Transcript of 676: Jesse Cole (Owner, Savannah Bananas) - The Beauty of Obsession, Building a Fans First World, Walt Disney, Mr. Beast, Radical Transparency (Opening the Books), Do the Opposite of Normal, Turning a $6M Mistake Into a Moment, and Creating Banana World

Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader. Com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader. Com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, Jesse Cole, is the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He went from $1. 8 million in debt, sleeping on an air mattress and has now built a business that is worth more than a billion dollars. I flew down to Savannah, spent half a day with Jesse watching practice, and he gave me a personal tour of their entire operation. It was an incredible day. I was exhausted by the end of it because Jesse has so much energy. It's obvious that he loves it. During our conversation, we discussed why Jesse sacrificed $6 million in revenue after a system error and what that decision compounded into. Then how the bananas, I noticed this when I was watching them, they practice trick plays on every single rep, the back flips, the behind the back catches. Why? Because they want this to become the default setting on game day. It happens every rep and every practice. Then Jesse talked about why he just released his full PnL as a private company.

That's revenue, expenses, player their salaries, everything. Most private businesses guard this information with their lives, and Jesse just gives it out so that all the fans could see. And he talks deeply about why he does this. Then I love hearing about him spending time with Mr. Beast to talk about YouTube. Jesse regularly puts himself in rooms with people who are the best in the world at what they do. I think there's a lot we all can learn from that. We talk about that and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Jesse Cole. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal. Com/ Learning Leader today to learn more. That's insightglobal. Com/learningleader.

Dude, so we first recorded- When was that? 2019. Okay, so it's been seven years. Yes. You have all of your people write these five-year in advance resumes, right? This is a part of the-Future resume. Future resume. We talked about it in 2019. It's one of the things you said, we have them write your future resume, not your past or your current. Dude, could you have ever imagined that we would be sitting here seven years later, and you and Emily are the 100% owner of a business worth a billion dollars, probably more than that now, that delights Millions and millions of fans all the time, puts giant smiles on their faces. Could you ever even thought of that on that future resume?

Well, that's the part excites me. It's the fans. You mentioned billion. I cringe hearing that number. I cringe. But when you talk about fans, that's what really excites me. In the beginning, the answer may have been no. But now the answer is yes, as far as imagine this. We had to see things that other people couldn't see. If you ask people on our team, on our staff, I think it was six years ago, I said, We're going to sell at Fenway Park. They're looking at me like, What is wrong with you? What do you mean sell at Fenway Park? With what? We have a college summer baseball team. We're not even doing tour. What is this? You have to believe something before you actually achieve something. Most people, they say, they might talk about something, but they don't truly believe in it. We believed that we had something that could be more fun, more different, and a better fan experience, and then we just had to execute it. We weren't going to be great in the beginning, Ryan. We were brutal in the beginning. Our first One City world tour was brutal. I mean, the sound was terrible, the show was terrible.

The game finished in the seventh ending because we didn't have a rule to make sure it goes all nine innings. It was messy, but you have to get through the messy to get to the great. Now, I see things in two, three years that people would never imagine. But I believe truly we'll do it. And it's going to be messy and it's going to be hard, but we'll get there. And then when you spread that and you share that with other people, it becomes contagious. And when you got a bunch of people believe in they can do something, you can find a way to do it.

What are some of those things? Two, three. What are you thinking? Crazy things.

Well, everything starts with the fans. So again, you have to. And I learned this from Walt Disney. There was no one better in seeing the future and not what was best for the business, but what was best for his guests at Disneyland or best for the people watching his movies. And he realized that he was the first one to go into full-length animation film. He was the first one to go into color, the sound. He was so far ahead of his time with Fantasia. It wasn't even close. And people at first were like, It was too much. And then it became, Obviously, this is where we need to go. And then with Disneyland, there were just terrible amusement parks. Multiple entrances, Barkers trying to get as much money out of the people as possible. They all had the same rides. He was like, No, I'm going to focus on one entrance. I'm going to control the experience. I'm going to have custom rides. I'm going to invest in a castle and landscape escaping, which makes no money. I'm going to invest in cleanliness. He saw what would be a better experience. When you look at what we're thinking about, there's a multitude of areas where the fan experience can be better.

When you think about the ticketing experience, and we're already starting to do that, we're building a secondary ticket market because right now people are paying thousands of dollars. They're getting ripped off. There's fees. It's crazy. We're going to work on figuring that out, and we're already starting right now. It's going to be messy. That's one area. The youth, banana ball. There's a challenge With youth sports, we know it. If you have people are paying, how parents are feeling, the accessibility, it's brutal. We're going to work on trying to address that. Then when you think about places that we can play, go where others won't go. I learned this from Sam Walton. Everyone was like, You're going to go to the big cities, the K-Mart. They're like, You got to go to the big cities. I was like, No, I'm going to go to the small towns. We're going to win the small towns. Everyone thought it was crazy. They didn't even pay attention to them the first 5 or 10 years. People still really aren't paying attention. They're like, Oh, there's just a circus baseball team. That's fine. Our competitors don't need to pay attention to us.

We're going to pay attention to our fans more than anyone else. We'll bring this show and game to places that people would never imagine. We're already starting this. We're doing 45 states this year. It doesn't make sense on paper to go to Billings, Montana. I mean, I'm not saying against Billings, Montana or North Dakota, but that's 3,000 fans. We're bringing 150 plus people, flying them there and putting on a show for 3,000 fans. But it's one fan at a time, and that's what we're obsessed with, and that's what we're going to try to create.

It's also that sign back there we just walked past reminds me of Michael Jordan. He was known. Now players, they take nights off. They have load management. Jordan just played every game. It seems like he had a similar feeling that you put up on the wall. This is somebody's first time every night. I love that that's your approach. You live that way, and all of your players, coaches, everyone associated with the bananas and the whole league, it seems this mentality of it's always somebody's first time.

Yeah. Well, it's a responsibility, especially now. We hear constantly, we have fans that wait three years on a waitlist, and they get to come. I don't care if you're having a bad day. That's their first time. How are they greeted? What happens when they come to the parking lot, when they walk in? Every single concession stand, every single place they go. That's the biggest challenge for us. What Walt did better than anyone else as he controlled the experience. He learned that he couldn't control the experience when people watch one of his movies at a theater. It could be dirty, people couldn't be that nice. And so right now, 95 % plus of our shows are at other stadiums. That's the concessions, that's the concessions. That's the ushers. That's the security who's trying to get fans to leave early when we want to sign every autograph to the last fan leaves. So if you were to look into the future, we you would follow the same footsteps as Walt and say, How do you control the entire experience? And so that's something we'll be thinking about as well.

Is there going to be a banana world?

Banana land.

Banana land with amusement park and rides and players dancing and music?

That's a pretty good vision there. Right now, we're done twice a banana land at Sea Cruise. And so what people don't realize is I've learned the greatest leaders, the entrepreneurs, they're not just thinking about their next move. The great show, The Queen's Gambit, and it showed she was playing chess, and she could always see the whole chess board. And so a lot of people, they might see one move ahead and another move. Sometimes moves take years. This banana land at Cee Cruise, which we've done twice now, it's four to five days with no banana ball. We're having to entertain fans for four to five days from 7: 00 AM to 2: 00 AM with no banana ball. What do you think we're learning? We're learning how to entertain nonstop and it not just be a show. Do people want this? Are they engaged by all the entertainment? Are they engaged by our players? All of that we learn, and it takes years. And so, yeah, there's a world where there's a banana land, and it's unlike any sports and entertainment experience in the world. And we will build that at some point.

You recently opened your books. You're a private company. Yes. So I just want to set the stage. I actually get a text message from you.

Early.

Early. It's It's a video, and it's always a little bit jarring because it's always after you work out, and you're not wearing this. You're wearing your workout clothes, and you're just like, Hey, man, doing something cool. It's new. We're opening up the books. We're sharing. We should talk about it. We should do something. My immediately thought was, I literally want on Delta, my Delta app to look for a flight to come down here. But the thought was, why are you doing this? You don't have to do this. This transparency is with public companies because you have shareholders. You don't have that. You and Emily own the team completely. Yourself. And yet you just completely open the books. Numbers, player salary, merch, sales, I mean, everything. Why? Why do it?

Who do we work for?

The fans. Yeah.

So we have a responsibility. And I think if we want to be truly who we are and what we stand for in the fans, then we have a responsibility to share them. And also we have accountability, accountability to them and accountability to our own team and our staff. When we put this all out, which took weeks, weeks to write, because really, again, every intentionality of every word and what we're saying and why we're saying was thought of, we have that responsibility to now deliver. Often people don't share what they're going to do or how they're going to do it, because if they don't do it, they don't look good. I'm not afraid of that because there's a lot of things that we're going to try to do that we may fail, but that's part of who we are. But if we have this aspiration, this goal, this is what, hey, these are the areas we need to get better. We need to get better with our ticket experience. We need to get better with our merch experience. Our broadcast has to improve. Here's where we're going to go with our shows. When they go to bigger stadiums, we are going to obsess over winning the upper deck.

Because when we play in front of 100,000 fans, I want the fan sitting the furthest away of the best experience they've ever had at any sporting event. When you put that out, put it down on paper, put it in a video and share with your team, it's a responsibility. We better deliver. And fans may call us out. I was sitting in section 405, and I didn't see a cast member. Well, that's on us. We got to be better. You better believe we'll make it up to them. I shared what we did last year when we messed up and we sent a wrong email to 44,000 fans, and we're supposed to send it to 4,000. It cost us $6 million to take care of those fans with tickets. We will do that, again, if we don't hit what we believe we're responsible to do and make sure the fans feel something and have an unforgettable experience.

I was going to ask you about that because you didn't have to take that big of a financial hit, and you did. I feel like I don't hear a lot about, I'm following everything you guys do. I love it. I've been to game. I want to come to more games. My family is a massive fan of you and everything going on.

You were in a march, by the way, which not many people get to be in an actual march.

Dude, my 11-year-old daughter is with stilt. She loves stilt. Now, I just took a picture of his locker and I sent it to her. I mean, she's in school. Yeah, you've more than taken care of us. But just the idea of, wait a second, we're going to give away $6 million is a lot of money. What happened and why did you do that?

That was More than the company brought in our first five years. I mean, literally, we were only playing 30 games. We were a college summer team. That was ridiculous. We messed up. Most companies, they mess up. You're lucky to get an apology. We messed up. We have to feel Our team has to feel that. They need to know that, hey, we messed up, and we're going to make it right to our fans. Now, our staff, Hey, we talked to them. We said we figured it out. We're going to have bigger failures and bigger mistakes that cost us a lot more in the future. If we don't, we're not trying things big enough. We need to have bigger failures. And so I remember vividly as I was flying and I see Twitter and emails blowing up, you were told we could get tickets for Savannah and it shut down. And what happened? Immediately called Jared, our President, and remember, and he said, wow, what just happened? So we said, we got to apologize. And Jared, who's been with us since day one, 24-year-old team President, now older, he said, I want to write this apology. So he wrote the letter, and we realized that wasn't enough.

And how do you go to the next step? And so we said, well, we got to take care of them as much as it's going to hurt. And so we offered the best seats to the biggest stadiums anywhere in the country, football stadiums, Fenway Park, you name it. And I remember, I was like, We need to turn this into more than just, Hey, we're doing this. So we set up, we're all over the country traveling at that point. I said, Let's do a Zoom call with everybody. And I told everyone to turn their cameras on. And I wanted everyone to see. I wanted to see everyone and everyone to feel like, hey, this is a moment. I want you to remember where we were in this moment and what we're going to do to make sure we always make it right for our fans. And so it's probably one of the best six million dollar lessons you could ever ask for.

God, that's wild. Hiring, we talked a little bit about... You talked about the five-year future resume. You went through your values when you were doing the tour and how... That is, I think to do something like this, this special, you have to be... I mean, you're fanatical about everything, but fanatical It's about the who, the people. How involved are you in that? And what is that process? I know it depends on the role, depends on the players, coaches, but I was asking you earlier about players, coaches, how you choose them, very intentional. I think this could be applicable to lots of people who are trying to lead businesses is how you choose the people in the process to bring people in.

Well, I think it's important. A lot of times you join a company and you've heard of the company. You may know what they sell, their product, but you don't know really who they are and what they stand for. You can see some policy things and letters. Bob Iger learned this from him, and we've been close with the Disney Company, and obviously, I've learned so much from them and especially Walt. In Bob's book, he said he would often lead by press release. He would share the vision of the company where they have thousands of employees. And so myself, I'm very open on who we are and what we stand for, and I share it constantly. And because as we've grown out hundreds of employees, I want them to hear it. I want them to see it. And it can't always be in front of us. I can't always be in front of them. And so that's That's intentional. Then we have our team. Marie has been with us since day one. She leads our people department. Day one, she was right out of college, 22 years old. And then with Emily, Emily is the heart of our business.

As much as I want to grow and create more fans, Emily wants to make sure that our biggest Our people are taking care of. Every day, Emily is checking with people and connecting with them and seeing and hiring. She did hundreds of interviews. She's still doing hundreds of interviews constantly. As an owner, Emily is doing that because it matters so much who comes into our team, who joins our team. So again, it's intentionality. I think the reality is not like it. We go through a long process of hiring people. We hire a lot of people. And fortunately, we've had probably less than five people have intentionally left our company in the last 10 years.

When they come here, they want to be here.

Because we're so clear on who we are and what we stand for in the hiring process. And then when you join it, you're not just walking into a company and filling out paperwork. We're going to welcome you. We're going to make you feel a part of this. The players example. The players showed up. We spent weeks crafting and designing dining every second of their experience. When they showed up, we had them go to a parking lot right across the street. We had a DJ out there. We had music playing. It's 8: 30 in the morning. Then all of a sudden, three busses show up. They get into the busses. There's balloons and a bunch of things, celebrate. There's DJs in each bus. Then all of a sudden, two police cars show up in front of them, turn the sirens on, do a police escort to the stadium, which it's a quarter of a mile. You're literally going 300 yards. Police escort, as they make police escort. Our entire staff is lying the streets. Hundreds of people lying the streets, encouraging them. They show up. Then all of a sudden, we put on a show for them.

We have a big opening. We have walking around. Our man, Anna, is walking around literally with munchkins on silver platters. Our dad bought cheerleaders, serving them. We put on a full show. They're dancing, they're singing. We welcome them in. Then we have the whole staff, again, lining them up in a tunnel. They walk to the field. Then we have a brand new custom hype video created with moments from there when they got drafted, when they joined us. Then as soon as that finishes, all of a sudden, video camera goes in on our young professor who's our host. Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls, he's on the roof. He does an entire hype intro from on top of the roof. They turn around, he's on the roof. Then each coach gets introduced and we have music going off, then fireworks going off on top of the field. Then we get in, we do one big, Hey, baby, streamers go over. That's how they're welcomed. The intentionality. Then we had five-star, we had carving stations, we had food for each team, we had a whole carnival set up for lunch. It's all intentional. Do leaders put the into creating a custom-designed, intentional, meaningful experience for their own team members?

Is it always just about their customer? That sets the tone. That first day, I think the players know what's important. They know what a first-class experience looks like. They know what being a fan feels like. And so if you deliver that to them, okay, I got to deliver that to the fans.

That's what I was reading and watching some videos about leading up to this is that intentionality with taking care of your people, you leading with enthusiasm and all juice and obsession and excitement, it radiates to me, and I don't even work here. I'm like, I'm going to go do this and do that. It honestly makes me think a lot bigger, and we've just been hanging out for an hour. I can't even imagine what that feels like for your players. How do you have the juice and the energy to bring it? You're not really ever in a bad mood. You know what I'm saying? This is wild to me.

I'm not a robot. I do have moments where, obviously... But again, it's what you surround yourself with. At the end of every day, me and Emily do our Rose, Rose, and Bud. Rose, great thing that happened today, and a bud you're looking forward to. We do it with our kids. And so what's the lens you see things every day? And so that is very, very intentional and how we see things and how we view things. So, yeah, when it comes to the players, for us, you got to set the tone. You got to bring the energy. You got to bring the fun. But I put myself in their shoes. You're an athlete. I was barely an athlete, but I played baseball back in the day, and I had the big dreams of playing Major League Baseball, and I had that dream of playing at Fenway Park. And I was fortunate. Some scouts were talking to me and I was getting letters. And then all of a sudden, I tore my shoulder and that ended it. I was told I wasn't good enough because of an injury, and I just never performed up to my ability.

And the reason why I didn't perform to my ability is I put so much pressure on myself. I was a big scholarship guy at Wofford, as big as Anyone in the program had ever had up to that point, and I had to perform. And it wasn't about having fun. We played the game as kids to have fun. So every night, I'm putting so much pressure on myself not having fun. Career ends, and I'm done. Not good enough. Can't play anymore. Every one of our players. They've been drafted or they've been a top college player, and at some point, they've all been told they're not good enough. They've been rejected. They've been cut. This didn't exist. They were about to hang them up. Then we built this, and Now I can put myself in their shoes and say, You've got this second chance. You've got this chance now to play the game the way you used to do as a kid and go out and just have fun and play it for the right reasons. You're not competing against the other outfielder to try to get called up to the next level. You are competing to create fans, and we're all doing that together.

And so this is what I wish I could have built for myself, and I'd still be playing and having the time of my life. And so when you build something for yourself, something that you would truly love, you can feel it with them, and you can every day try to make it better for them. And so now they play with heart, they play with fun, they play with passion, and they play the way when they were five years old and they went out just to go have fun and nothing more. That I want to build all over because that's what it's all about.

One of the things I've been I've been seeing a lot lately, Jesse, is obsession. And that's why I love you. I love what you do is because when you feel a leader who is obsessed with the thing that they do, and it's about other people and serving other people, It is as contagious as anything gets in the world. It seems like you're doing a really good job also of surrounding yourself with other people who are obsessed. Jimmy Donalds, Mr. Beast, some of the guys you're with this week with what you're doing. I'd love to hear your mindset and your thoughts on not only being obsessed with what you do, but also surrounding yourself with others who are.

Yeah. Obsession's got such a bad word. It does. Oh, you're obsessed. It's bad. It's tremendous. It's awesome. If you can find something you're obsessed with, so few people in the world get to have that. You are lucky to find that. And so I feel I was truly lucky to get the opportunity to have something I'm truly obsessed with. And so, yeah, I think it starts... Everyone's like, you're an average of the five people you surround yourself with. Well, it's a cop-out sometimes. Like, well, I don't have those people around me right now. We've more access than we've ever had in the history to be able to have every book at our fingertips, to have every podcast at our fingertips for free. We can listen and hear from the greatest leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, you name it, for free every single day. If you're not taking advantage of that, you're missing out. I've had the opportunity to surround myself with Walt Disney, probably as much as anyone in the world, with Jeff Bezos, probably more than anyone in the the world. Steve Jobs, Grateful Dead, WWE, Circa Soleil. And I get to get in that world by reading.

I mean, I've read some of these books over and over and over again. I literally can know with that page, you go to this. I literally can feel it. So that's who I I surrounded myself with. And now, because we've been able to have a little bit more success, we have more people reaching out, being around the best of the best. Derek Huff is an example. So he reached out, one of the greatest dancers, and he reached out and dance with us. And I watched His obsession on every part of the dance moves. And he wasn't just focusing on the dance. He was focusing on how it was captured. With our camera crew, which we have a very young but unbelievably passionate and talented video crew. He's like, All right, no, you come around here, hit me at this moment, then I'm going to hit here. I'll wink right here. Then you go around, spin here, and then I'll do it. He's producing while thinking about dancing. When you're around the best of the best, one of the best dancers in the world, and he's obviously around some of the best dancers in the world, you see everything and you see the attention to detail.

That's what Walt Disney had. And so now I'm so fortunate some of these people are reaching out to us. John Cina was another one. John Cina, when he came out with us, I watched his attention to detail on how he came out, what he did, his moments, what he said. He was thinking about all those. He understood production. He understand where the lighting hits. He understood when to look here. That attention to detail, not many people think about. They think about, Oh, here's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it. What I'm so grateful that I get to see now is when I'm on the field during the show, I'm thinking about the live crowd, number one. I'm thinking about digital, broadcast, social media. I'm thinking about every upper deck. I'm thinking about all of that and saying. And so now our team, we can look at each other. My director of entertainment, Zack, we just look and he goes, Oh, yeah, got it. We don't have to say a word because we've worked together five years. Energy here, music, get a song here, and just start to We get to realize those things.

And so once you're around it, it just starts growing.

The obsession and attention to details and intentionality, a commonality among leaders, I found over the past 11 years, that 11 years that... 11 years, interesting. I've been doing this 11 years. It's a good number. It's a big number. The hold music. Yes. Your invoices. There's nothing that's just going to be normal. Nothing that's going to be, Oh, yeah, you just get an invoice or the whole music is normal. Everything, everything. You talk to me about that. How crazy, stupid, not stupid, how crazy, awesome.

We heard stupid.

But how crazy cool your invoicing process is and what it sounds like, oh, my God, it's payday.

You get to pay out. All that stuff.

Well, again, all of us, to an extent, we're chasing moments. We want to have these special moments in our life. I think more now than ever because of the phones and the screens. I think people want to feel alive. We're both music guys, Dave Matthews Band. When I go to a show, and I get there, our coaches we've gone the last few years, I'm nowhere else. I'm in the show. As soon as Jeff Coffin starts ripping a saxophone solo, I'm there. I'm in it. I think people need those now more than ever. I think about those moments and how to create those moments with everything. And so it's just... To go back to the point you were making, I'm talking about hold music in voices. See, I just got lost in a moment. I was just literally picturing myself in the moment. Yeah, so the intention-Well, I'm thinking of a Dave concert.

I was thinking about going to Deer Creek or somewhere to listen to it.

Yes, 100 %. So I don't think anyone goes home and says, I just had a really normal experience tonight. I went to a show and it was normal. That restaurant, that restaurant I was talking about, it was really normal. But I got to tell you about how normal it was. The waiter served it the same way. The food was pretty normal. And then when I left, no one really said goodbye. It was really The parking lot was a normal experience. No one gets excited for normal. It's so true.

It seems so obvious, but it's so true.

It's so exciting. So if you want to create a life that has special moments where you feel a part of something, you feel excited about something, then you try to eliminate everything that is normal. And so normal gets normal results. If you do things that are normal, good luck. There's a lot of normal out there in the world, but there's not a lot of extraordinary. To do extraordinary, you got to think of every single little thing that is normal and do the exact opposite. One of our fans' first principles is whatever is normal, do the exact opposite. So yes, for years, we had just regular payment confirmations when you bought tickets. We had regular invoices. We had all of that, and we got to keep pushing. But the reality is right now, people still find lots of things that we still do that's normal. Our broadcast is still normal right now. We're not even close to what we can touch.

You've mentioned that multiple times. So what is that? It seems like this would be something you'd be on the cutting edge of.

Yes. So it's very hard in a lot of things, and it takes time. And also, where does your focus go and energy go? I have put almost all of my focus on the live show because that is where our fans are there in person. The broadcast is very hard for me. And to be honest, I love live shows. I can go to a theater show, I can go anywhere. I have concerts. I can go to a live show. I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm not the prime audience right now. So I can't picture myself. I don't even watch much sports on TV. It's all... It is what it is. A team wins, a team loses, whatever. There's some cool moments that are done, but I am not the right audience, so I haven't really been able to put the right energy or time into trying to create something that I love. What I want people to do, I want to disrupt our business and say it's better on TV than a live show, which is almost impossible because our live show is so immersive. I challenge our broadcast team, what could we do there?

I think it's still normal at broadcast, and we had to figure it out ourselves. We do it all ourselves.

One of the things that's not normal, though, is that you've negotiated and probably given up money, I'm assuming, when ESPN or other networks want to broadcast their games, you say, Yes, that's great. And it's still going to be free on YouTube. I don't know anyone else who's been able to do that. It's very hard. Right. You probably had to make some financial concessions, I'm guessing, and pay for everything. Yeah, everything. But again, I assume that's a fan's first, and that's why you would do this, right? Instead of saying, Wait a second, this is an opportunity, really. I say it all the time.

It sounds simple, but the starting point of all innovation is just put yourself in the customer's shoes and eliminate the friction points. What are the things that you don't like as a customer and eliminate it? Where's the football game tonight? Is it on Amazon? Is it on Peacock? Is it at CVS? Is it at NBC? Is it-They're making billions. I think it was like 18 billion, 20, whatever it is. They're maximized. They're the most valuable sports league in the world. I don't want to be the most valuable sports league in the world. I want to be the most fans-first company in the world. And so that makes your decision-making very easy. So that's a friction point. Where's the game? Or, Oh, I don't have Amazon. I don't have Netflix. I don't have Peacock. Oh, I got to do a subscription to get this. So we were willing to throw away millions. Literally, I have some of the biggest networks that we're not working with because they said, No, we can't do this. No one does this. But here's millions of dollars. That's not what gets me excited. What gets me excited is our fans being excited to be able to see our show for free at all times.

And so, yes, ESPN at first, they never did it. They were like, We're not going to pay you for this. I was like, Well, no. And so it was like, All right, now they do. And then again, they came back this year, We're going to do more games. No, we're not going to do this. All the other ones, We're not going to do it. And I said, Well, we want to work with you. Look at what your ratings are. Espn averaged over a half million viewers this past year while having our games on YouTube. Cw Roku monster numbers. So I'm like, Your advertisers are getting exactly what they want. They're getting lots of eyeballs. So who cares if it's on YouTube? So you got to be firm in what you believe in. Yeah, we would have a lot more money if we did it the exclusive way, but it'd be not fans first, and we'll never do that.

In order to have a business, though, you do have to make money. So is your mentality of, We focus on the fans. We focus on our people internally. The money will come.

Yeah, our fans reward us more than... It's unbelievable. I mean, yeah, I share it. We sold over one $1. 9 million merch items last year. So when you think of $1.

9- The merch is everywhere, everywhere.

Well, you build something that people are proud of, that people want to wear. I make a joke often when I get a chance, just like you, I get a chance to speak to a lot of companies, and I get in front of the stage, and I said, What does a fan look like? And I said, We have one fan that every year we have a new team, he gets a new tattoo. And so he's got six tattoos of our team's logos on his leg. And he goes, Dude, you got to stop adding teams. I go, That's a you problem. That's you, my man. I'm You don't have to get the tattoos. But you think about this, no matter what company you have, if you are loved, people want to wear their merch. Just like you have an unbelievable podcast. I want to wear a learning leader because it is awesome. You know what I'm saying? If people don't want to wear your merch or rep you, you haven't made them feel something yet. You haven't been so obsessed with them and created an experience that they want to show it off to everyone. So the more things we do, like keep all our games free on YouTube, have no ads at our stadium, do these things to go to places that don't make sense on paper, we create more fans and people are proud to wear us.

We spend zero dollars on traditional marketing, but we invest everything in the experience. If we make the experience so good, our fans will share with everyone that this is something they haven't experienced anywhere.

When you go to one of the games, there's so many kids. I brought mine. I want to bring more of them to the future games. Certainly want to come down here. This place is magical. It truly is. You think a lot of that stems from your social media growth and how focused you guys have been on TikTok and others, and you just absolutely crushed it there? Was that intentional? Did you stumble into it? How did that go?

A lot of things, we have some vision and we do it, and then we stumble into the learning that happens.

But you're willing to try a bunch of stuff.

I'll never forget. It's our first year. Again, we had an intern We didn't think to hire. We were college summer baseball. This was in 2016. We had interns. You help out with tickets, you help out with merch. But we didn't have any idea to help out with video because teams didn't have videographers back in 2016. It didn't make sense. We had one guy, and he was with us, and he's like, I can create some videos. I was like, Oh, really cool. Then all of a sudden, the Can't Stop the Feeling. We call it Can't Stop the Peeling by Justin Timberlake. That song came out that summer, and it was a banger, and everyone was playing it. I was like, Let's just do a music video. We had our staff, we would lip sync, and it was so low-level-produced. We never done a video, so we're just having lip sync. The players, I remember sitting in this corner, were lip syncing, but they weren't even into it. It was just like... It was so half, but we put it out. I remember I was driving in from our house and I'm looking at Facebook, and it's 10,000 every few minutes.

Facebook was where we put everything. It was like 100,000 views, 200,000 views. Our fans were just like, yes. They were so excited. From that, I was like, guys, so we hired him as a videographer, and we said, let's just show us having fun. That's how we stumbled on that. Then when TikTok came along in 2020, we were like, Let's just start posting. The big question for our team was, What are we going to post? I go, I don't know. Just something that makes baseball fun. Our first video was our group's director dressed up like Cupid, the Cupid of the heart, and he was doing the Cupid It made no sense, Ryan. It got 12 views. All right, let's not do that again. Then so the next day, another video. Then we realized, Oh, what can we show the players doing that they don't normally do? Singing, dancing, things on the field. Again, get away from normal.

Walk up with a bat on fire.

Exactly. What are things you've never seen before in a baseball field? And so we said, that's the lens. Make baseball fun. Anything that makes baseball fun and shows our players, our cast, our staff doing things that you normally want to do. And then we said, we're going to post every day. And we committed to posting every day. It's like, hey, a podcast, I'm going to post every week. I'm going to get it out there every week because you learn by doing. This is one of the biggest things. You don't learn by talking about it. You got to do it. And so now you've gone since TikTok in 2020, we've posted every single day. So you're talking about thousands of posts. And so now you look at the party animals, our second team, They have more followers than every Major League baseball team on TikTok. And they're selling on Major League's names because we committed to just putting something out every single day. And I think it's not always just creativity. It's putting out so you can learn and being willing to try things that might not work.

Yeah. So you're brought in to speak now whenever you can in between all the other stuff you're doing. And so there's people in corporate America who say, Well, what can we learn from Jesse Cole? What can we learn from the Savannah Bananas to bring into our business? What are some of the ways? What are some of the potentially portable lessons for a random Fortune 500 company that is boring, that is normal, right? What are some of the things they could say, Well, we could do that. We don't have a baseball team, and we don't put on shows, but we have a company, and we want to make it better for our people. We want to make better for our customers/fans. What are some of the things that you say to them?

I'm fortunate now. Before no one, I had to beg a Kauanis group or a Rotary group to let me speak. It was hard, but now a lot more fortunate. But a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to the National Asphalts and Pavement Convention, their annual meeting. And so exactly where you think I would be. Like, this is it. I told them, I open, I go, When I was a kid, I dreamed I'd get the opportunity to be here. And now that I'm with you guys, you've made my dreams come true. Unfortunately, they laughed at that. But it was very hard because they work with governments. They work It's B2B. It's not B2C. But what I said is we're all H2H, human to human. And we're all, how do we connect with humans? And they're like, Well, we can't do things with the government because it's a bid process. I go, Okay, but what can you do to create fans? How can you work on the experience every step of the way? Most the way, most companies, This is the process that they do it. Hey, for them, you do a bid process, you hope they say yes, and then you deliver the road, the street, the parking lot, whatever it is.

But how intentionally do you look at every step of the experience? From when you first interact with them, for what happens when that day you Can you show up? Can you show videos? Hey, this is what we're doing today, and show the process. Because everyone's asking, Are things getting done? They're working with the community. And so, for instance, people in the community are like, How long is this row going to take? You're making it inconvenient to me. And what if you actually show what you're doing in the progress and how you're making it? You actually do things for the community and put social media share in that. There's all opportunities. Change the lens on how do you grow customers, on how you chase customers, but how do you create fans? And so if you look at everything and say, if you meet with a business and it's like, All right, what are ideas that we can bring in an extra million dollars, $2 million? You'll get a bunch of ideas. If you ask the same question, how can we create a million fans? They're different ideas, almost always. Most people chase, how do you create an extra million dollars?

Not, how can you create a million fans? And so if you do that, that's how we start with everything. It's like, okay, what does this experience look like? How can the upper deck experience at every stadium be the best sporting event experience ever? I don't care if you're sitting behind home plate. How can we make it even better than sitting behind home plate? And when you ask those questions, then all of a sudden, the business will take off because people will invest in because they believe in you. So whatever the business is, the question is, how do you create fans? And what are the steps? And I've shared in my first book, Fans First: Eliminate Friction, Entertain Always, which means it's not entertain. The definition of entertain is to enjoy. So to entertain, enjoy. So can you make every step of the process filled with enjoyment? And then next experiment constantly. You got to try new things you never tried before. How do you engage deeply? How do you do for one what you wish you could do for many? You can't do everything for everyone. But can you create a moment? Can you listen carefully and respond creatively to what your guests are wanting or what are your customers are wanting?

And then finally, how do you empower yourself to do things that scare you, that are hard, that are uncomfortable, that people would say you shouldn't be doing and do what others won't do. And if you do any level of those, you'll start creating more fans. We obsess over all five of those.

You're one of the most grateful people I know. I think I got my first yellow thank you note, handwritten. It was this long from you eight years ago now. You made such an impact. Which is wild to think. It's been eight years since I got that in the mail. I'm like, What is this yellow thank you card? You send those videos to me all the time after you work out about, Hey, I listened to this episode, and it was great. And so I imagine you do this to everybody. So I am-Not everybody, Ryan. I mean, it hurts a lot to people. But the idea of being perpetually grateful and then telling other people by sending them those videos or writing them those notes. Do you have a process for that? Or just whenever you feel like it, you're just saying, Hey, I should send him a video because I like that podcast, or I should write him a note or her a note because she impacted to me in this way. I'd be curious to hear how you think about gratitude.

Put yourself in their shoes. It comes down to empathy. Again, it means so much that after a night that I've worked from all day, and it's 11 o'clock in signing autographs, and a fan will come up or a kid will come up, and The best are the kids. The kids, thank you for creating this. This was the best day. This is the best day. I love your teams. Thank you for... The way I feel when someone tells me that on the first cruise, a woman came up to me and she was emotional. She just came up to me and said, Mom, I'm here on this cruise because of you. Can I give you a hug? And I said, yes. And I go, What do you mean you're here? She's like, I'll never forget. I went to a game in Sacramento, and I was wondering around aimlessly. And you came up and asked if you're okay. And you're like, I'm okay. Hey, just going through something. And you said, Can I give you a hug? And I gave her a hug. She lost her sister the day before. And her sister was a big fan and wanted to go to the game.

And instead, she said she lost her sister. She's like, I'm going to go contribute to my sister. And she was just walking around aiming. She didn't know what to do. And I guess I saw her in that moment. I don't really, unbelievably, vividly remember that. And she said, You gave me that hug, and I came on this crew so I could give you a hug back. And so when you think about those moments, you think about those which happen to every one of our players, Every one of our staff, there's moments like that. It feels so good. It feels like you have such purpose and meaning that if I can find a way, if I see something, whether it is just a podcast or something, and just send a quick video and say, Man, thank you. That was awesome. That inspired me. You've made my day. I'm pumped. You try to give it back. And so, again, because of how powerful it feels for me, how much joy, how much energy it gives me, I want to just give it back. And I can do a lot more, to be honest with you. I can do a lot more.

And I think about that like, I'm doing a lot more videos than I used to do letters. Videos are the one I do because I don't want people to feel the tone and the energy, and they don't always get my letters. I can send a letter and you never hear back. I like to try to hear that immediate like, Hey, I hopefully made your day because you made my day.

Yeah, it's contagious, too. It makes me want to do it for others. My I love that. One more question. Let's fast forward one year from now. You're, again, a forward resume type guy. So it's 2027. You and Emily are hanging out maybe after a long day of work.

What month are we in?

We're in February, 2027.

Okay.

I don't know if you drink champagne, but for the purpose of the question, I'm going to use it. The Jason Gaynard champagne question. Okay? What are you and Emily celebrating? What are you celebrating a year from now?

I know exactly where we're going to be.

You can't say?

Do you know Taylor? She has an idea.

I would love for you to share. Why not?

Because everything we do is very intentional. And how we announce things and how we share things is very intentional and to be right for the fans. I know you don't want a political answer, but we will have just done something that we've never done in history, and it will be one of the biggest things we've ever done and the most challenging and the hardest. And it's been in the making, and fans have been asking us this for years. In February of next year, we will look around after doing it, and we will say, Look at what we just did, and we will celebrate. It'll be something that shows that we can do anything.

Wow. Thank you, man. Thank you for having us, man. Thank you for being so accommodating in the tour, the whole deal. I love you, man. You're super, super inspirational for me. You make me think bigger. And there's not a ton of people in the world who do that. I really, really appreciate the way that you make others. It's contagious. You're enthusiastic enthusiasm. So I appreciate it, man.

And this was the third time. So the third show, third time is a charm here in Savannah.

It won't be the last. It won't be the last.

I appreciate it, brother. Thanks so much.

It is the end of the podcast The Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of The End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, rian@learningleader. Com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Jesse Cole. A few takeaways from my notes. Actually, go to YouTube, youtube. Com, com/rihanhawk to see this one in person. We filmed it in the new Savannah Bananas locker room. It was so cool. We'll also be releasing a vlog soon of the tour that Jesse gave me. We went all over Savannah, and it was so cool to see him talk through it. A few takeaways for my notes. I loved watching them practice. Every single repetition, they practice some trick, a backflip, bouncing the ball through their legs, a behind the back catch. Why do they do this? So that on game day, it is just their default setting. They don't even think. They automatically do trick plays. It's all about entertaining the fans. And I love also, they make their values visible. They are all over the place in the locker room. The sign Fans First is on every single player's locker. It's leading out to the field.

It also says, Tonight is someone's first time seeing our show. Not game, not a game. It's a show. Jesse was adamant that it says that. Your team cannot execute on principles they cannot see. I think it's worth it to put the reminders where the work actually happens. I thought it was really cool about being so transparent with their profit and loss statements, revenue expenses, player salaries. When I asked why, he said quickly, Fans first. They deserve to know everything. Transparency builds trust faster than any marketing trading campaign. Then we talked a lot, both on air and off, about his time spent with Mr. Beast, Jimmy Donaldson, trying to learn everything he can about YouTube. Jesse regularly puts himself in the rooms with people who are the best in the world at what they do. Also, Bob Iger at Disney, he spent quite a bit of time with him to learn how he's built that business. I think that that's inspiring for all of us to learn, how can we put ourselves in the rooms with people who are the best in the world at what they do, or at least who are excellent at what they do.

I think that will make us all better. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Jesse Cole. I think it will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. You also go to Spotify, Apple podcast, subscribe to the show, rate it, hopefully five stars, write a thoughtful review by doing all of that.

You are giving me the opportunity to take these amazing trips to Savannah, learn from the best in the world, and do what I love on a daily basis.

For that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.