EntreLeadership - Tips for Creating Moments Your Customers Won’t Forget with Jesse Cole

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Jesse Cole, the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas baseball team. Jesse has an inspiring story that started with an empty baseball stadium on the brink of closing. Now that same stadium is home to a team that’s selling out nationwide tours with raving fans all over the country. Later in the episode, George chats with Joe Leavitt, the director of event production at Ramsey Solutions, about Joe’s process for creating memorable experiences—and how you can do the same for your team and your customers.   You’ll learn: Why wowing your fans is crucial The question that vision-driven leaders ask How to create unforgettable events Easy ways to make fantastic customer experiences   Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre Exodus 90: https://bit.ly/Exodus90Entre Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital   Links mentioned in this episode: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast The Savannah Bananas: https://bit.ly/3sKFvLe Download 43 Easy Ways to Recognize Your Team: https://bit.ly/3HDajDh Schedule a call with Tim, our producer: https://bit.ly/3bJOSmi   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipElite Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Weekly Report Tool: https://bit.ly/WeeklyReportTool   Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all would say that we care about our customers, but what are you doing every day beyond a business transaction to create a memorable customer experience? I get it. You don't have the time, money, or resources to go above and beyond with marketplace service. But is that what it really takes to get intentional and personal while super serving your customers? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and today's episode is all about making moments. for your customers so they can't help but talk about your brand. Our first guest today is Jesse Cole. He's the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Banana's baseball team.

And today I get to talk to him about how to lead your team to make moments for your customers. He's got an inspiring story that started with an empty baseball stadium on the brink to now selling out nationwide tours with raving fans all over the country. In our second conversation, I talk with Ramsey leader Joe Levitt, and he shares what he does to create moments for our team and fans and how he comes up with those ideas for those moments. Up first, my conversation with Jesse Cole. Jesse, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. How you doing? Oh, great. Fired up to be with you, George.

I appreciate that you are wearing your signature yellow tuxedo. I imagine you just sleep in it at this point. You don't wear this some of the time. You wear this all of the time. I got to ask, how much of your success do you attribute to the yellow tuxedo? Well, the yellow tuxedo has certainly become my calling card, and it's my uniform. You know, I played baseball as a kid, and, you know, when I put on my uniform, it was game time. And when I put on this yellow t. It's showtime. And I'm, you know, been hugely influenced by P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney. And I realized that putting this on gives our team permission to have fun.

And it amplifies who I am because we're not in the baseball business. We're in the entertainment business. So this has become a big part of what I do. And hopefully our team can see it every day and understand that, hey, we can have fun, and not take ourselves too seriously. Yeah, we talk about work hard, play hard around here, and how you should take your work seriously, but not take yourself seriously.

And you embody that perfectly. I mean, that really does. That leadership starts from the top. Does your team have any fun outfits they wear? I think that's an understatement. I mean, think about our team, you know, we have the senior sits and dance team called the Banana Nannas that are in their 60s and dance to Justin Timberlake.

We have our male cheerleading team, the mananas, which is the dad-bod cheerling squad. You know, they wear little shorts and pom-pons. You know, we have breakdancing coaches. We have directors of fun. We have directors of entertainment. I mean, it's definitely more of a circus environment at our office and our ballpark, so we definitely embrace it.

Well, thank you for normalizing dad bods for so many out there. It's an inspiration. Okay, so tell me about the story of getting to the first opening night of the Savannah Bananas, because you have a fascinating journey. Yes, you know, I started in the industry over 15 years ago. I was a GM at 23 years old of a small baseball team in North Carolina, and the only way you got a job at 23 is if it's the worst team in the entire. entire country. So I took over a team that only had $268 in the bank account and only 200 fans coming to the games.

And for 10 years, I used that as kind of a place to learn and test things and try things and, you know, player dancing. And I learned that we weren't in the baseball business. We were in the entertainment business. And so the big journey happened in Savannah, Georgia. And my wife and I decided we were going to buy a baseball team, an expansion baseball team. And we decided to come to Savannah, Georgia, where they had professional baseball for 90 years. I mean, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, they all played at the stadium. But baseball never worked there. No one ever came to the games. My wife and I went to a game. There's only 300 people in the stadium. But we thought we could do it better. And so we bought an expansion team and we showed up that first day. The former team cut the phone lines, cut the internet lines. There

was nothing left at the stadium. It was myself, my wife, our 24-year-old team president and 322 year olds out of college. What a crew we had. And so we showed up that first day, all gung-ho to start calling people in the community. We called everyone. We're here. We're the new baseball team and no one cared. And we only sold George two tickets in our first three months. Two total. It was like a donation. And it got so bad that I'll ever forget, January 15th, 2016, 445 p.m. I got the phone call that we had overdrafted our account and we were completely out of money. And it was at that moment that Emily turned to me, my wife, and said, Jesse, we have to sell our house. We have no other options. So we sold our house. We emptied out our savings account. We found a dump. We got an airbed.

And we were sleeping on that airbed. And I remember going grocery shopping with only $30 to spend. for the entire week. And this was just six years ago. And so as that point, we knew we had to do something dramatically different if we wanted to have success. And so the first step is we named the team after a fruit. We became the Savannah Bananas. And yes, we had a mascot name split and the Banana Nanas Senior Citizen Dance Team.

And, you know, we came up with all these banana themed ideas. And, you know, people hated it. The local community said we should be thrown out of town. You're an embarrassment to this city. You'll never sell a ticket. But we knew we at least had to get attention. So we worked really hard, just trying to get people to come. come. We convinced enough people to come out opening night. We sold it out, and we were playing

in green uniforms because we weren't quite ripe. And we ended up making six errors and played terrible, but it was pouring rain. The banana nannas went on the field. They danced. The break dancing coach did the moonwalk and the single ladies dance. And fans had the time of their life. And when they left, they ended up telling everyone about it. And since that point, since that first game, we've sold out every single game. We now have a wait list for tickets over 12,000, and we're taking the show all over the world. And I pinched myself going back to where it was, to where it is now. But we're so fortunate at the community and the fans have embraced us. Jesse, that is an unbelievable story. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm so happy

to see the success you guys have had over the years well deserved. And what's interesting about you guys, you know, baseball is a slow, long, often boring game to many, to many. I will caveat that. We've got some diehard baseball lovers here at Ramsey Solutions. But you know this because the tagline is, we make baseball fun, which insinuates that it normally maybe isn't. So how do you, how do you land on that mission statement? I think it's, we exist to make baseball fun. You know, our mission is actually fans first, entertain always. And yeah, I mean, the starting point for all innovation for us and for creating fans, which is the most important thing that we try to do, is look at all the friction points, all the frustration

points in the customer journey and do the exact opposite. You know, we say often, whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. And that's where we looked at. In baseball, to many, is long, slow and boring. The average baseball game is over three hours and 12 minutes. MLB attendance is declining, viewership is down, and they're less young fans. But for some reason, you know, for the team that struggled in the beginning, we now have almost 300,000 more followers on TikTok than every major league baseball team. We're about to have a million followers. And it's because we focus on the fun and our players dancing and our players introducing themselves when they come up to bat. You know, now batting for the bananas, myself, Bill Leroy. And, you know, we play in kilts and we celebrate

everything. And I think that's why we love what we're doing. And so, yes, make baseball fun is why we exist. And it guides us in all the decisions as far as our content and what we do for our fans. But really, the name of our company is fans first entertainment. And fans first entertain always. Every decision we make, we ask, is it fans first? And that's what every night we try to create fans first moments. And that's really been, I think, what's guided our growth is our fans. Yeah, what an incredible filter to use, because does this help the fan? Does this entertain them? bring them some joy. If so, then let's do it. If not, let's cut it. So let's talk about those fans' first moments. It's all over your website. Why are these moments important to you?

Well, I think what we all do, and we've learned this so much from you. And as I shared before, we're such big fans. We've been following you guys for a year, gone to Entree Summit. We love what you guys do and what you teach. And I think what we realize when you're part of something that is bigger than what you actually do and what business are you in, but what business are you really in? We're not in a baseball business. You know, we're in the entertainment business, but we're in something bigger than that and bringing people together and providing fun. And, you know, when I think about every company has core beliefs, every company has, you know, their mission, but do they have stories that back them up? And so we collect stories. We incentivize stories over sales. We don't

talk about revenue sales. We talk about creating fans and fans first moments. So, you know, when the team gets together, when all the players show up, they don't get a uniform until they go through fans first you. And I tell stories. You know, I tell about a guy, Brian and Carnacione, who just joined us for the first game three years ago, and he was only going to be with us for a few games. But after the game, I was walking through the crowd, and two kids in Banana's uniforms, Bananas Jersey, said, hey, Brian, can we get your autograph?

And he got down to a knee and said, only if I can have yours. Wow. And both kids signed his hat. They put their names on his hat. Ethan and Steve, they put their names on his hat. And all of a sudden, from that point on, all the players started getting autographs of kids

on their hats, on their shirts. And those are the moments that matter most. We're trying to create these moments that kids will go home and say, mom, you wouldn't believe, I signed a banana's hat. I signed a bananas player autograph. And so those are the things we're trying to create. And that's really what guides us.

Wow, that is incredible. And that's a very others focused posture to take. You know, as much as the players feel like, man, look at me. I'm on the Savannah bananas. There's a level of, hey, we're just people and we want to bring people joy. And bringing the kids in that, especially, that's going to be a legacy left where they take their kids to Savannah Banana Games and go, man, when I was young, I got to sign one of those hats. and you get to do that too.

Yeah, well, no one's done that better than Disney. And, you know, I've read every book on Walt Disney that I can, and you think about your moments and the memories you had as a kid. And so I want to provide that. I want to say, you'll come back, bring your grandkids. And, you know, that's why our players in the middle of the game will go into the crowd and deliver roses to little girls in the crowd every single game. And we've heard some parents that said, my daughter's kept that rose for a year.

It's not really a rose anymore. I'm sure it's not. But, you know, it's those memories that matter. And so hopefully they'll come back and maybe their daughter or their granddaughter will get a rose from a banana player. Yeah. So walk us through an experience. If I'm the first time around a Savannah Bananas game,

listeners are going, I don't know what this is. This is baseball, is this entertainment? What happens? When I walk into that stadium, what do I experience over the course of the night? Well, it starts from the first time you buy. We look at what are the friction points and frustration points? And most times people just buy a ticket

and they get a normal payment confirmation. So from us, every year we do a new video recorded with our staff and it's over-celebrating you buying a ticket. So the video I was a part of a couple years ago, it opens with me at my desk and says, congrats, you just made the best decision of your day. Right now as your ticket order came in, a high priority siren went off at our stadium, and our Bananiacs rushed to the ticket laboratory to get your tickets. And then a banana nana slowly walked in, and hens selected your tickets and placed them on a silk pillow.

We raised the silk pillow up in the air and saying, Nassavanya to celebrate the birth of a new fan. And then we walked your tickets underneath the stadium, where they're in our vault, waiting with maximum security, ready for you to go back. bananas. And people write back like, what is happening there? What are you guys doing? And so that's the first step. Then after that, we actually call every single fan who buys a ticket and thank them. And this is crazy, and it's completely unscalable. So don't ask me how to do that because I still don't know. But, you know, as we just announced our Banana Ball World Tour and we've sold out every city,

myself and my wife, we've been making between 100 and 200 calls a day. And we call and we just say, hey, this is Jesse, the owner of the Savannah Bananas. I just want to call you. Thank you so much for coming to see us in Daytona for a world tour. We can't wait to go bananas with you. If they don't answer, I send a video on my phone and text it to them saying, you know, we're ready to have fun with you guys. So that sets the tone. Then we send a playlist of music to listen to on the way to the ballpark. Like we play Can't Stop the Peeling and Holler Back Girl where it has the bananas park like Gwen Stefani and hey baby some of our mainstays of the ballpark. So that sets the tone. And then when they show up, you know, the first thing they see is our parking penguins.

We have people dressed up in penguin costumes parking your cars. Does that make any sense? Of course not, but we thought it would be funny if they were parking your cars and they actually pass out Freezy Pops to kids and say, stay cool tonight. And so that's part of the process. We learn from Disney. We don't just open the gates. We have our whole pep band come out. Our mananas come.

Our banana nana's come. We do a whole celebration and dance with confetti. We high five all the fans before they enter. Our banana ticket takers are in banana costumes ripping your banana shaped tickets that in the past have in the past have been scratch and sniff and smell like bananas. So we want to set the tone before you come to the ballpark. And it's all setting the environment that this is not. not a typical baseball game. It's time to have fun. And then through the night, we have promotions

every half inning. We have people singing, dancing, all of our performers, players on stills, all that happening. And then the end of night, my favorite moment, all the players, all the cast, all of our staff goes into the plaza to thank our fans when they leave. We're passing out banana moon pies. The band's playing music. And when the band finishes their last song, they play Stand By Me. And you watch as all the players, characters, cast members, and fans put their arms around each other. And they sing Stand By Me. And it's a moment that gives me goosebumps every single night, and that's how a night finishes in Banana Land. That is incredible. I mean, the level of thoughtfulness and orchestration that has to come

together to make this seamless experience happen, if I'm the fan, I'm just wowed by this whole thing. You can't help me feel that way, I'm sure. So how do you train this into your team? Because this is something that obviously you believe in deeply, but then trying to get dozens and dozens of people to get this ingrained in them, that's a difficult thing to do, especially for any leader listening to get their team to think and behave how they want them to. How do you let that bleed into your team? Well, I think I was so fortunate to be taught that from, you know, my biggest mentor or my hero, my dad. And as a kid, when I played baseball, I remember when I was five years old, I come up to the plate. And my dad yelled to me, Jesse, swing hard, in case you hit it. And I was like,

good advice. And everyone laughed. And since that day, I've been swinging hard. And I've swung and missed a lot. And I think, but I've also had some pretty big hits. And that I try to teach our team. and we're embracing discovery, not failure, discovering new things. And so every day we're teaching that to our people. And one of the best advice I've ever received is when someone asks you, what should we do here, you turn it back to them and ask what do you think? What is fans first? So I'm always asking that.

And I can share some stories, but some things that our young staff member, our young team members have turned it to a whole other level by feeling empowered because we're going to keep coming up back, keep trying new things. And that's kind of what we're all about. Yeah, a lot of the great companies, like you've mentioned, and the ones that you look up to, they do this so well. Where everyone on their team, I mean, you look at Disney or Chick-fil-A even, and everyone on the team has got the same values

that you can expect the same exact level of experience and customer service, and you guys do that so well. We have a core value here at Ramsey Solutions of Marketplace Service, and here's what it says. If you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. And it seems like you guys embody that, but maybe you switch it to if you give joy to enough people, you don't have to worry about money.

Would you say that's true? Oh, I love that value for you guys. I mean, we're just trying to deliver fun and we're trying to do something, you know, create something that you would be a fan of. You know, I learned this from George Lucas. You know, he came up with Star Wars because he wanted to create a movie that he wanted to watch and a story that he wanted. And if you become so passionate about that, you know, I wanted to create a baseball game that wasn't boring, that I didn't pull money on my pocket. That, you know, I don't go to the game and get advertised by ads all over the ballpark and promotions. You know, right before COVID, we got rid of all of our ads.

You know, it was probably the worst business move you could do two weeks before pandemic to throw away all your ad money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we did that, and we were criticized. People thought what we were doing. We believed it wasn't a fan's first experience. And now our merchandise is five to six times what our advertising revenue was. That is unbelievable. Yeah, you know, Ramsey Solutions and the Savannah Bananas, we are united on one thing, very countercultural, very against the grain.

If everyone else is doing it, let's run the other way. And you guys have done that an incredible way. And your very future focused. You have a 2025 vision for the future of the Savannah bananas. And the more I learned about you and the team, and you've said it, this is not about baseball. We are in the entertainment business. So what does that 2025 vision look like for you?

Well, I've learned that from you guys and also from a friend of, you know, you guys, Michael Hyatt and his vision-driven leader book. And, you know, it asked the question to focus on what isn't versus what is, to think exponential versus incremental, to not worry about the how, to focus on the what and the where. And we asked all those questions during COVID. We said, well, why don't we play year-round?

You know, if we've reached our capacity in Savannah, why aren't we bringing this show to more people? Why does our ballpark just have a regular field? Why don't we have zip lines across the field and tree house Airbnbs and bananas breweries and trains that go around the ballpark and all these ideas? We started asking the what if question. And I learned this from Disney as well. The best question you can ask is what if.

And not focus on what can go wrong, but what could go right if you focus on what if. So we started asking those questions. So now our vision is pretty simple. We're going to try to bring the bananas fun, the joy, all over the world. And I believe I'm from Massachusetts and I got to be Bat Boy for the Red Sox when I was five years old. And I've said publicly, we're going to sell out Fenway Park within five years. And I'm confident by 2030, we're going to play in front of a million fans, which is more than any NFL team, NBA team or NHL team. And I believe we'll do that.

And we're on a mission to bring this joy to people because we know how it makes people feel. We see mothers have tears down her face because she's with her kids and they're having such a good time. We see people come up to us and give us hugs and say thank you and bring families together. We have a responsibility to do that. And so we're on a mission. And, you know, our world tour now, we've gone to six cities and, and, to, tickets are selling more than I ever imagined. So we're very fortunate. Wow. That's an incredible vision. And I love the heart behind it of connecting people as we

see such a disconnected culture. And people are just craving connectivity with one another. Families are trying to figure out how to get their kids off screens. And you guys are creating this circus-like experience that people can come and enjoy it. People of all ages. You can feel like a kid again, even if you're not seven. So that's an amazing, amazing mission that you guys are on. And I can't wait for you guys to come through Nashville. I'm betting right now we'll be in Nashville in 2023. I'll say it right here, so I'm excited for it. He said it.

And as a fellow Bostonian, I salute you. There we go. So the listeners so far are like, all right, Jesse, he's got an incredible story, but man, I can't get up in a yellow tuxedo. I'm not in the entertainment industry. Dude, I work with wrenches in HVAC. Like, I'm just not, we live in different worlds. What do you say to the listener, to the leader who's going,

I want to be fans first, I want to create an incredible customer experience, I want to be successful financially. How do I begin to take a step into that world for what it looks like for me? Well, we've been so inspired by the quote from Andy Stanley, do for one what you wish you could do for many. And we talk about engaged deeply. And one of the best lessons we've learned is to listen carefully, respond creatively. And I think we can all listen to our customers, listen to our fans.

We don't do surveys. We watch and pay attention to our fans. We actually do videos and take pictures every 30 minutes in our ballpark to see when our fans start leaving their seats and when they go. And when we don't ask those questions, we video every 30 minutes. And when we see that one of our fans is having a baby, we'll send them a banana's onesie for their baby and say, oh, I congratulations, here's a banana's onesie.

You know, when we see that people are getting engaged and they're coming to a game, we'll go order flowers and deliver it to them in the game and have the whole stadium stand. And this is what our team does, and they believe in it. And so I think how can you teach your team say, guys, listen, carefully, respond creatively. What are your customers saying? And how can you do something that shows that they matter? And we believe that nothing matters more than making people feel

like they matter. And so that's, I know there's the craziness, the yellow tucks and all the wild things that we do at the ballpark, but it really comes down to that. And I think we're all in that business of making people feel like they matter. So as we wrap here, Jesse, you have probably thousands of stories, but would you just share one as some encouragement of maybe how one of your team members has embodied the values of the Savannah Bananas? Sure. And like I said, I believe stories are everything. And that's what really helps people learn and understand what you're all about. And so for us, it happened our first year. And we still tell it at every single fan's first year in Banana's orientation. We had a young intern, Barry, 22 years old, and we're calling people and thanking them for buying tickets. And one fan

family bought eight tickets. And that was a lot back then. You know, eight tickets was a big order. And he called and he couldn't get in touch with them. And she tried back again because we wanted to make sure they were all said. And finally the father answered the phone. And the father said, I'm so sorry my wife bought these tickets for our seven kids, and she just tragically died. And Barry came to me, and he said, Jesse, what do I do? And I said, what do you think, Barry? He goes, well, I want to try to provide something fans first for them. What can we do? And I go, I trust you. A 22-year-old intern, I go, just do something that you'd be proud of. So he called the dad back. And he said, hey, you know, we really love to give the kids a great experience if you're up for it.

And the dad said, you know what, it'd be good to get the kids out of the house. We'll come. So Barry gives him his cell phone, says, call me as soon as you arrive. As soon as they arrive, Barry takes the kids to the front row of the seats. Pregame, he brings all the players, not just four bananas players, not just six, the entire team to come up and sit with the kids. They sign autographs, they sign bats, and they just hang out for about 20 or 30 minutes. And then Barry hands the dad at Jersey with his wife's name and the amount of years that they were married as the number.

And the family stayed till the end of the game, George, which never happens in a baseball game, especially with seven kids. They stayed till the end of the game. And at the end of the night, the father came up to Barry and said, that was the last gift. my wife ever gave the kids, and I couldn't imagine a better gift. Wow. That is unbelievable. It's fascinating to see the impact that you have had, even in what might, you know,

some might call, well, this is a trivial entertainment experience, but the impact that you can have on people's lives to create those fans' first moments, the intentionality that you and your team take every day to bring joy into a world that seems like it's gone mad and gone void of joy, you are so needed. and your impact is innumerable, and I'm so excited for all of our listeners to experience us a Savannah Bananas game in their lifetime. Jesse, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Thank you so much, and truly appreciate you guys and everything you share with the world. You've made a huge impact on us. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Thanks so much, Jesse. What an incredible story and an incredible human being. If you want to learn more about the Savannah bananas or get tickets to a game,

you can use the link in the show notes. If Jesse inspired you to get a little more creative and personal with your customer experience, you may still be wondering how you can do that in your industry and for your customers. We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, coming up, I talk with Joe Levitt.

He's the director of event production here, Ramsey Solutions, and if you've ever been to an entree leadership event, Joe and his team are the ones behind the scenes making it happen. We're going to talk about his process for creating memorable experiences and how you can do the same

for your team and your customers. Here's our conversation. Joe, this is your first time on the Entree Leadership podcast. You didn't even know where the studio was. You didn't tell me. You've been here 19 years. Indeed, yep. And you finally made it to the big leagues.

Is this the big leagues? I don't know. I have no idea. But I'm really excited to talk to you today. Yeah. And you were the first, maybe second person we thought of when it came to coming up with ideas that create memorable moments. And you are someone who has done that for decades now.

Can I say that? I guess. Am I aging you? Yeah, you are, but you already said 19 years. It's fine. Okay. Well, you look great. And the thing that amazes me about you is you're amazing on stage, but behind the scenes, you are directing the team who's making it happen for our clients, for Entree Summit events. I mean, you name it, your team is behind it. How do you guys consistently do that year after year?

A lot of caffeine just simply keeps us energized. No, I think we keep it going. We keep coming back each and every time because of the customer. I mean, we really do. I know that sounds really cliche. Sounds really like cheesy and be like, we do it for the customer, but we do. I mean, we do it for those experiences. There's nothing that I enjoy more than walking through a lobby and kind of just interacting, seeing those faces,

seeing those people who are coming and experiencing our events. experiencing our team. And what we like a lot is when we get back from these huge events, it's usually not the production. It's usually not those things that people are like saying, this was amazing. It was that big LED wall. Sure, that's part of it.

But what they're talking about on these surveys is we saw the team interacting with each other. We saw the team interacting with guests. And those are the experiences that we're really making. Kind of just organically right in front of everybody. So it's a lot of intentionality. it's a lot of hard work and it's a lot of personalized touch to make people feel seen and go, hey, we're so glad you're here.

And being able to connect with the team and not just experience the fancy stuff, the lights, the LED walls. And one of the things that you do personally, if you were at Entree Leadership Master's series, you could have seen Joe in a robe and a wig on stage. Can you explain what was happening? First, I think we need to clarify exactly what that.

That was, it was a judge's robe and a barrister's wig. So it wasn't just like I went down to some random costume shop and showed up in some shorty bathroom robe and a blonde wig. There was a reason, okay? So I was playing...

Still both upsetting visuals. Yeah. Okay, so you're in the judge's robe and Barrister's wig. Is that the right name? Yeah, barrister. It's a fancy word for judge. For the old-timey judge.

Yeah, it's, you know, like the curls and things in it. So, yeah, it was part of our spelling bee, and I was playing the role of kind of judge and jury giving out the words listening to people spell. It is one of our home run events that we do at our Entree Leadership Master Series event, and we also do it for our team, and they absolutely love it. Was this the one?

Do you remember? Was this the one where they couldn't spell anything at all? Every person got out. And I ran out of words, and I said, okay, now we're going to spell backwards, and they were all spelling the words backwards with no problem. They're amazing business owners. I thought that. are incredible entrepreneurs, very successful people, but acoustic is just not going to happen.

They're not going to spell that word today. No. Okay, so not every leader listening is going to go get a judge's robe now based on this conversation. But why do you? What's the heart behind dressing up in costumes? Because this is not just an entree leadership thing. You do this in a staff meeting. You'll get up there in a get-up and you'll have a little intro song as you walk up on the stage

in front of our team. And there's an audible laughter and excitement. from the team of like, oh, Joe's up there now. We're going to have a good time. Yeah, I think it's creating those kind of sticky moments. Those moments that they're going to remember. It's not being too seriously. You just can't make fun of yourself.

A couple years ago, we were having a Christmas party. It was the theme was barbecue and boots, boots and barbecue. And so that year it was kind of an evolving costume. I may not remember the first time got up and it was just boots. Well, fully clothed with boots. But then... Helpful? Yes.

And then the next week, we added a really tacky Western shirt for the next announcement. The next one, huge bell buckle. By the end, it's this whole ensemble, bolo tie, big foam hat, and a kind of a riding horse. So the team begins to just kind of get excited about what's next. It's fun. I mean, it really is. And these things didn't cost a lot of money. Well, Western shirts can cost a lot of money, like real ones.

Yeah. But the idea of the idea of... this is not, hey, we need to go have $10,000 to make a moment. You can do this with very little budget. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And what it creates on that back end with the team, they're having a blast. They're enjoying it. And it is. It's super, super cheap. And you just have to be willing to not take yourself so seriously. Yeah. And that's easy for me. We have a lot of creative people here. And I think for the listeners, they're going, okay, well, yeah, Ramsey team, man, they're amazing. They're so creative. I'm not the type, Joe. I don't come up with ideas like this. How can they

they use the same framework that you guys use to come up with some new exciting ideas? Yeah. For us, it's about the team that does it. Our live events team will often just get in a room. So it's really helpful, I think, if you have somebody to bounce these ideas off of, because somebody starts with an idea, and it's usually pretty bad. Like, it's kind of like, and then somebody sings like a meatloaf song, like, I won't do that. Like, it's like, I would do it, but I won't do that. And so, but then we kind of back it off. And usually we, somehow that crazy idea helps inform everything else. But it starts with the team who comes together, has these ideas.

And we just start kind of brainstorming. You know, it's like Wayne Gretzky said, you know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And I think Michael Scott said it for Wayne Gretzky or Wayne Gretzky said, I don't remember. But it's, you got to take some, yeah, it's very close. You have to take some shots. Otherwise, you're going to be boring. You're going to kind of just do the same thing. and you need that team around you that's going to help you make those crazy ideas,

not so crazy, and then bring them to the team. So if you were coaching one of our listeners right now, a small business leader, and they're not in the live events industry, they're not in the entertainment industry, they can't replicate all of the fun things that we do, both with budget and time and effort and scale and all of that, how can they still use these principles to create those great customer experiences? A lot of folks come to our events and they see these really big things or they hear about our Christmas party, which is enormous in scales, and there's a thousand people,

and I can't do that. But things like the spelling bee literally don't cost any money. It's a list of words, and people get up and they spell words. The things like our flip cup, good grief, go to the grocery store, get some Red Solo cups, play Flipcup, and give somebody a gift card for coffee, and they'll lose their mind. So you create that fun, you create that energy within the team. Then when they interact with customers, I mean, you're... you've got a head start.

First is a team that's showing up that doesn't love being there, doesn't love what they're doing. It's hard for them to then go, we're going to treat our customers amazing when they're not having fun themselves. Yeah. Well, what all this points to is making these memorable moments and creating these customer experiences and raving fans,

it really points back to the culture. And it starts with you, it starts with the team, and that then bleeds out to all the fans and the customers so that when they meet one of our team members, they go, oh my gosh, Josh was awesome and Stacy was awesome and everyone treated me so well and it was such an incredible experience. But it starts with those shared experiences where we all go, yeah, this is who we are. These are the values we stand for. And I remember playing Flip Cup with Josh the other day and we had a

great time and you bond together and create those relationships and all of that, it matters. And it's hard to pinpoint and put a metric on it and say, well, the spelling bee is really what we, our culture bar is up 4% today. How do you measure those memorable moments? Yeah, I think we communicate with the team, so we try to find out what they want. You know, because our team that loves the spelling bee, and we can talk about this and say, man, it's easy, you need to do it, and you go and do it, and it may just lay an absolute rotten egg, and it might be horrible. Flipcup might be the thing for your team.

Your team might be super creative, and they want to do these lip sync battles. We did those, and then it just got really bad for personal brands. Like people were doing things that they shouldn't have been doing lip syncing to songs. We're like, we probably shouldn't do that. So there's ways that you can kind of figure out what's good for your team. And it's going to take some trial and error. But it's important we get real fancy and we have analytics and we survey. And so we know that the Christmas party is a major, major huge morale booster for the team.

If we took that away, it would be kind of a big deal for the team. If we took our Battle of the Bands away, which again is another huge thing, people would notice, they would also really hate if we took Flipcup away. and if we took Spelling Bee away, those are, again, really easy things, but the team loves them. Yeah. And a lot of that, we end up going, hey, our team love this. I bet our clients would too. And so we start to emulate that stuff on the outside, and it becomes a really cool experience.

And they go, oh, the Ramsey team does that too. Yeah. That's a cool thing to have that shared value system, which is why I think a lot of listeners listen to this podcast is because they have shared values and they care about the team, and they want to have a great culture, and they care about hospitality. And so a lot of cool themes in here today, Joe. And as we wrap, we talked about how making these moments, it can be a lot of work. And it will be a lot of work.

It's going to take some intentionality. And sometimes it takes money and effort and time and all of those things. But what is a simple way that they can implement this stuff? Maybe one idea that they can do this week with their team to start stepping into that. One of the simplest things literally would be going to the grocery store, getting those flip cups doing that. Even that might feel a little risky for some folks. but you could literally just root around in your desk drawer, find an old stapler, something like this.

We have a lot of teams around the company that do things like this. Paint the stapler, gold, and now you have the Golden Stapler Award. You just made up an award. It cost you a can of spray paint, probably, and that's about it. And then you just make up what this award's for. Somebody that crushed it that week, somebody that had a great customer interaction, whatever it is.

And now you've just created this little bit of team culture, a little bit of fun. It doesn't even have to come with a big prize. A lot of these things, like there's a one team has a nailed it award. It's a big nail, nail, and it just gets passed around. We have a VIP award on the live events team that was actually an old award that was somebody misspelled a name. So we just kind of put a piece of paper over that just says VIP for live events, and we give that out once a month. And it comes with no prize other than just, hey, we're going to recognize that somebody did something really good this month, and people love to be recognized. And so how can you recognize your team real simply?

And once you start doing that, once you start building that culture of recognition, it's just going to just naturally, I think, flow out to the customers. Yeah. Well, Joe, I've loved working with you in my, you know, nine years here. And in 19 years, you have served a lot of people really well. And we get to see hilarious Joe on stage, making jokes, making fun of people, and that's all a good time. But what I really love about you is your heart for service,

your heart for hospitality, the way you serve our clients. And I hope that our listeners out there can make it to an entree leadership event and meet you in person and possibly see you on stage, maybe in a wig, maybe in a rope. We don't know. I thought you were going to try to make me cry there at the end. It was getting close. I brought it back around.

Yeah, you did. Hey, thanks. Yeah, it was my pleasure. I hope to get to meet these folks as well. Appreciate you. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks so much, Joe, for coming by and sharing some of your wisdom.

As Joe was just talking about, creating a culture of recognition and hospitality has to begin with your team. Now, Joe gave you a few ideas to start off, but if you want even more, our team has put together a resource called 43 easy ways to recognize your team. The keyword here is easy. These are budget and time-friendly ways to create memorable experiences for your team.

To get this free download, just click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And we want to hear what you think of the show, what you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better. You can give us your feedback by using the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire

Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like Ramsey Call of the Day. Check out our new Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It'll give you a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes. Listen to the Ramsey Call of the Day, wherever you listen to podcasts.