Ryan Englin on The Plumbing Sales Coach: How to Hire Better People Faster

I went on The Fresh Approach with Christopher Fresh to talk about why most trade contractors are stuck in a hiring loop they built themselves, and what it takes to break out of it.

Chris and I covered a lot of ground. We talked about why recruiting is a marketing activity, not an HR activity. We talked about core values, vision, employee referrals, and the real reason that six-week hire who looked amazing in the interview flames out every single time. If you run a service plumbing company or any blue-collar trade business, this conversation was built for you.

Let me start where I always start. My dad was an owner-operator. He worked 12-hour days, six and seven days a week. He wanted the American dream. Time freedom. More money. More for his family. What he got was a business that owned him. The reason? Nobody ever taught him how to build a team of people he could trust. He's a blue-collar guy. That's common. And it is fixable.

I started a marketing company years ago, and a few years in, my clients started telling me they didn't need more leads. One plumbing company in particular had four trucks sitting empty in the yard with no techs. They were booking AC calls three weeks out and watching 70% of those customers cancel. I said, let me help. Three weeks later, all four trucks were full and two more were on order. That was the moment I realized the same principles I used to attract customers work to attract employees. That insight became the foundation of everything I teach inside the Core Fit Hiring System.

Chris asked me to share the rhinoceros story, and I love telling it. I was working with a company that claimed to have 27 core values. Twenty-seven. But as I sat in their office, I noticed something. Photos, sculptures, and wood carvings of rhinoceroses everywhere. The owner had read a book about being an unstoppable force and fell in love with the idea. A herd of rhinos is called a crash. They put their head down and nothing stops them. Everyone in that company was already living it. Already talking about it. But they never committed to it as a value. We sat down, redid all their values, and made it official. That's how real core values work. They're descriptive, not prescriptive. You don't copy them off a poster. You watch how your people already behave, then you name it and own it.

Chris and I also hit on the difference between core values and what I call permission-to-play values. Not stealing. Not lying. Showing up. Those are table stakes. You don't even get to sit at the table without those. They are not differentiators. If your core values are honesty and integrity, you haven't done the work yet.

One of the most actionable things we talked about is employee referrals. Most referral programs fail for two reasons. First, only 6% of your people are motivated by money or recognition, and that's exactly what every referral program rewards. Second, most programs don't pay out until the new hire stays 90 days. That's not a referral program. That's an employee retention program. You just made your tech responsible for keeping their friend around for three months. That's not their job.

Flip it. Reward the behavior you want. The behavior you want is the referral itself. Pay it out the day the new hire shows up for work. Or put every referral into a quarterly drawing for something meaningful, like a $2,000 gift card. And equip your people with how to have the conversation. Nobody wants to call their buddy and say, "Quit your job so I can get 500 bucks." But what if the conversation was, "Hey, my boss will give you three days of PTO your first week. You know how your wife has been wanting to visit her parents but you can't afford to take the time off? Here's your chance." Now you're solving a real problem for a real human being. That changes everything.

We also went deep on vision. I used the skiing analogy. You tell two people, "We're going skiing." One shows up in a snow bib and beanie. The other shows up in shorts and a life vest. Somebody is about to be extremely disappointed. If your vision isn't crystal clear, you're inviting people into confusion. And when confusion meets reality, they leave. Not because they're bad people. Because you weren't clear. The same person who flames out in your company will go somewhere else and become a top performer. Because they found a bus headed where they want to go.

Chris made a point I want to underline. Your employees' goals are not your goals. They don't care about your private island. They care about their life. Find out what they want. Then show them how working for you gets them there. We have clients doing exactly this inside what I call the Growth Accelerator Program. One client bought Dave Ramsey's Smart Dollar course for every employee because their purpose was helping people retire a millionaire. People who wanted that never left. Where else were they going to get that kind of investment?

This all comes back to one idea. Your employees are your first customer. Market to them like it. Invest in them like it. Cast a vision for them, not at them.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on every one of these topics on Titans of the Trades. And if you haven't picked up Hire Better People Faster, do it. Everything is in there.