The (Improbable) Story of Savannah Bananas' Rise to a $1B Empire | My First Million

You got to create attention first.

If people don't know who you are, good luck trying to create something.

You guys have a multi-million person wait list for tickets.

On TikTok, you have 10 times more followers than the New York Yankees.

Ideas are more valuable than anything.

Whatever's normal, do the exact opposite.

No one comes home and said, oh, did you hear this thing?

It's so normal.

You get excited about remarkable, unforgettable.

You're one of our Mount Rushmore type of guys because you're playing the game on extreme hard mode and I respect you for it.

It's way harder than I thought.

So we completely ran out of money.

We had nothing left.

And then Emily turned to me and said, we have to sell our house.

So we sold our house.

Did you have conversations of wanting to quit?

I mean, it was brutal.

What's up, guys?

Oh, my God.

It's Jesse Cole.

What's up?

How are you guys doing?

We almost wore the same thing today.

You should have.

There's a lot more going around these days.

I think I'm keeping them in business.

When did you start the yellow suit, yellow hat?

What was the day?

Before the bananas.

That's the crazy thing.

People didn't even realize that.

It was before the bananas.

That's the wild thing.

Oh, yeah, man.

We had a team, and you talk about First Million.

We had a team in Gastonia, so I was wearing this before because of P.T.

Barnum.

I'm inspired by him, not just to be the same.

Same regular host like everyone else.

Do you know what you're getting into at all with this?

I know.

I've listened to your show and I'm ready to rock.

I love the one with the owner of the jazz.

That was interesting.

That was more of a sit down.

When I was hanging out with him, I was telling him a bunch of Savannah Banana anecdotes.

I was like, you got to do this.

You got to do this.

You got to get the grandmas on the court.

He loves hearing all the other things he should do.

Yeah.

That's probably what he liked, Sean.

He probably liked that.

Yeah.

No, it was very well done and very well produced as well.

You guys did a great job with that.

Well, thanks, man.

Well, we're excited to have you here because you are, you're one of our like entrepreneurial Mount Rushmore type of guys, because you took some.

You know it's the, it's about the gap.

It's about the gap of going from nothing to something.

And the way how far you went with nothing to something incredible is is pretty remarkable.

Just to give people a sense, i mean, i don't know a soul in my life who wanted to go watch exhibition or minor league baseball.

That was not even a thing, and yet you guys have a multi-million person wait list for tickets you guys have.

I just looked this morning on tick tock.

You have 10 times more followers than the new york yankees, and so just accomplishing that kind of blows my mind and I want you to come on here and I want you to tell your story.

I want you to teach us kind of how you think, because I think what you, the way you think and how that's been applied to baseball could be applied to many other types of businesses.

I think that's the real gift you're going to kind of give the entrepreneurial world.

Yeah, we'll fire it up.

Let's jam.

All right.

So Sam, where should we start?

Start at the start?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's spend.

But we'll keep it a little bit abbreviated because you've done a lot of amazing podcasts.

We've talked about it.

But yeah, do set some set the context a little bit like 10, 15 years ago.

Where were you?

Yeah, well, I started as a 23-year-old general manager with the team in Gastonia, North Carolina.

And so it was college summer baseball, which is a low level of baseball.

So that's where I started with this.

And yeah, that team only had 200 fans coming to the games, $268 in the bank account.

I couldn't pay myself for literally three months.

It was December, I think I was able to take my first paycheck, which I was making $27,500.

So I wasn't making a lot of money regardless.

But that's that's where I started.

And so I was learning how to make college summer baseball exciting and entertaining.

And I did that for years and no one knew anything.

But we were just experimenting and trying new things.

That's really kind of learned the the ideas of making baseball more fun and adding new things to the show.

Why even be there?

Like why weren't you an intern at JP Morgan?

Or why is your first job a GM of a summer league baseball team?

What was the plan?

Never could have got a job at J.P.

Morgan or any of those for the record.

So, no, I played ball.

So my whole life was baseball.

My dad owned a baseball facility.

I was very fortunate to get a huge scholarship to Wofford College Division, One School down in South Carolina.

So my goal was to play professional baseball.

So I was getting, you know, letters from the Mets and the Padres and the Pirates and the Braves.

And I was like, this is going to happen.

And then I tore my shoulder just like that.

So everyone's like, oh, you're going to go into coaching, Jesse.

Your dad was a coach.

You just that's your mindset.

And I coached for one summer in the Cape Cod League, and I wanted to pull my hair out every day.

It was...

The best players, like the highest level, like these guys were all going to be first round picks.

And I was in the dugout of the best seat.

And I was just bored out of my mind.

I used to go to the Cape Cod League games and it was the hot dogs were great.

It was just baseball.

But it was it was high.

It was it was all these guys.

If you look at the major league rosters, all stars, a lot of them played in the Cape Cod League.

But I was bored.

There's a difference between playing and watching.

And so it was the first time I really, you know, as well.

Disney thinks, you know, put yourself in the customer's shoes.

I put myself in the spectator's shoes and I was like, I'm bored.

And so then I realized that I don't want to coach anymore.

And I said well, what if I got in the front office and tried to make the show and the entertainment and the experience better for fans?

And that's really where it started.

That's when I went to take this job as a 23 year old general manager of one of the worst teams in the country.

Isn't there a story of Disney going to I don't know if it was a park or an amusement park with his daughter?

He's sitting on a bench and he's kind of just like looking at this.

He's like, why don't, like, I wish this was fun for me and her and not just her, for example.

Isn't there some famous story like that?

And that's where the origins of Disneyland came about.

A hundred percent.

And I've studied Walt religiously.

So yes, it was a Griffith Park.

It was his two daughters.

Saturdays was his day with his daughters and he always took them.

He had, you know, daddy day with the daughters.

And so he took them to Griffith Park and they're on the carousel and he's sitting there and he goes.

I wish there was a place that adults and kids could have fun together.

And that's where the literal mindset said, well, what if we created a place like that?

And so I, in a weird way, was sitting in the dugout with the best seat in the house, with some of the best players, thinking I'm bored out of my mind.

Why can't this be fun for more people?

And so that's where it kind of started the journey.

As a 23 year old general manager with no money in the bank account not getting paid on, how do you make this more fun?

And that's really where I fell in love with Walt Disney and P.T.

Barnum and started studying WWE and Cirque du Soleil Saturday Night Live.

I became obsessed with learning about entertainment, not necessarily learning about the baseball business.

I want to learn about the entertainment business.

Can you tell us the transition from employee to owner?

And then, well, yeah, first about that.

What was that era?

I was a general manager for two or three years.

Then I became the managing partner, which the owner gave me, I think, like a 5 equity stake for being a part of it.

And then it was 2014.

So that was, geez, six, seven, eight years later that I bought it from him.

So the team was worth...

Very little made it worth a lot more.

So went into owner financing debt with him and bought it for him in 2014.

And he gave me every opportunity.

I was so fortunate that the owner, Ken Silver, just let this kid kind of run with the team and try things and experiment.

But we end up having success after that first year, and so made the team a lot more valuable, which is a good win for all of us.

And it was still like a normal baseball team for the first two years, right?

Oh, no.

Well, it was normal.

I mean, we had grandma beauty pageants our first year.

I mean, we came up with the garbage.

Can nachos like?

Four orders of nachos, three cheeseburgers, three hot dogs, nacho cheese jalapenos, donuts.

We called it heart-stoppingly delicious.

I tried to get a cardiologist to sponsor it, but no one was interested.

Uh so, like we started doing, we did a dig to china night, where we literally had hundreds of people go on the field and dig uh in in the infield dirt to get a trip to china.

But when the woman won she realized it was just a one-way flight to china, no flight back and no accommodations.

So so we had a lot of fun.

I mean, we fired our mascot uh for uh bear growth hormone, because hgh was big.

So we did BGH.

We offered George Bush, because he just finished his term as president, an internship with us with a 1000 stipend.

We were going to get him a host family.

We were going to figure it out.

He turned it down.

But we just came up with all crazy ideas.

We were just trying to get attention.

I was using the P.T.

Barnum book of how do you create attention?

And so we were trying everything.

And yeah, the players, we got the players to dance that first year.

They weren't great dancers, and every player turned me down except for four.

But four dancers did the jump on it dance, and they became the most popular players.

So we were dabbling and experimenting in no man's land where literally no one knew who we were, outside of Charlotte.

You're not even the Savannah Bananas yet.

You're still the Gastonia Grizzly.

Yeah, the ones nobody heard about.

I think that's really important, sort of like the toiling and obscurity, trying things, iterating.

Now let me ask you those ideas that you just said.

Every one of those ideas I'm like oh my God, what a genius idea.

That's fantastic.

And I can totally, it makes me laugh.

I can totally see them.

I can see the press release.

I can see the news clip.

I can see the TikTok clip.

Now to have 10 great ideas, you probably had what a thousand, 10,000 bad ideas, something like that.

Tell me about your practice of generating ideas and what was your kind of system of creativity?

Well, when we first started, you know, I learned from so Bill Veck was the famous owner of the St.

Louis Browns, the White Sox.

He was brilliant in what he did.

I mean, obviously, so many things.

Grandstand managers night.

He literally let his fans in a major league game dictate whether they were going to bunt, steal or hit and run.

He put his coach in the grandstand.

It was unbelievable.

Obviously, he came with Eddie Guidel, the midget hitter, and he did so many things.

He gave away live lobsters to fans during games.

I mean, he was brilliant.

His book, Vecas and Wreck, made a huge impact on me.

But I went to his son's conference, Mike Feck, another unbelievable pioneer, the St.

Paul Saints, Charleston Riverdogs, had a lot of minor league teams.

I went to his conference when I was 23.

And he said my dad always said Bill, he said if there's a fire, you got to get the most important thing in the house.

And it's our idea box.

And so the idea box, he said, ideas are more valuable than anything.

And so he actually gave us a wooden box.

I still have it today.

And we started coming up with ideas.

And that, as a 23-year-old, started coming with lots of ideas.

They were all a lot of them ridiculous.

Some work, some didn't.

Salute to Underwear Night failed.

Flatulence Fun Night failed.

You know, I mean, the hairiest man in Gaston County.

That was gross.

So, I mean, we did a lot of things that just didn't work.

But I started learning about ideas.

And you know, the big premise that I kind of came up with is whatever's normal, do the exact opposite.

No one gets excited about normal.

No one comes home and said, oh, did you hear this thing?

It's so normal.

Like you get excited about remarkable, unforgettable.

And so it was literally eight years of doing that.

And when people, I think about the title of the show, My First Million.

We never made a million dollars in Gastonia.

You know, we started, it was $100,000 in total revenue the year I took over.

The team, it was, the expenses were 250.

So we were doubling pretty consistently and getting like 200, then 300, then 400, then 500, then 600, then 700, then 800.

But we never got to a million.

I ran that for eight years.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Let's recap.

That's pretty remarkable.

This is remarkable.

So it took you eight years to get to a million in revenue?

No, we didn't even get to a million in revenue.

We never got to a million.

It wasn't until Savannah that we actually reached a million dollars in one year.

And how old were you on the eighth year?

You were like what?

Like 32, so i was 23 yeah so yeah, you know, it was so when we finally got.

So we had gastonia and then savannah in 2015, so we had both teams at once.

So i went to savannah in 2015.

2016 was the first year we reached a million dollars in revenue.

How many times did like kind of smart, well-intentioned friends and family sit you down and be like jesse, What are you doing?

What are you doing?

What's going on?

I was having the time of my life.

Do you need some help?

Do you need a job at the car wash?

Like, what are you doing out there?

Oh, everyone I've come across, especially family, knows I need help in many different ways.

But they were, no, they saw I was having fun.

Guys, think about this.

We took over a team that had most nights 50 to 100 fans.

And my first year, we had nights where we had over 1,000 fans or 1,500 fans or 2,000 fans.

By our second year, we were selling out games.

Like, again, it was only 2,000, 3,000-seat stadium.

But it was unbelievable.

I was having the time of my life.

Were you making a profit?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we got, you know, by probably 800, 850,000 in revenue, probably costing 600.

So, like, expenses.

So, it was, you know.

Oh, it was a healthy profit.

For college summer baseball, we were killing it.

Are you kidding me?

It was like, heck yeah, look at what we're doing.

And in the late 20s in Gastonia, a little tiny, I was happy.

But every day I got to create new things.

That's what people don't realize.

I got to create things.

I got to have fun.

And I got to see every day.

I got to test those ideas in real time.

Will people show up or will they not?

Will they like this promotion or will they not?

Will it sell tickets or not?

Will they buy this birch or not?

I get to test every day and henry ford at greenfold village i'll never forget i visited.

He said henry believed in learning by doing, and i'm obsessed.

I want to be the fastest learning sports organization in the world and so the more we do, the more we learn.

So that started, you know, many years in gastonia, before we went to savannah.

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Now let's get back to the show.

You mentioned P.T.

Barnum and Disney and how you obsessively studied them.

What were some of the early stories that inspired you or things that they did that maybe me who hasn't read about PT?

Barnum wouldn't know about, but that blew your mind?

Well, you know, with P.T.

Barnum, it was so much about how do you create attention?

You know, showmanship.

He says, without promotion, something terrible happens.

Nothing.

And so when you look at his books, I mean, he was just...

He hired terrible performing musicians violinists and musicians that were so bad that he put them outside of his museum.

And so he'd say, the only way you can get away from it is you have to come inside the museum.

He would just come up with ideas and he would bring people together.

He was a master promoter.

He was also a tremendous writer.

And he was always writing.

He was always speaking.

So I kind of took his spot as like, he was always a front person.

You know, you got to have someone that truly believes in what you do.

And P.T.

Barnum believed in his museum.

He said, hey, some of it's true, some of it's not.

But you're going to come in and you're going to be entertained.

And he believed in that.

And he went on top of every mountain top to yell that.

So I kind of took that from him.

It's like all right, i was dressed like everyone else.

I'm like no, i'm gonna get a full tuxedo.

By the way, the first one was black and it had tails and it was 95 degrees in north carolina summer night.

I almost melted so i said we're not doing that.

So i found a yellow one that was brighter and fit the color of the grizzlies, which was also kind of yellow.

That's how that started.

Um, but it was about showmanship.

Pt barn was a showmanship.

How do you create attention with all your acts?

And then bill veck man.

He was the most fans first owner ever.

He would sit with the fans in the stands.

He was an owner.

He would literally set up and he would talk to all the fans every single night.

He would go vecking, as I made up the term.

But after every game, he would go to the bars with the fans just to connect with them.

You know, when he stuck over the St.

Louis Browns, they say, what time the game starts?

He goes, what time do you want it to start?

Like that was his mindset was always what would be best for fans.

And he did it.

He did constant giveaways.

He was first to put names on the back of jerseys.

He had the exploding scoreboard with fireworks.

I mean, he was just so far ahead of his time and every other owner hated him because he was doing so much more for fans than they all were.

And so you combine that with Walt Disney's vision.

And it's kind of fun to do the impossible and put yourself in the guest shoes.

Those three kind of just set me on a tone of like let's try to combine these worlds and create something pretty special in baseball.

So all of that is like you dressing the way you dress and doing the thing you do now.

It's inspiring because the company is.

I don't know if it's real, but the headlines is that it's worth a billion dollars and you're incredibly successful and you're well loved.

But for the first handful of years.

Did you feel embarrassed?

Were you like, I don't know if this is going to pay off.

I don't know if this is going to be worth it.

I'm risking my reputation.

I look silly right now.

Did that fear come into play?

Because when I hear what you're doing, I'm like, that makes sense.

I should do that.

And also, I'd be embarrassed.

Oh, a thousand percent.

We've been criticized every step of the way.

I've been embarrassed many steps of the way.

You know, our first eight years and nine years in Gastonia, we did everything.

It was myself.

It was my wife.

We had one or two other team members.

We put out show tonight signs out around town just to try to convince people, hey, they have a game.

Please go.

We did the trash before the game.

We did the hiring.

We did the concessions.

We did operations, putting signs up.

We did everything.

And it was exhausting.

And people criticize.

It's like you're a college summer team.

On a Wednesday night, there might be 500 people there.

And then when we went to Savannah, that's when the criticism and the skepticism reached an all-time high.

Why then?

Well, you had professional baseball for 90 years.

So you have professional baseball for 90 years.

And then all of a sudden there's a college summer baseball team coming in.

So they just had the New York Mets affiliate the year before us.

And now they wanted a brand new stadium.

The city said, no, they weren't going to invest because no one was coming to the games.

So all the professional Savannah teams were the lowest in the league in attendance.

I mean, literally some nights having 300 people in the ballpark for professional baseball.

So we came in and we had, we're going to make baseball fun.

We're going to do this.

They're like, sure you are.

We've heard that before, kid.

And yeah, we sold two tickets in our first three months.

And I mean, we were hung up on every day.

I mean, my wife, she would walk in.

So we had a free launch event where we literally having free food, free drinks, everything.

She'd walk into little shops, stores, restaurants, and be told, get out.

Like literally told, we weren't selling.

We were offering free.

Hey, we just want you to come.

We're the new team.

We're here in town.

We want to meet the community.

I mean, it was brutal.

But did you have conversations of wanting to quit?

You couldn't because we were now seven figures in debt.

You know, we had to buy the team, which was.

We bought it through the Coastal Plain League because it was an expansion team.

And then we also had to put money in the team.

We had to do the startup.

We hired people.

We had nothing.

So we were in debt and we had all these young people right out of college a 24-year-old team president as well that we were responsible for.

And so there were no options of quitting.

It was just, how do we convince these people to believe in us?

And what I realized is the only way to do that is we had to show them.

As Steve Jobs says, no one knows what they want until you show it to them.

We were talking, talking, talking.

That's not good marketing.

Marketing is creating experience and showing people.

So we had to get to that point.

You seem like an incredibly optimistic guy.

And I love that.

I love your energy.

And obviously, at this point, there's a lot to be optimistic about.

But the era that we're talking about, things were not going well.

You sell two tickets in three months.

You're seven figures in debt.

And I'm curious, nobody's optimistic right now.

100 of the times um there are moments of either doubt or pain or struggle and like so when i say rock bottom and then they're making the movie about you what's the movie scene where the director's like okay this is the rock bottom scene it's maybe it's you and your wife or it's you know you at the atm machine looking at the balance you know what what's rock bottom when i say that well so we got the phone calls 4 45 p.m january 15 2016 and that was when we were out of money So we completely ran out of money.

We couldn't cover payroll.

We had nothing left.

And so at that point I moved.

I think it was like 3000 over that I had in my own account to cover that.

The rest of the payroll.

And then we emptied out our savings account, put that in to cover us for another couple of weeks.

And then Emily turned to me and said, we have to sell our house.

So we sold our house.

Now, people don't know the timing of this is me and Emily had just got married.

10-10-2015.

We got the keys for savannah that same week.

So within three, four months three months we're completely out of money.

Our first year of marriage, we have nothing left and we have to sell our house.

We found an old garage That I would like to say was turned into a studio.

But it really wasn't.

It was the grossest thing I've ever imagined living in.

It was the only thing we could afford.

She got an airbed.

A twin airbed.

We realized that we could only grocery shop with just $30 a week.

And we couldn't use credit cards anymore.

Because we were already maxed out.

So we were going with a $20 bill and a $10 bill into Walmart.

For 42 meals.

That was pretty rough.

That was a tough time.

Emily's the one.

She kept me.

I don't know how, because I can get into, you know, I think, all I entrepreneurs, you know we're, we're high performers and we think differently.

But also you can spiral a little bit.

And I started I'm optimistic.

I was like, what are we going to do?

We this is bad.

Everybody's saying no to us.

But she's like, Jesse, we did this.

We got to get to that first game, get to the first game, get to the first game.

So she lifted me up and we knew we just had to get to that next that a bat.

But the first thing was really name the team, because at that point we didn't have name the team.

So we had to get people to understand who we were.

And so that was the big thing, too.

And that's when things changed, positively and negatively, because when we did a name, the team contest, everyone said be the spirits, be the ports, be the anchors.

You know, be the Braves.

I was like, there's a team in Georgia called the Braves.

We're not going to be the Braves, guys.

But there was one person that suggested bananas.

And I remember we looked at each other and said, yeah, go bananas.

And we thought of the Banana Nanas senior citizen dance team and the Mananas male cheerleading team and a banana baby that we lift up before the game and a banana band and can't stop the peeling.

We just thought of all those guys.

We were like, we have to go.

It is perfect.

And then we announced it.

And we got crucified.

Man, we were ripped apart.

Locally, I mean, it was so bad, guys.

I'll never forget the St.

Patrick's Day parade, two weeks after we announced, and we're wearing green banana shirts and we're getting booed walking through town.

Literally, people are booing.

Were they like baseball purists or did they think that you were insulting the town or what?

And yes, embarrassment to the city.

We were insulting the town.

How dare you name the team after the silly bananas team?

I mean, it was.

But naturally, we were like SportsCenter, like logo of the year.

And like it was like naturally like, yes, because, you know, they didn't take the pride in Savannah.

Like this is fun.

This is gimmicky.

This is cool.

Locally, it was bad, but at least people knew who we are.

And I believe attention beats marketing 1000 percent of the time.

You got to create attention first.

If people don't know who you are, good luck trying to create something.

And so they at least knew who we are.

And then when we're like, oh yeah, every single ticket's all inclusive.

They're like, what?

I go, yeah, every ticket.

All your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda water popcorn, dessert all night long.

No ticket fees, no convenient fees 15.

People are like, what?

And then they were like, And then they started kind of paying attention that we're going to try to make everything fans first.

Here's what our players are going to do.

We have a banana band.

Here's our senior citizen dance team, the Bananas.

And they're like, all right, this is a little different.

And I think people were expecting us to fail.

So we sold out opening night.

They all came out and they wanted to see it.

And then people had to wait three hours for food because we didn't know we were going to go through 10000 pieces of meat in an hour.

We had no idea how to do that for the record.

But they watched the show.

They watched the fun.

They watched the banana baby and the band and the players dance.

And that's when they started telling everybody.

And that's really when it changed after that first night.

I've watched like maybe 10 or 20 interviews of you now and we've talked about you a bunch of the podcasts.

And I've noticed that you do a few things consistently.

And one of them you've done here already a bunch of times.

You've already named Henry Ford, Bill Vett, Walt Disney.

You talk about Steve Jobs all the time.

You name P.T.

Barnum.

You name drop all the time.

And am I taking?

I guess I'm reading into that.

Where do you go out and try to find inspiration and then do you find like a couple lines in books and you're like that's it, that's what we have to do, or because i've learned.

Yeah you, you.

I don't think you've ever explicitly talked about your creative process, other than i think you said that you make a list of 10 new ideas every single day.

And then i've also noticed that you have these like frameworks where you say, like walt disney said this, and it's as if you like read this biography.

You saw that one line.

You're like i live my life according to that.

Now can you talk a Well?

Walt Disney said curiosity keeps leading us down new paths and we will keep trying things and experimenting.

And it's, it's, it's my curiosity.

So yeah, I'll go very deep on subjects.

You know, I don't think there's a track.

Yes, I do 10 ideas a day.

Yes, I journal every day.

Um, but it's the, the reading I get fascinated by.

So when I started learning about Walt Disney, I read one book, then it guides me to another book.

Then it guides me to another book.

Then it guides me to like, I'm looking across right now.

I have an entire bookshelf of all every book on Walt Disney and Disney world.

Like it's, I don't know, 100 books maybe.

And then I have a whole section on P.T.

Barnum.

Then I have an entire shelf on Amazon.

Then I have an entire shelf on Steve Jobs.

Then I have shelves on ESPN.

I have every book on Taylor Swift.

She's fascinating what she's doing.

Marvel, Grateful Dead, all these different worlds.

Because there's there's a blueprint on how to create something truly special, a world of entertainment that's different than anyone else.

But in sports, you know, i would say you know obviously wwe ufc f1, they're thinking differently, but in most traditional sports It's the same thing.

You're competing to win.

And our game is compete to create fans.

And how do we entertain?

And so I want to learn from the greatest entertainers in the world.

So my framework is I'll just go very, very, very deep.

And then what I do is I earmark every single page.

And I know exactly where, when I earmark a page, what I'm looking for.

I've done book reports.

I've done numerous book reports, like built to last.

Tell me about a book report.

Like what's that look like?

Yeah.

So we did this as a team.

So for many years in the beginning, we actually paid our people to read.

So we pay them to do book reports.

So we're obsessed with learning as part of our organization.

So we did that for many years.

Now we do kind of team books that we read as a group.

But yeah, a book report all go through and just kind of the biggest takeaways, the biggest things that lead to fans first ideas, parallels.

David Novak, the former CEO of Yum!

Brands, he had a very good compliment to me.

I didn't know what it meant at all when he said it at first, but he's like you're one of the greatest parallel thinkers I've ever seen.

I go, thank you, David.

What does that mean?

And he goes well, he goes literally.

You can see something and then you can make it your own in a parallel path.

And so when I see something from Grateful Dead about what they did as far as they brought the sound in-house, they tried to bring the tickets in-house.

They let all their fans record all of that.

Then Dave Matthews followed suit.

I can see that and then follow it our way.

So that's, you know, again, no real method.

It's just I want to look at examples of the best in the world.

So like Jimmy Donaldson, you know, he was with us, Mr. Beast.

And so like I've read everything on him, but we spent a lot of time talking together because he's the best in the world at YouTube.

So I try to ask all those questions.

I think that's just you follow your curiosity.

What'd you steal from Jimmy?

Well, the biggest thing I was fascinated with him was the YouTube growth on how he looks outside of the country.

70% of his views come from outside the US.

And so you better believe that we immediately were hiring, you know, Spanish speaking broadcasters.

We're going to hire Japanese speaking broadcasters.

We're going to start having our games and social go all over the world as we continue to grow there.

So that was the one thing I was like all right, what in YouTube can we do right now to grow an audience and create fans?

And he shared what he's doing with his audience and dubbing and that was fascinating.

We did a episode with Jimmy and he talked about the same sort of 10 ideas a day thing.

So he was like, you know, I started this when I was 11 or 12 years old.

And he said, kind of your same story.

There's a great quote.

He goes, at 12 years old, nobody watched.

13 years old, nobody watched.

14 years old, nobody watched.

15 years old, nobody watched.

16 years old, is anybody ever going to watch?

Nope.

17 years old, nobody's still watching.

And he's like, finally, when I was 19, I started to get some viewers.

And even then it was small, right?

So he had this kind of six years of toiling and obscurity, seven years where...

It just wasn't working, but he was getting better.

And he talked about how he used to do the kind of 10, 20 ideas.

He's like, the most important thing in a YouTube video is the idea, the premise of the video.

So I came up with 10 to 20 ideas a day.

He's like, I would flip open a dictionary at the source.

So we had him do it live on the podcast.

We put a random word generator and he came up with ideas live on the thing.

And you could tell he had built that muscle.

So I'm curious, like you say this thing about the 10 ideas a day.

Is that like you used to do that early on?

Are you still doing that?

Is there a sticky note on your desk right now with like 10 ideas you wrote this morning?

I did two groups of ideas.

No, I have.

Please get it.

So here is here's the idea book.

So I have one every single year.

So what's that say the cover?

Well, it just says 2025 ideas, banana ball.

So I just have, I have these books all the time.

And so, yeah, today I was obsessed.

So I'm working on our, our two, two of our newer teams.

So I'm working on uh, the Annapolis clowns which we brought back um one of the most famous Negro league teams.

And so yeah, it's all the clowns characters, dynamic contortionist, bad boy uh, the juggling hawkers, juggling ball boy, an umpire.

That's a mime trampoline coaches strong men, a balloon artist ringmaster, slash Barker, human cannibal, a character artist uh, So like just, and it starts listing.

So I start thinking about ideas on how I want to zoom in.

You do this first thing or you take meetings first or what's your kind of process?

Are you like you have a routine you use?

Sure.

Hal Elrod helped me tremendously.

So his book Miracle Morning was a game changer for me in 2015.

I read that.

I realized that most people, they don't start their day on purpose.

They start their day with other people's news, social media, other things going on.

And so win the morning, win the day became a huge thing.

So 2015, I actually ran into him as speaking appearance.

I showed him my first notebook or in 2015, where I started writing and journaling.

And so, yeah, I have to win the morning.

I have three kids, you know, under seven years old, so I got up very early and I start I read, because your input affects your output, so I want to read something.

So I'm rereading Amazon unbound right now.

It's just a story of how Bezos was continued to grow them.

And then literally, I start writing journal.

Then one of my ideas often I have an idea bucket the day before so I can already start thinking about it a little bit before I go to sleep, and then I start that idea bucket the next day.

Dude, you're an animal, you're an animal.

Yeah, i love it, though it doesn't feel like it's.

It's never felt like work.

There's certain things that if you really love, like ideas, if i've come up with good ideas or ideas that are exciting to me, like i'm fired up the rest of the day, i have great energy, and so it's like you got to create before you consume.

Often we consume when we read all these things and i'm getting criticized.

We get all these different things, but it's like, if i can create first, And that's I mean, we just today literally record this.

We just launched our first ever fans first ticket marketplace.

So secondary market right now, we're getting killed.

People are spending four or five, six, seven hundred thousand dollars for tickets.

And often they're getting scammed.

We built our own one face value.

No markups, no fees.

We just announced that 30 minutes ago.

Like that fires me up because I'm going to learn.

We're going to get it out there.

We're going to start experimenting like.

You get to do new things.

That's what Walt Disney, you get to try new things constantly.

And I love that.

I feel like the now the sort of you've hit escape velocity and people now recognize oh wait, this is something special.

And you have a lot of momentum going.

And I'm sure, whether it's speaking fees or like speaking gigs or just meeting interesting people throughout doing what you're doing, you've now gotten into some pretty interesting rooms.

Like you've mentioned reading about Jeff Bezos.

You'll meet Jeff Bezos if you haven't already.

These things will happen because I think everybody can take inspiration from a brand builder and a fan first customer, first mindset.

That's like not just words but actually put into action in all these really interesting ways.

Who have you met in this that kind of was like a wow moment for you?

And I'm curious, what do they want to learn from you?

What do they pull from you?

Because I think, you know, it doesn't matter how sort of successful you are in one industry.

I think there's a lot they can learn from you.

Well, I appreciate that.

But you know, whenever I get a call with one of these people, I'm picking their brain like crazy and asking questions.

But yeah, the question tug of war usually is, you know, it's it's funny.

The FaceTimes and the videos and the calls that I get now.

And but, you know, one that stood out for me was Bob Iger a couple of months ago.

And, you know, I have so much respect for what he did and to continue to make creative decisions.

The heartbeat of Disney, you know, I think it loses its.

Sometimes it ebbs and flows with the creative

And after that, Walt was gone for 20, 30 years.

They were figuring out then Michael Eisner and Frank Wells came in and went crazy.

And then Iger kept it going to a whole nother level.

And now, again, trying to bring back that that was a 30 minute conversation.

I walked out fired up.

So, you know, I mean, there's. uh it's a wide array you know from you know the heads of wwe and some wwe wrestlers to actors to actresses to a lot of musicians now i'm hearing from a lot of musicians um you know big time football players uh and you know athletes but you know i think my biggest thing is i always just want to host them come out to our show you know you learn by seeing watch how we literally start entertaining seven hours before the game watch how we stay two hours after the game and continue entertaining like that's what taylor swift she's like i'm gonna do a three hour and 45 minute set which is crazy because i want to over deliver and so we look to over deliver with everything and so you know i i enjoy hosting people more at our shows and getting to meet them and share with them the behind the scenes that's where i get a lot of joy when i hear you talk i think i would never want to compete against this person uh and we've and we've had a bunch of people like that i think jimmy was one of them where you're like oh this guy is just like um he's gonna he's gonna die or win i mean there's there's you know you're going against a crazy person you don't seem motivated by money you don't seem particularly competitive with the outside world you must have a chip on your shoulder and what caused it and what's and what's kind of forcing you to keep on moving forward yeah name that chip certainly have a chip on a shoulder and i think um but that's not what i'm chasing i mean yeah chip on my shoulder you know i was an I always wanted to make my dad proud.

That was kind of a big thing for me.

I want to make my dad proud.

He worked really hard, spent a lot of hours working, and I always wanted to do well for him.

But then I didn't get drafted, tore my shoulder.

I think often I've been misunderstood.

It's probably the way Bezos would explain it, like misunderstood.

And we've got criticism every step of the way.

You know, in Gastonia, what are we doing here?

In Savannah, you know, how dare you bring college summer baseball?

How dare you need the team to bananas?

How dare you leave traditional baseball to create this silly sport called banana ball?

You know, it happens all the time.

The one that really fires me up now that I have a folder saved, it's a fad.

It'll be gone.

Their 15 minutes are up.

I have every one of those saved and I will never say anything back to them, except some people when they get really going.

I just write thanks for the inspiration because it actually and I mean that sincerely

The and ones and all the groups that have come along and disappeared I get fired up about because we are completely misunderstood.

People think we are the Harlem Globetrotters.

We're building a sport.

There will be a world where the kids' first ball they pick up is a yellow banana ball.

There will be a world where banana ball is played all over the world because of the entertainment level, because it's not just about people who love the sport.

They love the fun.

They love the show.

Plus, they love the crazy talent that these guys can do with backflip catches and trick plays and the celebrations.

They love how they sit on the upper deck.

We're going to come up there and we're going to give them flowers and we're going to throw giveaways and we're going to put on a show, no matter where they're sitting, even if they're the furthest seat away.

And so I get excited for that money.

You know, again, 10 years ago, we had nothing.

And so now, yes, we're very fortunate with the businesses.

But now I chase moments like this certain moments.

You know our first game at Fenway Park.

I was a kid who grew up with a goal to play at Fenway Park.

Grew up south of Boston.

And we had the largest crowd of the year there.

And we're all singing the moment yellow, which is a powerful moment.

You've probably seen the videos.

Everyone's got their flashlight.

The whole stadium is singing yellow.

And I'm on the field and saying look at what we get to do together, or our first football stadium with 81 000 fans and we're putting on a halftime show with 250 people in the middle of the game, which should never happen and i'm jumping up and down because i'm feeling it.

You know, when we're going to do a hundred thousand seat stadium, when we're going to do a cruise where, you know, all these we're playing aircraft carriers, all these things play games at beaches, those moments fire me up, because you get to feel a part of something and you get to feel alive.

You know, i think i want to feel alive and i'm sure you guys get that feeling too.

With certain things.

It's not the money it's, it's these moments that uh, you know, really light me up.

You're sort of like this joyful version of Dana White or Vince McMahon.

You know, like I think Dana literally said the same thing in a press conference.

He goes, he's like, I'm in, we're in the business of moments.

And he goes, we sell good moments.

And then sometimes we sell holy shit moments.

And tonight was a holy shit moment.

He's talking about a big knockout that happened.

We're a similar mindset.

You know, I've got to work a little bit with those guys.

I haven't connected directly with him yet, but I mean yeah, he creates these moments that you never imagine.

I love it.

He's just sort of like rage-fueled more so than you're like, I want to create this amazing family fun.

But I think that's part of the nature of fighting versus baseball.

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When you sit, when you step back, you know how do you sort of figure out the good ideas versus the bad.

It's easy to come up with 10 ideas a day.

It's easy to sort of think of these things in hindsight.

But you know, when you say the ticket price is 25, there's no ticket fees, we sort of round off the change.

That's cute when you're selling 200 tickets.

Now you're selling i think i did the math.

It's like this is like tens of millions of dollars you're eating in cost by eating the ticket fees or revenue left on the table, depending on how you wanted to look at it a bit of it.

And um, I'm sure there's someone over there with a spreadsheet who's like Jesse.

Can we not do that anymore?

Can we charge for hot dogs?

They know better in our organization at this point, but yes.

Well, I guess what are your principles?

So one thing you've talked about is like, fan first.

And I think if you asked if I go to a hundred businesses around here, I said are you a customer first business?

They would all say, of course, of course, customer matters.

But then you go look at their actions and they're totally out of line with, with customer first.

And so like, what are the different principles you have or the things you find yourself repeating over and over again, that sort of Or when a new person comes in, they really have to like, almost break their brain and rebuild it to work the way you guys want to work and come up with the ideas you guys want to come up with.

Yeah, well, we started simply by naming our company Fans First Entertainment.

So that was the start.

So by naming the team Fans First Entertainment, it made it very clear who we are, who we work for.

You know, we said our beginning, our mission Fans First, Entertainment always like.

That's what we do.

As we've grown, we've developed a little bit more of our core beliefs and our fans first principles which we talk about all the time.

So like how we hire who we are is I try to keep things very simple.

Always be.

So it's alphabet.

Always be caring, different, enthusiastic, fun, growing and hungry.

So like that is who we are.

And so even when we hire people an essay, how do they fit those core beliefs?

And then we have show us your future resume, because we're not really interested in what you've done in the past.

We want to know what you want to do in the future and how do you fit?

If you say you want to stay in the same position for the next five years, you're probably not growing and hungry.

So we can find that out.

Then, a few years ago, we developed our fans.

First principles, inspired a little bit by Bezos and his 14 leadership principles.

We developed 11 and 11 is a very big number in in banana land.

So the 11th letter of the alphabet is K and the symbol for potassium is K. So we use 11 a lot.

I know it sounds like kind of silly, but the reality is we realize this all started because of a banana.

And if you think about Walt Disney, they were out of business, bankrupt.

And he said it all started because of a mouse.

And they had a lucky old rabbit was stolen from them.

He had nothing.

And then he came up with Mortimer Mouse.

His wife corrected him, said, let's do Mickey.

And that kind of changed everything.

So for us, it started with a banana.

So we have.

11 fans, first principles we have 11 rules of banana ball.

We do our countdown from 11.

Uh, 11 is a very big part of us and so yeah, it starts.

Uh, we're fanatical about the fan.

We entertain, always play the long game, whatever's normal, do the exact opposite.

So again, i don't want anyone ever gets excited about normal.

Um, ideas are everything as we talked about.

That is kind of how it started.

Point everything constantly curious.

We're always going to learn from the best in the outside the industry, not in our industry.

Outside uh, everything speaks.

That's a Walt Disney one.

You know, if you lose the detail, you lose it all.

And so we're obsessed with the details, fewer things done better.

So we eliminate all of our sponsorship in 2020, uh, which we eliminate all of our events.

And we focus solely on banana ball because we wanted, what can you be the best in the world?

And we believe we can create the greatest show in sports.

And so we went obsessed with that, uh, relentlessly resourceful.

When we moved into our new office, a lot of people know this, but I made a trade.

I got all of the furniture traded for free.

I sold my soul a little bit.

I think I gave two or three speeches, but we get all of it for free.

And so that was very important.

It was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And so little mindset, uphold the highest standards.

That's very at the highest.

Not high because everyone has a different version of their high standards.

And then finally, always plus the experience.

And so.

Those guide us.

We talk about them every Tuesday in Snapchat.

We have people give examples of how we're doing that.

And then, when we have really big moments, we share again a big example.

So everyone knows how we do that.

So I'm psychoanalyzing you a little bit because I admire you so much and I want to steal little pieces of the way you operate.

You're doing something that we talked about Sean, when we talked about MTV and how they sort of said this is the world that we are building.

So basically what you're doing is you're saying, I'm creating a world.

I'm world building.

I'm not necessarily empire building, but you're creating this world with its own rules.

And I think where a lot of entrepreneurs, myself included, fall short is you say like your values and you're like well, I'm just kind of going through the motions of getting it done.

And if I asked you what your values were, sometimes you wouldn't even remember what they are, or they would just do it because they have to.

You do this really good job of creating these rules and processes that you actually abide by.

And some of them sound incredibly silly.

Like, you know, you have like you have all these phrases like you had the one city world tour.

I think your first world tour, it was just in Georgia or making Georgia.

There's meaning behind that in the whole thing.

There's meaning behind that, which I can get into later.

But the point is. is that there's intention and meaning to everything.

And, I think, a lot of entrepreneurs.

They don't have the courage to say this is the world that I'm building and here's the rules and laws of the world that I'm building and I'm going to stick to them.

And some of them might sound silly, like wearing a yellow tuxedo all the time, but there's a reason for them.

But if I live it according to the rules, it's going to actually become a thing.

Did you always have that in you?

Or is this something where you've learned man, if I just say it enough times, I'll start to believe it and it'll start to become true.

Walk us through that.

I guess your average of the five people you surround yourself with.

My five people have been Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos.

And I mean that not arrogantly.

I have read and learned more of what they think, and that's around me.

And so Walt Disney was a world builder.

And yeah, you better believe, we will build a banana land, the first ever sports and entertainment theme land.

You better believe every single team that we build, we build with that point of view in mind.

I mean, if you don't think we just built the local beach coconuts and we're not going to build a local beach, you're crazy.

And so, and if you don't think we we built the Indianapolis clowns with homage to the history of the 1940s and 50s to build that landry up like all of this has a bigger picture.

So I just I've surrounded myself with that.

And I think, you know, it fires me up.

And there's certain principles like I want to go back to the one city world tour.

Start small, dream big.

One city world tour.

We still call it a world tour.

We've got numerous opportunities to play internationally.

We've turned it all down. but we call it a world tour because that is where we are going.

That is our vision.

That is what we believe.

And so we're going to continue to call it.

And then we will pretty soon start doing international.

But everything we do the cruise for the first time, a football stadium for the first time is a one city dream big.

We did a few football stands.

Now we're doing 10.

We're doing multiple nights at the Superdome and the Patriot stadium.

And literally we're doing Kyle field and Neyland stadium with over a hundred thousand fans.

That was a one city test.

And now we're, we're expanding it.

So yeah Yeah, I'd never thought of the world builder, but I love it when you can create everything and control everything.

What people don't realize, control is such a big part of this.

Most people give up control.

And when you give up control, you lose more fans than you realize.

We built our own ticket system.

Now we built our own secondary system.

We do all the merchandise in-house, everything from warehouse.

We do our logistics in-house.

We do the entertainment in-house.

We do our broadcast in-house, which leaves millions of dollars on the table because we're doing it all on YouTube.

And so when you do it all in-house, you afford yourself the opportunity to learn and to fail, but also to connect closer with your fans, because you can see directly how they're responding, and not outsourcing your core competency.

And so that's part of this world, I think, is Walt Disney wanted to control everything when people came into his theme park.

And he couldn't control a movie theater.

When you go into a movie theater, it could be dirty, it could be gross.

Who's serving you?

Sticky, the food, all that, the lighting, all of that.

But he can control Disneyland.

And I think about that often.

Did you raise money for this or do you control 100% of this business?

What does the business side look like?

Yeah, well, we went into a lot of debt.

We took in the opening debt and it was just my wife and I and we paid that off very quickly fortunately, after our first two years we were, you know, selling out games is good for the business model, and especially the more fans you sell out it helps, and then the merchandise has been bigger than anybody's ever imagined.

So yeah no, we've.

We get offers daily probably uh, at this point, in emails uh, but we've turned them all away because they're interested in uh, you know, return and they're interested in uh, you know, some controlling aspects and I have no interest in return.

If Sheryl would say start charging taxes, start doing shipping fees, start having more sponsorship.

Take the huge TV partnerships, there'd be Easy, probably 50 to 100 million, just like that.

And that'd be a no brainer for investor, but that doesn't interest me.

So yeah, my wife and I own it 100% and we don't plan to change that ever.

Do you, on your weekly leadership meetings or whatever you guys have?

Do you pay attention to the finances at all?

Or do you just say like, revenue is a scorecard.

If we're doing things right, that's all I care about.

Make sure I have enough money in the bank to go do what I want.

You focus on the metrics that matter most to your customers.

That's what I pay most attention to.

So you better believe that I pay attention to the speed of every game.

I pay attention to how long the merchandise lines are at every game.

I pay attention to how many trick plays are, how many ball force sprints.

Do you really?

Do you have a metric for like wait times on merch?

What's the wait time right now?

Uh, it depends on the stadium.

That's the biggest challenge.

So right now we're at a.

Really, if we go to Yankee stadium or Fenway park or a football stadium, depending on the size and the setup.

So we invested this past year with another experiment, and Jared Orton, our president, was brilliant in this.

He said, we're going to set up an outdoor mall.

So we bought a monster tent and that was a test at Yankee stadium.

And that changed everything.

Our per cap went up.

So we had to find the space to do that.

And we did the same thing in Seattle.

We're playing there.

So It depends.

If you're indoors, if you're in stadium, we have we can only have a small tent.

It's really bad.

My goal is to get everyone within 10 minutes.

We're not close to it right now.

But the same thing at serving all you can eat food right now in Savannah.

Everyone can get fed within five minutes.

The first few nights it was an hour.

So like we'll get there.

But those are the metrics that I focus on.

So to answer your question about money, I have one meeting a year.

It's coming up.

And it's about an hour or two.

And our finance director and Jared will share us what we're looking at.

And me and Emily just said, all right, great.

Where are we reinvesting?

And so what Dana White said, too, I think Dana White, I heard him say he's like, I meet with the CFO occasionally, but I just, you know, I don't really care.

It is what it is.

And again, we're very healthy.

And all the estimates that people have are dramatically low on where we are.

Like it is, we are very, very healthy.

And I know that.

I pay attention to right now, we're going, obviously you're going to Christmas holidays.

So how many fans are we serving merchandise?

How quickly are we serving?

How quickly are we getting it out?

We have a huge 100,000 plus square foot warehouse that we have now.

And our team is like, get out, get out, get out.

How quickly can we serve them?

That's the things.

So I'll know exactly how many people we serve.

When we do a 24 hour shirt, you know we go through 30 000 orders in 24 hours, like i know the metric this year versus last year.

And how do we continue to grow that?

Because that means we're creating a better product and a better experience and have more fans.

Uh, social media i pay attention to all that as well.

Have you ever heard the founder of airbnb talk about the 12-star experience?

Do you know?

Yes, i love brian chesky.

He's one i i would love to met me too.

I've taken a lot of inspiration from him.

Yeah, like the helicopter, the firefight, the fireworks going off the red carpet.

Yeah, you will.

We'll connect you with him.

But one of the things that one of the things you reminded me of was there's an anecdote about you pointed the cameras at the game at the stadium at the fans instead of at the game because you were like, I want to watch from the security camera when people get bored and when they leave. um is this true because you wanted to basically like study the fan experience and try to understand like what where are the lulls where are the dips almost like a like how jimmy would look at his youtube video retention chart and say oh at seven minutes there's a dip what did we do at seven minutes oh that's when we did our ad reads we need to make those more entertaining because we can't We can't lose people during that time.

Yeah, obsessed with that.

Yeah, what people don't know, that's when I'm on the field.

And again, I'm on the field in front of the dugout with our players.

We're always out there.

I'm constantly turning around and watching the fans and watching the reactions.

And our director of entertainment, who we've worked with now for five years.

It's so unbelievable because we can look at each other and all of a sudden say, all right, energy music, energy music now, because we can know when the energy is down, we can look at each other and it's just a feel and it's it's really special.

But yeah uh, it was geez many years ago and when we were looking at this debate, to go to banana ball and i realized that hey, fans were leaving games early and i said we need to document this.

And so yeah we, it was actually our, it was one of our staff members, one of our, our ushers, we i don't take pictures and video every 30 minutes starting 5 36 6 37 7 38 8, 39 and we realized at nine o'clock the first influx of people left 9 15, a lot more 9 30 more, and so i was like we got to do a two-hour time limit and no one said they wanted a two-hour time limit.

The games at that point in major league baseball were three hours and 12 minutes.

So even when i shared internally, our team was like jesse, two and a half is probably fair.

I mean, that's still dramatic.

I go no, you want people to want more.

There's a difference.

A great comedian, you want more at the end.

A great concert, you want the encore.

I go in baseball, everyone's like, I've had enough.

I was like, we got to create a product that people always want more.

And so that's what that helped us determine the two hour time limit.

And that's how we look at everything.

So me and Tyler, the CEO of Beehive, came up with a little challenge for you.

It's the newsletter challenge.

Now, if you know me, you know that I'm a big fan of newsletters.

I got my own newsletter.

I also had a business that was a newsletter business that was amazing.

I wrote this newsletter about crypto.

We grew it to quarter million subscribers and we ended up selling it after a year for millions of dollars.

And I want you to be able to do the same thing in your business.

So we're doing a challenge.

10 grand is on the line, plus me and tyler will actually be in your corner as growth advisors.

You just need to go to beehivecom mfm and you either start a new newsletter or you move your current newsletter over there and five finalists will get picked to pitch me and tyler sort of like shark tank and the winner gets 10 grand.

So go to beehivecom mfm that's beehivecom mfm to enter the challenge today.

How many um hq staff do you have now?

Okay, I wish I had the answer for you.

I'll give you an idea of what it looks like on the road.

So if we go to a major league stadium or football stadium, we travel with 200 plus people.

If we have a minor league stadium, it's 150 people.

And so we have three tours.

We have six teams.

So we're traveling with 500 plus people.

Then we hire between 100 to 300 at each stadium as part-time staff to help with merch tickets logistics, et cetera.

And then we have our team in Savannah.

So, and then we have our cast.

I mean, it's, It's hundreds.

You know, some are equivalent, some are full time.

But yeah, we're hiring every week.

There's new people joining our team.

And I read that you had the business and you were like, we're gonna get into social media.

And I think it was like, I don't really know what I'm doing.

But like hey you, you know my coworker, just start go and figure this out.

Um, is that true?

And were you successful in just getting like young and experienced people and inspiring them and that worked out?

And has that worked out better than hiring more the the more the experienced people we have very few from the outside.

I would say 80 80 percent have been started as interns.

Um, you know, and i i was an intern for a little bit, my wife was an intern.

Uh, we believe in that.

You learn, you learn from seeing how people do in this kind of culture and so yeah uh, social media again, first insight.

Uh, I can't stop the peeling.

2016, we created a music video to it.

And Justin Timberlake, we made Can't Stop the Peeling.

It was a very rudimentary video.

But I watched, I remember watching it, put it on Facebook.

It was like 10,000 views, 20,000 views, 30,000 views.

It got like 100,000 views.

I was like, whoa, people like this.

And I was like, let's do more of this.

And again so.

Once TikTok came around in 2020, when we started paying attention yeah, one of our interns I said just post every single day.

She goes, what do I post?

I go, I don't know, but make baseball fun.

If it's make baseball fun, if it fits that overall brand, do it and we learn.

And then nothing happened the first few weeks.

Then we had one that hit.

It was like, all right, it's our players.

What are our players doing?

Okay, now let's do this with our players.

How about a music video with our players?

How about this?

And just kept iterating.

We posted every single day from 2020.

And so that's literally how we learned.

And you think about our second team, the Party Animals.

They have more followers than every major league baseball team on TikTok because we started with them, you know, in 2022 or so.

And so, yeah, everything is just you can't be afraid of failing.

I mean every night we do 10 to 15 promotions we've ever done in front of a live crowd games skits, ideas.

Every single night we have our scripts and it's different colors to show the new things we haven't done before.

That's where you learn.

And so we're not afraid of failing, because we're just going to keep trying new things, and our fans will give us the benefit of the doubt because they know hey, they're just going to try something new next and they're going to keep trying.

Somebody told me you guys treat this almost like a Saturday Night Live.

Like you have the pitch meeting.

The way Saturday Night Live has this kind of weekly schedule where they pitch and then they script and then they rehearse, then they sort of edit from there.

Like, is that what you guys do?

So you solve first your problems with the fans.

So the starting point of everything is what are the friction points from your fan point of view?

And then you can do it from your organization's point of view.

So the friction from the fans.

Too long, too slow, too boring.

You get nickel and dimed, all that stuff.

So we just kind of went from there and create that.

Then from the internal, it's like, okay, creative.

It's hard.

It's hard to come up with creative ideas all the time.

I mean, I know these idea books, it's hard.

And so we said all right well, who's been sustaining creativity at a very high level for a very long time and doing new shows constantly?

Saturday Night Live.

So you better believe I bought every book on Saturday Night Live.

And then I realized guys, there's a documentary on a week.

Uh, behind the scenes of saturday night live i think james franco did i was like guys, we have to watch this.

So our creative team was a small team back then.

I was like we watched it like all right becoming monday, and then they pitched the idea.

It was a john malkovich, it was the host, that way.

They pitched to john, then they pitched to lauren, then they start writing, then they have an idea session, then they have a table read, then they start getting the props and then they do it.

And then they do a show at eight o'clock in front of a live audience and they watch what hits with the live audience, what doesn't.

Then they put the new ones in 11 30 and cut everything else out.

It's like guys, we're the same thing.

Like, let's just do that.

And so we started, we built it.

It's Tuesdays because Monday's our travel day.

So Tuesday's our OTT session over the top ideas.

Everyone comes with ideas.

So we actually have a form that you've got to fill up.

Even just naming it over the top.

Yeah, 100%.

So yeah, over the top.

And so a form got to fill out by midnight.

So we have all the ideas, whether it's a walk up, whether it's a celebration, whether it's something in the crowd, whatever that is.

And then if there's a video or a full description, And then our meeting starts at 10 o'clock.

We review all those.

Then we have a smaller group meeting at 11 o'clock.

Then the players share some of their ideas.

Broadcasts share some of their ideas.

And by 4 o'clock on Tuesday, we have a table read where we go over what's going to be in the script.

Then we start getting the props, the creative.

Then we do rehearsals in Savannah.

Then we do rehearsals in the city.

Then we do rehearsals in front of our VIB, our very important bananas, which is our special VIB group.

And so we get to watch them.

How do they react?

Are they taking video?

Are they into it or not?

And then we put it into the show.

And that's repeated with every one of our teams.

This business sounds so hard to run.

So you have just the production of the SNL, just so you have your personnel issues.

You're going to have some personality clashes.

You're going to have paying them and keeping everyone in line and then getting funny stuff out the door.

Then you have merch.

I think merch makes up half or 40 or something of your revenue, which is hundreds of millions of dollars.

You have supply chain issues.

Then you're traveling with hundreds of people.

Then you're doing social media.

I mean, this is an incredibly complicated business.

You're playing the game on extreme hard mode, and I respect you for that.

It's way harder than I thought.

What are you, David?

I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's so much.

And then you just have like normal company operation.

The principle is don't do the same show ever again.

Every show has to be brand new.

And yes, the logistics are impossible.

We hired someone from the military to help us.

And like because we've got trucks all over the country, multiple trucks.

We're going to a football stand with 100000 people.

We need 12 to 14 trucks.

But then we also have two other games, another part of the country that we need separate merchandise.

And the teams are playing each other different times.

So we're bringing all the merchandise and all the show and all the props to go there.

And then we're flying everyone around the country, getting them in.

It's crazy.

But then check this out.

Look, if you move your head, so move your head like this.

It looks like you have two books behind you.

I think you wrote two books, right?

Just Jesse Cole.

Oh, my God.

OK, so Jesse Cole has three books.

And then I also read online.

And then you have the Hulu documentary.

And I think you have another one somewhere else.

And then I think I read somewhere online that I think you said you don't take a salary or you're one of the lowest paid people and that you live off of your speaking fees.

Okay, so Jesse has a book, three books, documentaries, speaking fee.

I did this monster of a business that is incredibly complicated.

What price are you paying to do all this?

It's a good question.

I think it's the right question.

I believe in doing what gives you energy.

I'm very, very fortunate that what I do gives me energy.

When I first started in Gastonia and I was doing everything operations hiring, you name it I was worn out.

Now, like speaking or being with you guys right now, this fires me up.

I love creating.

I love sharing.

I love growing.

So when I can go speak, you know, that that's an energy giver.

And so, you know, I think our family, we homeschool now.

You know, we have three kids.

We homeschool.

We travel.

I think, you know, I do daddy daughter dates and burger boys and my son.

And I focus on that.

But I can always be better in that area.

I'm obsessed.

I'm obsessed with it.

I love it.

It brings me so much joy.

And I stay really focused, even though it sounds like there's lots of things.

I'm focused on trying to create the greatest fan experience in sports and the greatest show in sports, every day.

And if I'm speaking, I'm sharing about it.

If I'm on a podcast, I'm sharing about it.

Or in the morning, I'm working my team on creating it.

So it's really, it sounds widespread, but it's all focused on doing something very, very narrow.

What's your talent strategy?

So are you like, oh, we use recruiters and then they come in for interviews?

Or is it like You look in the TikTok comments and you find people like what is Jesse doing to source some of these, like diamonds that end up being there?

This is the crazy one, guys.

So like yes, I'm very grateful that we have 42 million people on our wait list to get tickets or whatever.

There's 12,700 on our wait list to work with us.

And so we have a wait list.

What I believe is attracting over recruiting.

If you're very vocal on who you are and what you stand for, you often attract people.

And I attract people I never imagined we'd attract.

I mean, you guys.

I was listening to you guys before we even knew each other.

Like, again, I...

I'm so grateful for that.

And so, yes, and we do.

I'm working with Cirque du Soleil right now on bringing on some cast at a higher level, because you better believe the Indianapolis Clowns.

It's going to be the greatest show people have ever seen.

It's going to we're going to take that to a whole nother level.

So I'm working with some of the you know work with WWE and UFC on some stuff.

You know people that are great.

But a lot of it is just attracting young, hungry talent that believe in us and believe in what we're doing.

And they'll give their hearts to it.

Very, very special.

I think that if I had to make a prediction, I think and I'd be curious to hear like if you ever, we probably don't have enough time, but like we brainstorm ideas here on this podcast a lot.

But I would be curious.

I think that so Ari Emanuel, who runs Endeavor and they own WWE, UFC, KBR, whatever, a ton of stuff.

He did this great podcast with Patrick O'Shaughnessy and he was like basically I'm betting, I'm making an anti-AI bet.

So he was saying like hotel bookings for Thursdays are now up through the roof.

Busy drive times are at 11 a.m.

And he's like, basically, people are working less and they want to go out and have experiences.

And so my prediction for you guys is that there's going to be a second win.

I mean, you're already like I don't want to say you're at a peak, but you're killing it right now.

I think there's going to be another macro trend that pushes you even further up this mountain of glory.

Are you feeling that?

And also, have you seen any other?

A lot of people don't realize this, but Cirque du Soleil is a multi-billion dollar company.

Have you seen any cool events, businesses that are shockingly large or well-run or that inspire you?

You know, I mean, I think I named the main.

There's probably other ones out internationally that I'm not aware of at this point.

But yeah no, I'm fascinated by the cruise industry too as well, because they're combining the entertainment, the shows, everything.

They're creating their own worlds.

So I've got a lot closer.

Obviously, we're doing our own to learn.

Can we put on a show for five days for all of our fans with no playing banana ball?

So that's a good test that we're looking at.

But yeah, no, I don't I don't think I look at that.

But I I'm fascinated about the youth game of banana ball and developing that.

We did a one city world tour test with a youth tournament sold out in Cleveland had kids from 48 states come in.

So we're going to build the sport that way.

And then obviously continue to look at I mean, we're going to do a tour movie.

I'm really inspired by what Taylor Swift has done and how she built that ecosystem, created a great tour, that all these little You know things from the flywheel that jumped off it.

We're going to do some of that.

We're creating original music.

So I haven't announced, but we have an unbelievable music partnership with very well-known group that's going to help create original music for us.

So all those steps, I think, are going to take the show to another level.

If we keep making our show better, I believe everything will take care of itself.

We just we can never settle for, hey, that last year's show was great.

Let's do the same thing.

That's that's what scares me.

If we saw you when you were a kid, like a teenager, 12 years old, maybe, what would we have seen?

Were you like selling CDs and like hustling entrepreneurially?

Were you like Mr. Popular at school?

Were you on the fringes?

Like who were you when you were young?

And would there have been any clues that this is who comes out of that?

Yeah, no, I was a shy kid to start.

And then when I was by myself a lot, And so I mean I remember, literally during the summer my dad would go to work and you know I was like 12 or whatever.

He's like, Jesse, what'd you do?

I was like, I rode to Alex's house.

I rode my bike to John's house.

I didn't do that.

Like I didn't have a lot of friends and I had my friends through baseball.

And so anytime I was around my baseball team, I would try to create attention.

I would try to do anything because it was my time around people my age.

And so you know, I think that that love and being around people, I think I didn't have that as much.

And now being around 50000, 100000 people and staying till the last fan leaves to sign their autographs.

Like that is something that I think because of what I had and what I what I wanted.

Now I can have it a higher level that I keep pushing for that.

But, yeah, I was I mean, creating attention.

We, instead of public speaking which ironic I now speak.

Um, we created movies, so we used imovie and we were the first ones to create movies.

So i learned how to create movies in social media and like like, not social media back then, but how to make videos that people were interested in.

That guided us with what we do on social media.

So um yeah, i was creative, but i was alone.

I just played baseball and i just i think it was more the world i surrounded myself with after after school the walt disney, the pt barnum, the bill vex it was that world that really you were interested in, in those guys when you were younger.

No, none of them.

No, it was after.

So, like yes, did I go to Walt Disney and I was the big kahuna at Typhoon Lagoon, which they let me in early and I got to have this whole experience.

It was magical.

Did I have some really cool experiences at AU national tournaments or going to Disney?

Yes.

I didn't know anything about them other than what most people knew.

It was that world I surrounded myself afterwards.

Like you guys, I mean, think about this 10, 15, 20 years ago.

It's what you've learned now in the last 10, 15 years.

That world has impacted you.

Maybe there were some influences, obviously back in school, but it's more now.

You find this new world of entrepreneurs and creative thinking and creators and inventors.

And that fires me up.

Sean, have you ever seen the talks?

So Jesse does these things on his Instagram where uh, he gives the players a talk before the game.

I don't know if it's like new players or something like that, or if it's before every game, but you have the guys in the stands no, i haven't seen these okay.

So he gets everyone.

I'm gonna tell the story for you jesse, as an outsider, and you can correct me if i'm, if i'm getting it wrong, but you have the i think it's the team, but maybe there's some of the staff.

You have them, i think, in the outfield stands or somewhere, like not in the front row, and you're like you're sitting here because you need to be where, like some of the worst seats are.

So you understand that we have to make this great for everyone, And then you tell this amazing story.

And I imagine you repeat some of the stories, but every time I've watched it it's been a unique story.

And it inspires them so, so much where I'm like This fucking guy has made like playing like silly baseball, like seem like I'm like saving the world.

And I'm so invested into it where I'm like, you guys are doing God's work, right?

Like you're the guy in stilts is doing God's work.

Like I'm so wanted.

I agree with you.

I agree.

I agree with you.

You've judo to me where, like I'm totally bought into this.

Uh, did you have to learn how to storytell like this because you're doing such a good job of getting me invested?

And i see the players, the players and typically baseball players, by the way, and when i grew i i grew or hung out with the college baseball players they weren't like the coolest guys.

They were always kind of like too cool for school, like they didn't want to like do silly stuff, and these guys are like so wholesome and awesome.

Did you learn how to like tell stories like this because it's incredibly effective?

Thank you 100.

And yeah, still to this day.

Did i tell that right?

Those talks yeah yes, it's.

Whenever we come to a city, the first thing we do is we have our fans first talk and so that is the entire staff, the cast, the players, so we can have upwards of 200 people in those.

But yes, both teams, the players, are there.

And every week we have a new talk and it is one of the most stressful things for me and i'll tell you i could speak in front of a fortune 50 company or 10 000 people.

I'm more nervous speaking to our 150 people because i know my words.

Our words mean so much to them and and it's weighted differently and i care truly um, how it impacts them.

So yeah i, every week it's like what's our message?

How does it fit fans first, how does it fit a principle?

How do we, you know like, win the upper deck.

We talk about that all the time win the upper deck.

And you know, i just think about i have a lens.

Now you guys look at this like one, two lenses i have is a friction fighter.

Wherever i go, i see friction.

So this is what Walt Disney said.

Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always asking what's wrong with this thing and how it can be improved.

If I go to a restaurant, if I'm driving down the road, if I'm going to a store, I notice what are the friction points from a customer point of view.

That's just my lens.

Now, the other friction or the other lens I see is I always see stories in everything.

Anything that happens, what's the story that can be told?

And when I think about speaking, it's like.

What's your story?

What's your message?

How can people get one main thing out of it and then leave?

And so that's what those short, short speeches.

So like to give you an example, one I haven't shared in forever was Russell Wilson.

You guys know the quarterback in the NFL.

He played for me in Gastonia.

And literally the first night I had all the players come down from the roof and to high five the fans coming out to the field.

And I said, guys, just high five the fans, get on the field.

We're going to do the starting lineup.

So I'm up on the roof and like batting first for the Gastonia Grizzlies from NC State.

Number one, Russell Wilson.

He goes down batting second from Clemson and each one goes down.

And I'm up on the roof and I see all the players on the field except for Russell Wilson.

So finally, I see everyone in the field except Russell.

So I go down onto the grandstand.

I see he's way out in the left field grandstand.

He was high-fiving every single kid in the stadium.

He was 22 years old and he knew what mattered.

It was high-fiving every fan more than getting out of the field.

And i just think about moments like that.

Guys, we're doing something so much bigger than just putting on a show.

It's how we make people feel.

You put yourself as that five-year-old kid, that seven-year-old kid that went to their first game and all you wanted was an autograph.

You wanted a ball, you wanted to high-five your favorite player.

And how many times did you not get that?

We can provide that every single day.

And now you guys are even bigger, looked upon even bigger than some of those major leaguers now.

We owe it to that kid. to do that.

And so we just share these messages and examples every morning.

You gave us the speech.

I'm ready.

Well, that wasn't the speech.

I don't think I've shared that one, guys.

I don't think I've shared that one because it was back in Gastonia days.

So you brought me back to that one.

I'm in, man.

I'm in.

Jesse, there's a quote that you remind me of.

We can leave it on this, which is, this is John Wesley quote.

He says, light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn.

And I feel like that's what you've done.

Like you, you have lit yourself on fire with passion, and you've done that with this thing that none of us even realized we wanted.

And now millions of people want to come watch you guys burn.

And I think that's, that's amazing.

Well, yeah, hopefully not the other burn way, because some people probably do.

The baseball traditional is impurest.

But I want you guys to see a show.

I'm so impressed on how much you've known and how much you're able to talk about this.

But for you to see it and see it from the beginning to the end and watch what goes into it.

So just got to get mentally prepared, you know, get some good rest before that.

Well, God bless you.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate you coming on.

This is this has been an old timer.

A lot of fun.

Thank you guys.

Seriously.

Really appreciate y'all.

All right.

That's it.

That's a pod.

If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out The Sales Evangelist.

You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

[The Art of World-Building: How Jesse Cole Created the Savannah Bananas Phenomenon]-[The (Improbable) Story of Savannah Bananas' Rise to a $1B Empire]

📋 Summary

The Philosophy of 'Fans First'

The Power of 'Whatever’s Normal, Do the Exact Opposite'

Surviving the 'Toiling in Obscurity'

World-Building and Scaling Momentum

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of World-Building: How Jesse Cole Created the Savannah Bananas Phenomenon]-[The (Improbable) Story of Savannah Bananas' Rise to a $1B Empire]

📋 Summary

The Philosophy of 'Fans First'

The Power of 'Whatever’s Normal, Do the Exact Opposite'

Surviving the 'Toiling in Obscurity'

World-Building and Scaling Momentum

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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