Does the trades industry have a labor shortage?

Ryan Englin argues there is an employee crisis, not a labor shortage. He says the industry has a bunch of employers who like to play the victim and don't want to train the next generation of technicians. His proof: ask your bookkeeper how many W2s you issued last year, then look at your payroll on December 31. The gap shows you are hiring just fine. You are not training, onboarding, equipping, or engaging.

How do trade companies capture tribal knowledge before boomers retire?

Ryan Englin recommends putting people who love technology alongside the veterans to record everything they do, then loading that content into an AI brain the next generation can actually reach. He explains the next generation doesn't type into Google. They talk to an AI agent. The knowledge has to live in a chatbot or voice agent, and once you have it, it's yours.

Why do mentorship programs fail in trade companies?

Ryan Englin explains that mentoring slows a technician down. Fewer jobs, more rework, more explaining. If that tech is on commission, mentoring feels like a setback in their career and their pay. He says mentorship works only when the mentor wins too.

Why does AI write bad job descriptions?

Ryan Englin says AI keeps producing the same garbage you get off Indeed: six generic bullets about what an HVAC tech does. After hundreds of hours building agents, the AI admitted to him that his way of writing job descriptions is totally different from the ten million job descriptions it was trained on. Just because AI is fast does not mean it is good.

What does Ryan Englin say about employers who blame candidates for ghosting?

Ryan Englin flips it. When owners say nobody wants to work and everybody ghosts them, he asks when the candidate applied. The answer is often twelve days ago with no response. His question back: who ghosted who first?

Ryan Englin built FieldCon to help field managers, service managers, and foremen connect with their people. These are strong workers promoted for doing the work, never given the people skills or communication skills. The system gives them the words to say, records the conversation on a phone, summarizes it, and writes up the review, cutting performance review time by 75%.

Ryan Englin on Service Business Mastery: No Labor Shortage

Q: Do technicians leave for more money?

Ryan Englin states that nobody leaves for money. He points out that if an employee came to you and said he just found out he's having twins and needs a bigger house and a van, you would work to make it happen rather than let him walk after two years of training.

I went on Service Business Mastery with Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch to make the case that the trades don't have a labor shortage. We have a labor crisis, and employers created it.

Here's the math I gave them on the show. Ask your bookkeeper how many W2s you issued last year. Then look at your payroll on December 31st. The gap tells you everything. If nobody wants to work, why are you issuing so many W2s? You're hiring just fine. You're not training, not onboarding, not equipping, not engaging. That's a different problem with a different fix.

I grew up in this. My dad was an owner-operator who started his own company to make more money and have more time, then woke up 30 years later wondering what happened. He still can't fully retire. I thought his problem was revenue. I thought it was marketing. It was neither. He never built a team around him that pulled work off his plate. Everything ran through him. He was the bottleneck.

That's why I went corporate, learned systems and process, then came back to help people like my dad. Ten years in, I've learned hiring is only the first piece. Onboarding, intention, and engagement are where companies actually lose people.

The bottleneck is almost always the owner

Josh shared something honest on the episode. His leadership team told him to get out of the way, and work started moving faster than when he was involved. He thought he was helping. He was the roadblock.

I see it constantly. I had an electrical contractor whose service department sat upstairs. We built a KPI tracking how many times he walked up those stairs in a week. Every single time he went up, work stopped. He reshuffled the board. He redirected the dispatcher. Nothing got done.

This isn't a man or woman thing. It's a visionary owner thing. The single biggest bottleneck in any business is the owner. I work with owner-led trade businesses on exactly this, and the pattern repeats across every size of company.

Nobody leaves for money

We got into this on the show. An owner trains a tech, then the tech leaves for more money, and the owner swears off training forever. Money is one factor out of five or seven. If that same tech walked in and said he just found out he's having twins and needs a bigger house, you wouldn't say good luck. You'd say let's make it happen.

The conversation is the thing. Most owners never have it.

Tribal knowledge is walking out the door

The retirement wave is real. People are leaving the trades faster than they're coming in, and that's exactly why it feels like a shortage. The knowledge in those heads was never written down.

The fix is unglamorous. Follow your veterans around. Record them. Capture why they wrap the Armaflex with the zip tie connector on the bottom. That's culture, not an SOP, and it only surfaces when somebody asks the question. Then put it somewhere the next generation actually goes. They don't type into Google. They talk to an AI agent. Build the library and they'll do it your way instead of YouTube's way.

Mentorship only works when the mentor wins

Gallup's Q12 has a question most owners dismiss. Do I have a best friend at work. People who say yes are six times more likely to be engaged. Then look at how we built this industry. One guy, one truck, alone all day. We did this to ourselves.

Mentorship fixes it, but only if the mentor isn't punished for it. If he's on commission and you hand him two mentees, he runs one call instead of three. That's a pay cut dressed up as a promotion. Make the mentor win or the program dies.

This is also why I built FieldCon. We promote great technicians into field leadership and never give them the communication skills. They don't know how to start the conversation. Give them the words and they handle it fine.

AI is fast. Fast isn't good.

We write job descriptions for clients, and we're hundreds of hours into building agents to do it. The AI kept handing me the same six bullets you'd pull off Indeed. It finally admitted why. My way is different from the ten million job descriptions it trained on.

That's the trap. Fast and cheap, never good. The same thing is happening with legal documents and marketing audits. Real expertise never got uploaded.

Apply All made it worse on both sides. Employers drown in 200 applicants in 72 hours. Candidates fire off applications without reading a word about the company. We had a guy text back apologizing because he hit select all and didn't realize he'd applied to a company he used to work for. Then owners sit on applications for 12 days and complain about ghosting. Who ghosts Indeed for 12 days?

Two candidates found that same owner on LinkedIn, found me, and emailed us directly. Both got interviews. That's initiative, and it's all I care about.

Stop testing how well people rehearse answers. Build a process they can't fake. Faking a process is harder than faking an answer. Every single time.

If you liked this, I go deeper on recruiting as marketing and building a bench on Titans of the Trades.

Ryan Englin on Service Business Mastery Podcast: Why There's No Labor Shortage in the Trades

Key takeaways