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

0:00 You gotta create attention first. If people don't know who you are, good luck trying to create something. You guys have a multi million person wait list for tickets. On TikTok, you have ten times more followers than the New York Yankees. Ideas are more valuable than anything. Whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. No one comes home and said, Oh, did you hear this thing? It's so normal. You get excited about remarkable, unforgettable. You're one of our Mount Rushmore type of guys because you're playing the game on extreme hard mode, and I respect you for it. It's way harder than I thought. So we completely ran out of money. We had nothing left. And then Emily turned to me and said, We have to sell our house. So we sold our house. Did you have conversations of wanting to quit? I mean it was Brutal.

0:37 I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like a day's off. On the road, less travel, never. What's up, guys? Oh my God, it's Jesse Cole. What's up? Yeah.

0:51 How you guys doing? We almost wore the same thing today. You should have. You should have. Uh there's a lot more going around these days. I think I'm keeping them in business. When did you start the yellow suit, yellow hat? What was the day? That's the crazy thing. People didn't even realize that. It was before the bananas. That's the wild thing. Oh yeah, man. We we had a team in you talking about first million, we had a team in Gastonia, so I was uh I was wearing this before'cause of P T Barn. I'm inspired by him, not just to be the same. Same you know, regular host like everyone else. So

1:20 Do you know what you're getting into at all, uh with this? Well I no, I've listened to your show and I've I I I'm I'm I'm ready I'm ready to rock. I love the one with the uh to the the owner of the uh The jazz? That was an interesting that was more of a sit down. when I was hanging out with him, I was telling him a bunch of Savannah Banana anecdotes. I was like, You gotta You gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta get the grandmas on the court. He loves hearing all the other things he should do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably what he likes, Sean. You probably like that. No, it was very well done and very well produced as well. You guys did a great job with that.

1:50 Well thanks, man. Well we're excited to have you here because you are um You're one of our like entrepreneurial Mount Rushmore type of guys because you took some the you know, the it's the it's about the gap. It's about the gap of going from nothing to something and the way How far you went with nothing to something incredible is is pretty remarkable. Just to give people a sense. I mean, I don't know a soul in my life. Who wanted to go watch

2:14 Exhibition or minor league. That was not even a thing. And yet you guys have a multi-million person wait list for tickets. You guys have I just looked this morning. On TikTok you have ten times more followers than the New York Yankees. And so just Accomplishing that kind of blows my mind and I want you to come on here and I want you to tell your story and I want you to teach us kinda how you think because I think what you the way you think and how that's been applied to

2:41 baseball could be applied to many other types of businesses. I think that's the real gift You're gonna kinda give the entrepreneur a world. Yeah, we'll fire it up. All right, so Sam, where should we start? Start at the start? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's spend but we'll we'll we'll keep it a little bit abbreviated because you've you've done a lot of amazing podcasts. We've talked about it, but yeah, do set some set the context a little bit like Uh, ten, fifteen years ago, where were you?

3:02 Yeah, well, I started uh as a twenty three year old general manager with a team in Gastonia, North Carolina. And so it it was college summer baseball. uh which is a low level of baseball. So that's that's where I started with this and Yeah, there was that team only had two hundred fans coming to the games, uh, two hundred and sixty eight dollars in the bank account. Uh, I couldn't pay myself for literally three months. It was December, I think I was able to take my first paycheck, which I was making twenty seven thousand five hundred dollars. So I wasn't making a lot of money regardless. But that's uh that's where I started. And so it was learning how to make college summer baseball exciting and entertaining. And I did that for years and no one knew anything. But we were just experimenting and trying new things. That's really kinda learned the uh The ideas of making baseball more fun and adding new things to the show.

3:45 Why even be there? Like why weren't you an intern at JP Morgan or you know wh why is your first job A GM of a summer league baseball team. What was the plan? Never could have got a job at JP Morgan or any of those for the record. Yeah. So no, I I I I played ball. So my whole life was baseball. My dad owned a baseball facility. I was very fortunate to get a a a huge scholarship to Waffle College Division One School down South Carolina. So my goal was to play professional baseball. So I was getting, you know, letters from the Mets and the Padres and the Pirates and the Braves, and I was like, this is gonna happen. And then I tore my shoulder.

4:18 Just like that. So everyone's like, Oh, you're gonna go into coaching, Jesse. Your dad was a coach. You just that's your mindset. And I coached for one summer in the Cape Cod League. And I wanted to pull my hair out. Every

4:28 Day. It was The best players, like the highest level, like these guys were all gonna be first round picks. And I was in the dugout of the best seat. And I was just bored out of my mind. I used to go to the Cape Cod League games and it was uh the hot dogs were great.

4:42 It was just baseball. It was just baseball. But it was it was high. It was it was all these guys, if you look at major league rosters, all stars, a lot of them played uh in the Cape Cod League. But I was bored. There's a difference between playing and watching. And so it was the first time I really, you know, as Walt Disney thinks, you know, put yourself in the customers' shoes. I put myself in the spectator's shoes and I was like, I'm bored. And so it was then I realized that I don't want to coach anymore. I said, Well what if I

5:05 you know, got in the front office and tried to make the show and the entertainment and the experience better for fans. And that's really where it started. That's when I went to take this job as a twenty three year old general manager of a One of the worst teams in the country. Isn't there a story of Disney going to I don't know if it's a park or an amusement park with his daughter and he's sitting on a bench and he's kind of just like looking at this and he's like, Why don't Like I wish this was fun for me and her and not just her, for example. Uh is isn't there some famous story like that, and that's where the origins of Disneyland came came about. A hundred percent. And I've studied Walt religiously. So uh yes, it was a Griffith Park, it was his two daughters, Saturdays was his day with his daughters, and he always took them. He had, you know, Daddy Day with the daughters and So he took him to Group Park and they're on the carousel and he's sitting there and he goes, I wish there was a place that adults and kids could have fun together.

5:48 And that's where the literal mindset said, Well, what if we created a place like that? And so I in a weird way was sitting in the dugout. The best seat in the house with some of the best players thinking I'm bored out of my mind. Why can't this be fun for more people? And so that's where it kind of started the journey. as a twenty three year old general manager with no money in the bank account and not getting paid on how do you make this uh more fun. And that's really where I fell in love with Walt Disney and PT Barnum and started studying WWE and Circus L Saturday Live. I became obsessed with learning about entertainment, not necessarily learning about the baseball business. I want to learn about the entertainment business. Can you tell us the transition from employee

6:25 to owner and then Uh well yeah, first thought that. It was like when what was that era? I was a general manager for two or three years, then I became the managing partner, which the owner gave me like I think like a five percent Uh just like equity stake, um, for being a part of it. And then it was twenty fourteen.

6:41 So that was cheese. six, seven, eight years later that I Bought it from him. So the team was worth Very little, made it worth a lot more. So went into owner financing debt.

6:52 uh with him and and bought it for him in twenty fourteen. And and he gave me every opportunity. I was so fortunate that the owner, Ken Silver, just let this kid kind of run with the team and try things and experiment, but we end up having success after that first year. And so made the team a lot more valuable, um, which is a good win for all of us. And it was still like a real like a like a Like a normal baseball team, like for the first two years, right? Oh no, well it was normal based I mean I

7:17 I mean, we had grandma beauty pageants our first year. I mean, we had I started c uh we came up with um the garbage can nachos, like four orders of nachos, three cheeseburgers, three hot dogs, nacho cheese, jalapenos, donuts. We call it heart stoppingly delicious. I tried to get a cardiologist to sponsor it, but no one was interested. Uh we started doing Cra we did a dig to China night where we literally had hundreds of people go on the field and dig uh in in the infield dirt to get a trip to China. But when the woman won She realized it was just a one way flight to China, no flight back and no accommodations. So So we had a lot of fun. I mean, we fired our mascot uh for uh b bear growth hormone because HGH was big. So we did BGH. We we we offered George Bush because he just

7:59 finished his term as president in internship with us with a one thousand dollar stipend. Um we we did like we we're gonna get him a host family we're gonna figure it out uh that he turned it down. But like we we we just came up with all crazy ideas. We were just trying to get attention. I was looking I was using the P T Barnum You know, book of how do you create a tension, and so we were trying everything and Yeah, the players. We got the players to dance that first year. They weren't great dancers and every player turned me down except for four, but four dancers did the jump on it dance. And they became the most popular players. So

8:29 We we we were dabbling and experimenting in no man's land where literally no one knew we were outside of Charlotte. You're not even the Savannah bananas yet. You're still the gas don't you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The the ones nobody heard about. I think that's really important. The sort of like the toiling and obscurity, trying things, iterating. Now let me ask you. Those ideas that you just said. Every one of those ideas, I'm like, Oh my God, what a genius I did. That's fantastic. And I could totally it makes me laugh. I could totally see them I could see the press release. I could see the news clip. I can see the TikTok clip.

8:57 Now To have ten great ideas, you probably had what, a thousand, ten thousand bad ideas, something like that. Tell me about your practice. Of generating ideas and what was your kind of system of creativity.

9:10 Well, when we first started, uh you know, I learned from uh so Bill Vec was the famous owner of the St. Louis Browns, the White Sox, that he was brilliant in what they did. I mean, obviously so many things. Grandstand Manager's night. He literally let his fans In a major league game dictate whether they were gonna bunt, steal, or hit and run. coach in the grandstand. And it was unbelievable. Um obviously he came with Eddie Guidel, the midget hitter, and he did so many things. He gave away live lobsters to fans during games. I mean he was brilliant. His book Vecca's and Rec made a huge impact on me. But I went to his uh his son's conference, Mike Feck, another unbelievable pioneer of the St. Paul Saints, Charleston River Dogs had a lot of minor league teams. I went to his conference when I was twenty-three. And he said

9:48 My dad always said, Bill He said if there's a fire. You gotta get the most important thing in the house. And it's our idea box. And so the idea box, he said ideas are more valuable than anything.

10:00 And so he actually gave us a wooden box. I still have it today. And we started coming up with ideas. And that as a twenty three year old started coming with blazing. I mean. They were all a lot of them ridiculous. Some work, some didn't. Salute to Underwear Night failed. Flatulence fun night failed. Uh, you know, I mean the hairiest man in Gaston County. That was uh gross. So I mean, we did a lot of things that just didn't work. But I started learning About ideas. And You know, the big premise that I kinda came up with is is whatever's normal do the exact opposite.

10:28 No one gets excited about normal. No one comes home and said, Oh, did you hear this thing? They just it's so normal. Like you get excited about remarkable, unforgettable. And so It was literally eight years. Of doing that. And when people I I think about the title of the show, My First Million. We never made a million dollars in Gastonia.

10:44 You know, we we started it was a hundred thousand dollars in total revenue the year I took over. The team c uh it was the expenses were two hundred and fifty. So we were doubling. pretty consistently and getting like two hundred, then three hundred, then four hundred, then five hundred, then six hundred, then seven hundred, then eight hundred. But we never got to a million. I ran that for eight years. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait let's recap. That's pretty remarkable. This is remarkable. So it took you eight years to get to a million in revenue? No, we didn't even get to a million in revenue. Okay, so we never got to a million. It wasn't until Savannah That we actually reached a million dollars in one year. And how old were you on the eighth year? You were like what, like thirty two?

11:18 So it was twenty three. Yeah. So yeah, you know, it was so when we finally got so good, Gastonia and then Savannah in twenty fifteen. So we had both teams at once. So I went to Savannah in twenty fifteen. Twenty sixteen was the first year we reached a million dollars in revenue. How many times did like kind of smart, well intentioned friends and family sit you down and be like, Jesse What are you doing? What are you doing out there? What's going on? I was having the time of my life. Do you need some help? Do you need a job at the car wash? Like what are you doing out there? Oh, everyone I've come across with, especially family, knows I need help in many many different ways. But they were no, they saw I was having fun. Guys, think about this. We took over a team that had most nights fifty to a hundred fans.

11:57 And my first year we had nights where we get over a thousand fans or fifteen hundred fans or two thousand fans. By our second year, we were selling out games. Like again, it was only two thousand, three thousand seat stadium, but it was unbelievable. I was having the time of my life. Were you making a profit? Yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean we got

12:12 You know, buy probably eight hundred, eight hundred fifty thousand of revenue probably costing six hundred. So like it expenses. So it was you know Oh, it was a healthy profit. You know, it was for college summer baseball, we were killing it. Are you kidding me? It was like heck yeah, look at what we're doing. And you know, in the late twenties in Gastonia a little tiny, I was I was happy.

12:30 But every day I get to create new things. That's what people don't realize. I got to create things, I got to have fun. And I got to see every day. I got to test those ideas. In real time. Will people show up or will they not? Will they like this promotion or will they not? Will it sell tickets or not? Will they buy this birch or not? I got to test every day.

12:47 And Henry Ford. A Greenfield Village I'll never forget I visited. He said Henry believed in learning by doing. And I'm obsessed. I want to be the fastest learning sports organization in the world.

12:59 And so the more we do, the more we learn. And so that started, you know, many years in Gastonia before we went to Savannah. Alright, you're hearing how Jesse turned one weird idea into a million dollar business. But you don't need to invent banana ball to make money. You just need one good idea and the guts to execute on it. Well the team at HubSpot just updated the side hustle database with over 100 new ways to start making money right now. It's got the classic stuff that works, but it also has new AI plays other people are sleeping on. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description to get the ideas right now. Now let's get back to the show. You mentioned P T Barnum and uh Disney and how you obsessively studied them. What were some of the early

13:39 stories that inspired you or things that they did that maybe Me who hasn't read about PT Barnum. Um wouldn't know about, but that blew your mind. Well, you know, with with P T Barnum, it was so much about how do you create a tension, you know, showmanship. He says without without promotion, something terrible happens.

13:57 Nothing. And so when you when you look at his his books, I mean he was just Yeah. I mean he had viol he had he hired Terrible.

14:06 Performing musicians. Violinist and music that were so bad. That he put him outside his museum. And so we'd say the only way you can get away from it is you have to come inside the museum. Like he would like he would just come up with ideas and he would bring people together. Um he was a master of promoter. He was also a tremendous um writer.

14:25 And he was always writing, he was always speaking. So I kinda took his spot as like He was always a front person. You know, you gotta have someone that truly believes in what you do. And PT Barnum believed in his museum. He said, Hey, some of it's true, some of it's not, but you're gonna come in and you're gonna be entertained. And he believed in that and he he went on top of every mountain top to yell that.

14:45 So I kinda took that. From him. It's like all right, I was dressed like nor everyone else. I'm like, No, I'm gonna get a full tuxedo. By the way, the first one was black and it had tails. And it was ninety five degrees in North Carolina summer night and I almost melted. So I said, We're not doing that. So I found a yellow one that was brighter and fit the color of the Grizzlies, which was also kind of yellow. That's how that started.

15:04 Um But it it was about showmanship. Pete Barnum is a showmanship. How do you create a tension with all your acts? And then Bill Vec, man, he was the most fans first owner ever. He would sit with the fans in the stands. He was an owner. He would literally set up and he would he would talk to all the fans every single night. He would go vecking as I made up the term, but after every game he would go to the bars.

15:23 With the bands, just to connect with them. You know, when he stuck over the Saint Louis Browns, they say, What time the game starts? He goes, What time do you want it to start? Like that was his mindset was always what would be best for fans. And he did it. He did constant giveaways. He was the first one to put names on the back of jerseys. He had the exploding scoreboard with fireworks. I mean, he was just so far ahead of his time and every other owner hated him because he was doing so much more for fans than they all were. And so you combine that with then Walt Disney's vision. And it's kinda fun to do the impossible and put yourself in the guest shoes. Those three kind of just set me on a tone of like

15:54 Let's try to combine these worlds and create something pretty special in baseball. So all of that is like you dressing the way you dress and doing the thing you do now, it's inspiring because the company is Uh I don't know if it's real, but it the headlines is that it's worth a billion dollars and you're incredibly successful and you're well loved. But for the first A handful of years. Did you did you feel like I mean, did you feel embarrassed? Were you like, I don't know if this is gonna pay off. I don't know if this is gonna be worth it. I'm risking my reputation. I look silly right now. Did that fear come into play because When I hear what you're doing, I'm like

16:26 That makes sense. I should do that. And also I'd be embarrassed. Oh a thousand percent. We we've been criticized every step of the way. I've been embarrassed many steps of the way. You know, our first eight years and nine years in Gastonia We did everything. It was myself, was my wife, we had one or two other team members.

16:42 We put out show tonight signs out around town just to try to convince people, Hey, they have a game, please go. We did the trash before the game, we did the hiring, we did the concessions, we did operations putting signs up, we did Everything. It was exhausting. And people criticize it's like you're a college summer team, you know, on a Wednesday night there might be five hundred people there. Um and then when we went to Savannah.

17:01 That's when the criticism and The skepticism reached an all time high. Why then? Well, you had professional baseball for ninety years. So you have professional baseball for ninety years.

17:13 And then all of a sudden there's a college summer baseball team coming in. So they just had the New York Mets affiliate the year before us. And Now They wanted a brand new stadium. The city said no, they weren't gonna invest because no one was coming to the games. So all the professional

17:26 Savannah teams were the lowest in league in attendance. I mean, literally somebody's having three hundred people in the ballpark for professional baseball. So we came in And we had we're gonna make baseball fun, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. They're like, Sure y'all are. We've heard that before, kid. And yeah, we sold two tickets in our first three months.

17:43 And I mean We we were hung up on Every day. I mean, my wife tells she would walk in. So we had a a free launch event where we're literally having free food, free drinks, everything. She'd walk into

17:55 Little Shops, stores, restaurants. And be told get out. Like literally t we weren't style selling. We were offering Free.

18:03 Hey, we just want you to come. We're the new team. We're here in town. We want to meet the community. I mean it was Brutal. But did you have conversations of wanting to quit? You couldn't because we were now seven figures in debt. You know, we had to we had to buy we had to buy the team, which was uh we bought it through the Coastal Plain League'cause it was an expansion team. And then we also had to put money in the team. We had to do the start up, we hired people, we had nothing. So we were in

18:28 dead and we had all these these young people right out of college, a twenty four year old team president as well. That we were responsible for. And so there were no options of quitting. It was just how do we convince these people to believe in us? And what I realized is the only way to do that is we had to show them.

18:43 As Steve Jobs says, no one knows what they want until you show it to them. We were talking, talking, talking. That's not good marketing. Marketing is creating experience and showing people. So we had to get to that point. You seem like an incredibly optimistic guy. And I love that. I love your energy and obviously

18:58 At this point there's a lot to be optimistic about, but The era that we're talking about, things were not going well. You sell two tickets in three months, you're Seven figures in debt. And I'm curious, like

19:10 Nobody's optimistic. One hundred percent of the times. Um, there are moments of either doubt or pain or struggle and like So when I say rock bottom and then they're making the movie about you. What's the movie scene where the director's like, Okay, this is the rock bottom scene. It's maybe it's you and your wife or it's you know, you at the ATM machine looking at the balance, you know, what what's rock bottom when I say that?

19:33 Well so Well we got the phone calls four forty five PM January fifteenth, twenty sixteen. And that was when we were out of money. So we completely ran out of money. Uh we couldn't cover payroll.

19:44 We had nothing left. And so at at that point, um I moved, I think it was like three thousand dollars over that I had in my uh own account to cover that. The rest of the payroll.

19:55 And then we emptied out our savings account, put that in. To cover us for now a couple of weeks. And then Emily turned to me and said, We have to sell our house. So we sold our house. Well, people don't know when the timing of this is.

20:06 Me and Emily had just got married. Ten ten. twenty fifteen. We got the keys for Savannah that same week. So within three, four months

20:15 Three months. We're completely out of money. A first year of marriage. We have nothing left. We have to sell our house.

20:21 We found an old garage. that I would like to say was turned into a studio, but it really wasn't. It was the grossest thing I've ever imagined living in. It was the only thing we could afford. She got an airbed, a twin airbed. Um We realized that we could only grocery shop with just thirty dollars a week. And we couldn't use credit cards anymore because we were already maxed out. So we were going with a twenty dollar bill and a ten dollar bill into Walmart.

20:41 For forty two meals. Um That was pretty rough. That was a tough time. Emily's the one.

20:49 Mm-hmm. She kept me. I don't know how sh'cause I can get into You know, I think all I uh uh entrepreneurs, you know, we're we're high performers and we think differently, but also you can spiral a little bit. And I started I'm optimistic, but I was like

21:03 And what are we gonna do? Oui. This is bad. Everybody's saying no to us. Um but she was like, Jesse, we we did this we gotta get to that first game. Get to the first game, get to the first game. So she lifted me up.

21:13 And we knew we just had to get to that next that bat. But the first thing was really name the team. 'Cause at that point we didn't have name the team. So we had to get people to understand who we were. And so that was the big thing too. And that's when Things changed.

21:27 Positively and negatively. Because when we did a name the team contest, everyone said be the Spirits, be the ports, be the anchors. You know, be the Braves. I was like, there's a team in Georgia called the Braves. We're not gonna be the Braves, guys. Like it but There was one one person that suggested bananas. And I remember we looked at each other and said, Yeah.

21:45 Go bananas. And we thought of the banana nana senior citizen dance team and the manas male cheerling team and a banana baby that we lift up before the game and a banana ban and can't stop the peeling. We just thought about all those guys. We're like, We have to go. It is Perfect. And then we announced it. And we got crucified. Man, we were ripped apart.

22:03 Uh locally. I mean it was It was so bad, guys. I'll never forget the Saint Patrick's Day parade two weeks after we announced and we're wearing green banana shirts. And we're getting booed walking through town. Literally, people were booing. Were they like baseball purists, or did they think that you were insulting the town, or what? In yes, embarrassment to the city. We were insulting the town. How dare you name the team after this silly bananas team. I mean it was but nationally we were like sports center like logo of the year and like it was like nationally like yes because you know they didn't take the pride in Savannah like this is fun, this is gimmicky, this is cool.

22:34 Locally it was Okay. But at least people knew. Who we are. And I believe attention beats marketing one thousand percent of the time.

22:42 You gotta create attention first. If people don't know who you are, good luck trying to create something. And so they at least knew who we are. And then when we're like Oh yeah, every single ticket's all inclusive. They're like what?

22:52 Oh yeah. Every ticket. All your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn dessert all night long. No ticket fees, no convenient fees, fifteen dollars.

23:01 What? And Then they were like, And then they started kind of paying attention that we're gonna try to make everything fans first. Here's what our players are gonna do. We have a banana band. Here's our senior citizen dance team, the banana and is and then like

23:12 All right, this is a little different. And I think people were expecting us to fail, so we sold out opening night. They all came out and they wanted to see it. And then people had to wait three hours for food because we didn't know we were gonna go through ten thousand pieces of meat in an hour. We had no idea how to do that for the record. Um but They watch the show. They watched the fun. They watched

23:29 uh the banana baby and the band and the players dance, and that's when they started telling everybody. And that's really when it changed after that first night. I've watched like maybe ten or twenty interviews of you now and uh we've talked about you a bunch of the podcasts. And I've noticed that you do a few things consistently. Um and one of'em you've done here already a bunch of times. You already named uh Henry Ford, Bill Vett.

23:50 Walt Disney, you talk about Steve Jobs all the time. You name uh P. T. Barnum, you name drop all the time. And am I taking I guess I'm reading into that where Do you go out and try to find inspiration? And then do you find like a couple lines in books and you're like, that's it. That's what we have to do. Or because I've learned you you you I don't think you've ever explicitly talked about your creative process other than I think you said that you make a list of 10 new ideas every single day. Yep. And then I've also noticed that you have these like frameworks where you say like Well, Disney said this. And it's as if you like read this biography and you saw that one line, you're like, I live my life according to that now. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because that's kind of fascinating. Well, uh like Walt Disney said, curiosity keeps leading us down new paths and we will keep trying things and experimenting. And it's it's it's my curiosity.

24:34 So Yeah, I'll go very deep on subjects. You know, I don't think there's a track, yes, I do ten ideas a day. Yes, I journal every day. Um, but it's the The reading I get fascinated by. So when I start learning about Walt Disney, I read one book, then it g guides me to another book, then it guides me to another book, then it guides me to like I'm looking across right now, I have an entire bookshelf of all every book on Walt Disney and Disney World. Like it's I don't know, hundred bucks maybe?

24:58 And then I have a whole section on P.T. Barnum. Then I have an entire shelf on Amazon. Then I have an entire shelf on Steve Jobs. Then I have shelf on like, I have Every book on Taylor Swift. She's fascinating what she's doing. Um Marvel. You know, a grateful dead, you know, all these different worlds because

25:12 Th there is There's a blueprint. on how to create something truly special, a world of entertainment that's different than anyone else. But in sports Yeah, I would say you know, obviously WWE, UFC, F one, they're thinking differently.

25:25 But in most traditional sports. It's the same thing. You're you're competing to win. And we're Our game is compete to create fans. And how do we entertain? And so I I want to learn from the greatest entertainers in the world. So my framework is I'll just go very, very, very deep.

25:40 And then what I do is I earmark every single page. And uh I know exactly where When I earmark a page what I'm looking for. I've done book reports. Uh I've done numerous book reports like built to last. Tell me about a book report. Like what's the book reporting? Yeah. So we did this as a team. So for many years in the beginning, we actually paid our our people to read. So we pay them to do book reports. So we're we're obsessed with learning as part of our organization. So we did that for many years. Um now we do kind of team books that we read as as a group, but

26:07 Yeah, a a book report I'll go through and just kinda the biggest takeaways, the biggest uh things that lead to fans first. Um ideas, parallels. David Novak, the former CEO of Young Brands, he had a very good compliment to me. I didn't know what it meant at all when he said it at first, but he's like, You're one of the greatest parallel thinkers I've ever seen. I go, Thank you, David. What does that mean? And he goes, Well he goes literally what what it you you can see something and then you can make it your own in a parallel path. And so like When I see something from Grateful Dead about what they did as far as you know, they brought they brought the sound in house, they tried to bring the tickets in house, they tried to they let all their fans record all of that. Then Dave Matthews followed suit.

26:43 I can see that and then Fall our way. So that's You know, again, no real method. It's just You I wanna look at examples of the best in the world. So like Jimmy Donaldson, you know, he was with us Mr. Beast. And so like I've read everything on him, but we spent a lot of time talking together because he's the best in the world at YouTube. So I try to ask all those questions. I think that's just you follow your curiosity.

27:03 What'd you steal from Jimmy? Uh well the big the biggest thing I w I was uh fascinated with him was the YouTube uh growth on how he looks outside of the country. Seventy percent of his views come from outside the US. And so you better believe that we immediately We're hiring, you know, Spanish speaking broadcasters, we're gonna hire Japanese speaking broadcasters, and we're gonna start having our games and social go all over the world as we continue to grow there. So that was the one thing I was like, all right, what in YouTube can we do right now to grow an audience and create fans? And he shared what he's doing with his audience and uh dubbing and that was fascinating. We did a

27:36 Episode with Jimmy and we Uh he talks about the same sort of ten ideas a day thing. So he was like, you know, I started this when I was tw eleven or twelve years old. And he said kinda your same story. He he there's a great quote, he goes At twelve years old, nobody watched. Thirteen years old, nobody watched. Fourteen years old, nobody watched. Fifteen years old, nobody watched. Sixteen years old. Is anybody ever gonna watch? Nope. Seventeen years old, nobody still watching. And he's like finally when I was nineteen. I started to get some viewers. And even then it was small, right?

28:02 Um, so we had this kind of six years of toiling and obscurity, seven years where It just d it wasn't working, but he was getting better. And he talked about how he used to do the kind of ten twenty idea he's like the most important thing in a YouTube video is the idea, the premise of the video. So I came up with Ten to twenty ideas a day. He's like, I would flip open a dictionary at the source. So we had him do it live on the podcast. We put a random word generator.

28:23 And he came up with ideas live on the thing and you could tell he had built that muscle. So I'm curious, like You say this thing about the ten ideas a day. Is that like you used to do that early on? Are you still doing that? Is there a sticky note on your desk right now with like ten ideas you wrote this morning? I did two groups of ideas. No, I have uh Yeah. Please get it. So here is here's the idea book. So I have one every single year. So uh say on the cover?

28:47 Well, it just says twenty twenty five ideas, banana ball. So I just have I have these books all the time. And so Yeah, today I was obsessed, so I'm working on our our two two of our newer teams. So I'm working on uh the Indianapolis clowns, which we brought back. Um, one of the most famous Negro League teams. And so yeah, it's all the clowns characters. dynamic contortionist bat boy, uh the juggling hawkers, juggling ball boy, uh an umpire that's a mime, trampoline coaches, strongman, uh balloon artist, ringmaster slash barker, human cannibal, character artists. So like just and it starts listings like start thinking about ideas on how we want to build. So I want to zoom in. You do this first thing or you take meetings first, or what how what's your kind of process there? You like give a routine you use? Sure. How Alrod um

29:28 helped me tremendously. So his book Miracle Morning. Uh, it was a game changer for me. In twenty fifteen, I read that. you know, I realize that most people they they don't start their day on purpose. They start their day with other people's news, social media, other things going on. And so uh win the morning, when the day became a huge thing. So twenty fifteen, I actually ran into him at speaking appearance. I showed him my first notebook where in twenty fifteen where I started writing and journaling. And so yeah, I have to win the morning. I have three kids uh you know under seven years old. So I got up very early.

29:55 And I start I read'cause your input affects your output. So I wanna read something. So I'm re rereading Amazon Unbound right now. It's just uh the the story of how Bezos was continued to grow them. And then literally I start writing. journal than one of my ideas. Often I have an idea bucket the day before. So I I can already start thinking about it a little bit before I go to sleep. And then I start that idea bucket the next day. Dude, you're an animal. You're an animal. I love it, though. It doesn't feel like it's it's it's never felt like work. There's certain things that if you really love, like Ideas?

30:23 If I've come up with good ideas or ideas that are exciting to me, like I'm fired up the rest of the day. I have great energy. It's so it's like you gotta create before you consume. I thought we consume and we read all these things and I'm getting criticized. We get create all these different things, but it's like if I can create first. And that's I mean, we just t today you literally as we record this, we just launched our first ever fans first ticket marketplace.

30:43 So Secondary market right now. We're getting Killed people are spending four, five, six, seven hundred thousand dollars for tickets and often they're getting scammed. We built our own one. Face value. No markups, no fees. We just announced that.

30:54 thirty minutes ago. Like that fires me up because I'm gonna learn. We're gonna Get it out there, we're gonna start experimenting like You get to do new things. That's what Walt Disney you get to try new things constantly and I love that. I feel like the now the sort of You've hit escape velocity and

31:09 People now recognize Oh wait, this is something special. And you have a lot of momentum going. And I'm sure whether it's speaking fees or like speaking gigs or just m meeting interesting people throughout doing what you're doing. You've now gotten into some pretty interesting rooms. Like you've met you know, you've mentioned reading about Jeff Bezos. You'll meet Jeff Bezos if you haven't already. These things will happen because I think everybody can take inspiration from a a brand builder.

31:32 And a fan first, customer first m mindset that's like not just words, but actually put into action in all these really interesting ways. Who have you met? in this that that kind of was like a wow moment for you or or and and I'm curious, what do they want to learn from you? What do they pull from you? Cause I think every you know It doesn't matter how s sort of successful you are in one industry, I think there's a lot they can learn from you.

31:52 Well, I appreciate that, but y you know, whenever I get a call with one of these people, I'm picking their brain like crazy and asking questions, but it usually is. Uh you know, it it's it's funny the the FaceTimes and the videos and the calls that I get um now and but You know, one that stood out for me was Bob Iger a couple of months ago. And you know, I have so much respect for what he did, um, and to continue to make creative the the heartbeat of Disney. You know, I think it it loses its sometimes it ebbs and flows with the creative and after the Walt was gone for twenty, thirty years, they were figuring out then Michael Eisner and Frank Wells came in and went crazy and then I kept it going to a whole nother level and now again trying to re Uh bring back that. That was a thirty minute conversation. I walked out fired up. So you know, I mean there's

32:35 Uh it's a wide array, you know, from you know, the heads of WWE and some W wrestlers to actors to actresses to a lot of musicians now. I'm hearing from a lot of musicians, um, you know, big time football players, uh and you know athletes. But you know, I I think my biggest thing is I always just want to host them. Come out to our show. You know, y you learn by seeing. Watch how we literally start entertaining seven hours before the game. watch how we stay two hours after the game and continue entertaining. Like That's what Taylor Swift, she's like, I'm gonna do a three hour and forty five minute set, which is crazy,'cause I wanna over deliver.

33:06 And so we look to over deliver with everything. And so, you know, I I enjoy hosting people more at our shows and getting to meet them and share with them the behind the scenes. That's where I get a lot of joy. When I hear you talk, I think I would never want to compete against this person. Uh and we've and and we've had a bunch of people like that. I think Jimmy was one of them, where you're like, Oh, this guy's just like um He's gonna he's gonna die or win. I mean there's there's

33:29 You know, you're going against a crazy person. You don't seem motivated by money. You don't seem particularly competitive with the outside world. You must have a chip on your shoulder and what caused it and what's and what's kind of forcing you to keep on moving forward. Yeah, name that chip. Certainly have a chip on his shoulder. And I think um but that's not what I'm chasing. I mean, yeah, a chip on my shoulder. You know, as an only child, um, you know, I uh I always wanted to make my dad proud. That that was kind of a big thing for me. I want to make my dad proud. He worked really hard, spent a lot of hours working, and I always wanted to do well for him. Um but then I didn't get drafted, tore my shoulder.

34:02 I think often I've been um you know Misunderstood is probably the way Bezos would explain it, like misunderstood. And you know, we've got criticism every step of the way. You know, in Gastonia, what are we doing here? In Savannah, you know, how dare you bring college summer baseball. Um, how dare you name the team the bananas? How dare you leave traditional baseball to create this silly sport called banana ball. Uh you know, it it it happens all the time. The one that really fires me up now that I have a folder saved. Um it's a fad. It'll be gone. Their fifteen minutes are up.

34:29 I have every one of those saved. And I will never say anything back to them. Except so when some people when they get really gone, I go I just write thanks for the inspiration. Um because it actually it and I mean that sincerely. You know, those the and ones and all the groups that have kind of come along and disappeared. I get fired up about'cause'cause we are completely misunderstood. People think we are the Harlem Globe truckers. We're building a sport. There will be a world.

34:51 Where the kids First ball they pick up. Is a yellow banana ball. There will be a world. Where banana ball is played

34:58 All over the world. Because of the entertainment level, because it's not just about people who love the sport. They love the fun. They love the show. Plus they love the crazy talent that these guys can do with backflip catches and trick plays and the celebrations. They love how if they sit in the upper deck, We're gonna come up there. And we're gonna give them flowers and we're gonna throw giveaways and we're gonna put on a show no matter where they're sitting, even if they're the furthest seat away.

35:20 And so I get excited for that. Um, money, you know, again, ten years ago we we had nothing. And so now, yes, we're very fortunate with the businesses, but Nah.

35:31 I chase moments. Like There's certain moments. You know, first game at Fenway Park. I was a kid who grew up with a goal to play at Fenway Park, grew up south of Boston. And we had the largest crowd of the year there.

35:42 And we're all singing. The moment yellow, which is a powerful moment. You've probably seen the videos. Yeah. Everyone's got their flashlight. The whole stadium is singing yellow, and I'm on the field. And saying look at what we get to do together. or our first football stadium with eighty one thousand fans, and we're putting on a halftime show with two hundred and fifty people in the middle of the game, which should never happen. And I'm jumping up and down because I'm feeling it. You know, when we're gonna do a hundred thousand seat stadium, when we're gonna do a cruise, where you know, all these we're playing aircraft craft carriers, all these things, play games at beach, those moments.

36:13 Fire me up because you get to feel a part of something and you get to feel alive. You know, I think I wanna feel alive and I'm sure you guys get that feeling too with certain things. It's not the money, it's it's these moments that uh You know, really light me up. You're sort of like this joyful version of Dana White or Vince McMahon. Uh you know, like I I think Dana literally said the same thing in a in a press conference. He's like he's like, I'm in the but

36:33 We're in the business of moment and he goes We sell good moments and then sometimes we sell holy shit moments. And tonight was a holy shit mom. We're talking about a big knockout that happened. It we're a similar mindset. You know, I've got to work a little bit with those guys. Haven't connected directly with him yet, but I mean, yeah, he creates these moments that you never imagined. I love that. He's just sort of like rage fueled more so than you're like, I want to create this amazing family fun. But but I think that's part of the nature of fighting versus uh you know baseball. Yeah.

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37:31 The good ideas versus the bad. It's easy to come up with ten ideas a day. It's easy to sort of think of these things in hindsight, but You know, when you say The ticket price is twenty five dollars. There's no ticket fees. We sort of round off the change. That's cute when you're selling two hundred tickets. Now you're selling

37:46 I think I did the math. It's like this is like tens of millions of dollars you're eating in cost by eating the ticket fees. Or revenue left on the table, depending on how you wanted to look at it. And um You know, I'm sure there's a f you know, someone over there with a spreadsheet who's like, Uh, Jesse, this is not Can we not do that anymore? Like can we charge for hot dogs?'Cause You know, this is they know better an organization at this point, but yes. Well, like I guess what are your principles? So one thing you've talked about is like

38:13 fan first. And I think ever if you asked if I go to a hundred businesses around here. I said, Were you are you a customer first business? They would all say, Of course. Customer matters. But then you go look at their actions and they're totally out of line with with customer first. And so like what are the different principles you have or the things you find yourself repeating over and over again?

38:31 That sort of Or when a new person comes in, they really have to like almost break their brain and rebuild it to work the way you guys wanna work and come up with the ideas you guys wanna come up with. Yeah, well we we started simply by naming our company Fans First Entertainment. So that was the start. So by naming the team Fans First Entertainment made it very clear, who we work for. Uh, you know, we said our beginning our mission, fans first entertain always. Like that's what we do. Uh as we've grown, we've developed a little bit more of our core beliefs and our fans first principles, which we talk about all the time. So like how we hire who we are. is I try to keep things very simple, um, always be so it's alphabet, always be caring, different, enthusiastic, fun, growing and hungry. So like that is who we are. And so even when we hire people an essay, how do they fit those core beliefs? And then we have show us your future resume. Because we're not really interested in what you've done in the past. We want to know what you want to do in the future and how do you fit. If you say you want to stay the same position for the next five years, you're probably not growing in hungry. So we can find that out.

39:21 Uh then a few years ago, we developed our fans first principles. Uh inspired a little bit by uh Bezos and his 14 leadership principles, we developed 11. And eleven's a very big number in in banana land. So The eleventh letter. Of The alphabet is K.

39:36 And the symbol for potassium. is is K. So we use eleven a lot. I know that sounds like kinda silly, but the reality is We realize this all started because of a banana. And if you think about Walt Disney, they were out of business bankrupt. And he said it all started because of a mouse.

39:52 And they had Lee all they had uh the lucky Osalt rabbit was stolen from them. He had nothing. And then he came up with Mortimer Mouse. His wife corrected him and said, Let's do Mickey and that kinda changed everything. So for us it started with a banana. So we have Eleven fans first principals. We have eleven rules of banana ball. We do our countdown from eleven.

40:09 Uh eleven is a very big part of us. And so yeah, it starts uh we're fanatical about the fan. We entertain always, play the long game, whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. So again, I don't want anyone ever gets excited about normal. Um ideas are everything, as we talked about. That is kind of how with start and coin everything. Constantly curious. We're always gonna learn from the best in the outside the industry, not in our industry outside. Uh everything speaks That's a Walt Disney one. You know, if you lose the detail, you lose it all. And so we're obsessed with the details. Fewer things done better.

40:39 So we eliminate all of our sponsorship. In twenty twenty. Uh which we eliminate all of our events. And we focus solely on banana ball because we wanted what can you be the best in the world then? And we believe we can create the greatest show in sports. And so we've went obsessed with that. uh relentlessly resourceful.

40:54 When we moved into our new office. I I made a trade. I got all of the furniture Traded for free. I I sold my soul a little bit. I I think I gave two or three speeches, but we get all of it for free. And so that was very important. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so little mindset, uh uphold the highest standards.

41:12 That's very at the highest, not high, because everyone has a different version of their high standards. And then finally always plus the experience. And so Those guide us. We talk about them every Tuesday in staff chat. We have people sh give examples of how we're doing that. And then when we have really big moments, we share a again a big example so everyone knows How we do that.

41:31 So I'm I'm psychoanalyzing you a little bit because I've just I I admire you so much and I wanna like steal a little bit pieces of like the way the w the way you operate, you're doing something that we talked about, Sean, when we talked about MTV and how they sort of like said, This is the world that we are building. So they basically like what you're what you're doing is you're saying, I'm creating a world. I'm world building. Um, I'm not necessarily empire building. You're you're creating this world with its own rules. And I think where a lot of entrepreneurs, myself included, um fall short. is you say like your values and you're like, Well, I'm just kinda going to the motions of getting it done. And if I asked you what your values were, sometimes people wouldn't even remember what they are.

42:06 Um or they would just, you know, do it because they they have to. You you you do this really good job of creating these rules and processes that you actually abide to uh abide by. And some of them sound incredibly silly, like you know, you have uh I like You have all these phrases like you had the one city world tour. I think your first world tour, it was just in J Georgia or making Georgia, I think. There's meaning behind that, in the whole thing. There's meaning behind that, which I can get into later, but the point is is that there there's meaning there's meaning to there's intention and meaning to everything. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't have the courage to say, This is the world that I'm building and here's the rules and laws of the world that I'm building and I'm gonna stick to them and I might Some of them might sound silly like wearing a yellow tuxedo all the time, but there's a reason for'em. But if I live it according to the rules, it's gonna actually become a thing. Did you always have that in you?

42:53 Um, or is this like something where like you've learned like man, if I just say it enough times, I'll start to believe it and it'll start to become true. Like walk walk us through that. No, yeah, I I I guess. If you sur it's you're your average of the five people you surround yourself with. Uh my five people have been, you know, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos.

43:10 Uh not Arrogantly. I have read and learned more of what they think. And that's around me. And so Walt Disney was a world builder. And yeah, you better believe we will build a banana land, the first ever sports and entertainment theme land. You better believe every single team that we build, we build with that point of view in mind.

43:28 I mean if you don't think we just built the local beach coconuts and we're not gonna build the local beach, you're crazy. And so and if you don't think we we built the Indianapolis clowns with a hit uh homage to the history of the nineteen forties and fifties to build that landry up, like all of this has a a bigger picture. So um I just I've surrounded myself with that and and I think you know it it it fires me up. And there's certain principles like I want to go back to the one city world tour. Start small, dream big. One city. World tour.

43:56 We still call it a world tour. We've got numerous opportunities to play internationally. We've turned it all down. But we call it a world tour because that is where we are going. That is our vision. That is what we believe. And so we're gonna continue to call in and then we will Pretty soon start doing international.

44:12 But everything we do, the cruise for the first time, a football stadium for the first time is a one city Dream big. We did a few football stadiums, now we're doing ten. We're doing multiple nights at the Superdome and the Patriots Stadium and literally we're doing Kyle Field and Neil and Stadium with over a hundred thousand fans. That was a one city test. And now we're we're expanding it. So Yeah, I never thought of the world builder, but

44:32 I love it. When you can create everything And control everything. What people don't realize control is such a big part of this. Most people give up control.

44:41 And when you give up control You lose more fans than you realize. We do our own we built our own ticket system. Now we built our own secondary test ticket system. We do all the merchandise in house, everything from where we do our logistics in house, we do the entertainment in house, we do our broadcast in house. Which leaves millions of dollars on the table because we're doing it all on YouTube. And so like When you do it all in house

45:00 You afford yourself the opportunity to learn. And to fail, but also to connect closer with your fans,'cause you can see directly how they're responding and on outsourcing your core competency. And so That's part of this world, I think, is You know, Walt Disney wanted control everything when people came into his theme park.

45:16 And You know, he couldn't control a movie theater. When you go into a movie theater, could be dirty, could be gross, who's serving you, sticky, the food, all that, the lighting, all of that. But he can control Disneyland. And I think about that often.

45:28 Did you raise money for this? Or do you do you control a hundred percent of this business? What's the what does the business side look like? Yeah, well we we went into a lot of debt. We took in the uh opening debt and it was just my wife and I and we paid it off very quickly, fortunately, after our first two years. We were you know, selling out games is good for the business model. And especially the more fans you sell out, it it helps. And then the merchandise has been bigger than anybody's ever imagined. So Yeah. No, we've Daily probably uh at this point in emails. Uh, but we've turned them all away because they they're interested in uh, you know, return and they're interested in uh, you know, some controlling aspects. And you know, I I have no interest in return. If if w if uh Cheryl would say start charging taxes, start doing shipping fees, start having more sponsorship, take the huge T V

46:13 uh partnerships. Easy, probably fifty to one hundred million, just like that. And that'd be a no brainer for investor, but that doesn't interest me. So yeah, we my wife and I own it a hundred percent and uh we don't plan to change that. Ever. Do you

46:27 On your weekly leadership meetings or whatever you guys have, do you pay attention to the finances at all? Or do you just say like Uh revenue is a score card if we're doing things right. That's all I care about and make sure I have enough money in the bank to go do what I want. You focus on the metrics that matter most to your customers. That's what I pay most attention to. So you better believe that I pay attention to the speed of every game. I pay attention to how long the merchandise lines are at every game. I pay attention to how many trick plays are, how many ball force sprints. Do you really do you have a metric for like Wait times on merch. What's the wait time right now? Uh it depends on the stadium. That's the biggest challenge. So right now we're at a really if we go to Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park or a football stadium, depending on the size and the setup. So we invested this past year with another experiment and Jared Orton, our president, was brilliant in this. So we're gonna set up a outdoor mall.

47:10 So we bought a monster tent. And that was a test at Yankee Stadium, and that changed everything. Our per cap went up. So we had to find the space to do that. And we did the same thing in Seattle. We're planted there. So It depends. If you're indoors, if you're in stadium, we have a t we can only have a small tent. It's really bad. My goal is to get everyone within ten minutes. We're not close to it right now. But the same thing at serving

47:31 Uh all you can eat food. Right now in Savannah, everyone can get fed within five minutes. The first few nights it was an hour. So like we'll get there, but those are the metrics that I focus on. So To answer your question about money. Um I I get I have one meeting a year.

47:45 It's coming up. And it's about an hour or two, and our finance director and Jared will share us What we're looking at. Um Me and Emily just said, All right, great, where are we reinvesting? This is what uh Dana White said too. I think Dana White I heard him say, he's like I uh I meet with the CFO occasionally

48:00 But I just You know, I don't really care. It's it it is what it is. And and again, we're very healthy and all the estimates that people have are dramatically low on where we are. Like it is it we are very, very healthy. And I know that. I pay attention to right now we're going, you know, obviously you go into Christmas holidays. So how many fans are we serving merchandise? How quickly are we serving them? How quickly are we getting it out? We have a huge hundred thousand plus square foot warehouse that we have now, and our team is like, get out, get out, get out. How quickly can we serve them? That's the things so I'll know exactly how many people we serve. When we do a twenty four hour shirt, You know, we're we go through thirty thousand orders.

48:33 In twenty four hours, like I know the metric this year versus last year. And how do we continue to grow that? Cause that means we're creating a better product and a better experience and have more fans. Uh social media creation of that as well. Have you ever heard the uh founder of Airbnb talk about the twelve star experience? Do you know? I love Brian Chesky. He's one I I would love to met me too. I've taken a lot of inspiration from him. Yeah, like the helicopter, the firefire the the uh fireworks going off, the red carpet. Yeah, you Okay, we'll we'll we'll we'll connect you with him, but one of the things that one of the things you reminded me of was there's an anecdote about You pointed the cameras at the game. Yeah.

49:06 At the fans? Instead of at the game,'cause you were like, I wanna watch from the security camera when people get bored and when they leave. Um, is this true'cause you wanted to basically like study the fan experience and try to understand like what Where are the lulls? Where are the dips? Almost like a like how Jimmy at uh would look at his YouTube video retention chart and say, Oh, at seven minutes There's a dip.

49:27 What did we do at seven minutes? Oh, that's when we did our ad reads. We need to make those more entertaining because we can't We can't lose people during that time. Yeah. Uh uh uh obsessed with that. Yeah, well, people don't know that's When I'm on the field. And again, I'm on the field uh in front of the dugout with our players. We're always out there.

49:42 I'm constantly w turning around and watching. uh the fans and watching the reactions and our my our director of entertainment who we've worked clean for five years. It's so Unbelievable'cause we can look at each other. And all of a sudden say All right, energy music, energy music now. Cause we can know when the energy is down, we can look at each other and just a feel and it's it's really special. But yeah, uh it was jeez, many years ago. And when we were looking at this debate to go to banana ball.

50:05 And I realized that hey, fans were leaving games early. And I said we need to document this. And so yeah, we it was actually our one of our staff members, one of our our our ushers. We had take pictures and video every thirty minutes starting five thirty six, six thirty seven, seven thirty eight, eight thirty nine. And we realized at nine o'clock uh the first influx of people left. Nine fifteen a lot more, nine thirty more. And so I was like, we gotta do a two hour time limit. And no one said they wanted a two hour time limit. The games at that point in Major League Baseball were three hours and twelve minutes. So even when I shared internally, our team was like

50:33 Jesse, two and a half's probably fair. I mean that's still dramatic. I go, No You want people to want more. There's a difference. You know, a great comedian, you want more at the end. A great concert, you want the encore. I go on baseball, everyone's like, I've had enough.

50:48 I was like, we gotta create a product that people always want more. And so that's what that helped us determine the two hour Time limit. And Yeah, that's how we look at everything. So me and Tyler, the CEO of Beehive, came up with a little challenge for you. It's the newsletter challenge. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm a big fan of newsletters. I got my own newsletter. I also had a business that was a newsletter business that was amazing. I wrote this newsletter about crypto, we grew it to quarter million subscribers, and we ended up selling it after a year for millions of dollars. And I want you to be able to do the same thing in your business. So we're doing a challenge. 10 grand is on the line.

51:20 Plus, me and Tyler will actually be in your corner as growth advisors. You just need to go to bhy.com slash MFM and you either start a new newsletter or you move your current newsletter over there and five finalists will get picked to pitch me and Tyler sort of like Shark Tank and the winner gets 10 grand. So go to bhyive.com slash MFM. That's bhy.com slash mfm to enter the challenge today. Uh How many um HQ staff do you do you have now? Yeah. I I wish I wish I had the answer for you. Uh I'll give me an idea of what it looks like on the road.

51:50 Um so if we go to a major league stadium or football stadium, we travel with two hundred plus people. Wow. If we have a minor league stadium, it's a hundred and fifty people. And so we have three tours, we have six teams, so we're traveling with five hundred plus people. Then we hire between one hundred to three hundred uh at each stadium as part time staff to help with merg tickets, logistics, et cetera. And then we have our team in Savannah. So

52:11 And then we have our cast. I mean it's It's hundreds. Um You know, some are equivalent, some are full time. But yeah, we're hiring every week there's new people joining our team. And I read that uh you had the business and you're like we're gonna get into social media. And I think it was like I don't really know what I'm doing, but

52:27 Like K you, you know, my co worker, just start f go and figure this out. Um, is that true? And were you successful in just getting like young and experienced people and inspiring them and that worked out? And has that worked out better than hiring more of the than more of the experienced people? We have very few from the outside. I'd say eighty, eighty percent uh uh uh been started as interns. Um you know, and I I was an intern for a little bit. My wife was an intern. Uh we believe in that. You learn you learn from seeing how people do in this kind of culture. And so

52:57 Yeah, uh social media again, first insight. Can't stop the peeling. Two thousand sixteen. We create a music video to it. And Justin Timberlake, we made Can't Saw the Peeling. It was a very rudimentary video. But I watched, I remember watching it put on Facebook. I was like 10,000 views, 20,000 views, 30,000 views. You got like a hundred thousand views. I was like, Whoa, people like this. And I was like, let's do more of this.

53:19 And again, so once TikTok came around in twenty twenty when we started paying attention. Um yeah, one of our interns I said just post every single day. She goes, What do I post?

53:30 I go I don't know. But make baseball fun. If it says if it's make baseball fun, if it fits that overall brand. Do it and we learn.

53:38 And then nothing happened the first few weeks. Then we had one that hit. It was like all right, our it's our players. What are our players doing? Okay. Now let's do this with our players. How about a music video with our players? How about this? And just kept iterating. We posted every single day from twenty twenty. And so that's literally how we learned. And you think about our second team, the party animals, they have more followers than every major league baseball team on TikTok because we started with them, you know, in twenty twenty two or so. And so Yeah, everything is just You can't be afraid of failing.

54:04 I mean, every night we do ten to fifteen promotions we've never done in front of a live crowd. Game skits. ideas every single night. We have our scripts and you know, it's different colors to show the new things we haven't done before. Um Yeah, that that's where you learn. And so like we're not afraid of failing because we're just gonna keep trying new things and our fans will give us the benefit of the doubt because they know, hey, we're gonna together just gonna try something new next.

54:25 And they're gonna keep trying. Somebody told me you guys treat this almost like uh Saturday Live, like you have the the pitch meeting, the way Saturday Live has this kind of weekly schedule where they pitch and then they They then they uh script and then they rehearse, then they sort of edit from there, like is that what you guys do? So you you you solve first your s problems the fans. So every the the the starting point of everything is what are the friction points from your fan point of view, and then you can do it from your organization's point of view. So the friction for the point of from the fans Too long, too slow, too boring, you get nickel and dimed, all that stuff. Um, so we just kinda went from there and to create that. Then from the internal is like, okay.

54:57 Creative. It's hard. It's hard to come up with creative ideas all the time. I mean, I know these idea books, it's hard. And so We said all right, well Who's been Sustaining creativity at a very high level for a very long time.

55:09 And doing new shows constantly. Set in her life. So you better believe I bought every book on Saturday Live and then I realized, guys, there's a documentary on a a week Uh behind the scenes it's Saturday Live. I think James Franco did. I was like guys we have to watch this.

55:23 So our creative team was a small team back then. I was like we watched it like all right, the coming Monday. And then they pitch the idea of John Malcomich was the host that we pitch to John, then they pitch to Lauren, then they start writing, then they have an idea session, then they have a table read, then they start getting the props, and then they do it, and then they do a show at eight o'clock in front of a live audience and they watch what hits with the live audience, what doesn't. Then they put the new ones into eleven thirty and cut everything else out. It's like guys, we're the same thing. Like let's just do that. And so we started, we built it. It's Tuesdays because Monday's our travel day. So Tuesday's our OTT session over the top ideas.

55:52 Everyone comes with ideas. So we actually have a form Even just naming it over the top. Yeah, a hundred percent. So yeah, over the top. And so uh forum's gotta fill it out by midnight. So we have all the ideas, whether it's a walk up, whether it's a celebration, whether it's uh you know something in the crowd, whatever that is, and then if there's a video or a full description. And then our meeting starts at ten o'clock. We review all those, then we have a a a smaller group meeting at eleven o'clock, then the players share some of their ideas, broadcast share some of their ideas, and by four o'clock on Tuesday we have a table read.

56:20 Where we go over what's gonna be in the script. Then we start getting the props, the creative, then we do rehearsals when we in the s in Savannah, then we do rehearsals in the city, then we do rehearsals in front of our VIB, our very important bananas, uh, which is our special VIP group. And so we get to watch them, how do they react? Are they taking video, are they into it or not? And then we put it into the show. And that's repeated with every one of our teams. This business sounds so hard to run. You have I mean so you have that you have just the production of the SNL, you know, just so you have your per personnel issues, you're gonna have some personality clashes, you're gonna have like pay paying them and keeping everyone in line and then getting funny stuff out the door. Then you have merch. I think merch makes up half or forty percent or something of your revenue, which is hundreds of millions of dollars, you have supply chain issues, then you're traveling with hundreds of people, then you're doing social media. I mean, this is an incredibly complicated business. You're playing the game on extreme hard mode, and I respect you for it. It's way harder than I thought. What do you name it all? I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so much to And then you just have like normal company operations. And the principle is don't do the same show ever again. Every snow has to be brand new. And yes, the logistics are impossible. We hired someone from the military that helped us in and like'cause we've got trucks all over the country. Multiple trucks. When we're going to a football stand with a hundred thousand people, we need twelve to fourteen trucks. But then we also have two other games, another part of the country that we need separate merchandise and the teams are playing each other different times. So we're bringing all the merchandise and all the show and all the props to go there.

57:39 And then we're flying everyone around the country, getting them in. Um it's crazy. And and then check this out. Look, if you move your head, so move your head like this, it looks like you have two books behind you. I think you wrote two books, right? Does Jesse Cole? Oh my God. Okay. So Jesse Cole has three books. And then I also read online I think you have the Hulu documentary and I think you have another one somewhere else. And then I think I read somewhere online that I th I think you said you don't take a salary or you're one of the lowest paid people and that you live off of your speaking fees. Okay, so Jesse has a book. Three books?

58:10 Documentaries. Uh speaking fee I did this monster of a business that is incredibly complicated. What price are you paying to do all this? It's good question. I believe in doing what gives you energy.

58:25 I'm very, very fortunate. that what I do gives me energy. When I first started in Gastonian and I was doing everything, operations, hiring, you name it. I was worn out. Now like speaking or being with you guys right now, this fires me up. I love creating, I love sharing, I love growing.

58:40 So when I can go speak You know that That that's an energy giver. Um And so You know, I think our family we home school now. Uh, you know, we have three kids, we home school, we travel.

58:51 I I think um You know, I do daddy daughter dates and burger boys with my son and I I focus on that, but I can always be better in that area. Um I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with it. I love it. It brings me so much joy. And

59:03 I stay really focused even though it sounds like there's lots of things. I'm focused on trying to create the greatest fan experience in sports and the greatest show in sports every day. And if I'm speaking, I'm sharing about it. If I'm on a podcast, I'm sharing about it. Or in the morning I'm working on my team. I'm creating it. So it's really it sounds widespread. But it's all focused on doing something very

59:22 What's your talent strategy? So are you like, Oh, we use recruiters and then they come in for interviews, or is it like You look in the TikTok comments and you find people like what what what is Jesse doing to source some of these like diamonds that that that end up being there. This is the crazy one, guys. So like yes, I'm very grateful that we have four point two million people on our, you know, wait list to get tickets or whatever. Uh There's twelve thousand seven hundred On our wait list to work with us.

59:47 And so we have a we have a wait list. So uh it's what I believe is is attracting over recruiting. If you're very vocal on who you are and what you stand for. You often attract people and I attract people I never imagined we'd attract. That uh even you guys go I was listening to you guys before we even knew each other. Like again, I I I'm so grateful for that.

1:00:05 And so yes, and uh we do I'm working with Circus Sole right now on bringing on some cast at a higher level,'cause you better believe the Indianapolis clowns is gonna be the greatest show people have ever seen. It's gonna we're gonna take that to a whole nother level. So I I'm working with some of the you know, work with WWE and UFC on some stuff, you know, people that are great, but A lot of it is just attracting young hungry talent that believe in us. And believe in what we're doing. And they'll give their hearts to it. Very, very special. I think that so if I had to make a prediction, I think and and I'd be curious to hear, like if you ever we probably don't have enough time, but like we brainstorm ideas here on this podcast a lot, but I would be curious

1:00:39 I think that um so Arya Manuel who um runs Endeavor um and they own WWE, UFC, P VR, whatever, a ton of stuff. He did this great podcast with Patrick O'Shaughnessy and he was like basically I'm betting uh I'm making an anti AI bet. So he was saying like hotel bookings for Thursdays are now up through the roof. Uh busy drive times are at eleven A. M. And he's like basically people are working less and they want to go out and get and have experiences. And so my prediction for you guys is that there's gonna be a second win. I mean, you're already like

1:01:09 at like um you're you're I I don't want to say you're at a peak, but you're like you're like killing it right now. I think there's gonna be another like macro trend that pushes you even further up this mountain of glory. Are you feeling that and also have you seen any other like A lot of people don't realize this that circus LA is a multi billion dollar company company. Have you seen like Any cool events businesses that like are are shockingly large or well run or that inspire you?

1:01:34 Uh, you know, I mean I I think I main I named the main uh there's probably other ones out internationally that I'm not aware of at this point. But yeah, no, I I I'm fascinated by the cruise industry too, as well, because they're they're combining the entertainment, the shows, everything, they're creating their own worlds. So, uh I've got a lot closer. Obviously we're doing our own. To learn can we put on a show for five days for all of our for our fans with no playing a banana ball? So that's a good test that we're looking for. But yeah, no, I I don't I don't think I look at that, but I I I'm fascinated about the youth game of banana ball.

1:02:03 In developing that we did a one city world tour test with a youth tournament sold out in Cleveland, had kids from 48 states come in. So we're gonna build the sport that way. And then obviously continue to look at I mean, we're gonna do a tour movie. I'm really inspired by what Taylor Swift has done and how she built that ecosystem, created a great tour, then all these little You know, things from the flywheel that jumped off it. We're we're gonna do some of that. We're creating original music. So I haven't announced, but we have an unbelievable music partnership with

1:02:28 Very well known. uh group that's gonna help create original music for us. Um, so all those steps I think are gonna take the show to another level. If we keep making our show better I believe everything will take care of itself.

1:02:39 We just we can never settle. For hey. That last year's show was great. Let's do the same thing. That's that's what scares me. If we saw you when you were a kid, like a teenager, twelve years old maybe

1:02:52 What would we have seen? Were you like selling C Ds and like hustling entrepreneurially. Were you like Mr. Popular at school? Were you uh on the fringes? Like Who were you when you were young and would there have been any clues that this is who comes out of that? Yeah, no, I was uh I was I was uh I was a shy kid to start.

1:03:09 Um and then Well, I was by myself a lot. And so I mean I remember literally During the summer, my dad would go to work and you know, I was like 12 or whatever 30 days. He's like, Jesse, what'd you do? I was like, I rode to Alex's house, I rode my bike to John's house. I didn't do that. Like I didn't have a lot of friends.

1:03:24 And I had my friends through baseball. And so anytime I was around bait my baseball team, I would try to create a tension. I would try to do anything because it was my time around. People my age. And so you know, I think that that love and being around people I think I didn't have that as much. And now being around fifty thousand, a hundred thousand people and staying till the last fan.

1:03:42 uh leaves to sign their autographs, like that is something that I think because of what I had and what I what I I wanted. Now I can have it a higher level that I keep pushing for that. But yeah, I was I mean

1:03:52 Creating attention. We we we instead of public speaking, which ironic, I now speak Um We created movies. So we used iMovie and we were the first ones to create movies. So I learned how to create movies in social media and like like not social media back then, but how to make videos that people were interested in that guided us with what we were doing social media. So um Yeah, I I was creative, but I was alone. I just play baseball. And I just I think it was more

1:04:14 the world I surrounded myself with after. After school. The the Walt Disney, the P T Barn, the Bill Vex. It was that world that really You were interested in in those guys when you were younger? No, none of them. No.

1:04:26 It was after. So like yes, did I go to Walt Disney and I was the big kahuna at Typhoon Lagoon, which they let me in early and I got to have this whole experience, it was magical. Did I have some really cool experiences? Uh at AU national tournaments or going to Disney. Yes. I didn't know anything about them other than what most people knew. It was that world I surrounded myself afterwards. Like you guys. I mean, think about this. 10, 15, 20 years ago, it's what you've learned now in the last 10, 15 years. That world has impacted you. You know, I maybe there were some influences, obviously back in school, but it's more now. You find this new world.

1:04:56 of entrepreneurs in Creative thinking and creators. And that inventors. And that that fires me up. Sean, have you ever seen the talks so Jesse does these things on his Instagram?

1:05:06 where uh he gives the players a talk before the game. I don't know if it's like new players or something like that, or if it's before every game, but you have the guys in the stands. No, I haven't seen it. Okay, so he gets everyone I'm I'm gonna tell the story for you, Jesse, as an outsider, and you can correct me if I'm if I'm getting it wrong. But you have the the I think it's the team, but uh maybe there's some of the staff. You have him I think in the outfield stands or somewhere like not in the front row. And you're like, you're sitting here because you need to be where like some of the worst seats are. So you understand that we have to make this great for everyone. And then you tell this amazing story. And it's how I'm I imagine you repeat some of the stories, but every time I've watched it, it's been a unique story. And it inspires them so so much where I'm like This fucking guy has made like playing like silly baseball like seem like I'm like saving the world and I'm so invested into it. Where I'm like, You guys are doing God's work, right? Like you're the guy in stilts is doing God's work. Like I'm so bought into it. I agree with you. I agree. I agree with you. You've judoed me where like I'm totally bought into this. Uh did you have to learn how to storytell like this because you're doing such a good job of getting me invested. And I see the players. The players and typically baseball players, by the way. When I grew I I I grew or hung out with the college baseball players, they weren't like the coolest guys. They were always kind of like too cool for school. Like they didn't want to like do silly stuff. And these guys are like

1:06:20 So wholesome and awesome. Did you learn how to like tell stories like this? Because it's incredibly effective. Thank you, a hundred percent. And yeah, uh still to this day, I think. Did I tell that right? Those talks that we went. Yes, it's whenever we come to an uh a city The first thing we do is we have our fans first talk. And so that is the entire staff.

1:06:38 The cast, the players. So we can have upwards of two hundred people in those. But yes, all both teams, the players are there. And every week we have a new talk. And it is One of the most stressful things for me, and I'll tell you, I could speak in front of a fortune fifty company or ten thousand people. I'm more nervous. speaking to our hundred and fifty people because I know my words, our words mean so much to them and and and it's weightedly and I care truly um how it impacts them. So yeah, I every week it's like, What's our message? How does it fit fans first? How does it fit a principle? How do we

1:07:09 You know, like win the upper deck. We talk about that all the time, win the upper deck and You know I just think about I have a lens now. You guys look at this like one two lenses I have is a friction fighter. Wherever I go, I see friction. So this is what Walt Disney said. Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always asking what's wrong with this thing and how it can be improved.

1:07:26 If I go to a restaurant If I'm driving down the road, if I'm going to a store, I notice what are the friction points from a customer point of view. That's just my lens. Now the other friction or the other uh lens I see is I always see stories in everything. Anything that happens. What's the story that that that he told?

1:07:42 And when I think about speaking, it's like What's your story? What's your message? How can people get one main thing out of it and then leave? And so that's one of those short, short speeches. So Like To give you an example, one I haven't shared in forever was Russell Wilson. You guys know the the quarterback in the NFL.

1:07:56 He played for me in Gastonia. And Literally the first night I had all the players come down from the roof. And to high five the fans coming out to the the the the field. And I said, guys, just hey pie the fans, get on the field, we're gonna do the starting lineup.

1:08:09 So I'm up on the roof and like batting first. For the Gasny Grizzlies from NC State number one, Russell Wilson he goes down, batting second from Clemson, and each one goes down. And I'm up on the roof and I see all the players on the field. Except for Russell Wilson. So finally I see everyone in the field except Russell. So I go down onto the grandstand, I see he's way out in the left field grandstand. He was high fiving every single kid in the stadium.

1:08:30 He was twenty two years old. And he knew what mattered. It was high fiving every fan more than getting out of the field. And the I just think about moments like that.

1:08:41 Yeah. We're doing something so much bigger. than just putting on a show. It's how we make people feel. You put yourself as that five year old kid, that seven year old kid that went to their first game. And all you wanted was an autograph.

1:08:53 You wanted a ball. You wanted a high five your favorite player. And how many times did you not get that? We can provide that every single day and now you guys are even bigger. looked upon even bigger than some of those major league now.

1:09:05 We owe it to that. Oh to that kid. to do that. And so we just share these messages and examples. I'm in every this morning. Gave us the speech. I'm ready. Well that wasn't that wasn't when I go work on my dad. I don't think I've shared that one guys. I don't think I've shared that one because it was back in Gastonia days. So you brought me back to that one. So I'm in, man. I'm in.

1:09:29 Light yourself on fire with passion. And people will come from miles to watch you burn. And I feel like that's what you've done. Like you You have lit yourself on fire with passion and you've done that with this thing that none of us even realized we wanted. And now millions of people wanna come watch you guys burn. And I think that's that's amazing. I got I well, yeah, hopefully not the other burn way,'cause some people probably do the baseball traditional is impurist, but um I want you guys to see a show. I'm I'm so

1:09:54 impressed on how much you've known and how much you're able to to uh to talk about this, but for you to see it and see it from the beginning to the end and watch what goes into it. So just gotta get mentally prepared, you know, get some good rest before that. Well, God bless you. Thank you so much. We appreciate you coming on. This is this has been an old timer. A lot of fun. Thank you guys. Seriously. Really appreciate y'all. Alright, that's it, that's a part. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I'll put my all in it like a day song. On the road, less travel, never looking back. All right, everyone, if you're listening to MFM, you probably want to make more money. Well, I want to tell you about a podcast you might want to check out. It's called The Sales Evangelist, and it's hosted by Donald Kelly.

1:10:34 Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts who share their strategies to succeed in sales. They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage, challenge, and motivate you to hustle your way to the top. If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out the sales evangelist. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

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