Ryan Englin on Sales Made Simple: Building Real Trust With Your Crew Starts With You

I went on Sales Made Simple with Joshua Gillow to talk about something most owners in the trades avoid: how you actually show your crew you care.

Let me start where I started on the show. If you heard the topic and felt the urge to shut the episode off, you're the person who needs it most. I'm a data guy. My opinion and your opinion are worth the same, which is nothing. The data is clear. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. Nobody leaves for a dollar more an hour. Looking for work is consistently one of the most stressful events in a person's life, and nobody wants to do it. Your guys know what they have where they are. Jumping into the fryer and hoping it's better over there is a gamble most of them won't take. So they stay. And they quietly check out.

Joshua and I agreed on something important. Most owners genuinely care about their people. I believe that. So I asked him the question I ask every owner I work with. If you care that much and they don't know it, whose fault is that? It's not your guys' fault. It's yours. And it is fixable.

We talked about why this is so hard, especially for men. 94% of the trades are men. We grow up learning emotions are weakness. I told Joshua about watching my grandfather and my father at funerals when I was eight or ten years old. Stern. No emotion. Inside I was devastated and I shoved it down because that's what I saw the men do. That training follows us onto job sites.

Here's what that costs. We are the most connected generation in history and the loneliest. Work is the one place most people spend time with others who share their interests. If we don't make room to connect at work, they go home lonely. In construction the suicide rate runs five times the national average. The saddest part is that when someone hurts themselves, there are people on that crew who truly cared and never said a word. Because we don't do that here.

Then there's the "no news is good news" belief. If you don't hear from me as your boss, keep doing what you're doing. When did we decide the only time we communicate with our people is when they're screwing up? That's exactly why they think you don't care.

I gave Joshua the practical side too, because nobody needs a therapy couch in the break room. I walked through the fuzzy file. You hand it to people during onboarding, and it's roughly 20 questions. Tell me about your spouse. Where did you meet. What's your anniversary. Favorite restaurant. Favorite movie. Favorite sports team. Favorite ice cream flavor. They fill out so much paperwork on day one that they forget they ever answered. Then their kid gets a birthday card in the mail that says "I work with your dad, he's amazing, happy birthday." You just told that man you care. One disclaimer I repeated on the show. If you do it for Bill, you do it for John. The system matters more than the gesture.

Joshua brought up carrying Gatorades out on a hot day. I love that. I'd upgrade it. Know every guy's favorite flavor before you walk out there. That's the difference between a nice gesture and proof you went out of your way.

We also hit the "leave it at home" mentality. How many owners say that? This isn't an Apple TV show. There's no magic elevator. You know what it's like to fight with your spouse in the morning and lose your focus all day. So stop expecting your crew to park it at the door. Build enough trust that a guy walks up and says his head isn't in the game and he doesn't belong in the excavator today. Then thank him. That's caring.

One of my favorite tools came up near the end. In your morning huddle, ask one question. Scale of 1 to 10, how'd you sleep last night. When a guy says two, three, four days in a row, you pull him aside. Sending that man home for two days, even paid, beats what you'll spend recruiting his replacement. Every single time.

I also shared my Clifton Strengths result. Empathy ranks 28th out of 34 for me. I teach empathy anyway, because there are tools and systems that demonstrate it even when it doesn't come naturally. That's the whole point of building this into your processes instead of waiting to feel like it. Create traps. Tell your team you'll send a gift card for every anniversary, and watch them volunteer the dates. That's accountability.

This connects straight to the work I do on employer branding and recruiting as marketing. The relationship you build after the hire determines whether the hire sticks. I wrote about the front half of that in Hire Better People Faster.

If you liked this, I go deeper on trust, retention, and leading frontline crews on Titans of the Trades.