How Low Engagement Drains 8% of Your Revenue—And How to Stop It

There are a lot of threats to our business. But interestingly enough, it really isn't things like competitors, inflation, or even the labor market that is causing our grief. The real threat is sitting quietly inside your building, blending in, waving politely while it drains 8% of your revenue every This dastardly condition is what causes turnover. It causes hiring chaos and an overall lack of productivity. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs develop new skills to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I'm so glad that you are tuning in today because today, we will uncover the surprising truth about engagement, retention, and why your hiring problem may not be a hiring problem at all. My one ask is that if you know somebody who could use this information, please make sure that you go ahead and share a link to this episode. You know people. You know people are struggling. You know that they have this issue. So please be generous. Share a link to this episode and say, hey, maybe you should listen to this. And for goodness' sake, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. We're well on our way to getting a meager 2,000 subscribers. I mean, when you see all the people out there with millions, I just want to get to 2,000. Okay, I don't. I just want to get past that. But if you're watching this and you're not subscribed, please make sure you do because you know what? It helps support the channel. It helps support what I do since the last— since March 2020. This is episode 278. So, your support means the world to me. You know, Every week, I talk to business operators who swear that their biggest headache is hiring. We need more applications. We can't find good people. Nobody wants to work. I mean, the list is endless. But the truth is you had great employees, right? I mean, you interviewed them. You vetted them. You brought them on board and you trained them, right? You trained them, right? You trained them. But somewhere along the way, they became disengaged. And according to Gallup's State of the Workplace Report 2025, close to about 80% of the workforce today is not actively engaged in their jobs. That's staggering. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, a little mental math for you. If engagement is draining up to 8% of your revenue each and every year, how long can your business afford to ignore it? I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead, share a link to this episode on your favorite social media platform, hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership, put your comments down. I look forward to having you part of this conversation. I'd love to know what your experience is. As I mentioned at the top, my guest today is a leader who has made it his mission to help businesses stop chasing talent and start attracting it. Ryan Englin is the founder and CEO of Core Matters. He's the host of the podcast Titans of the Trades. He's a best-selling author of Hire Better People Faster and the creator of the CoreFit Blueprint. He grew up watching his father grind through the reality of being an owner-operator that whole life. And that experience shaped his passion, building workplaces where people actually want to belong, where they want to contribute, and where they want to stay. He's data-driven, practical, and one of the clearest voices out there on fixing engagement at the source. That means in your workplace.

Ryan, welcome to the show.

It's so great to have you.

Marc, thank you for having me here. This is awesome.

It really truly is. And so, before we get too deep into today's topic, could you tell us a little bit about who your clients are and how you go ahead and serve them?

So, think about the businesses that run on people. You know, the companies that what their product or service might be is one thing. But they can't deliver it without the right people. That is, those are our clients. And so ops-heavy businesses might be in the trades. They might be construction. They might be insurance, call centers, any business that relies on people. And I'm just so passionate about this group because the, the idea that their business problems can't be solved is, I mean, it's just, just not real. Like we can solve these problems. We can connect with these people. We just got to do things a little differently.

Yeah. So, how do you explain to a stressed-out business owner that disengagement is more expensive than an empty job opening? Just before we went live, we were talking about people who are so desperate to hire. They'll hire people with a pulse. Just give me somebody. But that causes more problems than it solves, doesn't it?

It does. There's a couple of things at play here and most entrepreneurs get this. Nobody wants to play for a team full of B and C players. It's just human nature. Like, we want to play on the winning team. And we keep bringing people in who don't fit our culture, that don't think like us, that don't belong. We end up creating a team that's disjointed, that's fragmented, that doesn't know how to communicate. No one wants to play on that team. So, if you've got A players on your team, their productivity gets drained because they're spending so much energy just dealing with these people that don't fit in. Whether it's the rework, the callbacks, who knows, the bad communication that happens. Like it really drains the energy of your great people. And then, you look around, you go, I just got a team full of B and C players. I'm like, no, you've probably got a couple of A players. But the Ds and Cs that you keep hiring are draining them. They're pulling them down.

So right away, I could think standing in front of an entrepreneur right now, they're looking at you going, But Ryan, you don't understand how hard it is to hire. Like, you don't understand how hard it is just to get the application. Ryan, you don't understand my business.

I get it. I hear it all the time.

What's the myth? What's the myth I'm going through right now? What's the mindset?

You know what? Things are hard when you weren't trained how to do them. I mean, it's that simple. You mentioned training in the intro. If you as the owner or you as the leader have never been trained on how to get a quality application, on how to interview somebody, how to qualify somebody if you've never been trained. You've just gone to school of hard knocks and figured it out. Yeah, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. But if you have a simple process in place that allows you to objectively measure someone before you hire them, it gets a lot easier.

So, what are the big myths about employee engagement that we need to kind of unravel today?

Well, we need to stop thinking that Every generation is different. That this young, this new generation, this young workforce, well, that's that wasn't like us. You know, if you go to the boomers and you look at when they were twenties and thirties, they didn't want to stick around. They didn't want to work. I mean, that was the hippie generation. Think about that. And yet we look at the next generation. We all these twenty-somethings. They don't want to work. They're lazy. They're entitled. Well, they're no different than the old generation was fifty years ago. And so, we have to stop thinking that this generation is different or that we were better than the current generation. Because as leaders, no one wants to work for someone that is making fun of them. We just, we look at those leaders and we just say, I don't want to work for that person. They're making fun of us. They're making fun of entire generations. We have to let that go. The other thing we have to understand is that if you believe that no one wants to work, and there's a lot of people out there like, just no one wants to work anymore. Here's what we found. It's not true that no one wants to work. The reality is, and I don't pull punches, I hope that's okay, Marc.

That's perfect.

The reality is they just don't want to work for you. And I want you to sit with that for a minute because if you believe that no one wants to work, it's time you look in the mirror and you say, wait a minute, why don't they want to work for me? Because there are a lot of people out there that want good quality jobs. with career paths, companies that are going to invest and train them like you said earlier. If you're willing to do that, you'll have lifetime employees. Like, you'll have so many people you're like, I wish some of them would go away so I can get some new ones coming in. And we see it happen over and over again all over the country.

Yeah, it really is a cause and effect too, right? I mean, you invest in people. You show your people that they matter to you. And they'll stick around a little bit longer. But I've always said, if people leave me, I want them to leave me because that's their next evolution. Not because they're pissed off. Not because they can get 25 cents across the street. But because it's their next evolution. They've recognized a path that I'm not prepared to give them at this point, or I can't give them at this point. But I know perfectly well that they have now evolved and they're moving forward to evolve. Because one of the things that I recognized early, and I'm talking in my early 20s, if I could leave a legacy and I can use my influence with these people as I work with them, that they take that forward. They tell other people. They'll talk to their next employee and go, oh yeah, I worked with Marc and it was fantastic. I can't believe. And that reputation gets out there. I had no shortage of resumes to sift through or application forms to sift through because people wanted to work for us. Does that make sense?

And I think that the word that you use that I really want to go back to is reputation.

Yeah.

You know, so many of these companies have thought, I need to have a great reputation in the marketplace because my customers need to find me. My customers need to be excited about me. But we put almost zero effort And I know we put zero marketing expense towards what do they— what's the community think of you as an employer? Are you considered an employer of choice? Someone that people choose to work for and someone that people, they fight to stay? They're like, I got in here. I don't want to go anywhere. And when you think about some of the biggest brands like the Apples, the Googles, the Facebooks, those are employers of choice. Everybody dreams of working for those companies. And when they get in, They don't want to leave because they know that that is a great employer in their industry. And every single company on the planet, whether you are just getting started and you're by yourself or you've got a team of 500, you can be that employer of choice in your community, in your industry. You just have to do the things like you're talking about, which is really focus on your reputation. Recruiting is a marketing activity. Plain and simple.

Yeah.

And when we start treating it as such, we'll start getting the results that we're looking for.

Yep. It's interesting. I've walked into businesses where I've seen kind of like mission statements and motivational posters. Things like, treat your customers with the utmost respect. And yet, the manager is yelling at the frontline workers. Right? And it's like, and it's almost like I want you to treat everybody with respect. Do you hear me, you loser? Treat everybody with respect. And it's like, um, there's a problem.

Well, that's the thing we were talking about, right? There's no bad teams. There's only bad leaders. One of my pet peeves, it drives me nuts when I see this. I see this a lot in the service industry where you'll go to someone's website and it'll talk about how much they care about their customers. They care so much that they are available in emergencies, on call nights and weekends. The customer is always right. We'll do whatever it takes. They do all of these things to attract the customer. And then, the job seeker is looking at the website going, so, you don't care about my family. You don't care about my personal life. You don't care about my work-life balance. The customer is always right, which means if they're yelling at me, you're going to support that. I don't want to come work for you.

Yeah.

And yet, we think this is the way to grow our business. If you're in an ops-heavy business, Where your business runs on people, I promise you, I've seen it so many times. It is easier for you to go get customers than it is for you to go get people. And if you would just put the energy and the resources towards getting the great people and keeping them that you put into getting good customers and keeping them, Yeah. you flipped it, your business would take off.

Yeah.

Because great people will deliver a great service to your customers. Your customers will help you with that reputation. You don't have to worry about it yourself anymore. They'll go out and they'll tell everybody how amazing you are. And the business will just grow. But you have to say, I'm willing to do what it takes to put the resources and the effort towards the right people.

Right. And it's interesting because you said that they'll go out and do almost anything to get the customers. But they spend a lot of time getting brand new customers because ultimately, if you don't have good frontline people who are trained and engaged and delivering, those customers, you're just providing basic. You're not creating a wow factor by any stretch of the imagination. You just can't. And so, you're always spending everything on customer attraction and engagement, right?

Yeah, but who creates that wow factor for the customer? It's not you, Mr. or Miss Owner. It's the frontline person. That you hired because they had a pulse and don't care about your business and don't care about you. They're the ones that are hurting you.

Yeah.

Where if you put in the effort to attract the right people and keep the right people and train the right people, they're going to go create a wow experience for your customers.

Yep.

And now, all of a sudden, you don't have to worry about how do I get the next one? How do I get the next one? Because your reputation will be such that you hire the best people, you take care of the best people so that they can provide the best customer experience.

Yeah.

You said in your notes that owners are often the last to know that engagement is crashing. What behaviors from employees should leaders look out for to kind of be the early warning sign that maybe engagement's a little low?

I will say that the first place you will see it as an owner is in your middle management, your supervisors, your field supervisors, your team leaders. That's where you will see it first because what you will hear from them Over and over is, I don't have enough time. I don't have time to meet with my people. My people just aren't getting it. They are going to be blaming their people, their teams for all the problems that they're dealing with. And that is a very clear symptom of a lack of engagement because when they don't have the time, they're too busy putting out the fires that their team shouldn't be starting in the first place. And so, when you look at that middle management group, that supervisory group, that's where you're going to see the symptoms show up first.

Very interesting. And so, the productivity, I mean, those are the symptoms because all of a sudden, they're going to be bitching and bellyaching about certain things. That is the good indicator. We used to say, By the time somebody hands in a resignation, they quit 6 months ago.

People quit twice every time, yes.

Right?

And so, this whole idea of you have good performers. You know that they're not performing as high as they once did. But yet, we put ourselves like I truly believe now we give managers and frontline supervisors way too much to do. We need to figure out how to turn them from managers into coaches. So, how close, how much of a pulse do we need in order to really kind of take the early warning sign seriously and intentionally and be able to act on it versus, oh, Steve's just having a bad day?

Yeah, I mean, a couple of things that I want to speak to on that. One of them, if you are in a business that relies on people, you need to invest in the people leader training of your people, not just here's how you deliver the product service, which we do. We're really good at training how to deliver our product or service, how to deal with customers that are upset, all those things. But we spend no time saying, what do we do when an employee comes in and they're having a rough morning? It's just get to work. We got a quota to hit.

Yeah.

And so, we don't put that effort towards training them how to be great people leaders. One of the— and then, one of the things you had said, we need to spend more time teaching them how to lead. You know, where I see this happen a lot is in sales. We take our top-performing salesperson. We make them a sales manager. Peter Principle in play right there. And then, what we do is we give them a quota. And we're like, wait a minute. I thought you were supposed to be the sales manager. Yeah, but you're our top sales guy. We got to have you have a quota too. Otherwise, we're all in trouble. And basically, what you're saying is you're prioritizing the productivity over the people.

Yes.

And that message is really hard for leaders because a lot of times, people move into a leadership role because they want to see a team succeed. They want to be a people leader. But if you don't equip them with the tools and the training that they need to do that, you're just setting them up for failure.

Yeah, well, I mean, even growing up as a young manager, I can't tell you how many times I've been in evaluations where I get mixed messages where it's like, we want you to finish those reports. You're handing in reports late. And we want you to get more of those reports done. We know it takes time. So, just make sure it gets done. And so then, it's like, okay, that's obviously what's important to them. But then, the very next application, the very next evaluation is, you know, it seems like you're spending a lot of time in the office and you're really not out on the floor all that much. We really want you to be out on the floor more often.

Yeah, yeah. It's whatever lagging indicator is boiling up causing the red flags to go off.

Right, right.

They do that. And I think the root cause of this is that when we go hire a people leader, we go put someone in place to manage a team, we never take a step back and say, what's the purpose of putting someone in this role?

Yes.

Is, is the purpose to just do the more advanced work that the, the underlings, if you will, the frontline people can't do? Is that why we're putting this person into a leadership role? Or are we putting them there because we really care about our people? We want to support them. We want to train them. We want to equip them. We want them to feel like they belong on a team. And I would say more often than not, the reason we put someone as a team lead is because we want someone to manage the people that— and do more of that advanced work, right? Like they manage the people doing the work and then they do more of the advanced work and the advanced troubleshooting. But we rarely ever put people into a team lead role and say, your job is to just lead the team. Yeah.

Yeah. Just be a really good coach here. We'll teach you how.

Yeah. You know, that's the thing. When you get into people leader, you're a coach, a trainer, a mentor, a confidant. That's your job description.

Yes.

It's not, you got to make sure that the team pumps out widgets. And if not, you're building a new team.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because there is a dichotomy between this whole idea of like— and again, I think a lot of it falls back into the Industrial Age thinking that labor is an expense line.

Yeah.

And because it's an expense line, it's like we have to minimize that expense and we have to get more out of that expense line as profit or as revenue than we spend on it. And it just, you know, how many times has somebody told you, Ryan, oh, you know, well, if I spend money on training, they might leave me and go somewhere else.

Yeah. And if you don't spend money on training, they're going to stay and you're going to wish they left. Exactly! But you said the 8.4%, that stat from Gallup survey about what the cost of disengagement is. And the interesting thing about disengagement is we don't write a check for it. When we don't write a check for it, we don't really feel it. And we've seen, you know, we work with a lot of construction contractors. And in the construction world, if you get a— if you can get to a 10% margin, like you're the king, like you are top of the industry. They often settle for 5%, 6%, 7% margins.

Right.

If they realize that there's 8.4% of that bottom line, of that revenue being pulled off the bottom line, you could double your margin just by focusing on disengagement, which means when you get engaged employees, they generate more profit. And if they're generating more profit with engaged employees, then aren't your people a profit center? Yeah.

Aren't they? And I mean, there's an investment component. Like, I like to look at it not as a labor cost to train people but a labor investment to train your people. Because ultimately, you— I mean, and it's no different than Stephen Covey's Sharpen the Saw, right? That whole story about the lumberjack trying to cut down a tree. And he's at it for hours and hours and hours. And somebody comes along and says, why don't you sharpen the saw? He goes, I have no time. I have to cut down this tree.

Right.

And so, but I find the mentality in entrepreneurs the same kind of thing. It's Like, I don't have time. We're busy. I need them to work. I don't have time to train them. And if I take time to train them, I have to pay them for the training. I have to pay them for their hours that they're not at work. Plus, I'm not making— and it's like, but that's just like such a small component of your year if you take time out and train and coach and make sure these people are well equipped to do the job. I mean, you're in construction. You do a lot of work with construction and trades, right?

I do, yeah.

So, how many times do people bring on fresh new faces to do the work and expect them to do what their journeymen are doing?

All the time. The one that I really like is they'll buy a half a million dollar piece of machinery and then they'll hire someone that has no experience using it. They won't train them and they'll put them in the half million dollar piece of equipment. And that makes sense in their minds. And I don't get it. I'm like, you have this half million dollar piece of machinery and you're putting someone in that you don't have time to train. Help me understand how that's a good idea.

Yeah, right?

But they do it all the time.

So, there's so many different stories like this that are so self-evident, right? But it's not until something happens that you go, oh gosh, I guess I should have trained them. It's like, really? You said in your notes that engagement is not fixed by spending more money on it. It's fixed by leading differently. And I'd like to dig into that. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I'm speaking with Ryan England. Ryan, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book? You have a—

Yeah, I wrote a book called Hire Better People Faster. And the whole premise behind this is that I'm not telling you to just move faster to hire people. Better is the key word here. And it's counterintuitive. And you learn about this in the book. When you slow down the process of interviewing, qualifying, onboarding people. When you slow it down, it actually speeds things up. It's kind of that old adage that the military uses, you know, that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. When you slow it down, it actually speeds things up. And when you become objective and you stop looking at people as, oh, I like them, we share similar interests, our kids play on the same Little League team, they have a pulse. When you become objective in their qualities, The quality of people goes through the roof. And as I said earlier, A players want to play on A teams. And so as you start building that A team, you're going to attract more better people. And it's just this cycle that you get into when you slow things down and you think objectively about it and put a process behind it.

I like that idea because there's also in there is the word intentional as well. There's an intentionality when you slow things down. in order to be more objective and more open-focused, more outcome-focused on what you're trying to do. Especially, please, please, please, especially when you're promoting somebody. Yes.

You know what? I want to speak to this real quick and then we'll get back into your question. When you promote somebody, the biggest mistake every entrepreneur makes is they take their best person. They promote them into a new role and they don't onboard them. They just like, well, they've been here. Onboarding is about paperwork and it's about compliance and it's about training, and they've already been through all of that. They don't need to go through that. So we're gonna put them in this new role and we're not gonna onboard them. And it's the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make is they don't realize that they're putting someone into a role that they've never been in before. They need to be onboarded. You need to take your time. You need to slow down with them. And when you do that, you create amazing opportunities for career growth, but when you don't, You burn those people out. You want to demote them. You make poor promotion decisions. When you move someone into a new role, just think, if I were to bring someone in from outside the company, I would spend the time to onboard them. Do the same thing with your internal people because they don't know what they don't know.

And it's so interesting that because you're promoting them because they had the skill set to do what they used to do. Right? But then you're saying, so because I've heard this conversation so many times. Oh, Ryan. How about I promote you? You're so amazing. You're just so amazing. Why don't I promote you? You can teach everybody else how to be just like you. Yeah, right.

There's a term for that.

What's your term?

The Peter Principle. We all know this, right? It's what we do all the time. We promote these people and then we're like, what the— We had a client that promoted a foreman, best foreman he had. Jobs were always on time, always on budget. He's like, this guy's gonna make an awesome superintendent. Well, what they don't realize is that the foreman is a field job. The superintendent is a trailer job. It's an office job, a meeting job. So, he takes the guy out of being a foreman. He puts him into a superintendent. And he, and 6 months later, he calls me and goes, I'm firing him tonight. I'm like, whoa, hold on. You were so excited about promoting this guy. He goes, he's an awful superintendent. I go, did you train him? Did you onboard him? Did you do this stuff? He's like, no. So, let me ask you this. Is he gonna be surprised when you fire him?

Probably.

Which means you haven't had the conversation yet. Like, this is crazy. I say, here's what I want you to do. I want you to get off the call with me and I want you to go call him into the office and I want you, I want you to have a conversation with him. I want to ask you to ask him how does he feel he's performing as a superintendent? And then if he doesn't come back positively, I want you to offer him his old job back because he's not gonna take that cuz it's less money and it's all— The guy was ecstatic to take back his old job cuz he knew he wasn't performing. He's not stupid. He knew he wasn't performing. He knew he wasn't doing well. And he is like, I can have my old job back. He didn't think it was actually an option to ask the owner if he could go back. So, he wasn't saying anything.

Yeah.

He went back to being the best foreman they had.

Amazing! You know, I read some stats somewhere that when you promote somebody into a leadership role without any training, they only last about 18 months.

I'm surprised it's that long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's scary. It's scary. It's really interesting because again, this idea of intentionality of setting people up for success rather than just quick fixes, I think is really the key. You say in your documentation just before the break I mentioned, you say that engagement is not fixed by spending more money. It's fixed by leading differently. So, does that mean spending copious amounts of money and sending people to leadership courses is not going to pay dividends? Or what do you mean by all that?

Here's how I want you to look at this. When someone comes to work for you, They're trading their time for money. That's what they're doing. And what are the things that they are giving up on? They're giving up time with their friends. They're giving up time with their family. They're giving up time on the things they do for fun. They are sacrificing those things to come work for you now. Yeah, granted you give them a paycheck, but every study will tell you it's not always about the money. And for most people, it's not about the money. In fact, what it is, is it's about replicating those things that are important to them.

Yeah.

Gallup will tell you in their Q12 survey that question number 10, which has to do with having a best friend at work, is one of the greatest indicators of an engaged workforce. People that consistently rate that higher are 6 times more likely to be engaged than people that say they don't have a best friend at work. In other words, what that means is if you want your people to be engaged, you have to focus on the things that are important to them.

Goosebump moment! Goosebump moment because it's preaching. This is so important because to me, that is one indicator of what happens around the Keurig machine. What happens around at lunchtime and what are the conversations looking like? Is it people are isolated or they're with people just in in sessions where they're just complaining and everybody's going, yeah, it sucks. It's really terrible. Or is it more positive conversations, more creative collisions rather than the negative side, right?

Well, if you want people to be engaged and you care about the things that they care about, what do most people want? They want to know that their boss is investing in them, that their boss wants them to achieve success, that their boss wants them to get the things they want out of their personal life. I shared this stat with some of our groups this week. 51% of people want to find a new job in the new year. Yeah, scary.

Which means that they're constantly— their phones are constantly pinging.

It's incredibly scary. And so, everybody's like, way to ruin my day.

Right. But people have the app on their phone and it's pinging them all the time. What about this lead? What about this lead? What about this?

Yeah.

And I said, here's what you do. It's very simple. Grab that employee. Let them tell them you appreciate them. This is another thing drives me nuts. We do exit interviews sometimes, and well, most of the time what we hear when someone quits is I can do a hundred things right and never hear about it. I do one thing wrong, and I never hear the end of it. So sit down with that person five minutes, five minutes. Go when they're at the Keurig machine. Go stand there and talk to them while they're waiting for their coffee, and just say, "Hey, I want to let you know." I really enjoy having you on the team. I value you a lot. Thank you for your contribution. And then take it one step further and say, so as we get towards the end of the year, what are some of your personal goals for next year? Now, for most of the time, you're gonna ask the people and they're gonna just like deer in headlights. They're, they're not gonna know how to answer because no one's ever asked 'em this question before. Right. But to your point, now is the chance to come in and be a coach.

Yeah.

I've never thought about next year. Hey, do you mind if we put 30 minutes on a calendar or 15 minutes and let's just talk about some ways that I might be able to support you in some of your personal goals? And that's one less person that's now looking for a new job.

And that just answered my question about the simplest thing a leader can do to improve engagement.

There you go.

Didn't even have to ask the question. Like, how simple is it? It's having a real human moment Around the water cooler, around the curette, around lunch, whatever. But just to know that the question is going to feel awkward at first to the person receiving that question. But then, you give them a, you know, could you think about it over the weekend? Could we get together on Monday or Tuesday? And can we sit down for 30 minutes to talk about it? They're gonna leave that weekend going, Oh my God! I can't believe it. I have to talk with my boss on Monday or Tuesday about what I want.

Either that or they're going, how does he know I'm looking?

Why would he ask me that?

He must know something. And they're freaking out. But you know what? And here's the thing. Most leaders have never been trained how to have that conversation.

Exactly. And that's the problem, right?

That's the issue. It's not that the employee doesn't know how to answer. It's that we don't know how to listen.

Right. And we don't know how to ask the good question. Yeah, yeah. I love that you say, That values are caught and not taught. Could you break that down a little bit for us? Because I think that's a brilliant statement.

You know, we do these exercises where we create core values and mission statements. And then, we go to the marketing team and we say, blow it up as big as you can. Put it on the side of the trailer. Put it everywhere. And then, what we do is we just preach it. And we go to every meeting and we say, here's our values. Here's our values. Here's our values. And we're teaching them about our values. And then what happens, and this is a perfect, uh, follow-up to your story about respect. What happens is then they look at the leadership team and they go, well, they're not doing it. So they're saying one thing, but then they're doing something else. So actions speak louder than words. So maybe I should just do what they're doing. And so now all of a sudden you're creating this team that's looking at you and going, well, I value what they value. But that's not what's written on the wall. We're ignoring what's written on the wall. We're going to listen through the actions of our leaders and then we're going to follow them. And that's where I think we get caught up in this core values and this, how do we behave and how should we communicate and how should we talk to each other is we tell them one thing but we do another.

And what message does that send? Ultimately, when push comes to shove, They're going to behave the way they see people behaving to them. You know, it was so interesting, this whole thing about like even hazing, on-the-job hazing, or when somebody gets promoted, or whatever. That it's like, well, you know, that's the way I was treated when I started. So, when the new guy comes in, that's the way I'm going to treat them. Right? And it's like, well, did you enjoy that? He goes, no, the first 3 weeks I thought I wanted to quit. Every day, I woke up in a panic because I didn't know what I was going to get.

Yeah. Right?

And it's like, well, why would you do that to somebody else? Why would you do that to another human being? Let's—

right? That's what they were taught.

Yeah, it's— and it made it okay. And that's the thing. Like, I'm always so fascinated that good behaviors are seldom recognized and bad behaviors get ignored. Bad behavior, something happens and the supervisor's like, oh, it's just a one-off. You know, he's never done that before. I'm sure he'll never do it again. And what we fail to realize is that bad behavior will always escalate into worse behavior, right? If we recognize and reward somebody, good behavior will be repeated. If we could turn around and say, hey Steve, it is so great. Thank you so much for being here on time. Look, we can get going. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. Do you think tomorrow he's going to come in on time? As opposed to, oh Steve, well, it's about friggin' time. Look at that. Oh look, you're not late like you were the last 3 days.

You know, it's interesting. So, a lot of the training that we do, we break down and we use analogies of other parts of people's lives that they get. A lot of conversations around, would you treat a spouse like that? Would you want a significant other to talk to you like that? Would you speak to your kids like that? And the answer is always no. Like, I would never do that at home, but why is it okay here? And one of the things you mentioned, and we do a lot of work in construction, 94% of the employees there are men. And so, we talk a lot about what men need and how this bravado kind of sometimes hurts because we don't want to say the things that need to be said or we don't want them to hear the things that need to be heard. But the reality is, and I think this is true for everybody, I don't think it's just a man thing, but that's how I was taught.

Yeah.

Is that people become who you tell them they are.

Yes.

And so, if you tell someone that you just, you're never on time, you're always late, well, guess what they're going to do? They're going to hear, I'm always late, and they're going to process that as, well, that's who I am. And so, I guess it's not a big deal if I'm late.

Yeah.

Or if you never pay attention, you never pay attention to someone else on the team. Well, I guess I'm the kind of person that doesn't pay attention to people. We become who we say we are. And I think one of the things you said, you know, they ignore the bad stuff, I think Even more dangerous than that is we tolerate the bad stuff because we're afraid to have a difficult conversation.

Right.

I don't think it gets ignored just because we don't want to deal with it. I think we don't know how to have a tough conversation and we're afraid they'll leave us in a bind if we say the wrong thing. I think that's way more toxic and I think way more prevalent than just a, it's a one-off thing, which it does happen as well.

Yeah. Ryan, this is fascinating. If people are tuned in and this is really resonating with them, how can people get in touch with you if they want to have a conversation?

Well, I am active very much on LinkedIn. Follow me, DM me if you want to connect there. Lots of free content and training, a lot of, uh, just little snippets of things that you can go do. Uh, our website is corematters.com, and that is going to be the best way to get a hold of someone on my team if you want to learn more about how we do this. You can learn all about our blueprint, the 7 phases, what you can expect, how our program works, if that's something that you want. Or You can go to our hiring tips and we have just a tremendous amount of content. I want to help as many people as I can. And I know not everybody's going to have the wherewithal to call us and say, hey, I want help. But they're always looking for those little nuggets. And I love putting those out there. So, corematters.com is going to be the easiest way to learn about us and connect with us.

So, tell us a little bit about the CoreFit Blueprint that you Yeah.

So this, this is one of those things that it, it came to me so quickly, but it was really 15 years in the making. And the CoreFit Blueprint is a way to put the right systems, tools, training processes in place so that you can grow a team that allows you to scale your business to as big as you want, or to scale your profitability. Not everybody wants to grow the biggest, the largest organization. Sometimes people just want to say, hey, I want to hit $10 million at a 12% net and I'm happy. This allows you to do that as well by putting the right tools in place. It's a 7-phase process that we walk you through every single one of them. And in between, we're calibrating the whole time. We're not just saying, hey, we're going to go. And if we get off course, that's going to be a problem. We are actively involved with you and your leadership team to make sure that you stay on course. You get the system put in place. And one of my favorite phases that I'll talk about is phase 2, which is about becoming the employer of choice. We talked about reputation. We talked about the importance of the community looking at you and saying, that's a place I want to work. Becoming the employer of choice is all about developing that reputation, putting in career paths, giving people opportunities to grow, promoting that, being very clear about that. And then, one of my favorite modules that we do in there is we normalize money conversations. Because when we take that stigma of having a money conversation off the table, oh my gosh, magic happens in the conversations that we have with our people.

That's so fascinating. You know, so these 7 phases, could you, could you just so people know what they can expect, can you just kind of quickly summarize each of the phases?

Absolutely. Yeah. So, phase 1 is stop the bleeding. So, think about that ER doc, like, I just got to solve whatever problem is keeping you up at night. This is about creating margin for the leadership team, giving them some room to breathe so they can focus on the things that are most important. Then phase 2 is becoming the employer of choice. This is where we dig into culture. We dig into career paths. We dig into the normalizing of money conversations. But most importantly, are you building the reputation that you need to build to have the business that you want? And in phase 3, we look at right people, right seats. This is where we do some organizational design. Make sure that they have the right leaders in the right places. And it's interesting because you might have the right people on the bus. I mean, Jim Collins talked about this in his book 20 years ago, 30 years ago. You might have the right people on the, on the bus, but they're just in the wrong seats. And it's amazing what happens when you go to people and you say, hey, I think you'd be better suited for that seat. And they're like, really? Let's check that out. But we're so afraid to have those conversations because they think they're going to leave us. So we do organizational design, right people, right seats. It's all about creating job descriptions, having objective ways of measuring people. And then we go into phase 4, and this is where we align your people and your processes. So, this is all about onboarding. It's all about training. But most importantly, making sure that everybody understands what's expected of them, how you're measuring their performance, and what happens when they don't perform. So, those are the foundational phases, those first 4. And then the last 3 phases are really about future and thinking about the next steps. So when we get into Phase 5, we want to inspire a future-driven team. We want people thinking about the next step in their career. Now, for some people, for your rock stars, they may not want to grow anymore. They might just want to get better at what they do, and that's OK. But they're thinking about the future. Where is this metaphorical bus going? This business that you have, what's the vision you have? And how do you get them bought in? And one of the easiest ways to do that, we talked about before, was get them just really in touch and intentional about achieving their personal goals. So, we work with you to develop a 3-year personal development plan where your leaders come alongside them and coach them on how to accomplish the things that are most important. Then, we get into phase 6 and we talk about filling your bench. This is where passive recruiting happens. When you have that reputation and the people and the processes and the systems and know how to communicate, Now, all of a sudden, you can start bringing people in who may not be ready to join your team, or you may not even be ready to hire them. And you put them on a bench so that when you do need to recruit, when you do need to grow, when you do bring on that great customer, now you need to hire 40 people. You're not starting from scratch and competing in the same place as everybody else. And then finally, in phase 7, is all about scaling with confidence. Now that you've got everything built, you got your team focused on the future, you've got a bench of candidates. How do you develop your future leaders? How do you put reporting in place, make sure that you're measuring the right things globally as an entire organization? And how do you get your leaders aligned on the next step of the business? So, those are the 7 phases and they build on each other. I think it's a lot of fun. I geek out at some of that stuff. But it is an entire system on solving all of the people problems in your business.

I think it's brilliant. And I think that's If people have tuned in this long, this is the price of admission right there. You now have a roadmap. Now, having said that, you might not have the skills to be able to pull off the roadmap. That's why Ryan is here. So, make sure if you need help that you're reaching out. Ryan, this has been brilliant. When we come back, I'd like to talk about some pitfalls and cautionaries because it's one thing to be aware that you have a problem and you have kind of a concept of a plan to fix the problem. But I'm always a little cautious of people who want to jump in and make it kind of like the policy of the month. Or this is going to be the 6-month initiative now is we're going to be the place to be. We're going to become employer of choice. But without real strategy behind it. So, I'd like to talk about pitfalls and cautionaries. And we'll get to that right after this.

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We are having a phenomenal discussion. I hope you're getting huge value from what Ryan and I have been talking about. As you could tell, we are super focused on serving you and your team. So, if you're planning a leadership retreat or a conference, or you'd like to explore how we could maybe be a benefit to you and your team, drop us a line. Our contact details are in the show notes. We're here to serve. That's how we're wired. Ryan, based on our conversation today, It's clear to me that if we really want to tip the scales on engagement retention, leaders need to substantially shift their mindset before engagement will ever improve. Have I got that right that it's really got to be kind of mea culpa? I need to develop myself first before I can move forward?

They have to want it. If you're in the business where all you want to do is just make sure you got payroll at the end of the month and you just move on, you keep doing that and you don't really want to build this business where you can take a step back and trust your people to lead and to perform and to do the things. If you don't want that, this is going to be a real tough, uh, pill to swallow for you. Um, you know, and it's interesting, some people come to us and they want it, but they don't want to do the work. And I liken that to, I want to lose 20 pounds and put on 15 pounds of muscle, and I know exactly what I gotta do to do that. Yes. But when I get up in the morning and it's cold outside I want to go to Starbucks and I want to have a muffin. I don't want to do the things that I need to do. But when you want it badly enough, you'll do the things you need to do.

Yeah. I've come across organizations where the CEO, where the president, the head person has a hero complex. And they're so Afraid to delegate and give off responsibility because they want to be the one with all the answers. I want people to come to me. I want to feel because it validates my existence. If people come to me, if they have a problem and I can help, I can tell them how to solve their problem, it makes me feel amazing. Now, I don't know people wake up with that thought. But I do see it in the behavior. How do we recognize that this is a really damaging kind of mindset that is just going to set you up for failure.

If you're that owner, and I would ask your people, like one of the things that people ask me all the time is like, how do I find out? Ask them. They're like, never thought of that. Just ask your people. Am I that leader that when things are going well, not awesome, not hockey stick growth, but things are staying status quo, am I the leader that comes in and breaks things? So that I get to be the hero. And oh my gosh, do we see it all the time. We had one leader one time, he had his, uh, customer service team upstairs, his scheduling team upstairs, and his office was downstairs. We actually set up a counter to track how many times he went upstairs because when he went upstairs, it was to break something. It was to be the hero. And, uh, so we actually had a metric and every week they tracked how many times did he walk upstairs. Because if they needed him, they could go downstairs. They never wanted him up there. And we had to put that in place. But I think if you're that leader that when things are status quo, you start getting nervous because you're thinking something's going to break, something's going to be wrong, something must be off, maybe the report. And you start and you jump in to fix it. I mean, that to me is a huge telltale sign. And if you don't think you're that leader, ask your people if you're that leader. They'll tell you.

Yeah.

They'll tell you.

Yeah, if you create a culture where they can be open and honest. I mean, if they're afraid that they're going to be shut down and slammed if you say anything, then that's a different kettle of fish altogether.

I was hoping we were past that step already. But maybe not.

Yeah, who knows, right? I still see it though. Like I was in Costco the other day and the sample ladies, there was one sample lady who was having a beaking off with one of co-workers and the manager came in. And so, she was beaking off to the manager and the manager stopped and said the one line that I think is just absolutely abhorrent, you have to listen to me. I'm your boss. Right? And I'm there and I started to laugh. And my wife is like, what do you— he said the line! He said that dreaded line! And you know, I so badly want to go up and say, do you realize you suck as a leader? Do you need help? But he said the line.

You want to hand them a book, 5 Levels of Leadership and let them go read.

Yeah. Oh my goodness! And we know that The only time that we say that is because we felt we've lost control and we're trying to re-establish our authority. And if you have to say that, I'm sorry. You're past that. You need help. Yeah, you do. So aside from that, Ryan, when we think about this idea of kind of switching up our culture so that we can get more engagement, that we can actually seed better engagement, what are some cautionaries we should be on the lookout for as we try to try to change and try to kind of turn this boat?

We've already talked about a couple of them. Number one, make sure it's not the flavor of the month. Most leadership teams in construction, we have this term called pencil whipping. I don't know if you've heard that before, but it's basically when someone in the field has to check off boxes and instead of actually doing the work, they just check, check, check, check, submit. Their reports are done on time.

Right.

And a lot of leadership teams do this as well. They're like, oh, I got this new initiative. Let's roll out this new benefit. They do all the technical stuff to get the benefit in place, and then they go, oh, month's done. I'm gonna move to something else. And people are like, you did all this work, but now you're not doing anything to promote it and to share with the team and make sure people buy into it. You're not doing that because they pencil whip. They like check the box, move on. They don't do the extra stuff. And so, I think that's something to be very careful with. If you want to change the culture, you have to realize this is a long-term thing and it will take you a long time to do it because your culture didn't get where it was overnight. Even if your business is young, you have a value system that you grew up with. And so, if you're 30 or 40 years old, you've got 30 or 40 years of behaving a certain way. You're training your team that that's acceptable behavior. You're not going to be able to change that In 6 months. So, you can't have it be the flavor of the month. You have to plant the flag and say, from here on out, this is important to us. We'll be intentional about this. I think the other thing to do is to never assume that your people trust you.

Right.

Never assume that because they're doing what you ask them to do, it's because they trust that what you're asking them to do is the right thing. We talked a little bit about trust and, you know, when you lose that conversation, when people just say, Yes, boss. Whatever you say, boss. They just don't want to deal with it anymore. Don't ever think that they are in a position where if there was a problem, they would tell you.

Right. Because that's interesting that you say that because when I had my mom's house renovated, I was talking to the plumber and we were talking about putting in a manifold into the house. And then, but then, and so, I didn't know if it was right or wrong. I was talking to the contractors like, do you put a Manifold? Do you do— Oh no, we could put a manifold, of course, because it's copper and it's more sale. And so here, they're putting in manifold to go to like 3 areas or 4 areas within the house. And I talked to the plumbers about it and I said, was this really necessary? He goes, well, I wouldn't have done it but it was on the work order. And it's like, what? So, you didn't have the power to be able to stop and question it? Take a look at what's good for the customer? And turn around and say, hey boss, are you sure this is what we want done?

Well, and that's because you have an environment where people are not rewarded for speaking up. Where if they rock the boat, if they create conflict, they're usually reprimanded or punished for that. And so, they just keep their mouth shut. And that's where I think just because people are buying into what you want to do, don't assume that they're really bought into what you want to do. They just may not trust you and that's why they're not speaking up.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I wonder, you know, people tuning in, I wonder if people resonate with some of this stuff that, you know, just because they say it. And it's not loyalty either, right? The fact that people do what you tell them to do, they fulfill the work order, that doesn't indicate loyalty on any level. It's just a work order.

And it's like, I'm just doing what I If that plumber was loyal, they would look at it and say, this isn't the best thing for the customer. And I want to make sure we got a customer for life. And they're going to focus more on the results of the organization instead of their own individual results or their department's results or their sales manager's results. And they're going to say, you know what? The best thing for the company is to go to this customer and say, hey, we don't need this manifold. We don't need to charge this extra for this. We can do it for a much less expensive way. The customer will be happier.

Yep.

And I've never met a customer that you go to and say, hey, I love what you bought. But I can save you 30% right now if we just do this a little differently. They're not going to be like, nope, nope, I want to spend the extra money.

Right?

They're going to love you for it. You're going to get the 5-star reviews. You're going to have a customer for life. They're going to tell the neighbors how outstanding you are and what kind of reputation you have and how much you should be trusted. That's going to do so much more for your business. But we think that the frontline people have no influence over that.

Right.

Right. So, we don't create an environment where we trust them to make those kinds of decisions. Right.

Ryan, this has been a fantastic conversation. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today? I know we covered quite a bit. Any last thoughts?

I've said this before. I'm gonna say it again because I think it's so important. If you don't know or if you have a question that you want answered, Instead of figuring it out on your own, ask your people.

Mm-hmm.

They—

it will take some time for them to go, am I going to get in trouble if I'm honest? But when you get into a habit of asking your people and then validating what they say and showing them that you're listening by making changes, doing those things, I mean, that can be so transformative. Just that one simple thing. Hey, I mean, I've got something scheduled with my team next week where we're going to do start, stop, continue. And it's all about me. I'm gonna say for an hour, you guys have start, stop, continue. I'm gonna say thank you, ask clarifying questions because I want to know what I can do to be a better leader for you.

Yeah. So we can keep—

And that's a hard thing to do.

It's really amazing.

You know, but they, it takes time to get there. Like, don't go do start, stop, continue with your team tomorrow if you've never done that before.

Yeah.

Because you're gonna get a bunch of softballs pitched at you and you're gonna be like, what do I do with this? That was a waste of time.

Yes.

But when your team truly trusts that they can be open, honest with you, they can give you the hard feedback and you'll do something with it. I mean, that's transformative on so many levels.

Ryan, thank you. How could people— remind us how people can get a hold of you one more time?

Best place is corematters.com. If they want to learn more about the blueprint, we've got a whole bunch of information there. I got a brand new 15-minute masterclass that I've put together that describes the blueprint. So, they can go learn all about it. corematters.com. If they want to connect with me directly, connect with me on LinkedIn. DM me. Happy to have a conversation.

And all your links are in the show notes as well. Ryan, thank you so much for doing this show today. I really appreciate you being here. Like I knew, just having talking with you, I knew that this would be so high value. And you've, I think, delivered in spades. So, thank you so much!

Thank you.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's conveniently marked meetwith.marchaine.com. And if today resonated with you, please reach out to Ryan. There's no need to suffer some kind of of a fool's kind of confidence about this stuff. If you've never been trained on being able to shift cultures, there's no way that you're going to have the skills to be able to do it on your own. So, reach out to Ryan. Have those conversations and see if it helps you in the future. I know that both of us are wired to be of service to you. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you leave a comment about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? What was the big nugget you took away today? And while you're at it, please do make sure that you're subscribed to the show. That way, you get notifications when I bring you fresh new content each and every week. It has been my absolute pleasure to be here to serve you today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception. Bye for now!