the trades. Every HR tool I looked at was built for office workers, then awkwardly translated for the field. FieldCon starts from the opposite end: how do you actually develop a crew lead, a service tech, a foreman? Build the tool around that.

The mission hasn't changed since day one: make the trades a place where the best people want to build their careers. I just have better tools to do it with now.