Transcript of Fans First: How Jesse Cole Turned Baseball Into An Experience

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This episode, you already know, is fired. Just wrapped it up. Jesse Cole gives a master class. I'm not even going to prolong this. A master class in business and scaling and experience. So if you're a leader, if you're a business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, this episode is giving you all the tools that you need to create the best experience possible for your customers, for your fans, and for your employees who are often the most forgotten. So get your notebook ready, get your recorder ready, because this is truly a master class. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the brilliant, the amazing Mr. Jesse Cole.

You're listening to Mic Unplug, hosted by the one and only Mic Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mic takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get Unpluged.

Jess, how are you doing today, brother?

So great to be with you, my friend.

Man, I'm the honored one. I always start my podcast by asking my guests about their because, that thing that's deeper than your why. Simon Sinek wrote the book Start with Why. And I do believe you start with why, but you're actually fueled by your because, right? So if I were to say, what's your why? You'd probably say your family, your kids, success. But when I say, but why, that sentence usually starts with, well, because. And I care about what happens after well, because. So if I were to say, Jesse, man, all the things that you do, the way that you give back, the way that you've changed industry and marketing and visibility, what's your because?

Well, it's a deep question, and it's what makes you feel alive, what gives you energy, what fires you up. And a lot of that, if you really dig deep, I think it goes to the root of your upbringing. And for me, as an Only child. My parents got divorced when I was a kid. My dad helped raise me. I always wanted to feel loved. I wanted to feel part of something. I wanted to feel with people. What we get to do every day is bring people together from all over the world, from 2 years old to 82 years old, see people have fun, let loose, not take themselves too seriously, to be in a world of joy. I get to be in the middle of that every day. I think the world that has joy, that has fun, that isn't so focused on all the things that are going wrong as a better world. And so, yes, our platform is banana ball, and we get to put on a crazy show every single night. But I hope that we get to do something that is truly contagious, that joy, that fun, that togetherness, that let loose, be the best version of yourself can continue for people when they go home, at work, to their friends, to their colleagues.

And so I think it might be because it's bringing the world together, filled with joy, and just having the time of our life doing it. And that's what I think about daily.

And you do it better than anyone I know. And now a lot of things make sense, Jessie. It's the only child thing. I told you, Damon John, my mentor, he's the only child. You two are so alike that now I get it. It's the only child thing. You had to be so imaginative and creative to get people to, not to be around you, but to get people to want to continue those relationships with you. And you get home and it's you and your parents, right? Or your parents were separated or divorced. So it literally is you and you've got to be creative with, what do I do or who do I talk to?

Talk to us about- And create attention. And I wanted to... Hey, my dad worked so hard. He was working constantly. He's come home and I wanted to, Hey, dad, let's do this. Let's do this. And create attention and be fun. And when I got to be around friends, it's like, What can I do? And it was Just to make the most of every moment with people. I think about that. When I go through a door every day, my mindset is, Bring the energy, bring the fun. It's like a trigger for me whenever I interact with people. I want them to feel more energized after talking with me and being with me and more fired up about what we can do and not what we can't do. And that excites me. And so, yeah, I think as an older child, obviously, I was spirited to try to make the most of every moment when I had a chance to be around somebody. I still try to do to this day.

There you go. There you go. Man, you've changed my life. You've changed my businesses in so many ways because my mindset has completely shifted. One of the things that you've said, and it's on my wall because I need this reminder every day, is that normal gets normal results. And for me, the serial entrepreneur, the highly competitive person that I am, and I know that there are a lot of people that are listening, that are watching that are just like us, explain to us why normal just gets normal results, and doing the unreasonable is where your focus should be.

Yeah. Well, let's go back to when I started, I was a 23 world GM of a very small college summer baseball team in Gastonia, North Carolina that was failing. For seven years, lowest in the league, the country in attendance, only a couple of hundred fans coming to the games. It was what it was. And I realized that they were doing the same things every other team did. You have fireworks, you do a bobblehead here and there. You would do the things that everyone else did. Well, if you do what everyone else is going to do, you're going to get the same results as everyone else. You got to do what others won't do. When you do what others won't do, you're going to do things that may fail. I think I learned that first concept from Allan Faden. He wrote the book Innovation on Demand. Really brilliant man. Very creative. And yeah, it's whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. And he shared the story of how he sold his book. Most people would have your book in a regular bookstore or with thousands of different books, or you'd have it on Amazon. He's like, I bought an entire a sales store in Minneapolis, and I made it a one-book bookstore for my own book.

And he literally had his book in different sections, business, history, self-help. And he got so much attention. And I heard that story. It was very formative for me because he was 23. He went in a different direction. When I thought about building a banana ball and starting with first our team in Gastonia and then the bananas, I was like, We got to do things on the field that people have never seen before. And so the first thing that we said was like, Well, everyone expects players to play. What if they actually danced? And so, yeah, it was hard getting the players to dance. They didn't want to dance in the beginning. But players in the middle of a game dancing. People were like, That's a little bit different. And I saw their reaction to that. And people started talking about, Oh, you guys have the players that dance, right? And, Oh, yeah, you guys did the Grandma Beauty Pageant, right? Or, You guys did Flatulence Fun Night. Oh, you guys did, and all these crazy things. That's what they talked about. No one goes home and gets excited. It's like, Oh, I had the most normal day today.

You want to talk about it? No, no one gets excited about normal. No one gets excited about professional. They get excited about memorable. They get excited about remarkable. Every day, I'm chasing those moments and trying to create those moments for everyone we interact with.

I think that is so important to everyone that's a leader, that's an entrepreneur that's listening. It doesn't matter your industry. And that's what I learned from Jessie. It's creating those moments that people remember because we've all heard Maya Angela's quote, right? People don't remember the things that you say. They remember how you make them feel. And I think that is so important, and you've mastered that. So for the person that's watching or listening, and they're like, Okay, how do I do that within my business that might have a corporate feel or maybe a retail feel? And my team can't get up and dance, or at least they think their team can't get up and dance.

Everybody can dance. Even if you can't dance, you can dance. I'll tell you that. I've seen that with hundreds of players, but yes, I know exactly what you're saying. I can only go by the framework of what we use. The framework that we started with was we looked at all the friction points in an experience for every customer that we interact with. I learned this from Walt Disney. I mean, Walt Disney put himself in his guest shoes. He said, whenever I go on a ride, I'm always asking what's wrong with this thing and how can we improve? And so if you look at your industry, you look at what you do, and you look at what are all those friction points, what are all those frustration points for the customer, And then you look at what are all the normal ways of doing things. And so even to start a list, this is the normal way of doing a podcast. This is the conventional way of selling this. This is the normal way of doing an invoice. This is the normal way of doing voicemail. This is the normal way of doing an email signature.

This is the normal way of whatever it is. Those are micro little ones. And then say, well, what would be something that would be remarkable? Fans First is the name of our company. That's the spirit of how we do everything. But there's three words that we talk about regularly, and it's you wouldn't believe. And it's how do we get our customers, our fans, our team members, everyone we interact with, to say, You wouldn't believe. You wouldn't believe what they did today. And so whatever you're doing, how do you create some you wouldn't believe moments? The only way you do that is you look at what are the normal and say, All right, well, what would be something that would be a little bit crazier, a little bit different, a little bit wilder, a little bit more remarkable, a little bit more of a fun? Whatever that word that fits into your brand. Ours is fun. So we look at fun with everything. How do you make it more fun? How do you make baseball fun? How do you make every moment of our social media fun? Those are the things that we look at. I think it's just a framework.

And every day, you got to take time coming up with ideas. If you just say, oh, I'm going to change it, you're going to work your idea muscle. Are you working your idea muscle and actually coming up with ideas on things you can do differently in your job, in your industry? If you're not doing it, good luck. You're going to get out of shape. I mean by you're going to get out of shape, you're not going to be able to come up with a lot of good ideas. That's what we think about.

A follow-up question to that, because I love that. And it takes a team to be able to do those things, right? Because I know how wild and crazy Jesse probably gets in these team meetings where you talk about ideas. And I'm sure now your team has evolved to, they're coming up with some of these crazy, cool ideas. How do you put them aligned in that fan-first moment, that fan-first mantra?

How often you talk about it? I think you can put some things on your wall and say, This is who we are. This is what we stand for. But how often you actually talk about it? How often do you live by it? How often when something goes wrong and it's easy not to do what's best for fans and do what's best for your business, do you actually live by those values and show your team this is who you are? Here's an example.

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Last year, we, by mistakes, sent an email out to our fans. It was supposed to go out just to 4,000 because there were only a handful of tickets left in Savannah for a chance to buy tickets, the last few tickets in Savannah. Instead of 4,000, we sent it out to 44,000. We offered them all the opportunity to get tickets with time slots. I remember I'm flying, I'm going out to give a speech when this is happening, and I land. Twitter, Facebook, emails, everyone's messaging me. How dare you? You said you were going to do this. You weren't going to do this. Literally, our time slot was nine o'clock and there were no tickets available. It was Armageddon internally. It was Armageddon. So immediately, myself and Jared are present. He's been with us since day one. We get on the phone, we say, What are we going to do? And say immediately, Apologize. That's the first step right now. And again, that's table stakes. Some people don't I'm not going to do it. But the first thing, so we wrote, I was like, Jared, I want to do this. He's like, No, I want to do it.

I'm like, Okay. Jared wrote an amazing apology letter, and we said, That's not enough. Apology is one thing, that's not enough. So are you going to really stand by it? So what are we going to do? We said, We're going to take care of all these people with tickets for this coming tour. What does that equal? $6 million loss for the company. Over $100,000 with tickets. Over $100,000 with tickets. Over $100,000 with tickets. Over $100,000 with tickets. Over $100,000 with tickets. That we took care of for people. And so what we did is after we offered that to them, they had their opportunity to come to any game they want, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, anywhere. And we have a demand of over 4. 2 million people on our lottery list. So this is just basically throwing We gave away six million. But we said, We're going to do it. We got everyone on our team on a Zoom, and we immediately said, Turn your cameras on. This is why we're doing this. And then what happened, those first few games that people had tickets, they weren't showing up at the high rate that we usually get.

We get 95 75% redemption. But because they were free tickets for them, it was down to 75%. And I was like, That's unacceptable. We have millions of people that want to code our games. So we start messaging them off. So finally, we said, We will buy back your tickets so we can sell them. Buy back tickets they never even paid for. So now we're offering free money to these people, literally $200, $300 to get back their tickets so we can give them to people that are going to come to the game. Do you stand by your values? $6 million loss, pretty big hit. You go back three, four, five years ago, that's more revenue than the total company brought in. But it fans first. And that's what we're going to do, and that's how we're going to make those decisions. So give examples, give stories, share how you do it. If you got to do it every single day, and that makes the Love it, brother.

Love it. And you just said something about stories, and I tell people all the time. There's three storytellers I know that are great, like nick Nantin, Damon John is an amazing storyteller, and Jesse Cole, right? So What role does storytelling play in the way that you connect with your fans, your employees, and sometimes even your critics?

Yeah. So I think we think more about storytelling first, interestingly, with our biggest fans, which are our team members. We talked about how do we keep fans first in front of people. When we go on the tour, now we have six teams. We have three tours going all over the country. The first day we show up, and we do the unscalable to do the scalable, it doesn't make sense to travel with 150 to 200 people to every city. That is millions of dollars. But again, we want to have that high touch. Even at a football stand with 100,000 fans, we want to have high touch. When we get there, the first thing we do is we have a Fans First talk. And myself, Jared, some of our leaders, we share stories. Examples of some fans' first moment that happened, whether we had to a young fan, whether it was a proposal, whether it was a moment a fan, their first bucket list trip in four years, what we did. And we share that. What we did in the upper deck, the Manana's or our cast, What we did there, we share those examples and those stories.

And then the next night after our final game, we actually have another Fans First chat where we recognize our team and we give shoutouts about those moments. Then a couple of days later, we get back in the office on Tuesday. We start, we talk about the Fans First principles and more Fans First stories. We're getting three touch points, and then more because of our other teams and other tour of these examples, these stories, who we are, and that's what we talk about. We never talk about revenue. In fact, I have one financial meeting a year. It's less than two hours. That's it. I don't go into our account. I don't have any. It's a mandatory thing for me. I was like, All right, Jessie, here's where we are. Great. All right, we go create fans now and have fun. But I spend all our time talking Fans First, talking ideas, and talk creating. So we share stories with our team on those fans moments. And then, yeah, obviously, we share stories with our fans on social media, but our goal is just to entertain them. It's to bring joy. It's to bring fun. And yes, we do some storytelling, but mostly it's who we are, what we stand for internally with our team first.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I would say as a fan of you, personally, one of the things that I appreciate is the fact that you're always reinventing concepts, thoughts, ideas, is. And I tell leaders and entrepreneurs this all the time. A lot of people think reinvention means a complete 180 or a complete change. Sometimes reinvention is like, I don't like the way this one thing is doing. Let me reinvent how that one thing is going. And when I watch all the things that you've done over the last several years, I see that that's also your mindset, too. You don't have to change everything, but you do reinvent in different ways. Talk to us about the importance of being able to, this is the term of Mick and Mick only, to microreinvent so that you're not changing scale of everything that you're doing.

Yeah, so it's a clear direction. What can you be the best in the world at? Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Canes, said, Do one thing and do it better than anyone else. For us, we believe we can create the greatest show in sports. We believe no one will put the energy and effort into combining show elements and music and characters and dance and fun with the competitiveness of Banana Ball in one world and make it all happen together. And so we spend a lot of our time thinking about our shows in every moment. From what people don't realize is that, Hey, the game may start, the show may start at seven o'clock, or the game may start at seven o'clock. The show actually starts at two o'clock. Or now with the Texas tailgaters, the greatest pregame in sports, they're actually in the parking lot on their home games. So the whole team is actually out in the parking lot, greeting fans, interacting, playing games. They're drilling. We grill tons of hot dogs and burgers just for fans for free out in the tailgater. So when fans are When we're pulling up in the parking lot, the tailgaters send the town.

And then literally at 2: 00, we do a rope drop, and we have a big opening where everyone gets in. Then the players are signing autographs at Major League State. It's right when we open. Then we have a full show out there from literally 3: 00 to 4: 30 with a big March opening. Then from 4: 30 till 7: 00, we have about 72 different promotion skits, and songs that happen before the game. Then we go from 7: 00 to 9: 00, we have a full show. Then from 9: 00 to 10: 00, we have a post-game quasi-party with the cast. And then we sign on to the last panel. So that's what we believe we can the best in the world at. So we spend all of our time, so much of our time, thinking about reinventing there, creating, how do we make the show a little better? There's a boring moment here. It's why we changed the rules of Banana Ball and eliminated mound visits, because no one in the world gets excited about a mound visit. No one's like, I can't wait Hopefully, I have three or four mound visits today. I love when the coach slowly walks out to the mound.

Boy, that's my favorite moment. So again, you got to look at those friction points. You got to eliminate them. And then you got to listen to your fans. Not what they tell you, but how they act. The way we develop Banana Ball is we watched fans literally with a camera set up. Every 30 minutes, we were watching when our fans got up and left in our steam for a whole season. And we realized they were leaving early at nine o'clock. We realized they were getting out of their seats. That's why we made it a two-hour game. And now we watch our fans getting scammed constantly on Facebook with these fake people acting like us and trying to sell fake tickets. And we watch it, and it fires us up more than you ever know. And so, yes, we developed our own secondary ticket market. We're face value tickets, which is going to cost us more money than we even know to try to figure it out. But you reinvent by watching your fans and figure out what is best, what can you be the best in the world at, and what do you stand for?

We stand for fans for us, and we entertain always, and that's what we do.

Freaking love it, brother. That just got me energized right there. I almost got out of my seat and gave you an amen. That's how strong that was. But that's the truth. You talk about the early stages of Banana Ball and where it has come to today. What were some of those initial challenges Challenges that you had to overcome when you started the greatest show on earth.

Yeah, and that's the right word, challenges. Challenges. I've heard before people say problems. No, it's a challenge. We overcome challenges. The greatest people. To appreciate someone's success, you got to understand their setbacks. Everyone that's We both had bedbacks. And so, yeah, we had... We started two tickets in our first few months. People didn't understand. So we were the lowest level of college summer baseball when we started. I got the phone call on January 15th, 2016. Felt ready to celebrate the 10th anniversary. I don't know what I'll do then. But on that day, Ten years ago, almost, I got the call that we overdrafted our account and we were out of money. And we had to sell our house, we emptied our savings account, we were sleeping on an airbed. We failed because we were just talking. We were talking about who we are. People hadn't felt it yet. They need to experience it. Now, we hadn't had a game yet, but we should have found a way. We should have found a way to bring a show to someone's office or bring a show to someone to show them what it could be like. We didn't do that.

So we failed. First night, all you can eat. We did something no stadium's ever done. Every single ticket, all inclusive. That's crazy. But again, you start with fans first. We made every ticket, all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwich, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, all night, free, the food free. $15 total for the ticket. Crazy. Three-hour wait the first night. They went through 10,000 pieces of meat. We didn't expect that. It was crazy. And so we first came on ESPN, the transmission went out. Literally for 10 minutes, the anchors were like, Yep, the bananas can't handle us. Embarrassing. The next night, we figured it out. Our ticket system shut down. Our first Major League Stadium literally We shut down. Next day, we figure it out. And so we have failed every step of the way, but we don't give up, and we keep playing the game, and we show up and get better every single day. And the only way you can be great is if you're willing to get through the messy to get to the great. And we go through messy every single day. When you do things people have never done before, it is going to be hard.

It's going to be extremely hard. And that's what we do when we try to overcome it every single step of the way. And so, yeah, we're fortunate. It's been messy, it's been hard, and it's getting harder every day because we're doing bigger challenges. But I love that challenge because it's fun for our team to figure out how to do it.

When did you know early on in life, or maybe it was later, that this was you? Not maybe the bananas, but doing the uncommon, doing the unreasonable. When did you realize that that was Jesse Cole?

You're the average of, they say, the five people you surround yourself with. I surround myself with Walt Disney, P. T. Barnum, Bezos, Jobs, W. W. E. Grateful Dead, Circus Soleil, Saturday Night Live. I'm looking around because there's hundreds of books I have here. When I read about Walt Disney and what he did and what he accomplished and the challenge and the adversity, how he just doubted every step of the way, from animation, to long form animation, to the theme park, to Epcot, all of it. And he said, No, I believe. I believe in it. It's fun to do the impossible. So when I get inspired by that and I see there is a way, there is a path, it's hard. I got so inspired by that. That's who I want to be every day, do someone that does the hard things. And chase your energy, chase your moments. And so for me, the energy, I have an energy list. If I'm creating, sharing, and growing, I'm full energy, man. If I'm doing operations and other financial numbers or spreadsheets, I'm depleted. So do what gives you energy. And if you're surrounding yourself with people that inspire you and you can learn from them, then follow in those footsteps and find your own thing.

And that's what I look for every day.

I love it. I love it. For the business leader that's listening right now, what's one small but radical shift that they can make right now to start creating Superfans?

In the back of our Fans' First playbook, We first had a Fans' First Playbook. It said, Be patient in what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. What people don't know about our first 6, 7, 8, 9 years, we called every single fan that bought a ticket and thanked them. Every person that bought merchandise, we called and thanked them. It's unscalable now as we serve millions of fans. We went out of our way just to thank people. I started the thank you experiment in 2018, started writing thank you letters every single day. Now I do videos. Very simple thing. I pull out here and do a video and just send a video instead of an email or a text. How can you thank people? How can you spread gratitude? It's unbelievably contagious. When you spread gratitude, amazing things come your way. So a lot of times we think about how hard it is. Well, think about the people that have helped you along the way or just people who have been there. And so today, do you want to create fans? Spread some gratitude. Do a video to someone, one of your biggest clients, one of your team members.

Someone's been there and do it every day. And so I think gratitude has And something that we don't talk about. But even now, we just had our whole team, our players, our cast, everyone. We did thank you calls again to people buying merch. And we keep it part of our system. And this crazy thing about, it's almost the most selfish thing in the Because at the end, we feel amazing for doing it. But really, it's actually giving out to people. So if you're a business leader, I would spread gratitude, find a way to put it into your schedule every day, thank people for what they do. And you'll be amazed at what comes back to you.

Amen to that, brother. Amen to that. I'm going to give you the floor to talk about some of the things that you have going on, because I don't think everyone understands all that Jesse Cole does, and I think it's amazing. And I know one of the things Again, following you for as long as I have, reading your books, the power of mentorship and coaching, especially from a leadership perspective. I say it all the time. We don't always get it right. A lot of times we're lonely when you're at the top. Having that circle that you talked about, having mentors, having coaches, I think is critically important. Talk about how, one, that's influenced your life. And I know that you do a little bit of that, too, for other people, man.

Well, great leaders are great teachers. And when you think about the people that have really made an impact, they're sharing. They're not afraid to share what they've learned along the way. I remember I was 23 years old, first year in Gastonia, and I read what a Mark Cuban's first small little books. I read it in a day, and he had his email at the end of the book, I think. And I immediately emailed him. Within an hour, he emailed me back. And this is Mark Cuban. At that point, he owned the Mavericks. He was doing everything. I was like, Wow. All right. He shared. He shared about his journey. And he was still also reachable because he saw something, whether or not I shared my journey, that he wanted to help in some way. And so I think it's so important to... You learn by getting your reps in. People say, You don't learn just by reading. You learn by doing. And if you really want to be a great leader, great entrepreneur, you need to teach, you need to get your reps in. So the things that you go through, do you share them out loud?

Do you share them with people? Do you see how they respond to it? Are Are you repeatable? A great leader is repeatable because they say the same things over and over and over again. Great leaders are repeaters, and great leaders are teachers. And so if you look at the greatest leaders, greatest entrepreneurs, they do that regularly. And I've been inspired by them, and I try to share every day, get my reps in. I've done over a thousand plus podcasts. My first few years, anybody that took me was like, We have six listeners. I'm like, I'm in. Let's do it. I was fired up because I was like, I'm going to get my reps in on how to communicate about what we do. And I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn how to answer questions and go different directions and see how people respond to it. That helped me. How often are you getting your reps in? It's not about me getting on a podcast. It's about me learning and growing, and that's what we all need to do.

I love it. Let's tell the people all What are some of the things you have going on, man. Keynote speaker, obviously author. What are some of the things that Jesse Cole is doing in the world today?

I'm still chasing moments, man. I'm still chasing the things that make me feel alive every single day. This morning, I spent three hours on ideas for the Party Animal Show and our Firefighter show and doing things that people have never seen before in a baseball field. I get to work with our team now on how do we create that. We've got the new team, Indianapolis Clowns and the local beach coconuts. It's bringing the beach to the world. That's what lifts me up. I'm fortunate I get the opportunity to speak all over the world and to amazing companies, and I get to learn from them. But it's the everyday It's creating something brand new. It's inventing something brand new that people have never seen, never felt before. That's what I love doing. I'm fortunate I got a platform now to share it, to share what I learned, to share the journey, and hopefully inspire more people to take some chances, to not be afraid of getting uncomfortable and doing things others won't do. That's what excites me every day.

You do a great job of it, man. I'm going to tell everybody, too, just some shoutouts to you and some pub for you. Findyour yellowtucks. Com. You've got You've got a really cool quiz out there that I think-Oh, jeez, we're way back.

Yeah.

Yeah, man. I think it gets people thinking, right? Who am I? I almost tell people, because I've sent a few people there that it's like, Hey, it's just going to get you thinking you're going to realize the misses, right? The quiz, the assessment is a setup almost. It's just to get you thinking of how do you show up? What do you value? Do Do you really put fans first? Do you put experience first? I love the setup of that, but just an amazing follow. I think everybody knows that about Jesse, but the insights that he gives, especially if you're a business leader or if you're an entrepreneur trying to scale, you are the blueprint for that, bro. You are the blueprint. I have to give you your flowers while you're here.

Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

Yes, sir. So speaking of following, how can people follow and find you? Just google me. That should be your answer.

I'm pretty easy these days. But yeah, I try to share the journey constantly, whether it's Instagram or LinkedIn, everywhere, I'm trying to share it. But yeah, we're easy to find. Easier to find than people know. My email is out there, my phone number is out there. I've always tried to be accessible, and it's been a fun journey.

Cool. Well, I'm going to get you out of here on my quick five rapid fire. You ready?

Let's do it.

Is it the same yellow tucks over and over again, or do you have a million?

I have nine yellow tucks.

Love it. What's been your favorite moment of banana balls that you go back to that sticks in your memory? What's one cool moment?

First ever Clemson football stadium, 80,000 plus people. That was a moment because it was a bigger challenge, playing in front of 80,000 people, 190 feet down the left field line, putting on a huge halftime show. That was with the whole Clemson band, all of our people, 200 plus performers. It was an extreme hard challenge, and we overcame it. An hour and 43 minute game, not 11 home runs. The fans stayed till the end. It was the biggest crowd they had there. It was really, really, really special. So I look for those moments that are very, very hard, and that was very hard putting that on and tailgating out. And that was a special moment.

And what if I told you that's my hometown and I remember that moment, too?

Did you go to Death Valley? Did you actually go? I remember that in the...

Yeah, I lived there. I live in Greenville, South Carolina. So it was amazing.

It was amazing. Yeah, that was a show in a night we'll never forget.

There you go. What's the biggest lesson that failure taught you?

It's tough. That question, my mind doesn't even go like... We don't look at it as failure. I think failure is- The biggest lesson you've learned. It's not the failure, it's how you respond to it. If you treat failure as discovery, if you treat failure as a lesson, it will make you much stronger in the end.

Yes, sir. What's one thing that Jesse Cole does every day that sets your creativity juices on fire?

I run every morning. So every single morning, your input affects your output. Every single morning I run, and I listen to podcasts and founders acquired just about some of the greatest leaders, greatest business minds, greatest stories. When I'm done with a run, sometimes I can run for 8, 10, 12 miles, and I don't even feel it because my mind is so fired up and excited. Every morning I run, and then I start writing ideas, and I start journaling. I don't miss a day. I do not miss a day.

Yes, sir. Last question. The story of Jesse Cole has been told. What's the message you want to be told in that story?

That's a deep question, my friend. That's a deep question. I think the root of it is, how will you be remembered? What's the impact of that story. The simple thought process is just to have fun in life and not take yourself too seriously. But I think I would go find what it is that makes you stand out and amplify it. Be the best version of yourself. Show up the best way you can every day. And don't be afraid of what people say. Don't be afraid of criticism. We're all going to be misunderstood every day, every week, every month. But if you're doing what lights you up, what fires you up, you can change the world. I believe we're getting the opportunity to do You are the goat, as these young people say.

You are the greatest to ever do it, man. You are someone that's impacting lives. You're changing how we view entertainment. And I can't thank you enough just for being a blueprint for me. Selfishly, I just want to thank you for me, man. I owe a lot to you, and I'm going to continue to owe a lot to you. Just thank you for being an instrumental piece of my life.

I appreciate that. It's a lot of fun. Thank you for the really kind words.

That means more than You got it. To all the viewers and listeners, remember, your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.

That's another powerful conversation on Mic Unplug. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen. Share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave a review so more people can find there because. I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay Unplugged.