Behind the Smoker:

Jeff Walter (00:00) 

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the podcast. I have a special guest today, Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs. Sean is a seasoned restaurant industry leader with a rich legacy in hospitality and operations. He was raised in a family owned Carolina country barbecue, a beloved staple of Carolinas. Sean honed his expertise managing its five location chain after college. 

 

He transitioned to the corporate sector, spent two decades there, climbing the ranks within major brands, including Tia’s Tex-Mex, Buffalo’s Southwest Cafe, Lone Star, Denny’s, and Buffalo Wild Wings. His most recent corporate role was head of operations for a franchise group overseeing Buffalo Wild Wings and Denny’s locations, managing a $60 million annual sales across eight states. Now Sean challenges his deep industry knowledge and passion of barbecue into his own venture, 

 

Tickle my ribs barbecue, a franchise concept poised to bring bold flavors and exceptional dining experiences to communities nationwide. Sean, welcome to the podcast. Now, one of the things that I found really fascinating talking to you and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on a podcast is, you know, you have a pretty rich background with a lot of franchises and their training programs. And when you decided to do Tickle My Ribs, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (01:04) 

Thank you. 

 

Jeff Walter (01:20) 

You took a very different path and it’s something we’ve seen Occasionally in the in the industry where you’re embedding the training into the operations rather having being a separate thing you do outside the operations and so I thought it’d be helpful we start you know, tell us a little bit about I like to start with biography and kind of like how’d you end up where you where you’re at, you know kind of expand on the bio what made you leave the ⁓ 

 

the family owned country, Carolina barbecue to go corporate. then what motivated you to leave corporate to start your own thing and then we can transition into talking about the different training programs you’ve seen along the way, what you liked, didn’t like, and why you chose this path going forward. How’s that sound? All right. So tell us a little bit about you more than what I just read. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (02:07) 

Sounds good. 

 

Well, 

 

yeah, I was there. That was a bio. ⁓ I started out with my family business from the I was really born. ⁓ was a family ran, uncles, dad, grandparents, whole nine yards. were in it. Ran it, very popular in North Carolina and started to kind of become known. 

 

We opened up a couple more in Charlotte and we had one in Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina and then one in Dallas, North Carolina. Next thing you know, we’re going, hey, this has got something and then it started becoming so popular even when presidents would come in to do their campaign, they would have to stop by at Kellenkirch Barbecue ⁓ and seen eating the barbecue. So it was great. 

 

Jeff Walter (02:43) 

wow. 

 

⁓ nice, nice. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (03:01) 

I did, like I said, all the way through college and even spent two years after college in the restaurant, helping run it. But as any young guy wants to do, he wants to kind of venture out, I started meeting different corporate leaders at these different food shows. They used to have really big, elaborate food shows. I started meeting, you you start having conversations and you meet them once, meet them twice. 

 

Jeff Walter (03:24) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (03:30) 

Next thing you know, one of the guys mentioned, they had an opportunity in Texas. How exciting would that be? So next thing you know, I’m in Plano, Texas, ⁓ helping open up a TIAs and I got to work with some wonderful people. ⁓ And they really showed me what I was missing when it came to P &Ls and different stuff. Because when you work in a family business, it’s all cash flow. I mean, it’s straightforward costs. 

 

you know, sales, what do you have left over for the family? So I got to really look at how to analyze multiple units and I learned a lot. ⁓ But I got to see a lot of stuff that I feel like there were a lot of gaps. ⁓ I noticed, I started noticing after about five years that we were doing some great stuff in the family business that corporate was totally missing. ⁓ And you could see these gaps and they would appear 

 

Jeff Walter (04:18) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (04:27) 

I mean the operation. Minnesota moved on and then we did the Southwest Cafe and started working with Red Robin. Red Robin, gotta tell you, was one of my biggest eye openers as far as training. They were the publicly held, you know, the quintessential, you know, large brand that’s got all the corporate backing. It’s kind of the 

 

the backup from the market shares that are always funded. And they probably had the most robust training program that I saw of all of them, even with Buffalo Wild Wings and Denny’s, they had some training material. I mean, you could tell they put a lot of money in the material, but the actual thought process philosophy and everything was more, I saw more out of Red Robin than I did any of them. But once again, there were a lot of gaps. 

 

Jeff Walter (05:22) 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (05:26) 

And as I started to progress and even went with a group called Talk to Magnetize, there was a stage there for about five to six years when I was technically corporate, but it was private equity. And private equity, still corporate, and still trying to maintain stuff, but it’s a little different environment. the overall goals are a little different than when you’re a publicly held company. So after that, 

 

Jeff Walter (05:39) 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (05:54) 

I noticed that there were some, went to RJC and I was running a franchise group, once again, different motivations, different programs, but really had to follow some strict guidelines and training programs. But the gaps were growing even more there. ⁓ I really noticed. 

 

Jeff Walter (06:14) 

And what 

 

kind of gaps are you talking about when you say? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (06:17) 

So like you would do, you would have a training program, but you would never actually make an operation. And I started, I guess when I was with a family business, everything we did had a direct purpose and direct link and there was a direct outcome because there was no time for nonsense, right? The training programs, some of the programs I would notice even from the Ruby Tuesday type TIAs or the Red Robins and stuff. 

 

Jeff Walter (06:32) 

Okay. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (06:46) 

There was a gap between training and ops and they almost had to put a mechanic in between the two. So now you had a third arm to bridge the training program and the ops and like, like, like there had to be a way to translate it. It’s like, there was always a gap between, between what training believed and what ops believed and 

 

Jeff Walter (07:02) 

What do mean by mechanic? That’s an interesting choice of word. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (07:15) 

Then you go talk to the training people and they’ve never actually worked in one of the restaurants that they’re training for. you’re here and you’re going, well, there’s the gap. You don’t even know. And the same thing goes for culinary. I mean, sometimes you get culinary and, you know, I can’t tell you how many times a chef and I’ve had a vigorous conversation about what they’re trying to do as opposed to the possibility of executing it in operation. 

 

Jeff Walter (07:19) 

Right. 

 

Alright. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (07:43) 

And the gap, so what I noticed, especially whenever I was doing the franchising and leading, you know, at one point we had 48 restaurants over seven states, had different cultures, different personalities, different dynamics in the stores and everything. then, but you only have one training program. And when you’re dealing with FDDs, you’re strictly, you have to adhere. 

 

to those training programs. And you all, that’s where I think we had almost created a third mechanic in our operation to translate what was coming from the franchisor to the actual store. So while the FTV had their own, the franchisor had their own training department, as a franchisee, we were almost having to create a group in our group 

 

Jeff Walter (08:13) 

Right. 

 

All right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (08:41) 

to help translate the training from the franchise or to the franchise to our units. Because the material would roll out, but you’re assuming that everybody’s at the same level of education. You’re assuming that everybody’s at the same experience level of the restaurant. So therefore everybody’s going to understand everything that’s coming out. you know, sometimes you get a manual, like a simple milkshake rollout would be a manual to stick, you know, and you’re going, 

 

Jeff Walter (08:48) 

Yeah. 

 

you 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (09:12) 

To make the strawberry milkshake, needed a manual of this thing. ⁓ It just, were just so many different gaps between operations and training. And I started developing a mindset. I started taking back what I learned with my family. And then I took what I had from there. Then I started combining what I learned from corporate as far as structure, the consistency, the redundancy. 

 

Jeff Walter (09:29) 

Uh-huh. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (09:41) 

But then I took the family side and said, you you’ve got to have a direct line of anything that you do or anything that you lay out on paper. There needs to be a direct line to the operational outcome. And I don’t think we’re there, especially in corporate. think it was more, hey, we’re the training department. We came up with this really pretty nice flyer and manual that talks about 

 

Jeff Walter (09:55) 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (10:08) 

You know, and usually we’ll even go into, you know, what’s your leadership mentality? What’s this mentality? What’s this? you know, the latest buzzwords of the day, good to great, know, low hanging fruit, you know, all the all the buzzwords that we can throw into a manual and but. 

 

Jeff Walter (10:22) 

Hey, I was in consulting 

 

for many, decades. I’m very familiar with buzzwords. Yeah, it’s like, let’s make some stuff up to explain something. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (10:28) 

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And 

 

it’s like, we’re going to make a new graph, a new picture, a new artwork, a new something to say, hey, this is how we’re going to train. But none of it was actually making it. 

 

to the, do I have this great new book that’s supposed to just really transform operation and it’s never actually making it to operation? It’s great in our boardrooms. It’s great when we’re talking about it. And it’s great whenever the person’s put on a PowerPoint presentation and like, we’re gonna have our people do this and they’re gonna look at it this way. And it’s always this all great big training program and we’re gonna do this. But then you go to the restaurants 

 

Jeff Walter (10:59) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (11:18) 

three months, six months, a year later, how much of that actually made it to the operation? And we spent so much money and energy and time on these rollouts of this stuff. And I just started noticing, and after a while, I’m not sure I’m skeptic, but I really started to ask a lot of questions where people would present these programs to me. And I started noticing 

 

Jeff Walter (11:25) 

Uh-huh. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (11:48) 

that I was the only guy in the room really drilling down on, okay, well, what’s the ROI in this? If I buy 27 manuals, I send out 42 pro tickets, 500 hotel stays, days worth of hotel stays, and do all this stuff, what’s the return on this investment that I’m gonna see? If my top line sales are X, 

 

Jeff Walter (11:53) 

Yeah 

 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (12:18) 

And my bottom line numbers were X. And I’ve invested this amount of money, which one of these numbers are going to move? And what’s my expectation of movement? And I think that’s a fair question when you’re asking about a training program. 

 

Jeff Walter (12:35) 

I mean, you’re preaching to the choir here. been fortunate to have a number of clients that look at it that way. But the sad thing I think in the industry is that’s not the norm. If I’m going to spend a dollar on training, how do I get $2 return? Either an additional top dollar, top line revenue or increase the margins or because I’m decreasing some kind of expense somewhere. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (12:49) 

Right. Right. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (13:04) 

mentioned, you I was just raised as a consultant, this is like, the buck, you got to figure out, you got to tell them how you’re to save them two bucks or, or generate two bucks. Right. So I, you know, re so really interesting if we look at, ⁓ what you guys are doing and the country Carolina country barbecue, it’s a real, that’s really interesting. You know, I’ve always thought of it, ⁓ on the franchise side is there’s really kind of two use cases if you would write it’s there’s, I’m opening up a new location. And so how do I get that location? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (13:13) 

100 % 

 

Jeff Walter (13:33) 

spun up to speed and ready to go day one, right? And the franchise, I got a new franchisor and how do I get that guy spun up to speed in day one? And then there’s the ongoing thing of like six months, a year two years down the road, you know, I’m hiring additional, I’m hiring people because there’s turnover and, know, into the restaurant and how do I bring them up to speed? Could you, you know, it’s interesting, ⁓ with, with Carolina country barbecue and, and some of the corporate ventures that you were in. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (13:37) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (14:01) 

How would you like, let’s, let’s start with like opening up a new store. Cause you, you mentioned earlier that Carolina country barbecues started taking off like hotcakes. Um, and you know, if you look back at it now with the knowledge and experience you had, you know, you’re a young man then you’re still a young man, but, you’re a younger man then. And, uh, and, uh, and, uh, you know, at the time it may not have registered, but now with the experience, can kind of look back. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (14:11) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (14:31) 

When Carolina Country Barbecue was opening up a new store versus say ⁓ Denny’s or Tia’s or one of the corporate ⁓ franchisors you worked for, how did those different training programs, how are they different? Because I think that’s at the root of what you’re talking about, right? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (14:40) 

Mm. 

 

Right. Well, I’ve got. 

 

It is. 

 

Well, openings was my first step. That my first aha. I’m like, holy crap. How many people does it take to up a restaurant? You know, my first corporate opening, they had 125. They wouldn’t open a restaurant without 125 people on schedule. And I’m going, wait a minute. 

 

Jeff Walter (15:12) 

What does that mean? When you say 

 

like, at the location or like corporate support? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (15:15) 

Hourly, 

 

yeah, at a location, at a local location. And some of the fried franchises actually have that in their FTDS when they open with their programs and stuff about how many people you have to have on staff before you’re allowed to actually open a restaurant. and it’s, unless you’re running a very small fast casual, I mean, it’s in the hundreds. And just, I just imagine that imagine saying to an owner, I know I don’t want to get 

 

Jeff Walter (15:32) 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (15:45) 

to all phones, but I always found it crazy. So you’re telling me to open up a restaurant that you’re currently operating right now with around 35 to 40 people on staff. You’re running a $3 million location with 40 people to open up my store. You want me to pay 125 people to be on staff to open up. And you’re going to give me so-called the training team, which is usually consists of 

 

Jeff Walter (16:00) 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (16:14) 

two back the house, two front, two managers and some regional director. I mean, that’s kind of the staff and the way that it’s ⁓ set up. And there’s this big thing and they come in and they take over your building and they take ⁓ control of your hundred and something person staff and with the 10 extra people and they’re gonna run this thing for two straight weeks and we’re gonna have the best opening. And it’s like. 

 

Jeff Walter (16:30) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (16:41) 

The worst experience is the slowest ticket times. It’s, uh, I mean, you listen to people all around the country. I’m not going to go to that restaurant while it’s open because I’m going let them work the things out. mean, how many times have you said all that place just open? I’m not going there for a couple months until, you know, but when we opened up Carolina country barbecue, me, my dad, my two uncles, a new staff, a server, and a cook that came from the other restaurant. And we opened up with the normal staff. 

 

Jeff Walter (16:51) 

Night. 

 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (17:11) 

I did create a little thing called the captain method that really worked for us when we opened up the Dallas store and all that. the method was I would just use one trainer and they would stand and you got to remember these restaurants were no alcohol and but 300 seat restaurants. I they were the big old school restaurants, right? People were lined out the door. 

 

Jeff Walter (17:28) 

Right. 

 

⁓ that’s big. Yeah, ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (17:38) 

I mean, this was during the time. we’d be lying at the door from 11 AM to 9 PM and it was wonderful. Wonderful. Um, it was just packed and, we would have a, uh, an experienced server standing in the middle and just watch five or seven tables and they were doing handwritten tickets. And I’m like, Hey, we’re going to have get computer systems in here. And I have to computerize, kill, I could barbecue because you got to remember this was a 1995, um, 

 

Jeff Walter (17:42) 

That’s a beautiful thing. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (18:08) 

So we were just now getting the PLSs, we were still using PLU numbers. And we were able to run 400, you know, a 400 or 300 seat restaurant, 400 people coming and going within every 15 minutes. And we ran a file with handheld tickets. We computerized it and all of everything becomes, you know, crazy. So I go to these, I go to these restaurants and I watch these big corporate openings and I watch these disasters happen. 

 

Jeff Walter (18:12) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Why do 

 

you think, on a, I’m really curious, like, you you take a restaurant that you said needed like 30, 40 people, you know, it’s a $3 million a year location needs like 30, 40 people to operate normally. And I’m assuming that’s bodies, not full-time FTEs, you had a lot of part-timers. ⁓ Why would you need like three times that number? Like, I don’t under, like, what was the rationale to that? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (19:00) 

It’s well, 

 

well, I’ve, I’ve sat in these meetings and, um, they, we start here and said, well, you’re gonna have a high turnover. You’re going to have people not show up. You’re going to have people quit after the first day. get it. But nobody’s asking the question, well, why do you have the high turnover here in the Philippines? Cause it’s the most money the servers are ever going to make. It’s the most hours that a kitchen guy’s ever going to get. Um, so now would they be quitting during the. 

 

the openings and the reason is because it’s so hectic that it almost weeds out people that just want to work in a normal restaurant environment. It becomes a nightmare and it shouldn’t be that way because, here’s an argument, this was an actual argument I had and I don’t want to tell what franchise group it was, but me and the director of Tron stood in a parking lot. 

 

And I said, you guys, we just ran this restaurant and you guys had two people per position throughout the day. I had your so-called best people come in and help open my restaurant. We ran 30 minute chats. We had guests walk out. We had servers crying. We had cooks. And you guys are claiming that you’ve opened up 100 of these restaurants. Why is this so hectic? I don’t understand. 

 

Jeff Walter (20:05) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (20:28) 

Right. And I’m like, where’s the gap? I don’t understand why we’re having such a hard time opening up what I consider a, we’re operating 20 of these over here and we have no problem and we’re running similar sales. But when I’m the most people, mean, when you say this out loud, as a consultant, if I say this out loud, what would you say? If I was in a board meeting, go, so let me get this straight. We’ve got 20 restaurants that are running pretty smooth, heading free. 

 

Jeff Walter (20:42) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (20:57) 

They’re burying money in the bottom line. We’re going to open up a new restaurant. We’re going to put the most people, the most talent, the most leaders and give it the most attention than it’s ever going to have in its entire existence. And it’s going to run the worst it’s ever going to run from now until. If I said that out loud to anybody, they would say, well, don’t do it. 

 

Jeff Walter (21:09) 

Right. 

 

Yeah. Well, I would 

 

imagine the rationale would be something like, well, it’s a new operation. It’s going to be inefficient. You know, people have to go up to speed and that’s why it’s going to have, you know, terrible ticket numbers. And, know, like that’s why it’s going to be poor because 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (21:36) 

But we gotta ask ourselves why though? mean, so the… 

 

Jeff Walter (21:39) 

Right. Okay. So let’s go. I’m sorry. Let’s 

 

1. If I can, I think what I heard you say is, so from a typical corporate opening would be you hire two or three, you know, twice as many people as you need because you or, or, or, or three X, right. Because you train them all, right. Cause you got to train everybody. ⁓

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (21:59) 

At least three, they usually do three. 

 

Jeff Walter (22:09) 

including the managers and assistant managers. ⁓ Corporate comes and you bring in the, you got the two guys, I think you said typical would be two guys in the back, two guys in the front, experts to help the operation. And they’re there for a couple of weeks. Everybody’s trained based on the protocol. ⁓ They have a rough going for a few weeks. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (22:25) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (22:38) 

corporate leaves, store managers left there. They figure it out. They get the turnover because, you know, I gotta imagine some of that turnover is nobody’s getting the hours they need, right? Like if you’ve got three times the people you need, you’re not getting the hours you want, right? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (22:54) 

Well, actually, actually the first the first two weeks, everybody’s scheduled at max hours all the time. I mean, it is a big money suck. It’s probably one of the most expensive parts of open-air stores. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (22:59) 

⁓ 

 

Okay. 

 

So now let’s compare that. And then you kind of briefly hit on country, ⁓ Carolina country barbecue, right? And it seemed like a very different approach because you, you, you rattle off a couple of people, you, your uncle is your father, a couple of other folks. It’s almost seems like a very different, well, it’s a very different approach. If I look at it from a training perspective, it’s almost like you seeded the new location with a bunch of experienced experts. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (23:12) 

seven centuries. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (23:37) 

And then 

 

how long would you guys be at the new location? It was a team of like five or six people. You, you, route, know, when you mentioned it, like how long would you be there for about a month? Okay. And then, yeah, let’s just say it’s a 40 person restaurant. You know, the kind of one that, I mean, I know your restaurants were bigger, but kind of do apples to apples. Would you, are you, are you hiring 150 % of what you need? 200%, 300 % like the corporate or. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (23:44) 

Right. Yeah, well, we’d be staying there for almost a month. 

 

I’m out. 

 

Yeah. 

 

It was usually one and a half what we need, a hundred figure percent. And then of course that would be availability dependent. And I even did this in corporate though, we would write a schedule. We would literally write a schedule and say, this would be the optimal schedule with, and they were just calling employee one through 40, right? And then we’d write the optimal schedule and then we’d hire to that schedule. Like I would look and I would show a new person 

 

Jeff Walter (24:09) 

Okay, so a little bit more. 

 

All right. 

 

Uh-huh. 

 

Right. All right. 

 

it’s not. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (24:36) 

I said this one time at a board meeting, I that was crazy, go, write the optimal schedule, put that in the hiring trailer, and then when you hire someone, go, which one of these schedules is your best schedule? All right, your name’s here, this is your schedule. And then say, you know you can start filling it out, but we don’t do that in corporate, right? We just hire people. So that’s how we did Kill Kill Marticure, we would actually make a schedule, we would hire for that, and then we’d hire the backup for 50 % of that schedule. 

 

Jeff Walter (24:47) 

Right. 

 

And did 

 

the backup that extra 50 % that they know they were the backup because they were not on the schedule. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (25:07) 

Yeah, they would know they were the fill-ins, the part-time fill-ins. And what I say by backup is what I mean is, if I had you work from 10 till two, and and that was, doubles were huge back then, and then you’d work from four to 10 as my double, you’re a backup, you would come in and do my gap, right? You would be my two to six, right? You were my two to six person, so you had the transition, because this was before computers too, so. 

 

Jeff Walter (25:21) 

Right. 

 

Right. Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (25:35) 

You had to clean your own tables, you had to do everything, you had to do your own pre-emptive side work. So there was a transition in the shifts that would take place. So you would have to have those fill-ins about 50%. Those were your 25 to 30 hour workers. 

 

Jeff Walter (25:37) 

Right. 

 

Right. But 

 

well, the interesting thing is, and they knew that that was their role, right? So like, like, I’m just, mean, we’re kind of off topic on training, but it’s kind of an interesting approach. One is let’s hire 300%. Nobody knows exactly what their long role is or how many hours they’re going to get or anything like that. Well, let’s train them all. Let’s get a couple of experts there for a few weeks. And, then, you know, let’s double up the 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (25:55) 

Yes. 

 

They’re gonna work. 

 

Jeff Walter (26:17) 

let’s, let’s, you know, double up the shit. You know, let’s have double the staff as we’re going. And then you have the, you know, some turnover for a variety of different reasons versus let’s get a nucleus of experienced people, you know, to run the place, right. ⁓ as opposed to, oversee, you know, if you look at the two in the back, two in the front, you’re talking about, they’re there to guide, not to run and to train. ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (26:23) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Yes. 

 

Jeff Walter (26:45) 

When you guys were doing Carolina country, it’s a nucleus to actually launch the thing. We’re going to be here for a month, still going more, hiring more people than you need. But this person knows that this is what they’re being hired into. they’re getting these number of hours down the line. And then that extra 50%, cause you know, you’re going to have people drop out and all the other things we talked about, but it’s not a three X. You don’t need three times of people. need. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (27:10) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (27:15) 

50 % more, but the 50 % know they’re the 50%. Right. so the, X because you know, a lot of times like, you know, when it comes to turnover and retention, you know, like when we’re at the show, uh, I talking to folks about retention and, and, uh, it was interesting. said, um, one of the top reasons people leave a franchise location in the first 30 days, they weren’t trained. And one of the. 

 

major reasons they leave within the first year is they realized nobody else is trained. I thought that was a really interesting fact that came from that survey. so I’m like sitting there going, you know, but it’s the missed expectations, right? And so, um, it’s really interesting. then, so now, so then how did you train those, you know, 150%, you know, like, like how did they, how did they get trained versus how the 300 % got trained? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (27:55) 

Yeah. 

 

We did shoulder to shoulder training. There were no books, were no manuals, there were no, all this stuff. Now we had our little sheets and this was back in, remember when you had to go to a printer and print, we had our little sheets and we’d laminate them, we’d stick them in different places and it would show how to cut lemons, how to do this. And then we had our recipe guide and no one did hands on without someone with them the first time. It was a rule. Have you ever cut lemons? I know lemons is ⁓ probably very simple. 

 

Jeff Walter (28:16) 

Okay. 

 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Okay, right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (28:44) 

Simple money gets us down to the root is have you ever cut lemons here before? Yeah. Well, come on, let’s go cut lemons and let’s do it together because we have to do it every morning, right? And this is back whenever everybody only drink tea, you know, so we were going through five cases. Yeah, we’re going to five cases of lemons a day. So showing them how to cut lemons and they go, hey, you got it. You got it. All right, great. You’re signed off on this for now. And you’re my limit person, you know, and we would go do this. And who made beans? Who made sauce? Who made this? 

 

Jeff Walter (28:55) 

⁓ yes, sweet tea, yeah. 

 

⁓ Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (29:12) 

And we were shoulder to shoulder with these guys for a month. No manuals, no big books. You had a recipe book and you had small little things that kind of showed where stuff went and everything. And we just pumped the food out. And there was no anxiety when we opened up. There was no freak out. There was no, ⁓ my God, no one showed me this. was none of that. And there was a no rush. 

 

Jeff Walter (29:15) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (29:40) 

to train because we weren’t trying to consolidate it in a matter of 10 days worth of training because that’s what we’re caught in. We were there for a month. We’re like, let’s see if I relax. Let’s see if I get to know this stuff. But if you do this stuff, by the third week, we were almost sitting back and these guys were pumping out food. That third week transition with us just supervising, whoa, hold on, remember we gotta grab this. Hey, let’s do this. Hey, I’m gonna go watch the door. All of a sudden, 

 

Jeff Walter (29:49) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Right. Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (30:08) 

They’re starting to become a jail by the fourth week. Man, you guys have got this. We’re out. We’re going off to our next thing. We’ll be checking on you. And it was great. It was great. But there’s this, there’s, don’t know who wrote the rule, but I’d like to find them one day and just, but someone said, Hey, two weeks. That’s all. That’s all you get. You know, franchising group will give you two weeks, 10 days. And you’re going, how does, when your training programs for your normal stores, 

 

which I think you and I talked about this on the show. 

 

Jeff Walter (30:39) 

Yeah. 

 

Up. 

 

Oops. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (30:49) 

in their training program that 14 to 20 days to train some. 

 

Jeff Walter (30:52) 

Hey, Sean, 

 

I got that your recording stopped for a second. Could you just, let’s give it a second and just repeat what you just said. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (31:03) 

Okay. I’m out here now. Okay. I so I find it, I find it ironic that the training programs like the Buffalo’s, D &E’s, the Red Robin’s on the other side, to be a cook, some of these training programs are 10 days and to be a specialist and actual certified person can take 15 days. But when you open up a restaurant, you give them two weeks to support. 

 

Jeff Walter (31:31) 

Hey, let me ask you, I mean, it’s really interesting. ⁓ We stuck with the lemons for a second. know, I have little example because I’m listening to what you said about Carolina and it was a lot of on the job training with that nucleus of skilled, experienced people that knew how to do the job. And it wasn’t just on the job. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (31:53) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (31:54) 

training, figure it out for yourself. It was on a job training and you’re basically doing skill development, you know, and saying, okay, here are the 10 skills you need to be whatever the role is, you know, or here’s the 15 need done cutting lemons, which sounds trivial, but you know, you got to cut them. got to cut them, right. They got to be consistent. And you know, if you’ve never done it before, you don’t know what to do. Right. ⁓ and so. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (32:08) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Alright, alright. 

 

Jeff Walter (32:23) 

So if we take, you know, if I’m listening to what you’re saying on the Carolina barbecue and, and, ⁓ I’m like, okay. It’s on the job training with a mentor. With, with practice, with coaching. And then once you reach a certain level of proficiency in the skill, you know, free, you have now, ⁓ earned the right to do it on your own. Right. ⁓ and, and, and now let’s just take the lemon cutting thing for a second. So we understand how that happened at Carolina. 

 

So the guy that has to, or gal that has to cut the lemons at one of the corporate sites that we’re talking about, how did they learn to cut lemons? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (33:04) 

So usually at a opening, you would have three kids there getting ready to learn how to cut lemons, a trainer right here explaining how to do it. They cut it one time and they leave. And then these guys sit there massively, cut lemons, and they do it all over and over and over. But it’s done like in a classroom setting. 

 

Jeff Walter (33:21) 

Right. Okay. 

 

And then it’s, so we’re going to have a lemon cutting class. Might only last 15 minutes, but we’re going to, we’re going to teach you how to cut lemons. You cut it this way, that way, the other way. And, and I’ve conveyed the knowledge to you of how to cut lemons. I haven’t, I haven’t observed your proficiency at the skill of cutting lemons. And I’m not, and I’m not signing off that, ⁓ you know, these, those three guys that were 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (33:24) 

And 

 

Right. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (33:51) 

You know, I just taught how to cut lemons, that they can do it to a certain level of proficiency and quality that we expect from our lemons here. Right. So it’s, it’s interesting because I, I, I’m thinking about like, that’s like more of like a knowledge acquisition thing. It’s like, I’ll show you how to cut them. You know, in your head how to cut them. You may not know how to cut, but you may not be able to cut them properly versus the, I’ve got a mentor and a coach. I’m going to cut lemons with you. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (33:58) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (34:18) 

for three days if it takes three days until you until you’re proficient at the skill and I’m gonna say okay you know how to cut lemons you can cut the lemon you know you’re my lemon gal or you’re my lemon guy for you know so interesting 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (34:35) 

But if you have 300 people or 120 people, there’s no way that someone’s gonna sit there with 120 different people and cut lemons, you know, and train them that way. But if you have a schedule and you know who all your opers are, and that’s when you cut lemons, you sit down with the opers and every day, they’re in the shifts. 

 

Jeff Walter (34:37) 

Yeah. 

 

Right. 

 

Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s 

 

another interesting take on it. I hadn’t thought of. So because you had the schedule, not every, not every response, you know, it’s not a server as a server as a server and a cook as a cook as a cook. It’s well, if you’re the opening server or the opening cook or the opening bus boy or the mid or the mid or the closing, there’s a different set of job responsibilities as to what, yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (35:11) 

Right. 

 

Yes. 

 

Jeff Walter (35:24) 

skills and things you need to do if you’re in opening or if you’re closing or if you’re midway through the day. And therefore you could sit there and go, not only did you have half the number of people to train because you didn’t do 300%, you did 150%. Right? So you’re already down to half the number of people to train. But then, but then you differentiate it and said, well, I know who the openers are and here are the skills that an opener needs. And so I’m just going to teach the openers the skill and I’m not going to train. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (35:32) 

Yes. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (35:52) 

necessarily the other people because they’re, you know, they’re closers or they’re, they’re my mid afternoon people, or they’re my swing shift or whatever. And, uh, but then my closers, you know, there’s something, you know, there’s things you got to do when you close the restaurant at the end of the day. And, know, same, same type, you know, another set of skills. And I don’t need to teach my openers that because they’ll never use that skill. Right. And so we’re 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (36:07) 

Mm. 

 

But right now in corporate, they try to train every team member on every skill set in two weeks. 

 

Jeff Walter (36:21) 

Interesting, 

 

interesting. So it’s so. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (36:24) 

And then they wonder why it flops. And I’m going, because they’re trying to train the entire operation, opening, closing, mid, transition, forward cleaning this and that, and this, to every team member. 

 

Jeff Walter (36:33) 

All 

 

Right. So then, so that’s really interesting because then break it, it, it, it, further segregates it. And it’s, and you’re in that startup where you’re trying to get maximum. You’re trying to make sure that you have all the skills you need to successfully open this up. And what you guys did at Carolina was sit there and go, well, it’s not a server as a server as a server and opening server has a different set of responsibilities than the closing server than a transition server. I’m going to teach the. 

 

because you had that schedule and everybody knew I’m going to, and then over time, you know, which kind of transitioning to the next thing, which like, okay, now you’ve opened, you know, there’s the opening and then there’s the over time, right? Well, over time that opening server can learn the skills of the closing server and the transition server and vice versa. But I don’t need that to open and be a, have a successful opening. And then over time that closing server can sit there and go, okay, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (37:09) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Bye. 

 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (37:36) 

Sean, you how do you, not actually you guys have gone, ⁓ you know, to the, to, to the, to the assistant manager, manager, whomever. Okay. Show me how to cut lemons. Okay. Now I know how to cut and they go, okay. You, now know how to cut lemons properly for the way we do lemons here. And you’ve that plus these other skills, you now are qualified to be an opening server. Right. So you can start picking up opening server shifts as they become available, or maybe your life has changed and you no longer want to work closing. You want to work. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (38:00) 

Right. 

 

right. 

 

Jeff Walter (38:07) 

It’s very, that’s very interesting versus 

 

the teach everybody everything to start because nobody knows where they’re going to be on the schedule. And, and, ⁓ that’s interesting. That’s interesting. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (38:13) 

Right. 

 

When I had an opening where I pretty much stepped in and short of kicking the corporate time out and I almost went back to my roots and I said, stop. This thing is tipped over. I was in the kitchen, six guys working five fryers. Get your mind around that. I don’t have six people working five fryers. That doesn’t even compute. So you have two guys standing there watching. 

 

Jeff Walter (38:38) 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (38:48) 

And three guys trying to do all the stuff. I’m like, ⁓ stop, hey, here’s how this works. This is your fryer. We’re going to do tenders in this fryer. You own tenders. When they call fries, you own fries. So I went back to my roots of micro jobs. And the term that we’re dancing around, though, that ⁓ the corporate people call it is called what you were talking about, like, hey, once you’ve learned this skill, and then over time, you’ll develop more skills. Corporate quantified it as cross training. 

 

Jeff Walter (38:55) 

Right. 

 

Right, right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (39:19) 

And I laugh at cross training because it’s so not how that works. You let them learn the most basic skill first and over time allow that skill set because even though you know how to cut lemons, I know we keep going back to lemons, but it’s a great small thing. You’ve got to be fast at it too. It can’t just be, I know how to cut them. I’m trying to get them efficient. 

 

Jeff Walter (39:36) 

Right. 

 

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (39:45) 

at cutting them in a certain amount of time because I can’t spend five hours cutting lemons. Well, look, this is the best lemon ever. did. Yeah, look, you’ve got to be able to cut them in a timely fashion and be able to open a restaurant and still make your tea, still set up your table, still clean everything up, still backing the floor. So you got to do a lot of stuff. So but the lemon thing is just a good example of you’ve got to do it with them. You got to show them how fast you got to do it. You got to work with them for a week. 

 

Jeff Walter (39:50) 

Hahaha 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (40:12) 

and see that they’re fast enough to do it to where you can go, hey, now you are the opening lemon guy because you’re going to knock out lemons in 15 minutes and roll into the next job of setting up tables. That’s how the training starts to work. But just because you showed 12 people in a classroom setting how to cut lemons and said, all right, you guys know how to do lemons, let’s go do the other stuff, doesn’t mean they’re proficient at it. It just means that you dropped a little nugget of knowledge on how to cut. 

 

Jeff Walter (40:21) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (40:41) 

And the same thing goes in a several roles in the kitchen. Hey guys, I’m going to show you how to this food. Now that you know how to do it, remember this forever. And also I want you to remember this one plating with the other five other platings I’m to show you and the 10 other things I’m going to show you today. And then when you don’t, you don’t understand, I’m a guy, I don’t understand why you don’t get this. And I might, because you just, you just hide away them with the information and they absorbed about that much. They’re not proficient. 

 

Jeff Walter (41:06) 

Right. Well, and, and, and 

 

you, it’s interesting because the way, you know, I look at it from the, you know, our roadmap of, you know, stage one, self, ⁓ and then stage two knowledge acquisition stage three skill development. And it’s like, listen, I’m like, ⁓ Carolina country barbecue is doing skill development, which are, which you have to acquire knowledge, but then you also have to practice and be coached. 

 

And then you hit a certain level of proficiency and quality. Now you have that skill. A lot of corporate training programs. And it’s one of the things I’m really excited about AI. ⁓ but historically it’s been really, it’s been more knowledge acquisition. Here’s how you lemons, here’s how you plate this. Here’s how you do that, whether or not you have the skill to do that was not part of the program, right? You’d have to get that over time. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (41:42) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Mmm. 

 

What? 

 

Well, that’s part of my problem with some of the training programs. The training programs are about a information dump and not a skill training program. It’s a big difference. And I think I use this example at the thing when we’re talking is if me and sit in a classroom and I give you this little book and this is how to swim. Right. Let’s read this. All right. Ben, you’ve gone through all four chapters of how to swim. You understand the mechanics, you understand the philosophy of swimming. 

 

Jeff Walter (42:15) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (42:37) 

I throw you on the boat, we got in the middle of ocean, I toss you in and say, hey man, I told you I would swim, swim. How do you think this is going to work out? I mean, that to me is what an opening feels like. I gave you a book on how to swim and toss you in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and said, go at it. You know, I gave you all you needed to do. And so there is a, there’s a gap there on operational and information dump. just kind of segueing in is that’s where. 

 

Jeff Walter (42:39) 

Hahaha! 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (43:06) 

When I started to break away from corporate again, I go, you know what? I’m sick of all the stuff that, know, and FDDs have gotten into it and their federal requirements. You you got to have a manual for this, you got to have a manual for that, in order to say you have something proprietary. I go, no. You know what I need? I need something that works. If I was a franchisee and you gave me a book because the federal government said, hey, in order to be a franchisee, you have to have this book. 

 

Jeff Walter (43:20) 

Right. Right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (43:35) 

And you give me this book, but my restaurant’s failed. Well, let me tell you what you can do with that book. What I want you to do is come and tell me, hey, how are you a group that’s going to teach me how to run my restaurants? You’re going to make sure my guys have a skillset so that we succeed in our openings, we succeed in our operations. And that is skill development. That’s where we have to, we have to get away from this information dump. And I loved your term, bake it in the cake. 

 

Jeff Walter (44:03) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (44:05) 

The training has to be baked into the skills that we are practicing, not just in information overload. ⁓ I want the skill development to be the training program. 

 

Jeff Walter (44:19) 

So 

 

now, you know, transitioning over to Tickle My Barbecue, Tickle My Ribs. So now let’s look at Tickle My Ribs and let’s look at an opening there and how you’ve embedded the training into the operations to do the skill development. why don’t you take us through, you know, we’ve kind of compared and contrasted those things from your past. And it sounds to me now that I, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (44:24) 

Mm-hmm. Take a my ribs. Mm-hmm. Yes, 

 

Hmm 

 

Jeff Walter (44:51) 

understand the Carolina country barbecue and how that went. It’s like now I understand what you’re doing with Took On My Ribs. where, you know, it’s like almost like you’re taking a lot of the concepts that were back there in the 90s when you were starting out, but you’re kind of bringing them into a more modern context where you have all the technology to do things that you had to do shoulder to shoulder back then, right? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (44:59) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (45:19) 

So let’s transition to tickle my ribs and what does an opening look like there? How do you train people to make sure that a new store location is successful? And take us through what that looks like and how you’ve embedded the training into the operations. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (45:20) 

No. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Well. 

 

Well, the pre-work is ⁓ I utilize my POS system. And I think we underutilize so many different POS systems. And I don’t want to promote any POS system over another, but these things are walking information systems. And all we do is use them like cache registers. But then all this information, you have a spot where what the guests can see, 

 

Jeff Walter (45:43) 

you 

 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (46:09) 

what goes on the ticket and then what goes on the chit, C-H-I-T, that’s the term in restaurant for what goes back to the kitchen. And I’m like, we underutilize this stuff so much. So I sat down and we changed the chit part of all of the menu items when they get rang in. So when it prints out, I actually have the ounce and the place name. 

 

in order on when it prints out. So I’ll just give an example. It says pork plate, fries, coleslaw, right? When it prints out, it says pork six ounces, coleslaw five ounces, fries six ounces. And that’s the order it goes on the plate. And it goes from six to 11, six to 11. Everything is on that because the plate’s round. So you do it like a clock face, right? Protein’s always at six. 

 

Jeff Walter (47:04) 

Alright, alright. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (47:08) 

starches at three, 11 or two, however you want to do it and the brand is always at 12. Restaurant industry, so you stick with the restaurant industry standard stuff, build your plate accordingly, so when it prints out, it’s almost like the reminder of where everything goes to your kitchen help. The stuff that you showed them, as you were working beside them, that stuff is printed out, it just gets reiterated with check after check after check. So we’ve got the redundancy part. 

 

They’re actually hands-on doing it. So they’ve got the skill set part. And then we’re able to review it when we look at the check. And then so it’s the show, tell, review all in one program. Hey, I’m going show you guys how to do it when the chip comes out. Look at this. Got it. All right. Now you do it. Got it. All right. Here comes another check. Do it again. There’s another check. Do it again. Man, I’m telling you, within three days, they’ve got the plating memorized and they don’t have to guess with the amount of product. It’s on the check. 

 

Jeff Walter (48:05) 

So what 

 

would a typical, I’ve never worked back at restaurant, never worked, what would a typical chit look like? Like I just, like. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (48:15) 

But it would just, it’s a lot of times they try to use a code. It cracks me up. I’m like, they don’t even pronounce the whole word. Sometimes it’ll just be like C-O-T-E-W-Y. And then we actually have a decipher key in some of these restaurants and they go, okay guys, this stands for this. So not only does the kitchen guy have to memorize the menu, he also has to memorize the abbreviations, which is just another learning. 

 

Jeff Walter (48:32) 

All right. 

 

So 

 

in your example, ⁓ a typical restaurant that you would say some code that means the plate, or it would say the pork plate, right? And then I, as ⁓ the cook, would have to know, ⁓ that’s six ounces of shredded pork, that’s five ounces of coleslaw, that’s a biscuit. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (48:49) 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (49:03) 

And, and, and, and green beans or whatever it is, whatever the plate is, and it’s arranged in this way, right. Versus, what you did with the POS is you expanded that so that, no, tells you exactly how many ounces of pork, coleslaw, green beans, and where on the plate to put it. And then I thought was, well, I thought it was really fascinating. ⁓ and therefore if you ever change that, like, 

 

you know, the pork plate does not include green beans anymore. We’re putting collard greens or, know, so how, you know, if you were at a… 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (49:40) 

Right. 

 

I just changed it on the POS system and downloaded it out to all the stores. 

 

Jeff Walter (49:48) 

And as opposed 

 

to what would that look like in a corporate, you know, in some of the corporate without, know, we don’t have to name names, but what would that look like at one of the corporate rent things? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (49:57) 

Yeah. 

 

Oh my God, man. They’d be calling it a menu rollout, menu update. They would send out all this material to the stores. They would do some verification tour where they’d send some director to go and see if everybody got the download. If everybody’s following it, you would have to have some kind of regional meeting where you bring all the managers into one store, you roll out how you do it. And then once you get that all done, then they go back to the stores and do it. then corporate’s going to, but six months later, 

 

go and tour all the restaurants and make sure the changes have been made complete. And you’re going, wow, a million dollars so that we could say we’re no longer doing this. 

 

Jeff Walter (50:28) 

What? Oh, it’s- 

 

Okay. So in 

 

the little example I threw out there, if we’re, if we’re cutting it down to five ounces of pork instead of six, because the price of pork went through the roof, but we want to maintain our menu prices. We want to put collard greens on instead of green beans. We want to change the starch to be rice instead of the French fries. That would be a whole menu update, printed materials, promotional program, educating everybody because the shit that the cook is going to see. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (50:48) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (51:04) 

is still going to say pork plate or, or, you know, POBC or whatever the code is. Right. And, and, and then, and, so rather than do that, you have a much more, you know, the, training is baked in and you send out an alert going, Hey, we updated the pork plate. Pay attention to the chits because I got to imagine over time, you’re like, okay, I’ve done a thousand of these. I’m not really real. Yeah. Yeah. But 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (51:08) 

Poor play. Yep. 

 

Right, right, yes. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (51:32) 

But you know, and then, you know, but if you get the heads up that check out the pork, you know, we, changed the pork plate, check out the chit and all of sudden it’s like, boom, five ounces of pork instead of coleslaw or, know, or instead of a French fries, we’re putting rice instead of green beans, we’re collard greens. And this is how many ounces like boom, the training is done like that. And it’s all baked in. That’s beautiful. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (51:32) 

Right, right. 

 

Right. 

 

And. 

 

Yeah. 

 

And depending on your POS and it depend on your POS, you can actually put a message on the clock in. So when every employee clocks in before it allows them to hit the clock in button, it pops up a message that says, port plates have been modified. They no longer have six ounces. They now have five ounces. Please hit OK to verify that you’ve received this message. OK, now clock in. You can literally talk to every employee as they clock in. 

 

Jeff Walter (52:02) 

Uh-huh. 

 

⁓ 

 

so the 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (52:24) 

No manual rollout. No, I don’t have to be part of the manager to come in. I can actually put it on the clock in. So they get a message when they clock in and tells them, read this, get okay, now clock in. And you can stay on there for a week if you want to or two weeks. And they probably hit that thing 10 times as they clock in. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (52:36) 

And 

 

And they, they, they have to take an action to, 

 

⁓ Verify that they re know, they read that, right? You know, it’s like, you know, do something or otherwise they don’t start getting, they can’t clock in and you know, there’s no fun in not clocking in. ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (52:47) 

Verify. 

 

Yes. 

 

Right. 

 

But we can bake that all in. So now our team members are informed. They don’t feel uninformed because once again, know, team members hate feeling lost. I mean, I don’t believe anybody shows up to work and says, you know what I want to do today? I want to fail miserably and I want to make everybody mad and I don’t want to get the food out and I want to have a horrible shift. Nobody does that. So every tool that you can give them, which goes down to working equipment, 

 

Jeff Walter (53:04) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (53:27) 

and good information and they know what’s going on makes them feel safe and secure in their workplace. And they go, wow, I like working here because I’m informed on what’s going on. I know how to do my job. 

 

Jeff Walter (53:38) 

Yeah, so now 

 

let’s continue with our lemon example. So now in Tickle My Barbecue, how does a new, you’re opening up a new store, somebody’s gotta cut the lemons. How do they learn how to cut lemons properly? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (53:56) 

shoulder to shoulder with an opener, a certified opener. So I’ll give you an example. So we opened up, took him on a ribs and Indian trail. We went from station to station. We did a four day training program for the entire crew. And then we opened up. But in that four days, we literally opened up the restaurant. 

 

Jeff Walter (53:58) 

Okay, and when we’re in. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (54:23) 

in each position with each team member that would work that position. There weren’t 60 people in my restaurant ⁓ standing around while I’m teaching four people how to do lemons. got three people and that’s, know, they do these stations, that corporate trainings. ⁓ We didn’t do that. We literally went through the opening. Hey, all my opening people will be here on Monday. We’re going to open up the restaurant. And how do we do that? We pull this out. We do this. 

 

Jeff Walter (54:37) 

All right. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (54:52) 

My meat guys, I showed them how to open up the meat. My fry guys showed them how to open up fry. And we had everybody in their little microcosms. There was no 20 people following one person around when they opened up the whole restaurant. It was, they were doing their position, their opening. That’s all they had to learn. And in four days, they were proficient at opening the restaurant in their position. The closing the restaurant, the same thing. The guys would come in at this four o’clock shift. 

 

Jeff Walter (55:04) 

Right. 

 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (55:21) 

We would do a simulated four o’clock shift transition and then we would close the restaurant together. By the time we were done, they were proficient at doing what we were needing to do to open transition and close the restaurant. 

 

Jeff Walter (55:25) 

Right. 

 

Now you 

 

had mentioned a term certified opener. Are those training positions in corporate or is that like somebody that’s actually working a restaurant and they have that certification? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (55:40) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

They work in a restaurant and they have that certification. So what I try to do is, I did combine both accounting and corporate. So I did learn a lot about checklists and stuff. So when you keep using them, you’re proficient. So we have proficiencies. And you’re checked off. When you get hired, there are proficiencies for the position you were hired for. And you check off every day that you work. 

 

Jeff Walter (55:51) 

Okay. So. 

 

Right. 

 

All right. 

 

All right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (56:20) 

The manager signs off on it and says, you did this and this today. And did you do your four proficiencies or three proficiencies that you had to check off tonight? And did the manager certify that he did them with you and that you’re good? Yes. Boom. Done. And once you got all your proficiencies in position, you are certified to work that position. Then there is a training proficiency, which it says that you’re so proficient at it. You did all this and this, and that we certify that you are now allowed to train. 

 

Jeff Walter (56:31) 

Okay. 

 

Right, right. 

 

Okay, okay. So you’ve got 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (56:50) 

that position. 

 

And all it is is a checklist. There’s no book, no anything. It’s just a checklist that a manager signed off and said, you are hereby trained on how to do it. 

 

Jeff Walter (57:00) 

So 

 

because the manager was trained because, know, just going back to corporate, you know, going to the corporate, somebody trained them and made sure they were proficient and the proficiency continues. then they’re there now. know, I mean, you know, it’s interesting because what you hear a lot in franchises is, you, you, you train the hack, you know, you’re doing, you you got a new franchise or you are franchisee, you train the hack out of. 

 

the, the, the new franchisee owner or managers and, and then you go train the initial set of employees. And then you rely on the franchisee to do train the trainer, but you never actually certified the franchisee as being able to train the people. Right. You never actually, you know, you’re just like, okay, it’s your store, you know, good luck, go train your people. You know, so it’s, so, so all of the, so as as you’re growing tickle my ribs. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (57:35) 

Mm-hmm. ⁓ 

 

Right. Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (58:00) 

It’s like all the staff are like, Hey, you’re in this role. These are the proficiencies. There’s a certain level of, or, you know, a certain level of or proficiency of skill that you have to have to do your, to do your job and do it well. And, and, and you’re relying on the manager say, yup. You know, this person is an opener, an opening server. One of the proficiencies is cutting lemons. They know how to cut lemons, sign off on that. And the other 10 proficiencies they need as an opening server. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (58:13) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (58:30) 

And then add on another five as a closing server and now, and a transition server. now they’ve got all the proficiencies for all the different server roles. Right. And, and then, and then you’re going beyond and saying, okay, but now you have to be able to teach it. You know, which is really cool because you know, something we don’t, you know, we hadn’t had that conversation before because, um, you know, so I’ve been in the learning and development for, you know, a little while now. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (58:42) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Hmm 

 

Jeff Walter (59:00) 

couple of decades and an interest in for a decade or so before that, because I’ve been around the block a few times. And the most interesting thing to do, which I, until you just said that, I don’t think I’ve ever really heard it systematically in a program. And it goes back to something I learned like 30 years ago. It’s it’s it’s learn, do teach. Right. If you want to really understand something, you need to teach it. And, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (59:26) 

Mm. 

 

Jeff Walter (59:30) 

Yeah, but first you have to learn it, right? Then you got to do it and do it well. And then you got to teach it. And if you, and if you, you know, and it was a learn, do teach loop. And if you can teach it to somebody, they’re going to ask you questions you never even thought of. Right. Yeah. And, and you become really, really proficient at it. ⁓ and, and so that’s really fascinating that down at the, at the, at the. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (59:31) 

Yes. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

EW! 

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:00) 

you know, associate level where, you know, where, where the rubber meets the road with the customer, you’re basically saying, Hey, here’s the skills you need to be proficient at, at your job. Here are the skills you can grow into as you expand your responsibilities at the job. Right. So there’s, you know, it’s not just the server skills. It’s the opening server, transition server, closing server. Same with the back, same with the back, same with the assistant manager, same with the manager. And so here’s this whole set of proficiencies. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:00:22) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:26) 

We have a system by which we’re signing off that you’re proficient and certified. And it goes back to where we said before, skill development is all about practice and coaching and then demonstrating proficiency and you bake that in and you pick up the knowledge as you’re going along. Right. But then the really cool thing, and I didn’t know this until you just said this, I just think this is really fascinating is you’re going beyond that and saying, okay, now take it up a notch. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:00:41) 

there. 

 

Alright. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:55) 

so that you could be a trainer. And then as we open other stores, we don’t necessarily bring somebody in from corporate who’s never worked a store. We’re going to give you the opportunity to go to another store and help open as a certified trainer in that skill set. know, because, you know, and now the beautiful thing about that is not only are the new employees at this new store, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:01:00) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:01:26) 

learning from somebody who’s been in the trenches. It’s like the drill sergeant type thing. like, you just didn’t learn from somebody who’s not a soldier. You learn from somebody who’s been in trenches and can convey more than just the book knowledge. They can convey all that experience. But then at the same time, the certified trainer is becoming a better server or better cook or better manager. 

 

because they have to teach what they do to somebody else. And so they’re getting a better appreciation and that’s just going to go help them when they go back to their stores. That’s really cool. That’s really flipping cool. That’s so cool. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:01:59) 

Yes. 

 

Well, in the company, and the company benefits from it because the more, more of the trainers that you have, you have all these aces walking around that are subject matter experts. And all they’re doing is training your future leaders and it just makes them even better. And it becomes its own, it starts getting its own momentum and it’s even have a core group. we, so our colors are black and red for Tickle My Wrist, black, red, white. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:14) 

Yeah, yeah, that’s a win-win. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah, that’s really cool. 

 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:02:42) 

So all the, all the team members wearing black shirts and black hats, and it’s got the logo on it. When you’re certified ⁓ as a trainer in your area, you get a red hat or a red shirt. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:46) 

Right. 

 

Yep. 

 

Okay. 

 

Okay. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:03:03) 

And they’re identified. So you know who to go to in your restaurant. You go find a red hat or a red shirt and say, Hey, I need help with this. No problem. I’ve got it. I can help you with it. So they know who did they know who the leaders are. They’re identified in the store. And, and it’s funny how quickly we get man. I want to, want a red hat. I want a red shirt. I want one of those. And then I even developed these little patches because smoking is a big thing in our 

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:20) 

that’s so cool. 

 

Right, right, right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:03:32) 

you know, 

 

smoking different meats. So in order to be a certified smoke master in each of the things, we’ve got these patches that you can either put on your shirt or on your hat. They’re actual patches. So when you get certified on smoking pork, beef, chicken, there are smoke master ⁓ patches that these guys put on their hats, like the old pins. And they get these, they get these, they’re like badges of honor. And then when you learn how to do all of them, 

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:52) 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:04:01) 

and you’re certified to teach all of them, you get a smoke master pin that goes under hat and it says, anything over here, I’m a master of it. I can show you how to do it because I’ve done it all. And Sean has come in and here by certified me as a black belt of smoking. it’s like, it’s like, that guy’s a smoke master. He’s, he’s got it all, you know? So you set up achievement. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:04) 

Right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Well, the brilliant, that’s so brilliant. That’s so brilliant because a 

 

lot of times the reward and incentives are, you know, when we look at training programs, we also, you know, and we talked to our clients about them. We’re also like, well, what’s the reward and incentive? Like why? Like, like part of the why is what we talked about before, but that’s more at the owner manager level, right? Like I do this. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:04:43) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:51) 

We’re going to spend the dollar on training. We’re going to get $2 more in revenue. We’re going to increase our margins by 2%. ⁓ But the frontline person doesn’t, I mean, they care about that because they want their company to thrive and they want to continue to be employed, but it doesn’t hit the emotional side. So we always talk about, what’s the incentive? What’s the reward? Why should they do this? What are you doing to reward them? And usually it’s an afterthought. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:05:00) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:05:19) 

And, ⁓ yeah, it might be, get a certificate or something, but what I love about what you just said is it’s, actually the garment you’re wearing while you’re on the job. Right. And it’s like, you know, you could just see, I could just imagine in the store. It’s like, I want a red shirt. Right. Like, like, you know, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:05:35) 

Yes. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:05:48) 

I’m surrounded by red shirts. Me and Marty are the only black shirts. I gotta get my red shirt. And I can also imagine just the peer pressure, but in a positive way of, hey, Jeff, you come on, you can get, you just got these two other, you know, let me help you develop these skills so you can get your red shirt, right? And then you go beyond that by saying, okay, now I get into the mastery. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:05:56) 

Yeah. ⁓ 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:16) 

Right. And now let me have other visual cues to people at the store. You know, the customer may not be aware of it, but visual cues to people in the store as this person has this level of mastery in this. I think that’s just absolutely brilliant. Just brilliant. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:06:18) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Well, I tell you what, with the kids, and we talked about this, everybody’s talking about how hard it is to find team members, how hard it is to find this, and how hard it is to keep on and stuff. What’s one of the most addictive things that kids do today are video games, right? And how do they get addicted to it? Levels. Leveling up, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m leveling you up, and man, how do I get that sticker? How do I get this? 

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:51) 

Right, Yeah. Yeah, you’re leveling up. Level up. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:07:05) 

I mean, the dumbest thing is like a little emblem on a gun, you know, playing Call of Duty. Like I got to, I had to do like these 20 different things to get an emblem, you know, that doesn’t give me any money, doesn’t do anything for on the game. But people would, I would just notice these guys would go crazy just trying to get some new emblem. And I’m like, well, how do I bake that into my group and get these kids incentivized when those patches came out? 

 

Jeff Walter (1:07:28) 

yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:07:30) 

Everybody was like, whoa, how do I get those? That’s awesome. I want that. I want this, you know? And it was just that mentality. And I’ve got 17-year-olds, and I swear, going for more certifications than in my entire career that I’ve seen 25- and 28-year-olds go for. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:07:42) 

Yeah. Well, well, cause you know, when you talk about rewards and incentives, 

 

people just naturally gravitate towards money, right? Like you just assume money, right? Like I’m going to have to give you a nickel or I’m going to, you you do that and you get a buck or you got a gift certificate or you, know, or you get points to go buy stuff in a store. Like I’d say those are the most common, you know, when, when, when you get beyond the here’s a certificate of completion, we are, which is 

 

I’m not knocking that. It’s a good base level thing to do. Let’s recognize the fact that you accomplished this and give you some type of recognition. But beyond that, see a lot of, well, we’re either going to give you a monetary incentive or we’re going to give you points and then you can go to this store and spend your points on whatever it is. Like the credit card company. 

 

right? Like, you know, you can go buy gift certificates and stuff like that. And those are, I mean, I’ve seen those be very motivating and they work very well. But the thing you’re touching on that those don’t touch on, is, is just brilliant, just brilliant. This is why I love talking to you. I learned so much when I talk to you. I’m going to, but what that doesn’t do is it doesn’t give you social status. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:08:43) 

Yeah. 

 

But, but, but. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:10) 

and 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:09:12) 

Right. And long-term effect, the long-term incentive. Because I believe that the financial stuff is short-term. man, I worked hard, I got my credit card, I went on the company website, and I bought my two sweatshirts. It’s over. It’s over. There’s no more pat on the back, no more, you know, I joke around, you no longer get saluted as an officer anymore. You’re just, you know, that guy, if I get to show up to work every day with clout, 

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:14) 

Right. Yeah, exactly. 

 

Right. And there’s no 

 

Exit. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:09:43) 

I’m not as quick to jump ship because I’ve got to start over somewhere else. I’m a captain of the ship over here. mean, when I walk through people part ways because I’m a red hat in a red shirt with my emblems. I get respect here. All of a sudden I don’t want to jump ship for 50 cents more an hour because I’m respected here. You know? 

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:58) 

Well, exactly. Well, that’s what I mean by social status, 

 

right? Like, like, like the problem with the money and the points and things like that is it’s all private. It’s like, I might have, you know, 10,000 points in my little bank because I did X, Y, and Z. You might have a hundred thousand, but I don’t know that. You know, you’re, we’re just coworkers, right? And, and maybe I bought the 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:10:05) 

Yeah, yeah. ⁓ 

 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:27) 

the sweatshirt at the company store and spent 5,000 points on that. And you’re like, that’s pretty cool. Where’d you get that? And I tell you, but social status is a very big motivator. It’s part of the human condition. We actually have biological systems in our bodies and our brains that are continually ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:10:36) 

All right. 

 

Yes. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:56) 

evaluating your social status in any group and you have physiological changes that occur based on how you perceive your status in a given group. ⁓ But that’s a whole other thing. But I’d only bring that up to say it is a very deeply rooted thing of us as humans. It’s biological. And what I love what you just did is you 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:11:08) 

Mm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:11:24) 

you tapped into that to make the reward a social status thing. But also, it’s ⁓ also, you didn’t sit there to do it for social status, but then it’s a ⁓ helpful thing to go like, hey, I need to talk to somebody about X. I can visually see that this person knows X, right? Because they’ve got the red shirt, they’ve got the patch. You know, so I got, you know, I, I, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:11:48) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:11:54) 

I’m having, you know, I’m smoking a chicken, it’s not smoking right. And I go over here and talk to this guy, he’s got the chicken smoker, you know, right, patch. And he’s like, oh, you know, you forgot to put this on or you did this too early or whatever it is it did. So there’s a very, you know, there’s a very practical component to it in that it’s like, hey, when you need help, who do you go? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But there’s also a social component to it. And to your point about the video games, well, that’s why the kid, that’s why 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:12:05) 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:24) 

kids love that’s that’s why people level up. Right? It’s like, I don’t want to get I, you know, I don’t really care about those five electrons that make my site purple or whatever, you know, whatever the designator is, what I want is the people I’m playing with to see that I have the purple scope, because the purple scope means something. They and it’s a signal to them that I’ve achieved a certain level of 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:12:40) 

All right. 

 

Yes. 

 

Yes. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:52) 

skill and proficiency at this particular task. And so it gives me social status. I don’t really care that my scope is purple. I care that everybody knows what that means, like you said. wow, that’s brilliant. That’s actually brilliant. You might have thought about this once for a minute or two. ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:12:58) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah, a little 

 

bit, a little bit. Well, with corporate, just got tired of, we were turning over some of the trainers and keeping people in the training development program was tough. And I noticed that because like said, everything was private. Even the meetings were private. It was like, do it now, we have a trainer meeting next week. We’re all going to go over here. And I’m like, 

 

They shatter from the rooftops. Let these people know that these guys are the leaders of our company. Let them, you know, and there’s always been a mystique about being a manager in any company, right? It’s like, ⁓ we wave the magic wand and now you are a manager. Wow. You’re somebody. Well, what made them a somebody? You know, you know, somebody needs, you know, and there’s even a thing in restaurant business that we don’t promote with them and keep them in the same store. Do you know why? Cause there’s no mystique. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:13:44) 

Right. 

 

Right, right. 

 

Right, right. 

 

Hahaha! 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:14:10) 

They know 

 

this guy from his DNA. So when he becomes a manager, they’re like, that’s just Ralph. Yeah. And we’ve worked for a few years. So we have to take him to a new store to give him that mystique of he’s a manager and he’s gone through some kind of, you know, worldwide transition that’s made him now he’s, he’s all knowing and, it gives them more respect. But so what I try to do is I try to get that respect to the hourly team members. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:14:14) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:14:37) 

And it’s just amazing on what’s their work performance. I wish there was a study that we could do and do this with a company and change over all this stuff and then watch their work performance and, and company logic change as you bump their status up. I think I bet it would be insane. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:14:45) 

Right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Well, I tell you, I think as, 

 

as, as, as you go forward with took my bar, took my ribs. Um, I think you’re going to see it because you know, like I’m going back to that, uh, survey from the show. It’s like number one, you know, I mean, retail, especially restaurant, retail, very high turnover business, right? One of the top reasons people leaving the first 30 days is 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:15:24) 

Hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:15:27) 

Nobody trained them. And one of the top reasons they leave in the first year is they realize nobody else has trained. And, ⁓ and, and, and then they, and they’re like, I got to get out of here. Right. And I bet you, you guys, as you grow and that you’re just going to be a case study because I mean, I’ve seen it my bit, my, own business at latitude. Yeah. We have very low turnover. 

 

very low turnover and it’s not just training, it’s ⁓ whole myriad of things. But ⁓ the impact low turnover has on your business is amazing. The institutional knowledge that the staff has, ⁓ you could just do things that other companies just can’t do. And it’s not just that it adds a dollar or two to the bottom line. mean, it definitely does that. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:15:57) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Yes. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:16:24) 

You know, like, so you’ll make no bones about it. It adds money to the bottom line. If you can get your turnover down. And the other thing is it makes the place such a more enjoyable place to work in. just really is. You know, um, just on a side note, just talking about turnover, this is really interesting because it, it had, you know, and you notice this a corporate, um, one of my larger clients, one of the automotives, um, up here in Detroit, um, we were working with their dealer training program, right? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:16:26) 

It does. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:16:54) 

And, ⁓ and they, they, they got about, at the time they had about 2,500 franchises around the world and about 250,000, ⁓ franchise employees or dealer employees. Right. And a dealership has a 50 % turnover a year, five, zero percent huge. And the, we were rolling out this training program, ⁓ for these guys. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:17:19) 

Mmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:17:23) 

And, uh, and they were doing it right. They had baseline, you know, they knew a trained salesperson sold twice as many vehicles as an untrained, you know, trained being certified as an untrained, uh, certified tech had a fixed first visit score that was, you know, 50, 15 points higher than an uncertified, you know, like they had, they, that whole dollar of training, they knew that it generated like three, $4 of benefit. Right. And so we’re rolling this out, but, but, um, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:17:50) 

Mm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:17:53) 

We’re rolling this out, but here’s a really cool thing when we put our system in place. A dealership had a 50 % turnover and the conventional wisdom at this organization, at this company, ⁓ was we’re training our competition because there’s such a high turnover at the dealerships, they’re going to a more prestigious brand. That was the conventional wisdom. And we rolled our system out and we put it in place. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:18:21) 

Hmm 

 

Jeff Walter (1:18:23) 

And one of the things about our system is it tracks people as they move around different locations and they keep their ID. Anyway, long story short, goes back. Well, it turned out when we rolled everything out, a dealership had a 50 % turnover, but the network had less than a 10 % turnover. And what was really happening was people weren’t leaving the dealership and going to another competitor’s brand that was more prestigious. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:18:44) 

Bye! 

 

Jeff Walter (1:18:53) 

is people were getting trained and going to other dealers within the network that valued the training. And to your point about not leaving the network, it became, I’m a certified this at this level that has value within this community, not just within my store, but within this community. it blew everybody away. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:19:18) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:19:22) 

Not at this, you know, this is a big fricking company, right? Global company. What all the way up to the C-suite, you know, that we are not training the competition. We’ve got, you know, a dollar training generates X dollars of benefit and people are trading up within the network. That’s what’s happening. And so, you know, I’m listening to what you’re saying. It just reminded me of that. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:19:25) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:19:51) 

the value, the lower retention, not just within the store. You’ve got that, but then within the network, because as you build, it’s like, well, who’s going to value the master smoker patch the most? Another franchise of tickle my ribs barbecue. Anyway, it’s really, I think as 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:20:08) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:20:21) 

as a franchise or it’s, it’s you want to focus on the retention within the store, but then the larger retention within the network as well. And it’s just fascinating, but that’s really cool. I just, I’m sorry. I got all giddy and excited about that. ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:20:36) 

That’s 

 

right. That’s right. Well, when you were talking about turnover though, I was always suspect of restaurants when they would brag about their onboarding process. And then here’s the reason I’m like, so you guys focus so much on your onboarding and all these big training programs and all this, how bad is your turn? If you’re onboarding and hiring, 

 

Jeff Walter (1:20:45) 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:21:05) 

so many people within the same unit. I’ve got to ask, has anybody done a deep dive and figured out why you guys have become such masters of onboarding and training people in this one restaurant? Because to me, a point of bragging would be, hey, people don’t leave our restaurant. I mean, there’s like a waiting list to work here. You know, we don’t, our onboarding is, know, in fact, we had to dust off 

 

Jeff Walter (1:21:05) 

Right. 

 

Right, yeah. Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:21:34) 

the onboarding book because we haven’t onboarded somebody in a year and a half. Yeah, that’s an impressive program to me. But when you’re updating your onboarding on a monthly basis and you’ve got a training group just working on your onboarding materials and you’re ordering all the swag and t-shirts and all this stuff, you’re onboarding so many people, to me that would be a huge red flag indicator. I’d go, oh, if I was sitting in that boardroom, 

 

Jeff Walter (1:21:35) 

Yeah, that’s that’s success 

 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:22:02) 

And they were rolling out this new onboarding every other month. I’d go, hey, time out. Time out what? Let’s figure out why we’re onboarding so many people instead of, why are we not promoting more people? And that brings the other thing that if you have a training program where people are working shoulder to shoulder and they’re practicing skillsets with people instead of just giving them a book, a checklist and saying, hey, get this checked off, come see me later. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:04) 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:22:31) 

and it becomes you’re more of a burden than you are my co-worker. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:32) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:22:38) 

I think that we end up, we end up in a situation where we’re, we’re spending a lot of money on people that, like you said, just end up leaving. And I’m like, but if we have a program to drill down on why are people leaving, but Hey, I’m going to help you get promoted. You’re going to go here and you’re going to have this kind of rank and you’re going to have this. And we really want to move forward. People don’t leave because. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:50) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:23:07) 

They’ve worked a bond out with the person that actually trained them. Hey man, we’re red shirts together now or we’re, we’re red hats together or Hey, we’re smoke masters. And then, then you got to put it, then you, then you have to put this in your culture is when the regional director comes in the restaurant, he’s the first person he says, Hey, so I did this when I was, when I was the head of operations for the two franchise groups, they drove everybody crazy. When I walked in, you know, there would always be an HR director there. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:23:11) 

Right, exactly. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:23:36) 

you know, Sean’s coming in, there’s a VP of ops or, you know, everybody would show up, Sean’s coming in to do an inspection or whatever. I would walk right past everybody and I walked right to the dishwasher. Every time I went, every time I went to a restaurant, went right to the dishwasher and said, Hey man, how you doing? Good. Hey guys, Sean. It’s nice to meet you. He goes, Hey, how are you doing? I’m like, good. Hey, so what’s going on back here? Cause I’m like, you can’t have a clean restaurant if you have a dirty dish here. Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:24:01) 

Right, right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:24:05) 

And what do we call dish kits and all this stuff? I’m like, no, this is a dish area. You’re my safety sanitation specialist. I want to say hey to you and see what’s going on and how I can help you. And I took that mentality with the renter to stop. When we were only two restaurants right now, we’re hoping to build into big things, but I want that culture to expand to, hey, if you’re if you own your own franchise group, the first people that need to get your handshake when you walk in a restaurant. 

 

or your red shirts or red hats. Those are your subject matter experts. Those are the guys running your restaurant. And you create that cloud and hey, when you have a business convention, you’re gonna have anything, the red shirts are invited. Those people need to be the people that get the handshakes and get the data boys and I want that to be the culture of, hey, you’re a subject matter expert in my company. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:24:54) 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:25:03) 

I want you to be my conduit of information. But what we do is incorporate, they surround themselves with VP of Ops and directors of operations that come in and give this fluffy view of all this stuff and a training director and all this stuff, but nobody that actually is going through the program. And now you’ve identified who those guys are, bring them to the board meeting and say, hey, we’re going to roll this out. What do you think? 

 

Jeff Walter (1:25:29) 

Right. Well, that’s, I mean, that’s what 

 

I love about your, your, your, training certification and, and, and yeah, and going beyond just your proficient enough for the job. Now you’re proficient enough to teach the job. And when we open up a nation, we’re going to bring in a certified trainer. Who’s not sitting in corporate as a cert, but is, is working. mean, that’s just really, you know, one other point I want to make that I really love about what you’re doing. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:25:32) 

Tear it apart! 

 

Jeff Walter (1:25:56) 

and it’s conversations I had at the IFA show with some folks is, you know, as a franchisor, you work really hard developing your concept, right? And getting it just so that the consumer loves what you do, right? And then ⁓ when it comes to… 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:26:21) 

Hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:26:23) 

training, it’s all about creating that culture and that proficiency. And then when most franchisors, especially when they’re in the emerging stage, the developmental stage, they kind of outsource that to whoever the new franchisee is, right? Like I’ll train you and then you train your people. And I’m like, look, you worked really hard to build this concept and you worked through all the details and now you’re going to let somebody else 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:26:45) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:26:54) 

train the frontline that is the representative of your brand to your customer. like, that’s, mean, I know they’re, I know they’re part of the team, but don’t you want to connect to those frontline folks directly? Like you were just saying, like bring those folks into the boardroom. And one of the things that I really loved about your embedded training system with, you know, we talked about the chit system and using the POS and when you’re clocking in. And I think this, I meant to mention this before, but I think it’s something that 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:27:13) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:27:23) 

a lot of franchisors don’t think about is it gives you as the franchisor, a pipeline of communication and training directly to the people that are impacting the customer. And, and therefore you, that allows you to create a more consistent brand, more consistent delivery, a more consistent culture across all the different locations as you grow. And so just wanted to bring that up before. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:27:41) 

Yes. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:27:54) 

⁓ before we wrapped up is, you know, ⁓ I think that’s one of the real benefits of really getting that type of training program, ongoing training program out to the franchise employee is, know, it gives you that direct line. You’re not going through the management team or through the layers of management, especially as you grow and you have, ⁓ franchise groups that own 60 restaurants. Right. It’s like, it’s like you’re touching, I mean, 

 

You are literally in what you’ve done, you’re touching every single cook, every single associate directly to say, this is what’s changed. Are you aware of it? Yes, I am clock in. This is what changed. There’s now X ounces, know, there’s five ounces of pork instead of six, or we, we, we increased, you know, or pork is cheap. just, we’re, putting eight ounces of pork on it for the summer. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:28:22) 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:28:52) 

You know, cause now price of pork is down and we’re just going to give them big fricking helpings for the next six months. Right. Like, like whatever it is, whatever it is, you’re touching them directly. And it’s, it’s really, really cool. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:29:01) 

Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Well, we didn’t even talk about the fun house guys. mean, it’s the same thing. So when we mapped out how they bring in orders. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:29:11) 

All right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:29:15) 

It forces them to ring it in in a certain way. you work play, do you want one or two sides, two sides? And the questions are right there. There’s no, oh, hold on. Um, and you sat in front of those guys before, right? There’s a guy standing behind them going, I’m sorry, guys. I’m giving them a second. They’re training. I’m training them. And I’m always thinking to myself, well, if you’re training them, why are you letting them fail in front of me? That’s not training. That’s embarrassing. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:29:34) 

Right, right. 

 

Right, right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:29:45) 

I’ve never understood. I’m like, how good do you think this person feels about themselves? And they’re going, hold on, I’m sorry, I’m trained. I’m like, no, you never let a person fail while you’re training them. I don’t understand. thing with the manager thing. I was telling you, I do the orders with the managers until they’re proficient enough to do it by themselves, but we’re both doing orders. I submit mine until theirs is worth submitting. I cannot stand when I would call a restaurant and go, hey guys, why did you guys spend this amount? I’m sorry. 

 

Steve was training on ordering, he messed it up. And then they act like that’s the excuse. And I go, well, wait a minute. Were you training them how to do it did you just give them the order guide and say, go do an order? Because that’s also the gap that I’m talking about because my training program doesn’t allow the failure inside the training program because the point is to stop them from failing because you’re right beside them. 

 

and you catch the mistake before it’s submitted. But we use that as an excuse in corporate all the time. ⁓ man, why did they screw this up? Or why did they order this amount of food? Or why did this happen? they go, well so-and-so was trying me. I’ve never accepted that as an answer for any kind of failure because I’m like, well, wait a minute. So you’re telling me we had two people doing the job and it didn’t get done right. So we had a certified trainer and someone else and we still failed. that’s something we’ve got to deep dive into because 

 

Jeff Walter (1:30:51) 

Right. 

 

Well, I think that goes back to the whole philosophy, your whole philosophy, which is a skill development philosophy versus a knowledge acquisition philosophy. Right. If the whole philosophy of your training program is, is knowledge acquisition. And the example I always use is getting your driver’s license. Right. You got to pass the written test and then you have to pass the road test and the written test is all about knowledge acquisition. What is the red octagonal sign on the side of the road? Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:31:11) 

I don’t want people feeling like failures. I want them to feel like a trainee. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Mmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:31:41) 

Like what is these yellow stripes in the middle of the road mean? That’s, that’s knowledge acquisition. Oh, that’s a stop sign. I shouldn’t go across the yellow line. Um, now I know that. And, and you do that and you pass your written test and then you have to learn how to drive the skill of driving. And that’s where you and somebody that, you know, whether you’re, you know, a lot of times, you know, a parent or an older sibling or somebody you’re 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:31:43) 

All 

 

Jeff Walter (1:32:11) 

In a parking lot, you’re driving around, you’re setting up cones, you’re parallel parking, know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, practicing and you’re getting coached. And that’s the, and then you pass your road test, which is not, which is, can you pull out onto the highway safely? Can you parallel park? Can’t you know, can you operate a vehicle safely on public streets? It’s basically what they’re doing. Do you have that skill? And to, your point, that’s the difference between. 

 

a knowledge acquisition, you know, they’re just getting them ready to pass the road test, the driver’s test, you know, the written test, right? And then they’re saying, okay, he’s out on the road, learning how to drive. It’s, you know, I’m sorry, he crashed that car. He’s learning how to drive. And you’re like, you’re like, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:32:53) 

Right. 

 

Right, right. And I’ve never 

 

understood it, but we do it. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:33:08) 

No, I want them to be 

 

able to have the skill set to operate a vehicle safely before I let them out on their own so they don’t crash the car. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:33:18) 

Right. 

 

ride or have a self-driving car to help you. You know, I mean, and that’s what I’m creating. I’m creating a self-driving car. Last going, all right, so I hit this one. I hit the, can’t tell because it’s not going to allow me to hit a wrong button. I’m going to ask the question that I’m going to do it. And one, and the turn is like, now we’re in, remember do this, but it’s a smooth learning experience. And, and I don’t understand. and, and 

 

Jeff Walter (1:33:24) 

Right, yeah, yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:33:51) 

Look, maybe it’s a human nature. You know that better than me, especially with all the studies you’ve done. It’s like letting someone fail in business is not like being a dad where you let your son fall. In business, you don’t want someone to fail because one, costs you money. Number two, it makes the person feel like crap. And number three, the customers see that going on and they think, wow, what a bad company. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:34:04) 

Yeah. 

 

Right. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:34:18) 

So your perception is bad. So you get all three of these things that are bad. And I’m going, why are you not presenting this person in the best possible light? And it’s the same thing with cooks. You know, we’ve got to have the training program that requires the trainer to take as much responsibility and accountability as the person that they’re training. They are not an excuse for failure. Oh, well, so-and-so is training, they messed that up. Oh, well, no, no, you’re the trainer. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:34:35) 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:34:47) 

Never let them fail and never let them fall. And next thing you know, they’re really proficient at what they do and we’re able to move on. And guess what? My person doesn’t want to quit after the end of the day. And I can’t remember the study. I think it was done by SMS, but they said that 90 % of all team members that are going to quit their job know before they leave from their last shift. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:34:54) 

Yeah, but… 

 

Yeah ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:35:11) 

So think about that. So they know before they leave the ship that they’re on now that they’re not coming back. And we do it to ourselves. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:35:13) 

Yeah. Well, it’s, well, and that goes back to the retention 

 

that we talked about, you know, another analogy that came to just to get came to my mind. I’m just, as you were, as you were talking was, ⁓ was a theatrical performance. You know, it’s like, you got to learn your lines and then you have to practice them. And you do that all off stage. Like when you were talking about the, ⁓ you know, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:35:38) 

Mm-mm. 

 

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:35:42) 

please excuse him, he’s training. That’s like saying, okay, go learn your lines and then you’re the opener for tonight’s show, but it’s okay, I’m gonna be next to you while you’re performing. And then it’s like, no, no, no, you wanna learn your lines and practice them off stage. And then when you’re on stage, you’re confident and you can do the job and you can do it well. ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:35:57) 

Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:36:12) 

I think that’s a pretty good place. have to transition a little, getting back to you, Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs. Fascinating training program. I really love talking to you about it. I could talk to you for hours about it, but I know you have time. 

 

do what you got to do other things. So I appreciate all the time you’re spending with me so I can learn a bit more and more. I’ve learned a lot, so I’m really appreciating that. Just shifting gears as we wrap up, one of the things I like to ask folks is like, okay, outside of the work thing, what do you like to learn about personally outside of work? Yeah, outside of the professional stuff. When you’re learning about stuff, what do you like to learn about? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:36:57) 

Well, ⁓ 

 

Well… 

 

⁓ actually, I love, I love learning, martial arts. did it with my son. I did it growing up. ⁓ and I think I’m going to bake some of that into my program, ⁓ because it’s all about proficiency. I can tell you how to do a front snap king, but you’ve done it a hundred times. You don’t know how to do it. I, ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:37:07) 

Uh-huh. 

 

Yeah. 

 

You know, that makes a lot of sense now. ⁓ 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:37:27) 

You know, given a guy black belt, he doesn’t know how to fight. It’s not really a reason to have a black belt. You know, it’s just a color. You just went through a testing program. Um, also love, um, I’m actually learning something right now. If you want to hear about it. Um, my kids, my kids are actually trying to teach me how to play pickleball and I didn’t even know what it was. I thought they were joking around. like, you trying to pump me? What’s this? What’s this thing? And, and it’s actually pretty fun. It’s low impact, but I was a big racquetball fan. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:37:29) 

Right. 

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

⁓ yeah! 

 

Yeah. 

 

yeah, me too, yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:37:56) 

I used to love playing racquetball. Oh, God, I love that game. So it kind of got me back to playing some racquetball. So I’m learning they’re enjoying beating the crap out of me right now. So they better enjoy it till I learn how to do this. But I’m learning how to play football and there’s some weird rules and all that. But I’m always like doing physical stuff. I like learning physical stuff. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:38:07) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is my mom is 

 

my mom lives down in the villages in Florida, big retirement community and like 10 years ago, she and she was a big tennis player, you my whole life growing up. She was a big tennis player. And, ⁓ and she’s like, Hey, they got you know, and she stopped playing tennis because you know, her body is rough on her body. And she’s like, moves down there. She’s like, they got this great game. It’s called pickleball. Michael, what’s pickleball? She was like tennis, but it’s like paddle ball, but it’s low impact. And it’s great. And I love it. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:38:24) 

Alright. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:38:42) 

And it’s like 10 years ago. I’m okay. That’s interesting. And then next thing I know, like five years ago, I come talk to my friends and like, have you heard of this game? Pickleball? yeah. My kids are playing it. It’s really cool. And, they’re like, you know, there’s Wolverine pickleball here just opened up. We got to go there and we go there and it’s like all kids. And it’s, and it’s a fun game. It’s a really fun game. it’s. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:38:48) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah, 

 

it is. And it’s quick. I mean, you’re playing, it’s quick moving, you’re not sitting around. I I enjoy it. They just opened up an indoor pickleball place here, so I’m learning how to play and I’m actually looking to get my own little pickleball racket. Just so can just, I gotta bring the thunder with me. I gotta show them how to play. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:39:23) 

Yeah. And ⁓ on the martial arts, what 

 

type of, which style of martial arts do you practice? 

 

Miss Mark, MMA. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:39:35) 

Well, it’s a mixed martial art. Yeah, so my first black belt was Taekwondo, which was, compared to what we’re doing now, it’s like dancing. And then they did a couple of the styles that were mixed martial arts and they gave them different names, the Shodokan, Penduru and stuff like that. But I’ve just done several and the only thing I hate 

 

Jeff Walter (1:39:40) 

Okay. 

 

⁓ huh. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:40:02) 

is I’ve always hated grapple. I’m a pretty big guy and I get tired of getting wrapped up on these little guys on the ground fighting. So I’m trying to learn ground fighting right now is my focus. It’s a very, and at my age, it’s pretty high impact. So I doubt I’m ever going to be that proficient at it starting this late, but I just wanted to get back into it. So it’s more Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu style right now. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:40:06) 

Uh-huh. 

 

f- 

 

Yeah. 

 

jujitsu, okay. Yeah, yeah, 

 

I, when I was younger, much younger, I ⁓ never got to black belt, but ⁓ in college and that, ⁓ did karate, washin-ru karate. I always enjoyed it. Always wanted to get back into it. Now that the kids are out of the house and all that, as an older adult, ⁓ I’m like, gee, I’d really love to pick that up because I’m also a very physical type of guy. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:40:31) 

I’m just trying to learn it. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:40:55) 

Like I like, I just like to stay physically active and that my kids just recently, they told me they were going to do this half Ironman and I stupidly said I’ll do it with them. And that’s what I’m training. That’s what I’m training for right now. I’m learning how weak my body is. But what would you recommend if, know, since you’ve done a bunch of different styles as a mature male. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:40:58) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

God. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:41:25) 

If I wanted to get back into martial arts or something, ⁓ I just always really liked the, when I was in it, it just felt good. Not only the physical, like I love the practice sessions, but also you’re learning a skill that can be very useful in certain circumstances. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:41:28) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:41:53) 

there was a confidence that it instilled. ⁓ What would you recommend ⁓ for someone like me? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:41:54) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Honestly, I would go with jujitsu. It’s crazy. I’m really enjoying it. There’s gi fighting with jujitsu where you wear the gi. And then there’s the workout shirt where, and I like the workout shirt is a little faster. And I don’t get choked out by my gi by the guys who are already black belts that will choke you out with the gi on jujitsu. But the, I like the non gi fighting. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:42:06) 

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:42:29) 

with Jiu Jitsu because I believe it’s more practical for what’s really going on. ⁓ If you were to get into something, it’s a lot more practical. mean, the freestyle stuff I did with kickboxing and, ⁓ and well, the, the kangaroo was really good. His name was Sean Bradshaw and gave me a lot of skills for fighting. ⁓ But if you’re wanting something to really get, get a good physical workout and feel like you’ve got something that 

 

you can take with you. honestly believe Jiu Jitsu is one of the best styles that are out there. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:43:01) 

Now, I just, you know, I thought about that and I just 

 

thought, like, there’s a lot of throws in Jiu Jitsu, right? 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:43:11) 

Well, there are, but there’s more stand up fighting that people give it credit for. mean, and then in great position and then coming in on somebody and then also learn how to do your elbow strikes and stuff like that. There’s a lot more to Jiu-Jitsu than just tossing people around. And I think what Jiu-Jitsu gets confused with Judo. Judo is more the tall, standing, throwing and all that, where Jiu-Jitsu is more of the grappling aspects. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:43:15) 

Okay. 

 

Right. 

 

Okay, okay, yeah 

 

Yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:43:40) 

And also learn how to get your guys to submit and do choke outs and do locks and holds and stuff like that. It’s fantastic. And I mean, I’m just scratching the surface. There are some guys in there. mean, honestly, I doubt I’ll ever achieve a black belt in jiu jitsu. But just being around these guys and learning stuff, it’s unbelievable. I learned something every time I go in there, every time. It’s amazing. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:43:53) 

Yeah. 

 

Interesting. Well, thank you. I’m done with this training, 

 

it’s actually something I want to look into ⁓ in the coming months. I just, yeah. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:44:11) 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah, just get ready to get beat up a lot. That’s all I do. I joke around. I go in there too. I can just get beat up. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:44:20) 

That’s okay. I don’t, I don’t mind that. You know, it’s, 

 

it’s just one those things that I really enjoyed in my youth, as a young, as a young man. And then, you know, you got busy and family and kids and all that. And now, ⁓ as a empty nester, I’m like, I really enjoyed that. And I’d like to get back into it, but I’m a little bit more brittle than I used to be. I will, I will. ⁓ Hey, before we, ⁓ go, is there anything, ⁓ you’d like to. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:44:29) 

Yeah. 

 

yeah. 

 

Well, you got to keep me updated, tell me what you end up All right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:44:49) 

say to everybody or anything else that we haven’t, that you’d to cover that we haven’t covered. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:44:57) 

Um, no, my, I think my biggest thing I don’t want to say is I hope everybody takes a different look at the traditional, um, training and realize that there’s better ways for us to do it. And, and I’m sure there’s someone’s got a better way than what I’m doing and to start sharing it so that we can reduce the turnover and start making, um, our team members want to be in the workplace. And. 

 

and really start applying it. And let’s take egos out of training and start making people feel good while they’re training. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:45:25) 

Right. 

 

Yeah, well, I think that’s a great way to wrap up. 

 

I think one, thank you so much for your time. I learned a ton. And to your point, it’s one of the reasons why I started the podcast for partner training or extended enterprise learning is, we don’t really have any place to talk about it. And there’s just all these great techniques that people are using. Like the way you embedded the training, it’s, you know, 

 

And now that I understand your mixed martial arts background, like, okay, this is all start that and Carolina country barbecue, like, and what you guys did there, it’s, it all starts to make sense to me how you came up with a, take my ribs barbecue, ⁓ trainings approach and embed, you know, the embedding it, the touching the folks directly. And then, ⁓ and then I think it was brilliant on the reward and incentive side to actually change the physical uniform that people are wearing behind the counters. 

 

or, know, or in a restaurant, I should say. ⁓ you know, because it’s, you know, like, like that’s a motivator people, really is. And, and, and, it also has the very, very practical thing of, ⁓ Hey, that’s a red shirt. Let’s go talk. You know, I need to, I, I, I’m a black shirt and I don’t know what to do about X. ⁓ let me go talk to that red shirt. So those are some, and I think if we have more dialogues like this with people that are doing these types of training programs with franchises and, and, 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:46:48) 

Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:46:54) 

types of extended learning things. I think we can kind of tease out all those best practices. And I certainly learned a lot here. So I greatly, greatly appreciate your time. It has just been fantastic. So thank you for your time and sharing all that great knowledge that you have and experienced. And to everybody out there, I just want to say thank you for listening, as always. And catch you around next time. Take care. 

 

Sean Morris of Tickle My Ribs (1:47:13) 

Absolutely. 

 

Thanks, Jeff.