Systems, Not Seminars | Repeatable, Scalable, Sustainable.

Ryan Englin
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Weekly

If you run a frontline business and want to build a company that runs better without chaos, burnout, or sacrificing your culture, this is your show. Host Ryan Englin brings you practical conversations, hard-earned lessons, and real-world systems for leaders who are tired of chasing the next big idea and ready to make things actually work. Ryan is the CEO of Core Matters, best-selling author of Hire Better People Faster, inventor of FieldCon, and creator of the Core Fit Blueprint - a proven system used by ops-heavy businesses hire, onboard, and retain the right people by design, not luck, with clear expectations, repeatable systems, and less chaos.

  1. 3d ago

    Leads Won't Save You If Your People System Is Broken

    Most owners chase more leads when the real leak sits somewhere else. Jeff Kip spent years as CEO of Angi watching home service pros at a scale almost nobody gets to see, and he tells me the winners all run the same playbook. I push him on the people side, because filling trucks means nothing when you can't keep the people driving them. This one is for owners running crews who want growth that holds. Why small pros call only 70 percent of their leads, and what that gap costs every month.Jeff's two non-negotiables for scaling: unit economics and a clean lead-to-close process.How I reframe the labor shortage as a retention problem, backed by the W2 math.Where artificial intelligence agents help, where they swing and miss, and why waiting for perfect leaves you behind.The owner as bottleneck, and how to hand off the hats that drain you.Full Show Notes Connect With Jeff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkip/ Take the Bottleneck Test and find out what is actually holding your growth back. Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Leads Won't Save You If Your People System Is Broken

  2. Oct 21

    Know Who You Are Hiring Before the Seat Opens

    You filled the same seat three times. Same ad, same interview, same result. Ryan Englin calls that what it is: panic hiring, and it kills culture fit every single time. This episode is for owners of frontline-heavy companies who keep refilling one role and blaming the labor market for it. Ryan's fix starts before the job ad exists. Define the person first. Why leaders who describe a rock star never mention skills, and what they name instead.How panic hiring pushes you to take the least bad applicant and live with seller's remorse.The client who got a letter of intent to sell his business after swapping guesswork for a system, plus the rejection letters he now regrets.Why "I can't find good people" usually means you never defined what a good person looks like.The Monday move: pick your most refilled seat and write one page on who the right person is.Full show notes: https://ryanenglin.com/podcast/know-who-you-are-hiring-before-the-seat-opens Not sure hiring is your real leak? Take the Bottleneck Test at corematters.com. Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Know Who You Are Hiring Before the Seat Opens

  3. Oct 14

    Caring About Your Employees Is a Business Advantage, Not a Soft Skill

    Most owners in the trades care deeply about their crews. They lose sleep when somebody gets hurt. They feel sick when a paycheck gets messed up. Then they hide all of it, and the crew never knows. In this solo episode I explain why caring gets treated as soft in the trades, and why that silence costs you the exact people you want to keep. This one is for owners who run crews, not for HR departments. You'll hear: Why owners stay silent about how much they care, and what comes out of their mouths instead.Why a bigger paycheck rents loyalty for a while and never earns it.What 20 service managers told me when I asked where their loyalty came from.Why high standards and caring about people live together, not in opposition.The Monday move: tell one employee what they did well this week and why it mattered to the business.Full show notes: https://ryanenglin.com/podcast/caring-about-your-employees-is-a-business-advantage-not-a-soft-skill Grab my book "Hire Better People Faster" and start hiring the people you never want to fire. Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Caring About Your Employees Is a Business Advantage, Not a Soft Skill

  4. Oct 7

    Hiring Got Easier. Your Business Got Worse. Here Is Why.

    An owner told me his hiring is fine now. Applications are up and his seats are full. Then he showed me his numbers. Easy hiring hides a leak, and every business is leaking. This one is for owners of trades, construction, and field service companies who fill seats fast and still work sleepless nights and long weekends. You'll hear: - Why a filled seat doesn't mean you have the right person. - The costs you never write a check for: callbacks, doubled job timelines, managers back in tool belts, and morale draining off your crews. - What happens when you hire someone to handle hiring and put a person between you and the leak. - Why an easy market trains you to hire reactively, and why that breaks the day the market tightens again. - Why fill rate is a vanity number and tenure tells the truth. - The Monday move: pull tenure for everyone hired in the last 18 months, including the people who left, then compare it against the 18 months before that. Full show notes: https://ryanenglin.com/podcast/hiring-got-easier-your-business-got-worse-here-is-why Take the Bottleneck Test at corematters.com and find out where your business stalls. Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Hiring Got Easier. Your Business Got Worse. Here Is Why.

  5. Sep 30

    Why Your Best Employee Quits Without Warning (the Signals Owners Miss)

    They seemed fine last week. They weren't. They decided six months ago and you found out Tuesday. In this solo episode, I break down why your best people quit without warning, and why the warning signs were there the whole time. This one is for owners of frontline-heavy companies who just lost someone they thought was locked in for life. - Why people quit twice, once in their heart and once when they hand you the notice - The controller who left over two words her owner never said, and what her exit interview revealed - Why a quiet, agreeable A player is a checked-out A player, not a converted one - Why the three-dollar raise is the justification, never the reason - The real cost of replacing somebody, and why it runs far past your Indeed spend Your Monday Move: Name your one irreplaceable person besides yourself. Then ask yourself when you last had a real conversation with them that had nothing to do with work. If you can't remember, that's your signal. Find your bottleneck in three minutes. Take the Bottleneck Test at: SystemsNotSeminars.com Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Why Your Best Employee Quits Without Warning (the Signals Owners Miss)

  6. Sep 23

    "We Do Not Have People Problems" And What That Really Means

    "We don't have people problems." I hear it on almost every first call, and two minutes later I get the list. The superintendent nobody wants to confront. The guy who left for fifty cents more. The crew we keep recycling. In this solo episode I unpack why owners say that sentence, what it hides, and why admitting a people problem feels like admitting a leadership problem. This one is for owners who run crews and keep explaining the same issues away. - Why the phrase "we don't have people problems" always comes with a list attached - Why nobody announces a roof that isn't leaking, and what that tells you about denial - The hiring versus retention math, and why recycling the same guys keeps you stuck - How field supervisors who avoid tough conversations turn tolerance into the new normal - Why good systems handed to good people beat great people with no system, and why systems are the part you can actually fix Full show notes: https://ryanenglin.com/podcast/we-don-t-have-people-problems-and-what-it-really-means Take the Bottleneck Test at corematters.com and find out where your business leaks. Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    "We Do Not Have People Problems" And What That Really Means

  7. Sep 16

    Every Business in Your Industry Leaks Money and Calls It Normal

    A buddy of mine texted me about an oil leak. He was talking about cars. He was actually describing your business, and every other business in your industry. Here's what he sent me. He said people hear what I do and their gut reaction is "thankfully, we don't have people problems." Then he painted the picture. Imagine your car leaks oil. Your neighbor's car leaks oil. Every car on the block leaks oil. Everybody has a pan or a piece of cardboard or a bowl shoved under the engine to catch the drips. Nobody calls a mechanic. Nobody calls it a problem. It's just how life works on that street. Then a friend pulls up in a car that doesn't leak. Suddenly the whole neighborhood has a problem. But only once they see it. I read that text and thought: this is every business I have ever walked into. This is every owner I have ever sat across from. The way it's always been isn't always the best way Turnover is accepted as normal by many frontline companies. You see it in refilling the same seat every eight months, the Indeed ad that never comes, the owner working Saturdays because every estimate, every customer complaint, and every people problem crosses his desk. But none of it is normal. All of it is expensive. You have gotten so used to catching the drips that you stopped seeing the leak. Somebody at a trade association meeting told you everybody deals with this. Your competitor down the road said the same thing. Your dad said it. So you accepted it as normal and moved on with your day. I can say "this is not normal" until I am blue in the face and it will not land. Words don't move owners. Proof does. That's the entire reason this show exists. Nobody wants another guru with a great idea There are thousands of people out there telling you how it ought to look. They get you hyped up. They hand you a concept. They fill a ballroom for a weekend and disappear on Monday. Almost none of them get their hands dirty with you. Ask one of them "how do I actually make that happen in my shop, with my people, next week" and you get crickets. Or you get "just go have the conversation." I have never been trained on how to have that conversation either. Nobody taught me how to handle the pushback, the resistance, the rebuttal, the guy who gets defensive and shuts down. That gap is where owners quit and go back to accepting these problems as normal. This show goes the other direction. Practical. Tactical. Things you implement right away, with the people you already have, at the size you already are. The guy with the clean driveway started exactly where you are I know what you're thinking. You know that guy. He just sold to private equity for half a billion dollars, and now he stands on stage talking about supporting your people through thick and thin and paying them even when there's no work. You look at him and think, I am not that guy. He wasn't that guy either. At some point in his career he stood right where you stand. He put small pieces in place, one at a time, and he got there. He isn't smarter than you. He didn't get lucky. He made the right decisions at the right time. He stopped playing the victim. He stopped blaming the economy, the marketplace, and kids these days. He pulled his boots up and did the hard work. I have sat in that guy's office. Every so often I will bring one of them on this show. Not often, because I care more about getting our hands dirty together than about admiring somebody else's finished house. The nag in your gut means you are ahead of your competition When something eats at you and every person around you insists it's fine, the nag is the signal. That gut feeling that says there has to be a better way puts you ahead of the owners who accepted the oil leak as the cost of ownership. And you will hear me challenge a lot of thinking here. Starting with this one: there is no labor shortage. Some of you want to shut this off right now. It's still true. We don't have a kids-don't-want-to-work problem. We have a nobody-wants-to-work-for-you problem. I have made that case in longer conversations elsewhere, and I will make it again here. Disengagement alone rips real money off the bottom line every single year, which I broke down in this conversation on how low engagement drains revenue. I don't pull punches. I also don't point fingers and walk away. It's not your fault nobody trained you. It's not your fault the whole neighborhood convinced you the leak is normal. And it is fixable. Your Monday move: write it down Every episode ends with homework. I call it the Monday move. Instead of walking in Monday morning, staring at your inbox, and putting out fires, you do one thing that means fewer fires Friday and fewer fires next Monday. Here's this week's move. Write down every recurring problem you stopped calling a problem. Every place you "slid a pan under" and told yourself everybody deals with it. Do not fix anything. I mean that. Start pulling on threads at random and you create new problems. Take inventory first. If you don't know where you stand, you have no shot at knowing where to go. Two tools I built help you count honestly. The W2 test: compare headcount on payroll December 31st to the number of W2s you issued that year. That gap is a pan you have been ignoring. And the hats worksheet: list every single thing you do, then mark what drains you. Most owners find their biggest leak is themselves. That's the Core Fit Blueprint starting point, and it starts with seeing clearly. Make the list. Bring it Monday. Want to know how much of the leak runs through your own desk? Take the Bottleneck Test at corematters.com. New episodes every Wednesday. Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Every Business in Your Industry Leaks Money and Calls It Normal

  8. Jul 8

    Scale Your Brand With Culture, Systems, and Local Awareness

    What does it take to grow a trades business inside a franchise system without losing your edge? In this episode of Titans of the Trades, Ryan Englin sits down with Andrew Olesnavich, VP of Emerging Brands at Premium Service Brands. Andrew supports emerging service brands across the trades, helping owners gain traction, build strong teams, and reach breakout growth. If you’re a trades business owner who wants stronger systems, better leadership, and sustainable business growth, this conversation is for you. Andrew shares what holds entrepreneurs back as they move from operator to true business owner. He explains why so many owners think they “know better,” how that mindset limits growth, and what to do instead. They also discuss why brand awareness doesn’t happen automatically, even with a franchise name behind you, how to get involved in your local community to drive organic leads, the biggest people mistake owners make in their first 90 days, why culture is your only true competitive advantage in the trades, and how monthly financial reviews can empower your team and improve performance. If you’re serious about growing your trades business, improving hiring, and building a culture that drives referrals, this episode delivers practical insights you can apply immediately. Key Takeaways 00:04 – Why emerging franchise brands face the same growth challenges as independent trades businesses.03:56 – The biggest mindset shift owners must make when operating inside a system.08:31 – Why “I know better” is one of the most common growth killers in the trades.09:26 – The marketing myth that hurts new service businesses the most.10:52 – Why one week of training isn’t enough to build a high-performing field team.14:17 – “Culture is by design or by default” and what that means for your business.16:13 – A simple act of kindness that turned into multiple booked jobs and long-term brand equity.19:44 – A grassroots marketing tactic owners can implement this week.26:18 – Why reviewing financials monthly is non-negotiable for trades business growth.26:47 – How sharing KPIs with your team can increase ownership and performance.Connect With Andrew: Website: https://www.premiumservicebrands.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-olesnavich-9527776/ Support the Podcast: If you found this episode insightful, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Your support goes a long way in helping us bring more impactful discussions your way.

    Scale Your Brand With Culture, Systems, and Local Awareness
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If you run a frontline business and want to build a company that runs better without chaos, burnout, or sacrificing your culture, this is your show. Host Ryan Englin brings you practical conversations, hard-earned lessons, and real-world systems for leaders who are tired of chasing the next big idea and ready to make things actually work. Ryan is the CEO of Core Matters, best-selling author of Hire Better People Faster, inventor of FieldCon, and creator of the Core Fit Blueprint - a proven system used by ops-heavy businesses hire, onboard, and retain the right people by design, not luck, with clear expectations, repeatable systems, and less chaos.

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