Ryan Englin on Everything They Don't Tell You: Why Workers Quit and What the Trades Must Fix

I sat down with Josh Zolin on Everything They Don't Tell You to talk about the real crisis hitting the trades, and it's not the one most people complain about.

Here's what most contractors say: "Nobody wants to work anymore." Here's what almost none of them say: "Billy's about to retire and take 30 years of knowledge with him." That second conversation is the one that matters. The consensus is 40% of people in the trades will retire in the next 5 to 8 years. That number used to be 7 to 10 years out. The clock moved. And while unions still run apprenticeship programs and put tools in kids' hands on day one, most open shops refuse to do the same. They're all chasing the same unicorn: the 5 to 10 year seasoned tech with a great attitude who does it their way and never leaves. Good luck.

I don't call this a labor shortage. There are enough people who want these jobs. Two things stand in the way. First, nobody is teaching the next generation. Everyone wants the finished product and nobody wants to invest in building one. Second, the trades still have a reputation problem. Mom and dad sitting at dinner with friends don't want to say their kid "settled" for Plan B. That's pride and ignorance working together. And for most people, perception is reality.

What if we valued the plumber as much as the attorney? What if we valued the electrician more than Amazon? We treat the trades as a necessary evil. Something breaks, someone fixes it, they leave our world. I take for granted every time my toilet flushes. Most of us do. Until we fix this reputation issue, it's going to get painful for consumers, entrepreneurs, and every commercial and civil project in the pipeline.

Josh and I dug into what contractors can actually do about this. Two things. First, put your arms around your people. Stop saying "I don't care that he's having problems at home, he's got a job to do." That mindset is killing the industry. The construction suicide rate is five times the national average. When you reduce a human being to a set of hands, don't act surprised when nobody wants to sign up.

Second, engagement. When your people are engaged, jobs are more profitable, customers are happier, retention goes up, and people knock on your door asking to work for you before you even have an opening. And if you want to know what engages your people, ask them. It sounds simple because it is. I promise you it's not money. Money is what people demand when they've given up on ever being valued. When someone says "pay me more," what they're really saying is "my fee just went up because that's what it costs for me to tolerate how you treat me."

I walked Josh through the CHOICE framework, which is the diagnostic we use for becoming an employer of choice. C is clear values, vision, and purpose. H is high trust leadership. O is opportunities to grow. I is industry-leading growth and reputation. C is competitive pay and stability. E is an engaged workforce. Every one of these matters, but the two that create the biggest immediate impact are clarity and trust.

Clarity means your people know why you get out of bed on the days you don't want to get out of bed. It means your core values are behaviors people can see, not banners on the breakroom wall. When you recruit with that clarity, candidates say "I want to be on that bus." Without it, they show up on day one, nobody learns their name, and they go home and tell their spouse this place is no better than the last one.

High trust leadership is the biggest opportunity for most contractors. Your service managers and foremen are the leaders your people interact with every day. And what do we give them? Just enough rope not to strangle themselves. Almost no authority. Zero leadership training. Then we say "go lead" and wonder why nobody trusts them. If you want people to trust their leaders, train those leaders. Hold them accountable. Teach them to communicate. A banker's leadership course does not carry over to a job site. Ever.

Josh shared something powerful during the conversation. After going through our program, his company Windy City built and published a clear career path for every technician. Two starting points, apprentice-style, converging into junior tech levels, then senior, then master. Each step spells out exactly what you need to learn to advance. The feedback was massive. Candidates told him "I chose you because you showed me how to get here. No other company did that." That's Gen Z talking. They say development and investment rank above pay. Number one thing they look for in a career.

I also hit on something I tell every contractor: the riches are in the niches. Stop being everything to everyone. We've had clients recruit specifically for stay-at-home moms working remote, veterans, people coming out of the justice system with a second chance. When you get laser focused on a group of people, your message gets sharper, your onboarding gets tighter, and you stop competing on price for attention. This principle applies to recruiting and to the customer side of the business.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on the CHOICE framework and every piece of the Core Fit Hiring System on Titans of the Trades. Episode 100 is a full deep dive into becoming an employer of choice. Subscribe for more conversations like this.