The Evolution of Learning and Content with Jason Berkowitz at Arrow Up Training

(03:20) The shift to digital training has democratized content creation, making it accessible and authentic, while emphasizing the importance of consistency across all locations.
(07:58) Micro training combined with storytelling and mixed media appeals across all generations, enhancing engagement and retention by making content more digestible and relatable.
(11:09) Incorporating real-life stories and diverse media formats into training keeps learners engaged, personalizes the experience and reinforces the content's relevance and relatability.
(14:14) Effective training should be brief, intentional and practical, incorporating specific triggers and regular reinforcement to ensure learners retain and apply the information in real-life scenarios.
(16:31) Successful organizations engage employees by involving them in creating and sharing authentic stories and experiences, fostering a bottom-up approach that resonates more deeply than top-down corporate messaging.
(18:45) Crowdsourcing from employees to create relatable, updated content fosters a more authentic culture and attracts a workforce that values clarity and relevance over rigid corporate language.
(22:17) For critical content like compliance training, it's essential to balance high production value with authenticity, ensuring both professionalism and relatability in the final product.
(26:45) Building an effective training program requires focusing on what’s most important, leveraging industry knowledge and continuously learning and adapting to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world.
(32:52) Building strong relationships and providing regular, structured reminders are key to effective management, enhancing employee retention and creating a positive, engaged workplace environment.

• Arrow Up Training Website

Evan Melick: Well, hello! Content is continuously evolving. However, the top two needs continue to be the same. People want to know, what is my job? And how am I doing? Today we are fortunate enough to have Jason Berkowitz with us, CEO and Founder of Arrow Up Training.

Jason, can you give us some background about yourself and Arrow Up?

Jason Berkowitz: Absolutely, excited to be here. Love that intro. It is a mantra of mine, what people want, and kind of has really directed my experience from 14 years old in my first job as a King Whopper Topper at Burger King, self appointed, all the way through to my job later in my career was helping scale awesome restaurant companies. 

So if you had a good brand and you had a line around the block, you would bring me in and I would put all of the operations together and training and whatnot so that you could infuse some capital and really scale aggressively. After working at my last company as COO, I found myself just doodling, you know, time to burn, time to learn.

And, and all of these other kind of like training quips that I loved. And I was like, all right, it's time to get back to it and about five years ago, launched Arrow Up Training. While I've always been obsessed with service and hospitality, we started off with compliance training because we saw it was a really unique way to get in and help solve a problem and jump into the conversation. And really, you know, represent the culture of our industry, which I love. Arrow Up does anti harassment. We move to safety, and then we move to leadership development. A core focus of ours is helping develop supervisors into leaders, because those of us who have been there know you need more than a pair of keys and the ability to comp food to actually be effective. And we've been fortunate enough to partner up with Wisetail and our partnership and the way we love training and developing and we're kind of just beginning our journey and building from here.

Evan Melick: That is so exciting. Also, I think you need to create a badge for those whopper toppers. I think that would really catch on. We're gonna do that.

Jason Berkowitz: Yeah, I'll tell you what, you know turning on and I know you're about to jump in, but I'll tell you what, I still remember that day when I put the visor on the Burger King visor on it at fourteen and I, and I worked hard to get there. I mean, I was too young to work there. I had my mom, my dad, work orders, personal notes, like gym class notes saying you got to take them. We're done listening to him saying that he wants to work there. So finally they caved. This is Cleveland, you know, late 80s, so it was able to happen and I just remember that feeling of putting on that visor and it was just like, uh, the dawn, right? The true evolution of my living. So yes, it's good stuff from those days.

Evan Melick: Well, there's something so empowering about that, right? Like, just ownership of your own destiny for the first time, especially at these young ages. And giving people the access to create this experience for themselves. I think that's really a compelling story.

Jason Berkowitz: Love how you said that. Ownership of your destiny. Right, and I wanted it, and I saw it, and I saw the arena that I wanted to play in, that I wanted to grow in, that I wanted to learn with and play with. So that was, I love how you framed that. That's, that's why you're you. That's great.

Evan Melick: Well, thank you. That actually is a great segue into my first question for you. So Over your tenure, you've obviously seen a wide variety of content and training resources across numerous industries, whether it's restaurant, hospitality, or the intersection between the two. What are some of the trends that you're seeing in the workforce, and how are employees absorbing and retaining that training and content?

Jason Berkowitz: The first thing to recognize and appreciate is that we are moving more digital. Clearly we're a content creator. You're a content company; a vehicle for that, a learning system. And so coming out of the pandemic to really see this unbelievable adoption of digital is fantastic. Now, Wisetail has been around for a while. 

I brought them into a company years ago when I was overseeing learning and development. So it's been there, but to watch it trickle down into smaller emerging brands and mom and pops all the way up to enterprise is absolutely magnificent. So first and foremost is digital. Now, it's one of the most important things to solve this problem, which we've all experienced, I'm sure, which is, you know, hey, they do it this way at this location, but we do it this way or somebody comes over and you have this institutional knowledge that you have to get out of people's heads and create a level of consistency to just all across the board, not only for the customer experience and the guest experience, but for the employee experience, and that really matters. Because what does that come down to? The element of trust. Do I trust being here? Do I know what my job is? First of the things, what's my job and how am I doing? Do I know what that is? And so, watching people document this is great. I think originally everyone thought that they needed a really big budget to create all of this digital content. 

Now with whether it's part A. I. tools, reeling, uh, of real situations and conversations. So you've got TikTok and reels and, you know, we're really seeing the authenticity of just somebody talking to us. I think people are realizing that you don't need 12 weeks of pre production. Pull out the phone. Grab a video, make it short, make it sweet, get it consistent, load it, and put it into some sort of procedure that you can standardize. I'm seeing that. I'm seeing this disarming of we need to be perfect. And we've learned that along the way, right? Perfect is the enemy at times, right? Done is better than perfect. 

Get it done. Build it. And what's really cool is people then have set a framework or a blueprint of what we're doing. Then other people are jumping in and users are jumping in, and we'll get into that a little bit later, but I think people are realizing that that they don't have to do everything themselves. Tap into your community of fellow team members, and it's becoming this sort of rough and rugged, all hands on deck type of training and learning, and it's cool, and people are digging it because it feels real.

Evan Melick: So one of the things you said I think is really interesting is you talked about the mom and pop shops versus large multinational corporate franchise owned. When you're talking about consistency, it sounds like you're not just talking about between locations, but even within a location, having consistency and experience. Am I hearing that right?

Jason Berkowitz: 100%. It's both. Morning shift to night shift, to two people doing it different ways. Absolutely. And people will feel that working different shifts, working with different leaders, working with different managers, right? John likes it this way when you walk in. Watch out for that, right? Or the owners expect something, but no one's ever really communicated it.

It's just been on these hallway conversations. Document it. And I will tell you this much a hundred percent. My philosophy is organized. People work for organized environments. People who appreciate consistency stay in a consistent environment. We attract the workforce that we want to have. And so if anyone's measuring their ROIs on all of this it's not immediate. You can look at things immediately, right? Yep, you train them to get the second drink down, you teach them how to upsell at the cashier, you teach them the consistency of the weight and measures of the taco that they're making, or the cream cheese they're putting on the bagels, all of that stuff. But watch as you start to attract the people that want to work for these companies that are organized, the ones that don't appreciate it leave, the ones that do stay, and then your turnover minimizes. And all of your KPIs start to move in the right direction. So really watch that arc. It's awesome.

Evan Melick: That is so interesting. I really liked the way you said that, that we attract the workforce we want to have. I'm taking copious notes here because, uh, I like the way you phrase things. Which, to me, leads right into sort of a question around, um, multi generational workforce, right? We're in this unprecedented time, we've got arguably four, Soon to be five generations within the workforce.

They absorb content differently, they have different learning styles and experiences, arguably humans, right? I'll have learning differentials, um not just generational. But how do you think, and what has been your experience, in businesses keeping up with information shared content? that multigenerational approach. And where do you see some opportunities there?

Jason Berkowitz: I see. So, right. You, you touched on something that I think is important, but it's a much larger conversation of adaptability and dynamics of how somebody learns, whether it be in their Myers Briggs, right? Do I, do I like to be very clean and quick? Do I want something to be a little softer around the edges, more empathy to it? And that could be within a generation, right? And that's something to, I think anyone who's learning or listening should Kind of start to pay attention to that of what we like. Sticking on the point of now building off that with the multi generational, what's amazing is all of us are losing our attention span together, some generations, a little bit faster, None of us, so, so, let's get it smaller.

I mean, you know, let's, let's actually turn this to micro forces and micro training, which I think is important. And there's something interesting about this. As somebody who was building and selling content, you know, their value was, how long the content was, was how much we felt we could charge. And so it's right, oh, this is an hour course, so we can charge X per learner. When, what's shifting is minimum dose of what we need to hear and what we need to know. And that I think is having the value where can you shrink it and all generations appreciate. Give me the shortest bit of message. Let's create it in a micro format. Let's constant general pressure, which is feed it to you, but then bring it back at a later date for a little bit of a tune up, which you can get into. But at this point, we all appreciate that. We all appreciate when it's small. We all appreciate a little bit of authenticity. And one of my favorite pieces that is. It completely transfers all generations and the human experience is if you can build a story into it, then that really is magnificent, right?

People absolutely love that. And so every generation wants to hear a little story of how something happened and something that I think successful companies are doing. is because they're training and they're putting standard operating procedures and they're putting checklists in place and they're really being structured about this well what there is is more time for the people who are working together to actually get to know each other and that's at the end of the day what we want to do is blend what we're learning online to extend into this real life. Working together, whether it be shoulder to shoulder, whether it be, you know, getting to know each other. That's how you bridge generations. That's how you bridge all of this together in my experience. Now, one quick thing, Hey, everyone listening, everyone's talking about everything needs to be tick, I don't think so. I think it's about a mixed medias too. Have somebody tell a little bit of a story. Have Um, a GIF or a meme have a little TikTok bite, but if you make it all like these TikTok bites, your brain just starts to duplicate and pattern what you're doing when you're scrolling through TikTok, which is mind numbing.

You're not capturing it. You're not getting it. So I really think what's working that we're seeing is the blending of this.

Evan Melick: So would you say then from an instructional design perspective, some of those best practices, like immediate best practices that some of our listeners might be able to take away from this is incorporating those mixed media types of messages and Concurrently, right, having a hybrid model where it's not just absorbing what's on the screen, but making sure that your leaders are trained, that co workers are trained appropriately to share and showcase some of those real life learning experiences.

Jason Berkowitz: Absolutely. So let's talk about your, your, you're building a course, right? Let's get some fun imagery. Take photos of your staff doing stuff. Get their faces involved. We want to see each other. So you take a couple photos, you put a couple captions and quotes inside of there. Maybe you record somebody talking because they're a little camera shy.

You get the audio of that and you drop that into a little audio segment like an audiogram. Then you pull out the video camera and somebody videos a little something. And you, then maybe you produce a little more higher end if you want and there's somebody telling a story. Then you drop into a little bit of a meme and you ask a question and you get the quiz and the interactivity along the way. And it's just all coming together where you're, you're keeping them on the front of their seat the whole time. Then getting back to what you said, figure out who in there has a story to tell or something that means something to them. and let them then be a part of the in person training and have them tell that story over and over again to the point that they're so good that they share it with everybody there and then you capture that on video. One of my favorite stories of this is, we were trying to figure out how to help leaders Understand that not everybody's perfect from, from the word go. And we were, we were interviewing leaders and what was it like day one? And it wasn't until we came across this awesome kid, Dylan, on, on Instagram. And he put a little GoPro over his head and he was talking about, how he was scared being a new employee at the ice cream shop. 

Here he is, he's talking and he's scooping ice cream and he's talking about, I was so ridiculous that, that I was asking so many questions and I was so nervous and they were like, I was like, what do I do next? And they were like, well, you drain the sink. Well, how do I drain the sink? You literally pull the plug out of the sink. And he's like, He's like, and so I was that nervous and then I remembered how ridiculous I was with my questions and so I then share that with everybody that comes on board like, hey, let me tell you about a time when I was nervous and learning this. It's okay, I was there for you. Oh, while he's making these awesome scoops of ice cream and everything going on. So, you know what I'm saying? It's like this little bit of an interactive show, but he just got somebody telling a story that was so cool. We caught it. We shared it. And it means something.

Evan Melick: I love that connection piece too, because we can all resonate, right, with those first experiences when we're just, we're so nervous and we don't want to make a mistake, but then we don't want to ask those simple questions, but we want to do it right. And so I, I like, I like what you're talking about, about having that connection piece and that storytelling piece, because that's how, I mean, we're, we're, we're all built to connect to one another and, and share those experiences of the, and the stories.

I'm curious, a little bit, how do you see, so, so you described some of those areas with, um, the, the checklists and the memes and the GIFs and everything else, how do you see that evolving into, uh, a, a training curriculum? If you're doing this in a, um, sort of organic fashion, what does that look like at the end of the day?

Jason Berkowitz: I think it's, keep it brief. Make sure that you're being very intentional on what the takeaway is. Everyone still needs to have a tool that says, when I hit this moment, this is what I do, right? It can't be a series of platitudes. We did a de escalation course. This is something a little more universal, but we talked, it ended up being a course on empathy, of how do you understand people so that you can have empathy for them to de escalate the moment. 

Well, that's all grand and good, but we still taught them Okay, here what happens is when this happens, you pause, you do not speak for three seconds, then you find something to agree on, then you breathe, and then you start by finding something to agree on. So the test was, you know, as we were, we were a point during the pandemic and we were doing a course for the city of Santa Monica for people who didn't want to wear masks and they were walking in the door yelling at some of these retail associates. And we were teaching them these practical tools of what they had to do and in this we taught them a course on empathy, but they would say, okay, what am I going to agree with this person? You know what? You're right. Masks are stuffy. Masks are difficult. You're, I hate wearing them. You're absolutely right. So it was a real practical tool that they would do and more times than not, it disarmed and de escalated the moment. Going back into a little bit of the training, if there's something very specific, how to make a cappuccino, the way that we greet guests, try to put as many triggers so that it's automatic and intentional in the training. That's what I think. So if a. then B. Something else is continue to ask questions along the way for feedback. The humans learn better when you learn something, then you recall that information, then you move on, then you go back, then you recall that original information again, and you continue to bring that back in. That's what we're finding in the science of learning is working best.

Evan Melick: So, we talked through some of the basics, like, the, the components that go into it for sure. What do you see as some of the more unique methods that organizations are using to engage with employees through their content?

Jason Berkowitz: What I love that I'm seeing is they're really bringing their employees involved, they're bringing their employees into the mix of helping them build this. They're grabbing the cooks who are making the tacos and having them show you how to make the taco. They're grabbing the employees that are talking about how do you handle a guest coming in and talking about how they handled an upset guest that was coming in and they dealt it, dealt with it. I think the companies that are being successful are not using this top down corporate approach where it's all about day one, I walk in and there's the CEO telling me the core values. What they're doing is they're, and we've, we realized this recently, we were helping these companies build an orientation course, and they were talking about the core value of kindness. And. Fortunately, the VP of HR looked over at the cashier who was there and asked them to come on over and said, do me a favor. You know, and this person's tatted and pierced and whatnot. They're like, do you feel like we're kind to you? And this person just sat there and told this beautiful story of Examples of kindness and one day that they were having a really hard time at home and they came in and the manager could sense this on this and the manager took him outside and said, how you feeling today? Do you need to take a walk? I got you. I got, I tell you what, I'm going to cover the register for the first 10 minutes for you. And it's like, I choke up thinking about this, right? And here's this person not talking about top down core values. telling a story of where kindness fits into this whole organization and I love it and I think organizations are bringing, that are successful, are bringing their team members and taking this bottom up approach so Again, let them show you how to make the cappuccino. Let them show you what the struggles are with pulling the bagel out when it's hot. Let them talk to you about stories of kindness and core values. That's what I'm seeing that's really working, is they're just, it's a little gritty, and it's so relatable, and it's authentic. And they're seeing that, just drop the corporate speak, man.

Just be authentic. That's what's working.

Evan Melick: So a few things in there, it's really interesting to me because you've sort of drawn that, that out. a parallel path, if you will, between the storytelling, between the authenticity, and then going back to one of the first things you said that I've already called out, but I think it's worthy of calling out again.

We attract a workforce we want to have. And so it sounds like allowing more of what we used to call crowdsourcing, right? But, but more of a bottoms up approach builds a culture in an organic, authentic way, versus you must follow these ten rules of this organization.

Jason Berkowitz: Yeah, that's it. And, and people want to see the people that we relate to. We want to see our peers. We want to see the ones around us that we aspire to be, that they're giving us the sign of approval, the seal that they're working here, and therefore it's cool if we work here. So crowdsourcing is a great way to look at it, and it's just, it's leveraging your team.

Now, make sure your team's getting paid, that they're on the clock. Make sure all of that is taken care of, right? But ask your team, you know, here's what's great, Go, everyone, go look at your checklists. There's this Wisetel. Everyone go look at your checklist right now and read those checklists out loud and see if you're, if, if you know a 13 year old or 15 year old or 16 year old, is that how they would talk to each other to do the checklist?

Does it say ensure that we have the utmost, you're gonna lose them right there. Hey, make sure, because, like add a little why into it. Because. You know, hurts when it goes down. When it's raining, please make sure we got something to put the umbrellas in when, when it's, when it's wet outside. Just take it now and just read through every single checklist and see if it comes literally out of the playbook of Burger King, which I loved, but in the eighties, it should not read like that.

It should read like today, two people talking to each other. Not, because I told you so, it's got a little bit of a why, and you just drop that in like we're speaking to each other, so that, again, you're going to attract the workforce, and it have, you don't have to worry about writing it, go hand it to the people who are doing that and say, help me out, rewrite this thing, so it doesn't sound dorky and terrible.

Evan Melick: So it sounds to me like you have a very strong recommendation for instructional designers, L&D professionals, really anyone who is in any way engaged with employees within a business to make things more approachable, to add a personalized flair and flavor to things.

Jason Berkowitz: Yeah, to bring your personality into it, to, uh, grab people around you who have personality and to get them into the mix. Look at it like a concept album. Just grab people that are there. What do you want to do? Hey, this is a little track that we want to put in together. I mean, get into the art of it. So absolutely crowdsource the personality, kick it off with your own personality, be authentic, and then track it.

Because you know what? You might think you have a hit on your hands, but you got to tweak it a And that's okay. All great producers. Swifties know Taylor records 50 songs to get five of them right. So it's okay if you didn't get the first. Don't be so precious. Track it. Get it out there. See if the personality's vibing. See if it fits. Tweak it. All good.

Evan Melick: It goes back to that whole construct, right? Perfection is the enemy of done sometimes. So are there areas that you would caution our listeners against sort of just throwing things out there? I know you had talked early on about starting Arrow Up in that compliance space. Are there specific areas that you would recommend maybe a more prescribed approach to ensure, uh, oh, there's the word ensure.

Don't look at my checklist. They'll be full of words just for me, but there are there areas of content that you would recommend buying more off the shelf, pre developed, pre written content?

Jason Berkowitz: First off, you've got the best anti harassment training in the market at a company like Arrow Up. So, absolutely, I think that because, first off, there's legalities to it, there's compliance to it. And, and we, so it's a great question, right? So, for us we took to heart that we wanted it to feel very real. and get real stories, but it's, and it's very professional, and it's been vetted by attorneys, and there's enough there there that we produced it. And in anything, it's high low, right? There's a little bit of high low. So we do our safety training, very high elements, very high production, and then very low feelings of relatability and authenticity. 

Again, that mixed media stew. Our leadership development, which I'm most excited because we developed supervisors into leaders. Some of that stuff is really high production where we sit there. And we, um, you know, we capture these great interviews, but then we also have some zooms and some stories of people just giving a selfie on their phone and making it relatable.

So, I think you have to look at it like the blend. There's also something else that's important. Careful of what's in the framing. Now, you can be authentic and real, but are you filming real quickly and the sanitizer rags sitting outside the bucket? Well, that's eternally there. You gotta catch that. Is the, is the shirt wrinkled or stained? Frame it, right? This doesn't mean that we're lazy. This doesn't mean that we're not completely attuned and attentive to what's going on. And, and assume you're going to capture magic, because something that we didn't talk about, but it's really important and amazing on digital training is, when you capture a story or you capture a magic, magic on film, on video, well, now you can share it. eternally with everybody, because that feeling is there. That raw feeling is there. So, before you press play, or record, how does it look? Are the glasses where they shouldn't be? You know, are things looking where they should be? So I still think professionalism lives absolutely throughout. You want to check it. 

You want to play to the most neurotic denominator, which is how I look at service, right? Absolutely. Get the most obsessive compulsive person in the room who's with you and have them next to you while you're putting this stuff together because they're just going to see things that you might not see or vice versa. Absolutely. Going back to the crowdsource. High, low. You have to know when to do it. If you're going to capture the CEO talking about why they founded the company, yeah, bring in a crew, our crew, your crew, bring in a crew, get in a nice backdrop, you know, film it, make it nice, blend that together so there is an element of authority.

You always want to balance authority versus authenticity and guerrilla style.

Evan Melick: So if I could use one word to describe what you just explained, it sounds like intentionality, right? It sounds like making sure that. If you're filming, you're being very intentional about what you're filming, what you're hoping your viewers or listeners or whatever medium it is are getting out of it, as well as having the right understanding of where this is hitting that high or that low. If, you know, if it's a GIF, it's going to be a very different experience than if it's the CEO delivering on the mission and vision and value statement.

Jason Berkowitz: 100%. And that begins with sketching it out. So again, you're, you're building a project in our project. So we go back to something you talked about earlier, which is great. And I think it does need to be, uh, you know, we got to hammer in on this a little bit. Bull point it out, outline it out, understand where it's going, rough sketch it out.

This is where we're going to put a little bit more money into the budget. This is where we're not going to worry about it so much. This is the intentionality of the point we want to hit. This is the question we're going to ask. A lot of times, we know, we learn by just asking the question that you care about. Right? There are three options. Which one matters most? That's the takeaway. So be extremely intentional, map it out, and then you start to fill it in. The canvas is there, right? You piece together the colors and the feeling and the vibe that you got going on. So, yes. 100%.

Evan Melick: So I want to ask you just a quick follow up question, then we'll move on a little bit. But, um, I'm, uh, content is, is part of my, my lifeblood. I, I have a very extensive content background, um, but I'm really curious. When you started Arrow Up, how long did it take you to develop this recipe for success as you started building and adding more courses in?

My guess is there are going to be quite a few listeners that are either very early stage or this is only a very small portion of their day job, right? Because we know we, we all wear many, many hats all the time. And so just to give a little bit of context about how you started and how you have rallied the teams to get to where you are today that it has become a much more, um, process driven and oriented approach.

Jason Berkowitz: It's a great question. You're absolutely right. For all of you out there listening, we respect the fact that you have to build the ship, sail it, and, um, and continue. You know, fun little story, quick little story was, when I, my last few jobs in the kind of C suite, and I guess when I was a VP of Ops and then another Chief Operating Officer, my first 30 days and this was before I grew up.

My first 30 days, I said, nobody talk to me. I'm going to build a training program. If you give me a, if you even give me an email address, I'm not checking it. Because the second you expected me to respond, that was it. If I'm one of the people you call when the building's on fire, I will always go to put the building out of fire, right?

To put the fire out. And there's this thing that we all understand right now is when we talk about what's important and what's urgent. And it's very hard to be in an operational point and to do L& D and HR and to try to put your standard operating procedures and your training in place when you're also sailing the ship because urgent and important completely battle for each other. But I believe that training is so urgent. That I made it the most important thing for what I did, right? That informed me in understanding. That really taught me. To know what I needed to focus on in building a training program. So I was able to, when I launched Arrow Up Training, I had already built so many different training programs for so many different companies that I knew what the flow and the feel was going to be like. Here's what's funny. When I started the company, I was ready for service and hospitality. I was going to bring service and hospitality to everybody. And this was going to be awesome. And I, and I left my job and I started the company. And the first thing my partners, my. My creative director and my brother said to me was, It's never gonna work. It's just, it's not going to do because I wanted to also start with mom and pop shops. And I'm like, but I've trained, I've built the training programs for Gucci, Osteria to talk to a mommy burger to I'm the authority. Yeah, no one's gonna buy it in a small mom and pop shop. Right? It's just not gonna. Son of a So, I had come, though, with all of this experience building that, which was great, but my creative director, who's now our partner and chief creative officer, knew how to communicate brilliantly and creatively to people because he came from the commercial world. So he took my structure and knowledge and voice of how, because I speak, you know, the way we speak in the industry. And he blended that with his understanding of delivering a high impact message. And so I was at an advantage that we were able to come out of the gates, but here's cool. Take the story a little, little further. We started our first course was anti harassment training, right? Cause again, no one's going to buy service and hospitality. So let's build something that everybody needed. We were up against these companies that were. building with these huge Hollywood budgets, right? And these other content providers and I respect all of them, but a big piece of this is cheesy reenactments, you know, and a lot of them didn't speak to the restaurant industry. 

When you and I first talked, right, it was like, what works, what doesn't work? And I was like, okay, we're going to be different because we're going to speak to restaurants. And we now we, we have courses outside of restaurants and for different, uh, right. Industries, but we're going to first start with restaurants. And we're not gonna do these cheesy reenactments. We're actually just gonna put up the camera and we're gonna have somebody tell us a story of what happened. Instead of trying to reenact this, they just told us about a really rough moment that they went through. And we didn't vilify anybody, and we understood that the industry was shifting, so we wanted to make it inviting and talk about the gray area. What I'm getting to is, fortunately my creative director at the time knew the power in stories, and so We went from this big blockbuster of reenactments to say, Nope, we're going to do mixed media, we're going to make it high design, we're going to make it low at times, and we're just going to have people tell us their stories. 

It worked right out of the gates. So our learning curve was small there, to answer that. But don't forget, or to remember, that was five years ago. The whole world has shifted. multiple times since then, and then we have learned to even go shorter and smaller since then. And we continue to learn every day.

But again, we came knowing how to build a program and how to interview somebody, which really helped. And all of you have that power. Everybody listening to this has that power. Going back to intentionality figure out what you want to get, ask the questions that help drive the answers, that you can then put into the program. Does that help? Did that answer enough?

Evan Melick: 100%. And so I think what I was trying to do is wrap it in, uh, a little bit of a bow because you do this, this, this is your day job, right? Building content, building tools, building leadership, building all of those things, which We certainly sell here at YSTO off the shelf, um, but for organizations that don't either have a budget or don't want to get off the shelf or they feel like they need to have something that is a little more branded or specific or any of those things, we skipped ahead, right, in the first part of our conversation to say here are the things that you can do very, very quickly and get something out into the wild.

You did a beautiful job of elegantly and articulately describing sort of the process you you used to get to that advice of here's what you can do to data make a difference. And so hopefully some of the people on the on the listening end of this can Maybe not have to build over the last five years and go through another pandemic and learn all of the things, right?

Because we've already shared some of those, um, those really key pieces of information. But I think the background and understanding where the Arrow Up training, uh, ethos, was derived, I think, is a really compelling part of the story. I do have one sort of last ish question. We've talked a little bit, just grazed the surface, about the leadership training, moving supervisors into leaders, because we all know that's a big leap, right?

From day to day, detail to detail management into true leadership. So there's a Fine line between being a manager, supervisor, leader, and a friend, um, we want employees to feel safe and heard and valued, but at the same time, we know there are reminders that need to be had, feedback that needs to be given.

How do we manage? All of that as either first time managers or leaders, um, while keeping employees satisfied and, and retaining them, quite honestly. 

Jason Berkowitz: In the general workforce, it's what, 70 percent of employees quit bad managers. In restaurants specifically, it's 49%. So here you go, right? If you can just save one employee that's at 5,500 per year. So anybody in the HR training world, your ROI is sitting right there. It's sitting right there. And what you do is, and, and I love this and I'm obsessed over this. We went out and we record, we, we interviewed so many supervisors and young from 18 years old to 80 years old and all around and, and got advice. And first off, the number one way reason they stay that you keep great leaders. I asked, what's the number one reason you hung around? Because somebody said, thank you to them. They were appreciated. That was the number one reason why they all hung around was they felt appreciated. Now, the number one advice from supervisors to other supervisors is to build relationships with your team. Do what you can do to build a relationship. And then there's also how you communicate, and we're getting into what you're talking about, is there's things that you should learn, and this is why we obsess over it, and we have the course, right? I think you should License our course. I mean, there's no other way of saying it, right? Because we're obsessed over this. And, and it's a starting point, but it's teaching how do you talk about the why? How do you communicate? How do you introduce stuff? How, how do you communicate that shows that you're on their side? You know, the compliment sandwich is over. It, it never really worked anyways. What, what is showing to work? Show that you're on your side. Hey, listen, uh, um, cause, cause I know you can do better and I know you can get there. Uh, I need you to, to, to practice a little more of this or hey, cause I know what you've so got it in you and it makes a difference.

Your tips are going to go through the roof. Get that second drink down before we, before the entree comes out. So it's empowering them and giving them again, the practical tools of what to say in a moment. Now, let's talk very quickly of what the organization and institution needs to do. And anyone who's listening to this, take this back. Have your COO, have your, if you're the president, call me. I will tell you this, and I don't even, I don't even, you don't need to license anything from me. The number one thing you can do is to give your team the resources to put the infrastructure in place so that the SOPs are there and there is a regular rhythm of constant, gentle pressure. to remind. You know what? Everybody forgets. Everyone forgets. They forget, uh, you know, Danny Meyers was talked about the salt shaker theory. You could put it in the center of the table, but they're always going to forget. You just got to constantly remind them where the salt shaker goes. And that constant general pressure is how we feel the positive reinforcement. So put a regular rhythm in place. This is when we're going to remind people about how to hold the glass, how to make the tacos, that sanitizer rag goes in the bucket, put everything in training, attract the workforce that appreciates that, train them, then remind them on a regular rhythm. and what you're doing is and, and track it and put it in a checklist and make sure that checklist sounds like people talking to people, but this is the magic. If you put that on a regular rhythm, two things are happening. One is when somebody expects it, then they're more open to it because you're not there to critique them.

It's not always, it's not always fixing something. And look, I have a general philosophy of everything needs a tune up. All instruments go out of tune. So if instruments go out of tune, doesn't it make sense that people kind of go out of tune? Like we're, we're all frequency and, and So just set a regular tune up schedule. 

People will look for it. And then it's more proactive and it could be a fun little micro message. But secondly is now you've given the space for the supervisors and managers to actually build relationships with their teammates and their employees and talk about their day and their weekend and spend time training them up because there's nothing more awkward than saying, thanks for showing up.

Hey, how was your weekend? What'd you do? Oh my God, that party sounded great. That's awesome. Yeah. Listen, by the way, Can you, we, we, we need to use the, uh, the stepping stool to get the shirts off the top shelf. Do not use the egg crate, right? The milk crates. All of a sudden now you just broke that whole thing.

So put the micro messaging into a standardized rhythm. Get the tune ups going so that people can be people and enjoy being together. And then the number one thing that we love to see when we walk into an institution, people smiling. That's how you get there.

Evan Melick: I think you wrapped up our entire conversation in such a neat bow right there. I am so grateful we landed on that last question because it touched on every one of the, the parts and pieces, the components that go into training, the need for consistency. Having that Gentle, regular, consistent pressure, all of those things.

So while we're wrapping up right now, I do have a question that I like to ask people because I think it's fascinating to just get under the hood just a little bit with all the people we talk with. If you were to design your own bumper sticker, what would it say and why?

Jason Berkowitz: Okay. So let's look at this because there's a motto and there's a bumper sticker and a bumper sticker. A motto is an eternal. Mantra for myself a bumper sticker to me is a message a simplified message To those that are usually following or behind or some sort of right? I have i'm a billboard to them and For that my if you were behind it would say, uh, thank you. It would just say. Thank you.

Evan Melick: Oh my goodness. Which you already described as a compelling reason people stay at jobs. My guess is people build relationships, just that human connection component. Jason, this has been a true honor and a privilege. I always enjoy our conversations for sure. This one, probably the highest ranking so far.
So I certainly hope you'll be back with us. You have brought Dozens of unique ideas, very tangible takeaways, things that can be implemented by any of our listeners, any organization, no matter the size, immediately. And so, that's all the time we have today. Thank you so much, and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in.

Until next time!

Jason Berkowitz: Thank you.