Ryan Englin on Achieving Success with Olivia Atkin: Why Blue-Collar Retention Starts with Becoming a Better Employer

I went on Achieving Success with Olivia Atkin to talk about why blue-collar contractors keep losing good people and what it actually takes to become the kind of employer people fight to stay with.

Olivia opened by asking me what success looks like. For me, it's simple. Control over my time. Experiences with the people I care about. Not being at someone else's beck and call. And I'll be honest, I still struggle with it. My dad taught me a work ethic that defaults to always being available. But I've learned the hard way that nobody needs it as fast as I think they need it. I can't count how many times we dropped everything for a client who then said, "I'll get back to you next week."

That led right into the story of my dad. He was an owner-operator in manufacturing. Worked 12-hour days, six or seven days a week. Had the same vision every entrepreneur has: more money, more time, better lifestyle. Then he woke up decades later wondering what happened. For years I thought his problem was revenue generation. He didn't have enough clients or enough new business. But as I got older and went through the corporate grind myself, I realized his real problem was that he didn't have people he could trust. He was the bottleneck in every part of the business. And when I started working with contractors, I saw the exact same pattern everywhere.

That realization built Core Fit Hiring. The system treats recruiting as a marketing activity, not an HR checkbox. It forces owners to get clear on who they are, what they stand for, and what kind of people actually thrive in their environment before they ever post a job.

Olivia asked about the stigma around blue-collar work and why people stopped entering the trades. I walked through the shift that started in the '80s and '90s when knowledge work took off. Office environments introduced cereal bars, PlayStations, and ping pong tables. Not because they were generous. Because they understood that when someone leaves their home, they leave their family, their friends, and the things they do for fun. The trades never made that shift. The mentality stayed "leave your drama at the door." And an entire generation heard those stories from mom and dad and said, "No thanks."

Then COVID pulled back the curtain. Knowledge workers realized those employers didn't care about them either. The playing field leveled. But the trades still have a massive advantage: you develop a skill that a computer is never going to replace. AI is not taking that job. The question is whether contractors will step up and treat people like human beings instead of a set of hands.

We spent a good chunk of time on retention. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. Every contractor who tells me "nobody wants to work" is really saying nobody wants to work for them. If you want to attract better people, you have to become a better employer. Period.

I broke down what people actually sacrifice to come work for you. Family. Friends. Fun. You will never put a price tag on that. But if you create something that substitutes for those things, even a little, people stay. Create opportunities for friendship on the job site. Not two-hour breaks playing video games. Small things. Going to lunch together. Talking about the weekend. When someone knows they'll lose those connections by chasing a dollar more an hour somewhere else, they don't leave.

Olivia pushed me on when to have career development conversations. I compared it to a marriage. When do you talk about kids, where you'll live, who stays home? Before you get married. Same thing here. We call that a culture fit conversation. If someone has goals I can't help them achieve, the odds of a long-term relationship are not good. Find that out before day one, not six months in.

We talked about companies that bring in Dave Ramsey's Smart Dollar to teach personal budgeting, Babel to help people learn a second language, or Excel and estimating courses so field workers can start moving into different roles. That's what investing in the whole person looks like. It's not just about the craft.

I also hit on vision. A lot of owners set a vision like "hit $30 million and exit" and expect their team to care. Why would they? When you sell, they get nothing. Translate that vision into something your people benefit from. Then they'll run through walls to help you get there.

The construction suicide rate is five times the national average in the United States. That stat alone tells you the industry has disregarded mental health, connection, and belonging for far too long. These people aren't a cog in your machine. They're human beings with hopes and goals and dreams. The companies that figure that out will thrive. The ones that don't will keep blaming the labor market.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on all of it in my book Hire Better People Faster. You can grab a free copy at corematters.com/freebook. And if you want more conversations like this, check out Titans of the Trades wherever you listen to podcasts.