Ryan Englin on Vision Pros Live Podcast: The Next Generation of Workers for Blue-Collar Business

I went on the Vision Pros Live Podcast with Jackson Calame to talk about the next generation of workers for blue-collar businesses and why the "nobody wants to work" narrative is flat wrong.

Let me be direct. If you believe no one wants to work, take a step back, look in the mirror, and ask yourself why no one wants to work for you. That's the real issue. We see it happen time and time again in the trades.

Jackson and I started with one of my favorite litmus tests. Go look at a company's careers page. Most don't even have one. The ones that do have a paragraph about company history, a fax number or a general inquiries email, and zero reason for anyone to get excited. Here's the thing. Every business has customer testimonials. Every business has reviews. Almost none of them have employee testimonials. We have one client where a woman in the field propped her phone on a ladder, sat on the bumper of her truck, and talked to the camera for 60 seconds about why it was a great place to work. They shared it on social media and it took off. Because no one else is doing this.

People tell me all the time that what I teach is common sense. It's not. Common sense is not common.

I shared the story of how Core Matters came to be. My dad was an owner-operator in the trades. Up before the sun, home after the kids were in bed, working weekends. My entire childhood was spent at the shop as free labor. I told myself I'd never go into the family business. Went corporate, got my degree, did the whole thing. Then I started a marketing company to help contractors get more leads. And they started calling me saying turn it off, we don't need leads, we need people. I had empty trucks sitting in the yard and jobs they couldn't staff. That's when it hit me. Recruiting is a marketing activity. Not an HR activity. I applied the same principles I used to attract customers and started attracting employees. It was natural. And I realized this was the problem my dad always had. No one ever taught him how to hire people and build a team he could trust.

Jackson and I got into a conversation about cash flow, and I pointed out something most owners miss. A $10 million construction company with a 10% net margin that's losing $750,000 a year to disengagement, overtime, and turnover doesn't feel the pain because they never write a check for it. They just throw more hours at the problem. More overtime. More burnout. And they wonder why there's no money left at the end of the year.

We talked about the next generation. Every generation for the last hundred years has been criticized the same way when they entered the workforce. Boomers were the hippie generation. People said they'd never amount to anything. Every generation job-hops when they're in their twenties. Boomers did it too. Gen Z is actually giving the biggest jump to apprenticeship programs in the trades that we've seen in 50 years. They watched their Millennial older siblings and cousins struggle, and they're choosing a different path. Stop making fun of them and start figuring out how to attract them.

The mindset killing trades businesses is this: people come to work for a paycheck, and if my paycheck isn't big enough they'll leave. I had an entrepreneur tell me once, "I don't invest in my people because they're going to leave." Your people are leaving because you're not investing in them. Every study says it's not about the money. This younger generation wants purpose. They want to feel like they're making a difference. They want to go home proud of the work they did and enjoy the people they spent time with. They're giving up friends, family, and fun to come work for you. Make it worth it.

I walked through the phases of how we work with clients. First, stop the bleeding. Fix the urgent problem, whether that's overtime, turnover, or being short-staffed. Then build your employer brand so you attract the right people. Then fix the interview process so both sides take off the mask and show up authentically. Then onboard them properly with a 90-day process that walks alongside them. Then invest in their personal goals. Help them buy a house, get out of debt, whatever matters to them. Then start passive recruiting, building a pipeline of employed people who see what you're doing and knock on your door.

Jackson asked me for three resources. I gave him Simon Sinek, Patrick Lencioni, and Emerson Eggerichs, who wrote Love and Respect. That last one surprises people because it's not a business book. But here's the reality. The tools I learned to communicate better with my wife over 30 years of marriage became the foundation of what I teach business owners. People at work have the same wants, needs, hopes, and goals as people at home. They communicate differently. They hear the same words differently. And if you don't learn how to navigate that, you end up with the same cycle. Fire one, hire another, repeat. That doesn't work in personal relationships, and it doesn't work in business either.

My final thought on the show was simple. If you don't know what's important to your people, ask them. And when they answer, say "tell me more about that." They won't share the real stuff on the first ask because they're not used to anyone asking. Be a better coach. Be a better leader. Help them open up.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on building culture and hiring systems that actually work on Titans of the Trades.