He turned a broke team into a billion dollars

0:00 All right, this episode is a Billy of the Week. Me and Sam are so inspired by this one story, this one entrepreneur. I'm almost like slightly intimidated, Sam, uh by the story. It's like, Oh my God, the bar has been raised of what I need to go do. The person who we talked about, I pray this makes it to them and I pray that they come on the pod. And after listening to this, you're gonna agree that we have to get'em on. Amen. Also, the last two minutes of this podcast We need you guys to listen. We left you guys a message. Yes. Alright, enjoy. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

0:34 I put my law in it like my days off on a roll list. This is the most inspiring business that I saw when I was looking at the world of sports. There's a lot of things that made a lot of money. This one not only makes a lot of money. I literally in my notes wrote down in all caps. This guy deserves a billion dollars. And I want to be like him.

0:53 I don't even think I've ever had that thought before, right? Like, you know, but there's a lot of people who hate billionaires. There's I don't I'm not like that at all. I think it's great, you know, create a successful business, but I've never Heard a story and thought God damn, we need to give it's like if there was a Nobel Prize for business, we need to give it to this guy. This guy we're gonna talk about, it's one of these stories that I think I know all about it, and then I go and like deep dive and I'm like So much better than I thought. Yeah, so much more to know.

1:17 It's also another one of those stories where I almost didn't want to talk about it because I thought that like oh everyone has talked about it. But it's just too good. And there's more to it than I even realized. And I want to have'em on, so I was like, should we sell the whole story? But Well, whatever, gotta do it. Okay, here we go. We're talking about Savannah Bananas. So this is a business in baseball. This story is pretty incredible. So should we tell it from beginning, middle to end, or where where should I start here?

1:41 Yeah, let's give a let's give an origin story and then where they are now. Okay. Actually I'll start with the where they are now, then we'll go to the origin story. So the where they are now is The most impressive metric, they have a three million person waiting list. To buy tickets to their events. You can't buy it if you want to. You basically have to win the lottery in order to go to their event now.

2:00 And that's kind of a m you know, this is a business that's Probably worth close to a billion dollars, I would say, based on what I could tell. And It's about a hundred million in revenue. I think they do between seventy and a hundred million in revenue is my guess. I don't know what that would be worth, but it's definitely plausible that it will be worth a billion dollars if it's not already.

2:19 It's got more social they have more followers on TikTok and social media that follow their Their brand, their team. Then every single professional baseball team, including the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Dodgers. Combined.

2:34 All M L B le combined. These guys have more more engagement. So the i it's it's a very, very impressive visit. Okay, so what's the origin story of the Savannah banana? So Starts off with this guy, Jesse. And Jesse's the founder. He's himself like a college baseball player. He wants to go like you know, wants to make it. And I think he gets onto w like a college summer team or like a minor league team. Cape Cod. It's called it's called Cape Cod Summer League. It's like the premier like summer league for amateur baseball. And premier is a s so generous. Like that's like saying where the

3:05 Premier podcast of the world. Like premier, so there's major league baseball, then there's like triple A, double A, single A, then there's like another thing, and then there's College Summer League under all of that. Does me filming this from my bedroom not screen premiere? So

3:27 So he he's playing and then basically as he moves up in competition He's benched, basically. He's like not good enough to play. There's like better players. And he realizes while he's sitting on the bench, he's like, Man, the sport I loved and I've you know built my life around, had so much fun doing like Man, when you're watching pretty boring. Like it's it's really fun for the 10 guys out there, but damn, baseball's pretty boring to watch.

3:50 He said one story, he goes, I'm on the team. And I'm supposed to be like in it. And this is so boring. What is going on? Yeah, so he just has this thaw, this realization, and anyways he he gets his first job As

4:03 A general manager for a s uh college summer league team. called the Gastonia Grizzlies. Nothing we're not even at the Savannah Bananas yet. He's m he beg he gets to manage this team. Now you might think, well how's this young kid get to be the GM of this college summer league team. Well the team average two hundred fans per game. And had like

4:22 two hundred and sixty eight dollars in the checking account. So you know this team was basically on the brink. I was struggling. He comes on, he's not even gonna get paid at the beginning. And he's gonna be a manager of the team. And so he immediately starts hustling, like any entrepreneur does. He starts thinking, all right, how are we gonna turn this around? We gotta get fans to come to the game, buy tickets, we gotta sell some, you know, merch. We gotta what are we gonna do? How are we gonna actually get this to work? And so he starts

4:43 Doing a bunch of things that um You know, tr he starts getting i innovative. So he by day he's working this job and by night He's reading books about Disney. And um P. T. Barnum

4:57 And you know, the WWE and the UFC and Apple, and then you know, even things like The Grateful Dead and the Beatles, like how did they build their fan base? And he starts trying things. And he starts trying all kinds of fun. You know, hey, how about a fan comes out and throws out the first pitch? Hey, what if we uh what if we do this, you know, this this promotion where, you know, dollar hot dogs, whatever, little things like that. And it starts to work. It's a I'll fast forward through this part. He basically

5:20 starts to turn around the Gastonia Grizzlies. turns it from a th team that's about to go out of business to like, you know, small amount of cash flow. But again This is a summer league team. They're basically like You know, they play thirty games, it's only in the summer, there's only so much they're gonna be able to do.

5:36 But he's um Yeah, he's doing well. He's doing well with it. And I read about this or listened to it on the acquired podcast and they're like, So you what did you do? He was like, Well, I put a ticket to China. Or like a gift certificate or something like that to buy a one way certificate. Yeah, and they're like

5:55 So didn't want take it? He's like Well, no, it was a one way ticket and there was no accommodation and so no one actually went. But basically after the game like come out of the crowd and dig to China. Yeah. So he does things like that. And then he had like a grandma beauty pageant contest. He did like cute stuff like that. Yeah. And it it actually starts to work. And so he turns around the attendance. Um, and he's like, I'm gonna do anything I can to make noise. So he's like, How do I hijack existing news stories? So in baseball at the time, there's a big scandal around H G H, human growth hormone.

6:24 And he's like okay, we need to get in on the story. So he's like We fired our mascot, the the bear. The grizzly bear? He's like for taking BGA for BGH, bare growth hormone. And he's just doing anything he can to drum up any kind of interest in this stuff. And it starts to work and he basically spends

6:40 Nearly a decade. This is one thing I didn't under I didn't actually know. He spends About ten years tinkering and experimenting with these things before he ever he's like, I had one media story cover me. In my first ten years. He's like, but I got to experiment.

6:54 Um you know I got to I got to do things. And so and along the way Uh what happens? So he ends up meeting his wife. So he m he ends up meeting His future wife. Um, how did he do that? Well he's like I need to He's like, I wanna network and I wanna get to know people in minor league baseball, the one rung up from where he was. So he decides to host a free seminar.

7:14 And he gets the minor league baseball people to come and he's telling them all about grandma beauty pageants. And bare growth hormone and the dig to China. And they're like, What the hell is this guy talking about? And he's like, Hey, we turned attendance from two hundred fans a game to like a few thousand people per game, right? Like we 10X, we we 10X plus our t our average game attendance. And they're like, Okay, well, maybe this guy's not so crazy. And there's a woman there from Cal Ripkin baseball. And she calls um one of her employees and she's like, Hey, um I think her name's Emily. She's like, Emily. I just met your future husband.

7:46 And she's like, What? She's like, I just met this guy. He's as crazy and passionate and like nuts about baseball as you are. Look. You gotta meet this guy, just call him, talk business idea. And they do. And so he he ends up hiring her and for the first year they're just like, you know, like totally whatever. Um they just keep it professional or whatever, but it eventually they end up dating. He ends up proposing to her At one of the games on the field, she says yes, and she's as like part of the

8:12 Like proposal, they're happy. She's like, Oh, I'm gonna plan a weekend trip. To Savannah. And we're gonna go Savannah, Georgia. We'll just have fun there. And so they go from or I think they're in South Carolina. They go from South Carolina to Georgia. And um while they're there, she's like, Hey

8:27 Yeah, this is their idea of romance. She's like, Let's go check out this minor league stadium. And they check it out and they're and they're just blown away. They're like wow, this is a It's like field of dreams. They walk in and they're like, This is An incredible place. I could feel the history. I could feel feels like Babe Ruth played here. Like this is incredible. We gotta have a stadium like this. And they approach the stadium owner and they're like, hey. Is there any availability? They're like, No, no, we rent it out to this minor league baseball team.

8:49 Like okay. If anything ever changes. They ever leave. You call me and they're like, All right, sure, buddy. And um sure enough, like I don't know, a year later or something like that, the minor league baseball team goes to the city and demands like, We want a new stadium. We need like a thirty five million dollar stadium. And the mayor was like, dude

9:06 You're a minor league baseball team. We're not giving you a thirty-five million dollar stadium. And so they pack up and leave. And they call this guy and he comes and he basically cuts a deal. To sign a twenty thousand dollar a year lease. to create a team in Uh Savannah, Georgia. Alright, so

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9:49 And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars. These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now, you can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show. Have you been to a minor league game like this? I've never been to a money. Have you? Yeah, I ha I went to the I've been to the Cape Cod League.

10:23 the games that I've been to, to say that like you're buying a team That's like a little Ambitious. Like it's it's very uh grassroots. It's it's bleachers. You're missing the things that high school had call high school has my kid is playing. That's a pretty strong draw of why you're going to go.

10:40 Right, that's why I'm going. And in college is I go here. It's us. That's we. Minor league baseball doesn't have either of those advantages, right? Yeah, no, it it's like pretty whack. It's like uh I mean you really have to care about baseball. And like while all this is going on We've had um Dan from Overtime on.

10:58 Yeah. And he's kind of explained that basically like basketball and football has killed it lately because they understand highlight reels and they understand action and they're doing a really good job of telling some stories. Baseball doesn't. So over the last like fifteen years the social media's gotten popular. Baseball has absolutely gotten left behind a bit. And you know, it's supposed to be America's past time. It's not really America's past time at at the moment, in my opinion. And like so as past.

11:21 It's definitely the pass. It's the it's it's a pass time for sure. Uh push space like five times in between those two words. And so yeah, it it's ambitious to say that he was like buying something. I think he said when he bought the team that he was like, We bought it, but it's really just like seller financing, meaning the guy like gave it to me and I gave him a small percentage of some profits, which there was basically none. Yeah, exactly. Uh I think that was maybe the first team and this team they they kinda like it was they didn't buy an existing team. They created one as part of like the coastal plane league, but they owed the league like a few hundred thousand dollars to To like start this expansion team, basically. But he had a little reputation from the Grizzlies, right? He had a little he had something, which is why He was able to convince the stadium to give him the lease and the the league to give him a team. But now he's gotta make it happen. And so he starts

12:08 And it doesn't start well. I think in the first few months he said he sold literally two tickets. Um, and he's like, it was awful. Like we couldn't give away the tickets. And so he he tried to like host it a fan event. And he like promoted it. He's knocking on doors. He going on radio and he's trying to promote this fan event for the new team of Savannah. It was called like the Savannah. minor league baseball team. It was not called the Savannah Bananas yet.

12:32 He's like so few people showed up to our fan event. that the conference center, they like didn't even charge me for the food. They felt so bad. Like they felt so bad how poorly the event went. And basically these guys run out of money. So they're like they're on the brink. These guys being the husband and wife. The him and his wife, they're they're running out of money. And his wife is like all right, um Let's sell the house.

12:56 He's like, What? And she's like, Yeah, let's do it. We are all in. And so they sell their house. They move into a garage that's kinda turned into a studio apartment. They Sleep on a twin air mattress. He's like, dude, we were sleeping in socks every night. Like he's like, you know

13:12 Nobody sleeps in socks. We had to sleep twin. Air mattress and a twin mattress. They use all their savings and they just try to keep the team alive. And he's like I do I kept going because He's like, I would read books and he's like Walt Disney went bankrupt with his like I forgot his call, like laphomatic or whatever his thing was called.

13:30 Uh he was like P. T. Barnum struggled. Like this is just our struggle era. Like this is our struggle season. Like we will do this. We gotta coin that term. This is our struggle season. Yeah, exactly. The pain cave. He's in the pain cave and he's decides um He's like, Okay, first thing we need to do is we need to come up with a team name. And so they do, he's like, All right, we're gonna go to the community because he's trying to get the community on their side. Community didn't didn't really really like them. They had lost their minor league baseball team. And instead they had this like college like this like

13:56 this other team that was like, you know, the Savannah baseball team. And so he's trying to get them on board and so he has like a naming contest. And a sixty two year old nurse. submits the name and it was mostly names like the pirates and like just like standard baseball team names, right? Like nothing out of the ordinary. The sixty two year old nurse submits

14:15 Bananas. And he's like Savannah bananas. I like it. And everyone's like, No, you can't do that. He's like

14:22 And we have He's like we have the The Bananas. That's our dance team. It's a it's a bunch of grandmas, the nanas. And he's like, and then we have male chew leaders, the man nanas. And he starts coming up with all these ideas about like how he's gonna use this. And he ends up like I think he goes to a design agency. Did you hear this part? Like there's a lot of this, by the way, is from the acquired podcast. They did a great job with uh sitting down with him.

14:46 Uh so shout out to our to our friends at the Acquired Podcast. Um, but he one of the things he talks about is like he They were skimpy on everything, right? Sleeping on the air mattress, but he's like The brand is gonna really matter for this. And so he goes to an agency, they quote him twelve thousand dollars. He's like Cool. Me and my wife live off forty dollars a week right now.

15:03 So um I don't have tw I don't have a thousand. I don't definitely don't have twelve of those thousands. Like I don't really know what I'm gonna do here. And so they're like, dude, we can't do that. Just make a simple logo, we'll just do it ourselves. He's like, No, no, no. Like this is gonna be the logo that we print on everything like I gotta find a way to do this. He ends up paying for it, he gets the logo and he's like so proud of it. Which is kind of amazing because now

15:24 You know, years later. These They do like Tens of millions, like twenty, thirty million a year in just merch sales, right? Like the brand has totally taken off. Is it the same logo?

15:34 I don't know if it's the exact same or if they like touched it up, but the the the the core of it's the s the same. So anyways, he starts doing and he starts basically coming up with all these different ways to m to make baseball less boring, right? So like What does he actually do? So he's like, All right. He studies the end to end experience of an event. So he's like, First of all, when you buy the ticket, you see the ticket price is whatever. Eighty dollars, but then when you check out it's like ninety eight.

15:57 And'cause there's all these fees and taxes or whatever. So Savannah Bananas, here's what we do. It's a flat twenty five dollar ticket and we pay your taxes. So you will y it's twenty five dollars and you pay twenty five dollars So and they pay now millions of dollars a year.

16:11 Just paying the t the sales tax for their fans. Uh, which is like kind of amazing. But it says something like about what they represent. And, you know, I think their company name is even called like Fan First. In L C Fan First Entertainment or something like that. And that became the North Star. He's got this quote where he was like, I read that like in order to get big muscles, you gotta like, you know, flex your muscle and work out every day and I needed ideas. And so I had this thing where I was like I think he said starting in two thousand sixteen, right when the Savannah Bananas got going.

16:39 He was like, I'm gonna write down ten new ideas every single day because it's easy to do five or three a day. But once you get to six, seven, eight, nine, ten, you really have to start working hard. And I needed to flex that muscle every day'cause I needed really good ideas all the time to figure out how to make this great. And I think around this time when he's doing the exact quote on that. So he goes I started an idea book in twenty sixteen. I had 10 ideas a day, a lot of bad ideas, seventy, eighty percent terrible. But you gotta work your idea muscle.

17:07 And by the way. This is Everybody says the same thing. W go listen to the Mr. Beast podcast we did. He's like Every day I would wake up and I would come up with twenty, thirty, forty YouTube video ideas.

17:18 I just realized that The idea of what the video is about is the most important thing. So I'm gonna think of more ideas. I'm gonna open up a dictionary at the source. Go to a random page, whatever word I pick. I'm gonna brainstorm it. And on the podcast we did with him, we pulled up a random word generator. And we started pulling up or putting random words and he started coming up with video ideas on the spot. He's like, I've been doing this since I was twelve.

17:38 Ha. Dude, this is awesome. And I think what I didn't realize was around this time when it got going, it was a real baseball team. So they were they're still playing normal baseball. But then he was like, Okay, what all is boring about this? He's like, Can you believe That this is supposed to be an athletic sport.

17:55 And you can walk someone. Like they just get to like walk. Like they could walk to base. That's ridiculous. Or he was like he said, I brought my stopwatch and I timed how long it took a pitch to like get to you know, have the pitcher to like get going and then for a strike or a hit to happen. And I noticed that the

18:11 the the batters can step out of the box. Ridiculous. That took twenty seven seconds every time. And he like starts like nailing the experience down perfectly because it's sort of like when you own a baseball team, you're like, Oh no, it ain't broke. We're not gonna fix it. Like just don't worry about any of that nonsense. And he was like No no no, it's all broken. Everything is broken. We have to figure this out the the the more accurate thing is It's broke, but that's always the that's the way we've always done it. Exactly. It's very ninety percent of the world right now. Yeah, it's broke it's the way we've always done things. And so he comes up with all these crazy ideas, and I didn't realize all of the rules, but it was something like uh foul balls caught by fans count as being out.

18:47 walks are uh f are are or the fourth ball is you still have to sprint and I think you can get called out. games that you have and the defense has to they throw the ball amongst all the all the defenders have to basically touch the ball Um In order in between a walk, you know what I mean? That's crazy. If you butt, you're ejected.

19:05 'Cause there's nothing wimpier than a bunt. And then he also says um uh games have to be capped at two hours. And on that podcast he was like everyone said it had to be two and a half hours. It had to be this. And he's like, No, but children need to be home at bed by this time. And this is gonna be a family event. Therefore it has to be a strict two hours. And he called the whole thing I didn't realize it had a name. It's called Banana Ball. And so at first, yeah, they now they have that kind of their own format of a game, basically, and now they're have their own league and all this. So it definitely elevated. Uh over time.

19:34 But yeah, he did he did all those things. He also would do things like They he has a team uh his team would basically It started off with he would watch security footage after the game. So he's like, Oh, I could use the cameras in the stadium. And I can see when people leave. I can see when they get bored.

19:51 I could see when they go to the sea. I could see how long the concessions take. And so he started furiously watching security footage. to understand the fan experience and now today He has uh a team that basically they take a snapshot of every all the bleachers. Every like uh I forgot like what interval, like every ten minutes or fifteen minutes or something like that.

20:08 In orders so he could see when people get bored, when they get disengaged, when they leave. And th he uses that, then he reverse engineers, Okay, what's going on in the game right now? And how do I like do that better? Not to use Mr Beast again, but he did remember when we were sitting there, he was showing us the same thing about his videos, right? He's like Here's the retention curve.

20:26 And like see this dip, and we're like Yeah, so what? It's a little it was a little wiggle. He's like No no no. That Dip is like

20:33 Three million people stopped watching the video. He's like that dip. This dip. This is horror. He's like, This is the worst thing in the world. So it was like what is that? That's the ad read. He's like, So we need to make our ad read

20:46 As entertaining as the content. And the takeaway that I had with Mr Beast then, as well as what I have with this guy, is uh You say to yourself, When I get big, I'll worry about that stuff. It's the other way it's the other way around. You war you worry about that stuff and then you get big. Yeah, there there's uh you you remember like the Steve Jobs

21:05 quote about like what his His product. Strategy basically. And he used to say Uh, everything had to be insanely great.

21:13 If you've talked to people who worked with Steve Jobs, they say he used to always say this phrase, insanely great. And Normally when people hear insanely great, they're like, Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Because they're focused on the word great. And nobody can disagree with great. Yeah, who doesn't want great? I want great. You want great? We all want great. Fantastic.

21:30 It's the insane part. That's the part nobody wants to do. That's the price tag when you go look at the thing. It's like all are you willing to be like kind of insane about the level of details, right? Steve Jobs basically saying. We're not shipping the Macintosh because the inside casing of the machine is not finished. And they're like, Steve, nobody's ever gonna see the inside. He's like, But we saw it. You know, like so we're not s shipping this until that's finished. It's like it's a little insane, right? You you're gonna try to do insane things, you know, when when they were doing the iPhone, I remember there's like all these stories about the touch keyboard. So they were like

22:00 Steve, like we'll put a little keyboard on there like the Blackberry. He's like, No, we're not doing the keyboard. They're like, Well, but Steve, you know Blah blah blah, like, you know, we could do this digital keyboard, but it's not so great. He's like No, we need to make it and it needs to be insanely great. And they thought like We don't even know if this is technically possible. We're not just we're not trying to be lazy here.

22:17 Uh, but he's like, That's what we're doing. So you gotta figure it out. That's the job. And uh you know, it's uh it's the insane part of insanely great that actually matters. Listen up, the old playbook is slowing you down. AI. Broke the funnel. Loop marketing.

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23:02 All right. Back to the pod. Well I had two takeaways from reading about this guy, but the that's the first one, which is

23:09 So I I I mean I I run a business, you run businesses and The hard part is whether to be a dictator or like an elected official. Like do you just tell people, this is what we are doing, get on board. Or do you delegate and say, Let's surface some of the best ideas and uh we'll kinda figure out what to do. And this guy does not seem like he takes the first route.

23:29 He seems like he has a vision and he says, This is what we're doing. How wonderful is this? Let's do it. And oftentimes when you have a company, I will say ideas and people shit on it and they'll say, Here's all of the reasons why we can't do it. And you know the phrase like look, do you just want a yes man or what? And I'm like Yeah. I do. I want a yes, man. I just that's all I want. I want a yes, man. Uh and that's what this guy kinda did. Like, dude, have you heard some of his other stories? Like there's there's this guy, Jesse, he's got so many like layers and layers of little stories. Like, for example, I think at the game I've actually never been to a game, but I think at the game they have like the eleven rules and he's like we did

24:05 He's like what he said we picked eleven because K, which is stands for strikeout and potassium. Uh, which is what is uh in a banana. Uh that's the eleventh letter in the alphabet. Like there's like all these like weird symbolism where if I told an employee that, they'd be like, Dude, can you just like leave my office and let me like design this logo? Yeah. Did I feel you when you're like

24:25 You have an idea that's like a little Either it's just I can't prove that this is right. Like nobody can prove it's an unprovable thing. Or

24:33 It seems like a little much. Right. And you know, maybe it's seem maybe it's even something that's unserious. Like maybe we should be focusing on the serious things. And this is like This is extra in some way. But you're convinced that you know, you feel like this will be cool if we do it. This will be special if we do it. This will be unique if we do it. And

24:51 The amount of energy that it takes to kinda like bring people on board is so hard. That's what I did. I basically changed my criteria of who I hire. I realized I could not change Myself to turn that switch off.

25:04 And I can't change Like the process. Where I'm like No, I will just like magically change people's minds. Like I so I basically changed my criteria for hiring where I you know, I I I used to have the buffet thing, which is like

25:17 Energy, intelligence, integrity, like those are the three things you want. And I just added the fourth one, which is like are you down? And I'm basically like, are you just down where if we just have an idea, you're down to do it. That doesn't mean you say yes to every idea. That's not what that means. It just means like look Sometimes there's no evidence. Sometimes this is extra.

25:34 Sometimes this is unproven. Sometimes this sounds bad, but like we gotta try and have some faith that like we're gonna figure it out as we go. Like sometimes this sounds way out of our league and we're punching way above our weight. But like why not? Why not try this? And so like And which is you've met Ben. Ben is like the most down guy in the world.

25:53 I don't know if you've met Diego, but Diego's the same way where it's like There's probably more skilled people than them about the like certain tasks. Sure. But I know they're down, which means I can bring a fragile new idea, like a newborn around'em and They know how to raise that baby. They're not gonna be like, Oh, what is this? Right? Like because those ideas are so fragile that if you know

26:13 The other people on your team. Or not down? What happens is it's not that they even shoot your ideas down, it's that you censor yourself. You're like, I'm not even gonna bring it up. Right. Like there's a part of you subconscious. Yeah, for sure.

26:25 That just doesn't even bring the ideas to the table, doesn't have the conviction to say it, because you kind of know where they're at, right? It's like a friend who's easily offended. You're like, I'm just not even gonna bring up bring this up, because I kinda know where this goes. It's hard to convince people to do stuff just'cause So at a company like particular I mean, obviously in tech, where you're like show me the data and I'm like There is no data, brother. It's just soul. Like are like I it this just feels like the right thing to do. And it's hard to convince people to do that. And in fact, uh we should have this guy, Cole, come on the pod and really just talk about management. That would be actually quite interesting. I was gonna ask you, y you did a pod with the guy from

26:59 Uh the uh un what's it called Unreasonable Hospitality. What is it called? It's gonna be Yeah, so his name is Will Goudera. It's gonna be such a good podcast. So this guy will, he um Started um He was a chef, but he uh was most famous for owning Eleven Madison Avenue, which is or Eleven Madison Avenue, yeah, that's what's called. So it was awarded the best restaurant in the world. But then he was famous because of two things. One, he wrote the book on reasonable hospitality, and two, that book inspired one of the best episodes from the T V show The Bear, where the kind of dummy cousin goes to this restaurant to learn how to be a good restauranteer and he starts by like polishing the forks and then the next step is like doing the uh the second lowest uh uh job and then the one up, one up, and they just sweat the details

27:37 on everything and Will was amazing and we had this whole podcast is gonna be out I think in two weeks or so. And this whole podcast was about how can tech companies do that. And so his story was he started by uh overhearing a tourist at his restaurant say, uh You know this This trip was amazing. I got all this famous food, but I didn't get to do one thing. I just wanted to get a New York street hot dog. And Will, the owner, overheard that and he ran outside and he bought a three dollar hot dog and he chopped it up in a really pretty way and put a pretty garnish and he served it to the tourists and they were like mind blown. And he was like up, that emotion

28:10 That is what we are doing from now on. And so he gave uh uh he had a budget at his company at his restaurant to do crazy stuff. And so instead of coming in and giving children's Uh cranes, he would give them an Etchis sketch. Or uh uh and he would have like the etch a sketch waiting at the table for them. Just all these little small details that people normally forget to do, and he would just sweat the details on them. And that's the idea of unreasonable hospitality, which is go to go above and beyond for your customers, which is exactly what Savannah Bananas is all about. Our friend George Mack has this great phrase, which is um, they only remember your weird. And

28:43 Uh I love that because he basically what he was what he means by that is Look, if you just do the expected norms You don't it's like table stakes things. You get literally zero credit for that. If you don't do them, you get docked.

28:57 But if you do them You didn't get any points on the board yet. It's still love love, right? Like you have not actually done anything. Until you've done something weird. Now weird can be

29:08 really good. It could be just it's has to be out of the ordinary. And that's all people will remember about you. So whether you're building a personal brand or a product. Or yours the Savannah bananas and you say we pay your sales tax. That's weird. That's memorable. That's something I'm talking about. And it was a decision he made ten years ago. To do that.

29:26 It is a decision that cost him money, but how much did it build in goodwill and brand? How much did it show, not telling That hey, we actually give a shit about our fans.'Cause every single sports team will say Fans are the most important thing. We really care about our fans. as they gouge the shit out of them. Right. Like the actions and the words go in two different directions. And just by doing something weird like a statement

29:46 Um that was made by Let's say like Paying the the sales tax for the fan. Um or you know, being like hey It this you pay this one ticket price and then it's all you can eat concessions when you come in. Right, like doing things that were remarkable, worth worthy of remark.

30:00 Um is is what gets you the credit. It's you're gotta you're only remembered for doing what's weird. Did you pill put pick anything else up from that guy, Will of like Did it give you an idea of something to do in your own? Well, he did a couple he said he let me tell you two things. He said one thing that was amazing. He said uh I forget the exact quote, but it was something like uh every mistake is an amazing opportunity to blow someone away because he was like people will remember the stake mistake that you make and then they will remember you going above and beyond to fix it. But then when he talked about the customer experience.

30:28 Uh I had this idea and we're implementing it this at Hampton. So at Hampton, the way it works is you apply to join and three days later we'll review your application and invite you if you uh are on paper, if you are in one of our cities and you have the revenue threshold, we will send you an email and say, you can sign up to interview with one of our folks to see if you're any good or or a good fit. And so we had this idea, what if everyone who applied on Hampton, which is dozens and hundreds of people a day sometimes. What if within 10 minutes we phone call them and say, I just saw your application come through. Here's the process. I just want to let you know we see you and this isn't just some form that no one pays attention to. I see you, I'm going to take great care to like handle you. You may not get in, but like I'm here and I pay attention. And so it that's an an example of what it inspired me to do. But the idea that Will had that really inspired me was how you train your staff.

31:20 He was like, I just have to train my staff like crazy to care about this stuff. And he's like, basically, I'm like a propagandist, where like I have to repeat the same phras over and over and over and over again to get them to bind to these ideas. And so this is where the idea, it's so funny, you said insanely great. That's the exact same thing with unreasonable hospitality. He was like, Everyone likes hospitality. Right. But the unreasonable part is the hard part. And so that was actually really cool. That was actually really uh wise of you to catch that insane part. That's actually the the brilliance. With him it was unreasonable. Uh, and so this is like the part that we're actually describing here with Cole, which is like it's easy to say these crazy ideas. It's actually Hard to be wacky enough to like follow through on all of them.

31:59 Yeah, Dan Porter who's who's Probably our closest friend who does this, who's like actually done this and he did it with overtime. When he was on the pod last time, I don't think you were there, but he said a very simple thing. He goes, If your strategy is something that everybody agrees with, it's not a strategy. So he's like, you know, anybody's like, you know. We're gonna have Great customer service. He's like, Cool.

32:17 You and a hundred other companies in your space would all agree that's a good strategy. So he's like it's therefore Not a strategy at all. He's like, you have to have something that people would disagree with. So he's like, for example, For overtime. In the first year we replied.

32:32 I think to a million comments. On social. He's like that's a strategy that people would disagree with. Some people would say that's a waste of time. Right, like people would say, like that's not worth and he's like I was doing it myself, the founder, the CEO. Like That is a strategy you could disagree with. You could say that's stupid. That's foolish.

32:50 And he's like It doesn't have to be that it is superfluous. It just has to be not something that everybody already agrees. Is Is the thing to do. And so, you know, same thing unreasonable, which is like, Yeah, we all agree that we should have great hospitality.

33:03 How many people would agree that we should be listening for when the guy says Ah man, I'm my flights out tonight and I haven't tried the New York hot dogs. I really wanted one. to then be like, leave the kitchen, go get a hot dog from a street vendor, come in. Break the food code, cut it up, turn you know, serve it on a dish. That that's the part that Others I wouldn't even think of, let alone

33:21 Uh and and you know, definitely wouldn't institutionalize as like part of their core strategy to do things like that. And we'll we'll give a really tactical bit that I I would be curious to hear Cole's opinion, uh the C the founder of Savannah Bananas. I was like, Okay, so walk me through the profitable the profitability of this. Like it sounds like Cole, is that his name? Jessie. Jesse Cole. Jesse Call. Oh you' oh you're doing the last name thing. Got it. Uh not on purpose. I wasn't trying to be that cool. Jesse. His name's Jesse. Jesse Cole. He had two last names or two first names. Um Will said something, I was like, Will, how much of your money do you spend on this? He was like, Well, I basically allocate Uh five percent.

33:56 So if I'm a twenty margin business, I'm willing to go down to a fifteen percent margin business. I'm gonna use that five percent to do wacky stuff. And I anticipate that it will take most companies six to twelve months. to make that money back and for it to prove to be profitable. And so I'd be curious what this guy says. Uh did it take twelve months to become like Some of these uh weird

34:19 norms that he was trying to create within his organization. Did it take 12 months for the customers to catch on and for that story to get out to people and then to start coming back via more tickets? I mean, how do you measure showmanship? 'Cause this guy this guy's pure showmanship. And if anyone who listens to this podcast, you know me and Sam We are We appreciate good showmanship and that's what literally this guy is. He's like a modern day P T Barnum.

34:41 So where are they now? So they're at like what a hundred million in revenue and they're like I I live in Manhattan and they're that one of their buses drove by yesterday. Give you a sense of what's going on. So yeah, the revenues, let's call it like Our estimate. Somewhere between seventy and a hundred million.

34:56 I believe that the company is probably worth five hundred million to a billion. They own one hundred percent of it. If you just take their low so last year, two million people came to their games. Um two million fans. So it's ba it' bas basically doubled. It went five hundred K, one million, two million. This year should be, you know, over three million. If you just take the lowest possible ticket price they could have, twenty five dollars.

35:17 Which their normal tickets are thirty five to forty. Yeah. But if you just take the the lowest ticket price, twenty five bucks, two million, that's fifty million in just ticket sales. Then you have tens of millions in merch.

35:27 Um they have a three million person waiting list. They are now doing a world tour. So it's been up till now just like kind of a a North America thing. But they've been s you know, they went from like these minor leagums to doing the biggest ballparks in the country. I mean in a two day span they did a hundred and fifty thousand people. watching their games. Like it's insane what's going on.

35:49 Like we talked about Savannah bananas two years ago, three years ago. It wasn't this. And and you know, he started this thing, I think I think he started with the Gastonia Grizzlies or whatever, like in two thousand and eight or something like that. Like it's been a long time. That this guy's been doing this, which is why I had in all caps, this guy deserves a billion dollars. You do the you do you do what he did, you deserve a billion dollars. It's very inspirational,'cause he definitely has like that everyday v guy type of vibe.

36:13 I kinda get emotional like reading about a story. I'm like I like I'm I'm on your team. I don't care what you do, I'm I'm bought into you. Yeah. Uh and then the husband and wife uh bit is really great. Like I'm all in on this guy. Yeah, he's amazing. My last company, The Hustle, the year we sold, I was thirty one years old and we were gonna do about eighteen million dollars in revenue. I frankly didn't have a lot of peers. I didn't know a lot of people who were ambitious like me.

36:40 And this meant that I was making decisions that could cost me maybe five, ten, even more millions of dollars worth of money. I was making them all by myself. This all changed, however, when I got a group of peers. And that's, by the way, how this podcast sort of started. Sean was in my group. And we met every month. It sort of became a personal board of directors. And it frankly changed my life.

37:03 And that's why I started my company Hampton join Hampton. dot com. The entire idea is that we make core groups just like this, just like the one that I had of other entrepreneurs who have been there, done that, and we give you guys a time and a place to sit down and have these very honest, confidential conversations where you can share business ideas. You could talk about hiring, you could talk about all these decisions that you typically have to make all by yourself. The biggest risk in my opinion is not failing. You're you're gonna be fine. Your business is probably gonna work.

37:33 It's that in ten years you look back and you think, damn, I blew it. I blew this opportunity because I was making decisions by myself. I was making decisions out of fear and I did not grow. I did not maximize the opportunity. I'm telling you, it can save you ten years of headache and of heartache, and you can make better decisions so much faster. And the best part is that with Hampton, these core groups that we make, we make'em in real life, in your city. We're in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, London, LA, Miami, New York, SF, Toronto, and Vancouver. And so if you're running an internet company that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue, or you've raised at least three million dollars in funding, or you've sold a company for at least$10 million, go to joinham.com.

38:17 This is my company, Sam from MFM. I review every single person who applies. So again Joinhampton.com I have a question though. Do you think that this is gonna be like WWE WWF where it becomes like a sustained thing where it lasts forever? Or is this gonna be like a Harlem Globe Trotters where like it c the shtick gets tired?

38:38 I think both. I think it is Harlem Globe Trotters, not WWE, but I don't think it needs to end. So um you know,'cause Like I take my kids to all kinds of like inter Like we took my kids to Monster Jam last weekend. Can you explain Monster Jam to all of our foreign listeners, please? Ha

38:55 This is, by the way, this is amazing because this is normally the type of thing you're explaining to me. Oh yeah. Please do it. All right, so what is Monster Jam? Monster Dam is basically The best day ever for any little boy that loves like hot wheels and trucks, which is For my Count in my son's school, like

39:13 Fifty of all young boys love cars and trucks. Um and so what You know, you're normally at home playing with these like little like two inch Hot Wheels cars, right? Or maybe a remote control car and then suddenly your parents take you. To the Oakland Coliseum.

39:30 And you walk in. And it's literally a circle of like it's a dirt, like it's like a pitcher's mound. It's just a dirt mound in the middle of the arena. There's nothing else there. There's not like There's just one dirt mound. And then they have like these characters like the WWE. They have these like eight

39:47 Or ten trucks that will kinda like come out. And there's Megalodon, he's the shark one, and all the kids are doing the shark Shark, yeah, but I'm gonna go to the wheel. Yeah, my son has like a grave digger thing. And gr I mean Gravedigger's like the their undertaker. So he's like their like star, you know, star star thing.

40:06 And they basically the trucks come out. And they're No, like um Like. Two times the size of a Hummer, I would say. Like maybe three times. I don't know. It's not it's not that big. It's like you know, big, but not that big.

40:17 And they basically do tricks. And trucks like that can only do so many tricks. It's like they went on their back wheels. They went on their front wheels. Dude, could you backward now? Yeah, like they try to do like a flip and then half time they crashed out. And then the they're like a a crew comes out like with fire extinguishers and like toes the truck away and now

40:34 You know, you're not gonna see Gravedigger for the rest of the show. But they have like then they have like m guys come out on like dirt bikes and do tricks, which are way cooler as well. So It's this two hour family event. You get your kids you know, a s like a What's it called? Like a snow cone, popcorn. And they get to see crazy trucks and they're sitting there with the earmuffs on'cause it's too loud. And then they leave and you buy the merch or you buy them a car and they're like

40:56 Super happy and you're out. four hundred dollars. Okay, so that's th that's what Monster Jam is, dude. Dude, a grave grave digger, when he goes, it rattles your soul. That's how loud it is. Like it's not just a loudness, it's a it's a feeling. Dude, that's how life guns on too. It's so loud. You feel it. You f it's like a train when it goes by you. Like you feel the rattle. It's amazing. And I'm just Googling it. So I'm just you know it's grain of salt. But

41:24 I think it it says it sells four million tickets a year. There's no way. Is that true? Yeah, I believe that. I believe that. I mean it w there was probably ten thousand people at the event I was at. And you know, they're doing that. They were there for three days and then they're going to the next city. And it's just a traveling circus of monster jack monster truck. So I don't see any reason why. The travelling circus.

41:43 of um a banana ball can't be a sustained thing. So I do think what it is, the category, is more like Harlem Globe Trotters. It's a family show. You're gonna come, you're gonna have a great two or three hours. You're gonna be entertained, you're gonna laugh, you're gonna have the dances, there's gonna be some catchy things in your head, you're gonna remember a c few of the characters. And then you're gonna go home.

42:02 And like you're not gonna You're not it's not something you're gonna tune into, you know, three nights a week like the NBA. Uh that's fine. It doesn't need to be that. It's an amazing live touring show. Man. So the guy who owns um

42:16 Monster Jam. He also owns the Barnabin and Bailey Circus. And he's on Forbes as being worth three or four billion dollars. Who is he? His name it's called the Feld Entertainment. So Feld owns um

42:31 Ringling Brothers. Barnuman Bailey Circus, they own the Monster Jam, they own Monster Energy Supercross, and they own Sesame Street Live. And uh the owner's name kinda felt. Uh and it's just a huge Three thousand person company, according to Wikipedia.

42:48 Yeah, unbelievable. And this is also stuff that's like super AI proof, right? Like live out of home entertainment. It's only gonna go like up, you know, you know what I mean? Like 'C people are gonna always crave something that's different than what they have in abundance, which is like digital online entertainment. And so And then these are these things are scarce. Like there's not that many. And especially if you could do the

43:09 what W W E's done or what Yeah, Moss Jam's done where y you start to like become fans of certain whether it's players, teams, characters in the show. That's you know, that's always gonna be um, you know, an entertaining thing. By the way, his father started Ringling Brothers uh circus. And his son, Kenneth, eventually took it over and that's now they're the ones who only want to just imagine like

43:32 It's like the family business. The family business is like We run Monster Jam. We we started the Ringling Brothers circus, like the the dinner table. Like what's going on? It's so much better than what we do. Can you like Or the baseball like I so I I wonder uh the Cole family, the owners of um S Savannah Banana, I'd imagine they have children now. I wonder how awesome that is to see your parents do a job like that.

43:58 Yeah, it's also tough. I mean you're on the road like all the time. It's live. It's it's messy, right? You don't get to just like push a button and like oop, we send the we sent the newsletter to three million people. Like oh, I push the button and like the ads are running all night and then the uh When I ran the hustle, we called the send button on like Sale Three or whatever we we said We're gonna click the money button. Guys ready? We're gonna click the money button. Click the money button. And we would just call it the money button. Cause I know every time I hit send, there was that one point we were making like Thirty or forty grand a day. I was like all right. Click the money button. Boom. Right. And uh this guy does not have a money button.

44:31 He has a a money bus where he has to get on the bus for two weeks. Yeah, exactly. A lot more money probably than what I made, but uh Yeah, it's a money bus. All right, we um we ended up spending the whole episode on this Van Man ass, but that's cool.

44:46 I think we should just Call it that. All right. Um Is that it? Is that the pod then?

44:53 Yeah, I think we should all go. And just brainstorm ideas. For the craziest marketing things we could do in our business now. I think we should all go right down Twenty. Totally out of the box ideas and do that every day for the next sixty days until you have like

45:08 You know, three three ideas that are gonna be like You know, attention getting and uh unreasonable in some way. And I here's um all right, so we did this thing called the the Gentlemen's Agreement, by the way, where people would uh click like on our YouTube page if they've ever watched more than one video. Of ours and uh that was that was the way of paying it forward. I have a c I have a request, Sean, for our listeners. You and I have well this we'll do it.

45:32 We'll do a two part one. The first is uh If you have a connection to Jesse Cole. I want him on the pod. We want him on the pod. I don't have any connections to him, do you? No.

45:44 Yeah, so I would love to get him on the pod. If you get if you can help us get him on the pod, uh we will that that's that's you fulfilling the gentleman's agreement and we will uh thank you. But I think we gotta do a second one now with Spotify, right? Yeah, so people don't know this. 'Cause you know, you're busy and you have lives and you eat food and you sleep. But we doubled on Spotify last month. Spotify is growing like crazy as a podcasting platform.

46:07 And it used to be like five percent of our streams then it became ten percent of our streams. Fifteen percent. It's like twenty five, thirty percent of our streams now. It is growing. It is exploding. We added our video to Spotify. So if you have Spotify, you can watch. The podcast there.

46:22 There's comments there. We're replying to comments that we're really investing in Spotify. We think Spotify is kind of amazing for this. And we would love to grow. More on Spotify. And so if you like to listen to Spotify, um, if you listen to music on Spotify, if you got a Spotify account, Get on there and just type my first million and click follow. It's just a follow button. It's totally free.

46:40 Nothing else. But you will have reserved your space in the gentleman's Hall of Fame. Which we are creating. And here's what we'll do. The gentleman's hall of fame is going. A gentleman's hall of fame is gonna uh in my head when I think of a gentleman's hall of fame, it's a little bit different than a bunch of nerds clicking uh a button on their Spotify. Converting a gentleman's club, you might say.

47:06 It's gonna I I thought it was gonna look a little different than just a bunch of uh neckbeards clicking like on Spotify. But also uh leave a comment on Spotify for this episode and we'll actually reply to all of them. So long as it's not like five thousand. So as long as it's less than five thousand, we'll reply to every single comment. Even if it's just like What's up? Hold on. Would Jesse Cole say as long as it's less than five thousand? Were you listening to the podcast, sir? What kind of What kind of not not Savannah worthy comment was It's not called reasonable hospitality, Sam. Yeah. We're gonna tiptoe our way in.

47:43 This was me getting in the pool at uh the pool party this weekend and Half hour in. I'm still under the nipple line and I'm just like, Hey, I just take my time, okay? I just need my time to get in. I will get in. Okay, every comment. Seriously, make a comment on Spotify because that actually signals uh we're testing something. That's low past five thousand just so Sam gets the

48:06 Taste this. That signals that you're listening on Spotify and I think it's gonna go make us go up in the rankings. I think last week or two weeks ago, I think we were the thirty fifth or something, most popular podcasts in the world on Spotify. Uh all categories. All categories, not just business. And so we're gonna we're gonna game the system in front of everyone. So just comment on Spotify and we'll reply. Um all right, that's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world a no way

48:31 be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looking back. All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot Podcast Network, but we're not the only ones. There's other podcasts on this network too, and maybe you liked it. Maybe you should check them out. One of them that I want to draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you can make, the new habits you could do, the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference, that's what that podcast is all about. Check it out. It's called Nudge. And you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.

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