Ryan Englin on Sales Made Simple for Outdoor Living Pros: Hiring Tips for Hardscapers and Landscapers

I sat down with Joshua Gillow and Dwayne Drawn on the Outer Spaces podcast to talk about why trade contractors keep saying "I can't find good people" and what they need to change.

Here's the core of my message: stop looking for good people. Start attracting them.

Most contractors approach hiring the same way they did 20 years ago. Dust off an old job ad, post it on a job board, and wait. That's the equivalent of putting on the clothes you wore 25 years ago to impress your spouse and expecting them to still work. The world changed. Your approach has to change with it.

I walked Joshua and Dwayne through the fishing framework I use with every client. When you go fishing, the first decision is not where to fish. It's what kind of fish you want to catch. That one decision narrows down everything. The bait, the gear, the location, the time of day. Same thing with hiring. Get clear on who you want. Most business owners have sat down and figured out their ideal customer. Why haven't they done the same for their ideal employee? That's the Core Fit Profile and it changes everything downstream.

We spent a good chunk of the conversation on something I feel strongly about. Recruiting is a marketing activity, not an HR activity. HR is about compliance and following the rules. Recruiting is about creating an emotional connection with the right people and compelling them to raise their hand. Interviewing is a sales activity. If you have an HR person writing your job ads and running your interviews, you're putting the wrong person in the seat. Hand recruiting to whoever does your marketing. Hand the interview process to your best salesperson. The person who knows how to connect with people and ask the right questions.

Joshua asked where to start building a company people actually want to work for. I told him the same thing I tell every client. You don't have to do this alone. Find the internal champions already on your team who are bought into the vision. Get them involved. One of the biggest myths of entrepreneurship is that the buck stops with you on everything. It doesn't. And if you believe it does, you will stay stuck.

I shared a client story about a guy stuck at three and a half million for six years. He's a flaming visionary. A 10 out of 10 on quick start. His team's biggest complaint? He makes a decision at 8 AM, changes it by noon, and reverses it again by 3 PM. He needed a buffer. An implementer who manages the day-to-day so he can get out of his own way. That's a hiring decision. And it's the kind of hire that breaks the ceiling.

We also talked about the Growth Accelerator, which is our process for keeping people engaged after you hire and onboard them. It's an employee-led personal and professional development plan. I put heavy emphasis on the personal side. Invest in someone's financial literacy, their relationships, their communication with their kids. When you pour into the human being, not just the job title, they look back at you and say, "Nobody else on the planet does this for me. I'm staying."

One of the stories I shared was about a 250-employee landscaper in Arizona. 92% of his crews speak only Spanish. I asked him when he last posted a job ad in Spanish. Never. I asked when he put "now hiring" on a Spanish-language board. Never. He's standing right in front of the people he wants to hire and they can't read his message. We have a reinforcing steel client with 200 employees, 85% Spanish-speaking. We put everything in Spanish. Website, job ads, onboarding documents. They don't have a problem finding Spanish-speaking employees now. And retention is through the roof because nobody else is thinking this way.

I also pushed back hard on the "nobody wants to work" narrative. I don't believe we have a labor shortage. I believe we have a "we treat our people like crap" problem. Restaurants are a perfect example. Hospitals are another. These industries ignored their responsibility to their people for years and now act surprised when those people leave. As employers, we own that. If you took someone in at $8 an hour and left them there for four years, that's on you. Not them.

The conversation hit on trust, vulnerability, patience with new hires, and the importance of becoming the person you want to hire. I wrote about all of this in Hire Better People Faster. The premise is simple. You need to become who you want to hire. If you want trustworthy people, be trustworthy first. If you want people who are vulnerable and honest, model that yourself.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on building culture and hiring systems for trade contractors on Titans of the Trades.