The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 507: Jesse Cole - How To Build Your Idea Muscle, Create Unforgettable Experiences, & Earn Fans For Life

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of Learning Leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Jesse Cole is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He's fanatic about fandom and launched the Savannah Bananas with one mission: to spark a fan-focused movement. The Bananas have sold out every game since their first season and have a waitlist for tickets in the thousands. They have entertained millions of fans in Savannah and at ballparks all over their country on their Banana Ball Tour. Notes: "So many business owners are focused on short-term profits. We are focused on long-term fans." "If you're not getting criticized, then you're playing it too safe." - When is the last time you were criticized for pushing it too far? Ideas are about quantity. Jesse writes down ten new ideas in his "idea journal" every morning. Most of them aren't that good. You have to get through the quantity to get to the quality. It's a numbers game. Send handwritten thank you notes to people. Tell them about the impact they've made on you. Jesse has done this for me multiple times and it always makes me feel good. Customers are transactional... Create fans for life. "Do for one what you wish you could do for many." Create special moments for people. One at a time. Do an energy audit: What activities give you energy? How can you do more of those? We learn who we are in practice, not in theory. We learn best through actual trial. Move from idea to execution quickly. If it doesn't work, move on. "I'm not afraid to be embarrassed. My biggest fear is being irrelevant." Jesse focuses a ton of effort on understanding his teammates (both players and everyone else who works for him) The love language assessment... He learned that the majority of his employees have "words of affirmation" as their top love language. "Recognition drives behavior." The job title for Jesse's executive assistant is "Executive Rockstar." What Jesse learned from Walt Disney and PT Barnum: Master storytellers They create attention "Without promotion, something terrible happens... Nothing." Watch "The Imagineering Story" on Disney Plus "They built Disney Land in less than a year!" "Money doesn't excite me. Ideas excite me." Advice: "Give without asking for anything in return. Give, give, give." 9 Rules To Banana Ball: Every Inning Counts - Create walk-off moments 2 Hour Time Limit 1 on 1 Showdown (if there is a tie). No extra innings. Walks are now springs (if you walk, it's a sprint) No Bunting (bunting sucks) No Mound Visits (they are boring The batter can steal first base (if a pitcher throws a passed ball) If a fan catches a foul ball, it's an out No stepping out of the box

I mean, right now, I have no idea what's in the bananas bank account. I'm an owner of a team. I have no idea. And that fires me up that I don't know. But what does fire me up is sharing, creating, and growing, and spreading gratitude. Those things fire me up. So in my day, I look at how am I doing more of that? And so it becomes contagious to me.

Once I send one video to you, I probably do three, four, five more. I think, who are some other people from yesterday or this past week that have real? And I just fire from there because it's that contagious energy. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,

will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of. excellence will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now on tonight's featured leader. So good. The great Jesse Cole is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the owner of the Savannah Bananas.

He's fanatic about fandom and launched the Savannah Bananas with one mission to spark a fan-focused movement. The bananas have sold out every game since their first season and have a wait list for tickets in the thousands. They have entertained millions of fans in Savannah and at ballparks all over the country on their banana ball tour. Jesse is also the author of multiple books. I love Jesse Cole. A few of the topics we discuss writing 10 ideas a day. This one simple practice is the foundation for the impact that Jesse and his team have.

had on the world and you can do it too Jesse will explain how and then in any business instead of focusing on acquiring customers work to create fans customers are a transaction fans are for life and then how to deal with criticism Jesse is regularly criticized by baseball traditionalists and he shared some hopeful ideas about how we can deal with critics. So, ladies and gentlemen, I know you're going to love this one. It's the great Jesse Cole. So good to see you.

You as well. You as well. I can't imagine Christmas time with five girls ready to, ready to rock and roll. It's about that crazy time, isn't it? Yeah, it's all good, man. It's fun. We're having a good time. We just had a little mini vacation to chill out and now we're back.

So it's all good, dude. Us too. Where'd you go? We, there's a place called Hawking Hills. It's a few hours away that you, it's got some caves. and some just great hiking just to get outside, get off the phones, you know, do some, do some active stuff for a little bit. And we had a great time, man. It got a cabin, one of those types of deals.

Amazing. We took the kids on a Disney cruise, which was a... You did. Hey, I've thought about those. How are they? Have you been on cruises before? I've been on cruises. I've never been on a Disney cruise.

Yeah, it's next level. It's, I mean, they have a kids club, which has literally like a Frozen Land, a Marvel land, Star Wars Land that the kids love. And then you go to different restaurants that are themed every night and your waiters come with you. So they know the kids' preferences. They know what they like. They know how to take care of the same ones the whole time.

Yeah. So the first one we had our dinner in Marvel. Then we had a frozen dinner with performances and so on. And they literally travel with us to eat a restaurant each night. It's just, it's all my level. Like fans first. I mean, you walk in, welcome the Cole family. And like they welcome you into the ship.

It's the attention to detail that for me, it's like the best vacation because I can have a great time of kids and I get to learn a ton as well. So it was like, bingo. Like, let's do those all the time. How much, like, do you have to turn things off? Like, do you have to turn the Jesse Cole, Savannah banana guy off? Or like, how does that work? Well, there's difference. I mean, when I'm on the yellow tucks, when I'm with my kids, I'm a dad.

But I'm a dad that I never turn off wanting to learn. And, like, I will, Emily will look me, she's like, you okay, Jesse? Because I'm just spacing out a little bit for a second because I'm, like, so indefinitely thinking about something and trying to parallel think how we can do it. So I will, yes, I'm always on and thinking about everything in the sense of what we can do. But when I'm with my kids, I can have a point where I'm dancing with my daughter. You know, we're foster parents. We have two amazing foster daughters that are hopefully going to be ours soon. But we literally, I'll dance with her for an hour and I don't realize it.

But then afterwards, I'm like, they got me dancing. This is how they did with the music. This is what they did with the confetti and the streamers. This is how they brought this in. So then I come back and I reflect. So the next day, I write, how did they make this experience where I was able to get lost? How do we create that with our fans? So it's a cool, cool thing for me.

I was watching the whole ESPN series. Awesome, dude. Like, it was so cool. And just to see you and it's like, that's the guy who sends me the text message videos and all that stuff. And seeing you write your 10 ideas per day. So when you're on the cruise, Are you like banking those for the next day or you immediately write them in your phone or like what's your note taking process to remember all this stuff? No, it I it so what I do is I have a little to do to do for the next day and so I'll write ideas on the Disney opening

Introduction and so I'll have a theme my key with ideas is you got to have a bucket you have a bucket for the next day So I'll already pick my theme for the day which will get me in a lens seeing those things throughout the day and then so I come into my idea session at five in the morning five third in the morning and I'll I'm already firing because I've already been seeing things towards that. Do you remember? So you have a good memory as far as all the stuff that you've remembered from the day before or other times before? Well, I can get my mind to go there because when I'm in a moment and if I can really remember that.

So I can go in that moment and then it'll kept me thinking of other things like that. So I'll take notes. If I'm running every morning, which I run and I listen. It's funny. ESPN covered that too, which is very weird. I run every morning. And then I'm listening to a podcast. often yours, by the way.

I actually remember where I listened to a podcast. I was listening to, oh, I forget the name, but it was like the meaning of life. You're either in a art museum or an airport. Oh, really is awesome. I was literally, that was the day before we got on the cruise ship. So I'm listening and I'm running. I remember vividly where I was running, what I was passing.

And then I wrote after that day and talked to Emily. And so then I wrote in my journal, which I have a journal idea, I said, all right, art museum. And so I say, how can I do that? So what are those things that I want to be in that art museum type of mentality? So I will listen to a podcast, get a theme, and then I will come back and write more in depth on it. Gotcha. So your mind's just always in the learning mode, always on the lookout for ideas, always. It's what gives me energy, man.

You know, I mean, you're the same way, I'm sure. Well, I mean, it's funny, like, how do you get guests? And I'm saying, I'm never not looking for them. Never. Like, always, always on the lookout. I don't even remember how I found you so many years ago. wait did you write me no I wrote you a thank you letter at some point it might have been the thank you letter yeah I think I've heard about you and see it a little bit and then all of a sudden

I got your baseball card and your thank you note yeah and that was when it kind of fully brought it together that's the thing that I'm trying to get better at what's your process for sending out thank you notes to people so again on my day now my life changed when I brought on an executive rock star and again titles are very important to me I share this it's not an executive system I don't want someone to assist. I want a rock star. People would rather talk to her than talk to me. And so Taylor has been amazing.

So I've processed where I'll send notes of like who had an amazing interview with someone who had a great tall with them, hey, on my tomorrow's agenda. And so I get my activity sent. And so like today I'll be very transparent. I'm doing 10 times the amount of videos. Thank you videos as I am letters. So I'm fortunate. Just holding your phone up?

100%. So I've done probably 15 or 20 today. So just like this. put my phone up and I'll have a list of 10 or 15 people that have sent me emails, messages specifically of what they were asking about, talking about, or complimenting me. And then I do about a minute video, send it right to Taylor. Taylor then sends it to them. So I'm able to in 30 minutes, an hour, do personal messages to people that have really made an impact.

And it saves my time so I can still touch as many people as possible. So I get these text messages directly from you, not from your executive rock star, when you're out on a walk or a run talking about very specific things, which I'm really big, Jesse. I know you are on specificity when you're praising or when you're asking. Be specific. And you are, and it's something I, it always creates a ripple effect. It gets me to do it. I don't sustain it, though.

I will say when I get one from you, and a couple people do this, but not many people might. If you're one of them, and it always really juices me up. I'm like, God, what a, this dude's so busy. He's running this thing. I just watched him on ESPN. And literally like 30 minutes later, I happened to get a video from him. What, what process did you put in place to not only do the things with Taylor and your team and your people that work there as well as probably season ticket holders, stuff like that? But for just random dudes like me that you're sending videos to you, like, what's the process?

Well, the first thing is the mindset. said, I don't see you or anybody who puts great value in the world as a random dude. So, you know, I know, as Andy Stanley said, do for one what you wish you could do for many. And I know that there are hundreds and now thousands of fans that I don't get to personally touch the way I wish I could. But it's all about what gives you energy. I mean, Ryan, this has been the biggest a ha's for me, man. You know, I started creating my energy list.

And I did an energy audit. And I don't know if we talked about this in the last show that I was with you. But I literally realized days I came home burnt out. It was days that I was doing things that didn't give me energy, operations, financial spreadsheet. I mean, right now, I have no idea what's in the bananas bank account. I'm an owner of a team. I have no idea. And that fires me up that I don't know.

But what does fire me up is sharing, creating, and growing and spreading gratitude. Like those things fire me up. So in my day, I look at how am I doing more of that? And so it becomes contagious to me. Once I send one video to you or a message to you, I probably do three, four, five more. I think, who are some other people from yesterday or this past week that have really, and I just fire from there because it's that contagious energy. So just keep going. So perhaps you listen to a podcast.

Usually that's what you send me a video about. You learn something and you just want to tell me in the moment just to make sure that it's acknowledged, hey, thank you. I learned this. I really appreciate it. Keep it going. It's awesome. And so you're just like, let's just get them in the moment when it's when it's fresh. A hundred percent.

A hundred percent. It happens. And again, that could be seen as disruptive, but I make sure I have some white space in my days that I can do that. In my white space, my biggest space is in the mornings. So really from about 445 until 7.15 when the kids start really getting going, I have that space. And so I may record a video or record something at 6.36.45. And I don't send it until people like 9 o'clock.

A lot of entrepreneurs are up early. But I hold it. And then I have a note on my list, hey, fire that off to Ryan, fire that off to John, fire that off to so and so. And so then I can literally go into my time with my kids. And I've already got really good method of where I want to be for the day. What advice would you give to others who are running businesses who are leading big teams, who are very busy, but want to be more intentional about showing up for others, about being

grateful what what are some ways that they could be better about this is for me too about implementing what you do into their daily practice um yeah i'm not sure i mean literally as you know i think we might talked about the first time was the thank you experiment i mean i started that i bought 500 thank you letters and custom yellow with uh you know be remembered for who you are uh for and not for what you accomplished and and i had that on and i was like i printed those and then i started getting a list of people that I wanted to thank you. And the biggest log jam on that was finding addresses. That's one of the biggest. That's the biggest challenge these days is finding addresses. And that's why it's so hard for me now because I know three out of ten may never get to someone.

And yet I know a video will always get to them. So I'm been very strategic. But yeah, I think it's the intentionality, Ryan. I mean, again, I'm not an expert at it. But I know that every day I share a little gratitude. If I help lift other people up, as Booker T. Washington said, it'll help lift you up as well. And so anytime I'm ever down, I'm in a funk. And I'm like, I feel like I'm not accomplished anything. I'm an intagram three. So everyone thinks I'm an ingram seven. Like I'm all just about joy and happiness. No, like I have to have accomplishments. I have to succeed. And if I'm struggling there, I will say, all right, can I spread some gratitude to someone? And then that changes my day like that. So put it in your schedule. Like put in 30 minutes of just

actual gratitude. And whether it's a text message, a video message or a letter, if you put 30 minutes a day, that's not a huge commitment, but it'll actually make you more successful and give more energy to you to have a better day by doing that. And that's kind of how I've been able to do it in the morning. The idea thing is interesting, right? Again, ESPN pans in on you writing in your idea journal and you write all your ideas. Yeah, there you go. All your ideas every day and ideas like a lot of things in life are a quantity game, right? You've got to get the quantity to find some of the quality and most of them are probably not very good.

It's like writing a book. If you want to get 50,000 good words, you probably got to write like 100 or more because most of it's not good. I know that feeling. We know about that. So can you share more about the importance of not just an owner of a wacky, awesome, crazy baseball team doing this, but a leader in any profession, at any industry, of any team of any size, why they should have an idea journal and how it could be helpful. and then how they could potentially put this into practice. I mean, I'm so bullish on ideas. Obviously, you know, with the last book fans first,

I'm always going to be bullish on creating fans. I think that is the future of business. It's not how many customers you have because customers are transactional. It's how many fans you have. That is the future of business. That's why, you know, as we talk, we have over 300,000 people on a wait list for tickets, which makes no sense to me.

But other than fans, I think the next most important thing for any business is idea generation. And I think it's something that's really just thrown to the side by every leader or entrepreneur. You'll have meetings on driving sales. You'll have a meeting with your sales team. You'll have a meeting with your marketing team. But how often you have meetings just on idea creation and what the next innovation is for your company and how do you keep pushing an idea culture and an idea factory? I think, as you know, as an athlete and I was a washed up athlete back in the day as well, you know, you're constantly working out.

You know, as a baseball player, every day I was working out throwing, getting my batting practice in. I was working the muscles to be a better baseball player. Yet I believe so many leaders, entrepreneurs don't work their idea muscle. And so ideas are very hard. And so many people will say, I'm not creative enough to come up with ideas. I think that is not true at all. I think the reality is you have to start working your muscle. For instance, you're talking about you're constantly trying to look at guests and thinking

about how to interview and who do you want to interview. Because you're working that muscle, you're one of the best in the world at it because you've been working it for so many years. With my idea muscle, now I've been doing it for six or seven years, you know, that's 10 ideas every single day. And so every day I am looking for ideas. I am searching for ideas. And why it matters is because now when I get together with our team and we talk about these ideas and then we put in a play, a guy coming up to bat with his bat on fire was an idea that wasn't from me. That was from someone on our team. They didn't even tell me about it because they were scared. I was going to say, no. I would have said, yes, get more.

fire, but that's a whole other story. But they did it. And that single-handedly, I don't know, five, 10, 15 million views, you know, TMZ interview, all right, and then all of a sudden there's like, oh, all right, now can we like the mound on fire? Can we like the bases on fire? Can we have the ball on fire? So one idea leads so many other ideas. The greatest example I can show you right is like, we're known most now for our dancing. We're a baseball team that dances. And you could say whatever you want about it, but we're known for dancing. My first year was a 23-year-old GM, a meeting with a company, an HR director. And she's like, we don't want to come out to your games.

They're boring. They're baseball. And I go, no, it's entertainment. It's show. And she's like, you're a baseball team. I go, no. Our players dance. She goes, they what? And at this point, I had no idea our players could dance or would dance or anything. I just set it out of my mouth. And she goes, really? I go, yeah, they do a choreograph dance every night. She's like, oh, well, that doesn't sound like baseball. I go, yeah. So I had to then say, I got to find a dance instructor to bring them in, to teach these guys had a dance. And this was before our first game. So the guys think I'm absolutely crazy. I got convinced only four of 30 guys to dance. But they danced. The fans loved it. The next day,

they signed more autographs. By the third day, I'm walking through the crowd. A husband and wife are talking. And all of a sudden, I hear the wife go, shut up, honey. They're about to dance. And I was like, okay, we are on to something. This is gold. And so they, you or they all danced. When I came to Savannah, we developed the banana nannas, our senior sentence and dance team. They're women in their 70s who dance every night to Bruno Mars and Justin Timberlake, you name it. Then we developed our breakdancing coach. Then we developed our twerking umpire. Now in the middle of games, the 3-2-2, the third inning, the second batter, the second pitch.

You probably saw an ESPN special. We do a choreograph dance into a pitch. Those videos from just the 3-2-2 last year got 500 million views on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. 500 million. And drove our subscribers probably, I mean, we went from less than a million to almost 6 million now. And so that dance, that one idea led to a entire culture. New York Times did a full page story on us, not about the baseball, solely about the dance. It was in the culture section about dance.

So my point is once you develop that idea culture and you try more ideas, then you learn what to put gas on and you keep pushing and keep pushing. And so now it's pushing us into other levels we never thought we'd be in. So why don't entrepreneurs, leaders, managers prioritize that with the organization, say, every week, we are going to have these idea sessions themed on answering questions on how to create a better experience or a better moment or something new for our company. And don't think it is just brainstorming. Bring ideas to the session.

Answer a question and then actually have the courage to implement something that may not work. It seems like it would be so much more fun too. It kind of all goes together. This would be a lot more exciting, like the thought of innovation, the thought of a new idea. And the willingness to be completely okay with ideas that have no chance, that are not going to work, that are bad ideas. You have to just get through them, right? You look at the history of inventors, right? I'm sure you study this stuff, Jesse.

The people who have the most patents over time, the people who have invented the most useful things over time, they've invented the most stuff. And most of the things they've invented, you never even thought about. You don't know. You never used. You never will. Because it's not about that. It becomes a quantity game to get to the quality. 100%.

I mean, I share it on my key notes, the brilliant philosopher, Will Ferrell. He said, he said, keep throwing darts at the dartboard. You'll eventually hit the bullseye. And people don't realize, like, Amazon, the fire phone was $170 million. failure. It was a colossal failure. But the technology from the fire phone helped build Alexa, help build the Amazon Echo. Pete Rose, who had more hits than anybody that ever played Major League Baseball, had 14,000 at bats. He had 2,000 more at bats than anybody that ever played the game. Of course he had more hits. So, you know, our mindset, it used to be one new thing a game.

Me and our director on tape at Laugh, we do 10 to 15 things every night that we've never done in front of a live crowd, 10 to 15. And I'll tell you, Ryan, nine to 12 of them do not go well. I just shared on LinkedIn the other day, a promotion that was failed miserably, but I could go into the living pinata or, you know, literally the horse head race, the messy baby. I mean, we have every night. But what happens, Ryan, and I think, you know, such a testament to you and what you're doing, what you're teaching is we learn faster than anyone else because we learn by doing. The more you do, the faster you learn. And so it's such an obvious principle, but so often people are scared of doing more because

of the opportunity of failure. And I don't like talking about failure because I think it's a, it makes people, as soon as you say a failure, it makes you not want to do it. So we don't even use the term failure. What do we discover? What do we learn today? And those are often things that don't go well. And so it's so obvious.

Every entrepreneur talks about it, but I don't think to, how many things did you test this yet today? Can you evaluate your team by not how many sales they brought in, by how many experiments they did this quarter, by how many tests they did? And then that's how you can say, oh, wow, we did 12 new experiments this quarter this year. And eight of them didn't go well, but three are changing our business. That's what I get excited about.

That's why I love Amazon and what they do, because Jeff Bezos said our success is a direct function of how many experiments we do per year, per month. per week, per day. It's all about experiments. I love it. The one thing, Jesse, as you become more well-known as you have and your team, as more great things happen, more notoriety, your social following is absolutely exploded since the last time we talked. I don't even know if you had social following, and now it's tens and hundreds of millions of people watching all the stuff you guys do. sometimes that past success could actually make you a little nervous to mess up in the future

because now sometimes like an author who writes a book that just explodes they're a little nervous about the next book because like what am I supposed to do how is it going to live up to that first book do you ever have those thoughts like how do you manage anything like that to say like oh wow we've actually really hit some things now I don't want to I don't want to mess this thing up it's a great question. I think my bigger fear is irrelevance. My bigger fear is settling. And the only way you settle or become irrelevant is if you stop trying and stop testing.

You know, we're fortunate we get compared to a lot of different groups, but the Globetrotters is number one. And if someone has a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for the Globetrotters, especially in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. I mean, Ryan, the Globetrotters fundamentally changed the game of basketball. People don't realize this. The NBA used to book them for doubleheaders so people would stay for the NBA games. The Globetrotters sold out Madison Square Garden twice in one day. They played in front of 75,000 people in Berlin. Will Chamberlain played for the Globe Chorters before he played in the NBA.

The Globetrotters beat the Lakers twice with George Miken. Like, they were everything. They were the most popular sports team in the world. And then something happened. They learned how they were so good at the show, and they kept doing the same show for many, many, many, many years. And I still have respect for them, but we are not the Globe Charters. Every game, you never know what's going to happen.

We are more similar to the Grateful Dead, the WWE. The Grateful Dead will do a concert and they'll play at a venue three times and they'll not play the same song once. That's who I want to be. And that's who I'm trying to push our culture and to say, guys, we're going to do more 10 to 15 a night. That should be light by 2025. We should be doing 25 new things at night.

And so that's where I want to push us and challenge us. No, we're not just going to play in baseball fields. Can we play in aircraft carriers? Could we do a Bahamas cruise and actually get off a cruise ship with all of our fans and playing the different islands? What are those places that we could play that no one's ever played before? And so when you start thinking big like that, then all of a sudden, more ideas come from that. It feels like this would get exhausting.

The travel, the new show every night. Even like The Grateful Dead, they play different sets. And my favorite bands do that as well. But they all know They know all their songs, right? So even if they're going to play different sets They know all their songs. In your case, you're literally trying new stuff

All the time. After a while, do you get exhausted? No, because it gives me energy, but I know what you're saying. I mean, Dave Matthews, man, we're both Dave Adams fan. I mean, I heard they played Pig the other day And he missed a whole verse, which was hilarious. And like, you can't imagine. And when they do songs, like, if only are new ones

they haven't done before, it's not perfect. If you watch the evolution of a song, even for the great artists, evolves and that's what's great. Yeah, I think it would be exhausting if it didn't give you energy. And I think this is really true. A lot of people can look at a crazy guy on a yellow tuxedo that's doing all these wild things with the sports team and say that's not them. And that's fine. But to find lean in on what gives you energy and try to build a culture of people that do like coming up with these ideas and do like trying new things. For us, it all comes down to two

recognition. We're in a recognition culture. Right. I don't know if any of the company you've worked where the groups that you work with have done the love languages test. But the love languages test has been, was a game changer. And I was kind of very skeptical at first. Our fans first director, Marie, who started us as a 22 year old, comes up to me, Jesse, I'd like to do the love languages with our team. I go, isn't that for couples? And she goes, oh, well, they have it for businesses.

I go, okay, let's do it. So she did, you know, words of affirmation, access, service, physical touch, gifts, and quality time. And she did it with our whole team. 90% of our people, number one, was words of affirmation. Number one. And so what I realized, and yeah, our president, Jared, was number one words of affirmation. The last one was physical touch.

He said, tell me you love me, but don't you ever touch me. I go, okay, Jared, we got it, we got it. Coming as a high five guy, I got to be careful around Jared. But what we've learned is that this recognition drives behavior. I was just at SeaWorld with the kids after a Disney cruise. And, you know, obviously the whale done philosophy where how they train the whales at SeaWorld is by when they do something good, they feed them. You know, it's not about correcting bad behavior. It's about praising good behavior.

And so what happens at our games, whether we're in a new city, you know, we play in front of 10,000 people in Birmingham or soon to be major league stadiums in 40,000. Our entire team greets the fans before the game starts. And I think they did a little piece in the show of us. I said, there's a reason, guys, why I want you out in front. high-fiving the fans, dancing with the fans, and celebrating before we open the gates. Because I want you to realize that this is bigger than baseball. It's not if you've got a double or if you have 10 strikeouts.

It's the impact you make when you deliver a rose to a little girl during the crowd. It's the impact if you do, you bring someone up on the dug-eye and you're dancing with them in the middle of the game. It's the impact of doing a TikTok while you're running through the crowd with one of our fans. And I say, that's what it's all about. And so they do that and they see, you know, in Kansas City, we sold out 10,000 tickets in 16 minutes this past year. and they showed a little bit.

They stormed the gates. They literally ran through security. There was 4,000 people in line three hours before the game. And so we had to figure all we're doing. But after the game, when a game ends, we send the whole team, all the characters, all the players, out with the fans. And they sign autographs, and they do autographs, and they do pictures. And all the fans come to say, thank you so much for the joy you brought for my kids. We came, we drove 40 hours from Utah, which we have families do that, which is just crazy.

And that's what they remember. And at the end of the night, when we put our arms around each other, the whole staff, the cast, the players, the fans, it's crazy. And our band plays the opening beats to stand by me. And we're all singing, stand by me. It sounds very kumbaya, but it gives me goosebumps every time. You look around and you realize that I can never get bored of this. And that's why I get so emotional in that last episode because I realized we're never going to stop. Because it's a feeling that you look around with you doing people and you're bringing joy.

And that's so that's for me, I don't get exhausted. I think about how do we do it even better. How about P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney. I love hearing your inspiration from them. What have you drawn from those guys? Walt even more so because, you know, Walt, Walt still exists in the sense that you get still to see the pieces of Walt Disney on a daily basis. You know, P.T. Barnum at first, what he did as far as creating attention, I mean, he was the most famous. person in the world. I can't imagine if he had a TikTok what P.T. Barnum would do. That's a whole

another P.T. Barnum's TikTok, but, uh, you know, he was tremendous at bringing people together. He brought very unique individuals and he brought out the best of them. I mean, Jenny Lind, who he brought over, he never heard her sing, but he hired 12 reporters to do stories on her, not about her singing, but about her personality, about her, her attire, about her characteristics, about her. So when she came overseas and the arrived, there were 40,000 people to greet her. No one had ever heard her sing. He was a master storyteller, a master lecturer, a master speaker, and knew how to create attention and bring people together from all over the world. So I really think, I mean, the quote, say from him,

without promotion, something terrible happens. Nothing. And that's, you know, but everyone says that quote, by the way, P.T. Barner, because people criticize me on him a little bit, he never said there's a sucker born every minute. It was his rival. He had a circus rival, which is great. There would have been great TV back in the day. There was a circus rival who came up with that quote and put it on him so it would make people not want to go see his show. What he did say was there's a, the noblest art is that of making others happy. That's what he said. So I have a lot of respect for P.T. Barner, but there's so much more on Walt Disney because you get to field and see it. And Walt Disney, the vision, the attention to detail.

I think one of the most fascinating documentaries out there is the Imagineering documentary on Disney Plus. The first episode, you get to see Walt walking on the Orange Grove's and saying this is where we're going to put Disneyland. And you get to see his vision. And Walt was told by his dad, he should never be an animator. He was told by everyone in entertainment in Hollywood that Snow White was Disney's folly,

that they were going to lose the whole business. And Disneyland, his brother and his wife told them that they would fail. everyone, every step of the way, told him, but he had a vision so much larger than people could see. And he made his vision happen. The fact that he built Disneyland in less than a year, think about that, built Disneyland for $17 million in less than a year with a castle, a main street, four lands that have never even been imagined. Amusement parks were failing because they were dirty. They didn't have anything that was aesthetically pleasing. They were at Carnies.

It was not a good experience. He built it in less than a year. And it brought him $24.5 million in that first year. He was brilliant. His vision, he said, it's kind of fun to do the impossible. And the one quote about Walt that people don't talk about much, but I think about all the time, is he said, money doesn't excite me. My ideas excite me.

So if you can see the similarities from us, it's on that love of ideas. I have no idea what's in our bank account. I know a lot of people are fortunately buying tickets and merchandise, but I love coming up with those new ideas. And Walt was fascinated and obsessed with ideas to create a better experience. And that's what I think about daily. You're all about creating raving fans. In your books, both of them, you talk about this. And there are specifically five E's to creating them.

And I think, Jesse, this is something that could apply across the, there's no boundaries for creating raving fans, any business, any leader. This is something that we should think about. Can you tell me more about some of the keys, some of the ways that all of us could create raving fans? And a couple of years ago, you spoke to Ken Blanchard, right? Yes. Yes, I remember that.

Obviously, his first book, Raving Fans, made a huge, huge impact on me. But yes, I think it's very easy to look at a guy in Yellow Tucks in the entertainment industry or the baseball industry as a lot of people think we're in and say, oh, it's easy. Fans, you know, that's part of sports. But I beg to differ. You know, when you think of so many different brands, I mean, Buckees, a, I've heard. probably heard of Buckees. It's a gas station, but it's known as like the Disney land of gas station. I saw, I actually kept track, I saw over 50 people at our bananas games this year

wearing Bucky shirts. Shirts of my gas station. How many times have you seen Yetty hats or Yety coosies? Yet, if you create fans, people want to wear your gear. So how can you create a brand that people actually want to wear your gear? If you have a brick and mortar place, how can you create an experience that people would want to pay admission to come to? There's no reason toys or rush should be out of business. A little part of me died when Toys R Us went out of business, Ryan. I was like, I love Toys R Us. They thought himself as not a business selling toys, but as a business selling an experience,

and you charged admission and you could go play all day in a Toys R Us and you just happen to be able to buy the toys, they would be thriving. Look at the trampoline parks and all the other indoor activities they have these days. Toys R Us was in the wrong business. Most businesses are thinking about how do they drive customers? How do they drive sales? How do they drive revenue? But as I mentioned earlier, customers are transactional.

They come and go. But fans never leave. And you can be a fan of a terrible sports team. I'm not going to go into Cleveland Sports. I'm not going to go into your world. I'm not going to go in any of that. But what I'm saying is you can be a fan of a team and show up every single year with hope.

Because you know why? That team kept showing up every year. Those football teams, they play 16, 17 games a year, and they keep showing up. And they may let you down, but you know they're going to be back next year. businesses that show up constantly and that are obsessed with eliminating the friction, entertaining always, experimenting constantly, engaging deeply, and empowering action for themselves

and their team, they have an opportunity to create fans that will never leave, and you never have to think about marketing, sales, revenue. I mean, right now, Ryan, we spend zero dollars in marketing. We spend zero on sales. We don't have any salespeople on our team. It's all inbound. Everything is inbound because we focus so hard on creating fans. Why do you think this is so anti the norm?

It is the opposite as you, that's what you're known for, right? It's doing the opposite of what most or all do and doing the opposite of what's normal. Why it seems like not only is it much more effective, it also feels like much more fun. Now, it might be harder because you have to constantly come up with ideas and people aren't willing to do that work. I don't know, but why do you think this is so against the norm? I'll give you a great, it's hard, it's very hard to measure in the beginning. And I said this before, but so many businesses are focused on short-term profits. We're focused on long-term fans.

So if you're focused on the next quarter, it's a challenge. If you were following us in the first quarter of 2020, okay? Now, this is right before the pandemic hit. And you saw a sports team coming up with a big announcement announcing on February 25th, 2020, we are eliminating all advertisements from our stadium. We are getting rid of all of our sponsors. You would say, what is wrong with this team? And two weeks later, when we went into a pandemic, I said, what is wrong with me for doing this?

But we made that decision, Ryan, and we threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's the same reason why we have no ticket fees, no convenient fees, we have no shipping fees. and the crazy thing no one talks about is we pay everyone's taxes. So if you buy a $30 shirt online, it's $30 with no shipping fees and we pay your taxes. If you buy a $6 beer in our stadium, it's $6. We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. Why does that make sense? Because we are so obsessed with creating the long-term fan and creating something that we would be proud of.

We want to be the biggest fan of what we do. I never want to come to a sporting event and be sold to a market. to or advertised to. So have my stadium plastered with ads and have announcement reads and have people trying to pass out flyers and have a program that is 70% ads and only 20% 30% content. I don't want that. So we're willing to throw away that short term profit. But in the long term, Ryan, our president shared this with me because again, I don't, I really don't look at numbers. I'm like, I don't want to be a billion dollar company. I want to be a billion fan brand. I want to create a billion fans. That's what I'm fascinated by. But,

the numbers work out. As our president's sheriff who said, Jesse, you don't want to be eliminated sponsorship? I go, yeah, Jared, I remember. He goes, well, just let you know, our merchandise now, our merchandise now is 30 times the revenue we were doing in sponsorship, 30 times. So to put, that's now become a much bigger business than I've ever imagined, more than even professional sports teams, major league sports teams, because we're creating fans. And our revenue comes from our fans, not from corporate sponsors, not from TV rights, not from any else. It comes from our fans. That's who we work for.

And if every business works for their fans, they're going to create an experience that creates even more fans. There are nine rules to banana ball that make, I think, I don't necessarily love traditional baseball. Don't go to the games anymore. I think they're pretty boring for the most part. Boring on TV, too. And watching the ESPN series and just actually seeing it. I'm pumped to see one in person at some point. But traditionalists probably hate you, or at least hate the idea of this.

They don't even want like a small shot clock for the pitcher for Major League Baseball games, like let alone all the stuff that you guys do. How do you think about baseball traditionalists versus the nine rules to banana ball? I love that, by the way. That's probably one of the first questions, and you've had hundreds of interviews that say, these people probably hate you. Like, I love that. Like, that actually fires me up.

I mean, am I wrong, though? Oh, no, no, no. Oh, yeah, I get, I get criticized every day. And I also. It's probably really, no, I'm not even going to say that, actually. It's just people who aren't, don't have as open of a mind to evolving. It's fine. We're not for people.

I think it's so important to know not just who you were for, but as Seth Godin says, know who you're not for. And I believe, as I've seen this with Walt Disney, and as I've studied him extensively, he was criticized every step of the way. So I believe, if you're not getting critical, you're playing it too safe. So for traditionalists that don't love us, okay. Like, yeah, I mean, we were doing this, right? When we had our own little bananas podcast many years ago,

we used to do a review of the week, and we only read bad reviews of people said, it's an absolute circus at the games. It's so wild. There's a crazy, Willy Wonka guy running around. You need to put ear plugs in. I shared that because it's like, yep, that is who we are. You got it.

Like, nailed it. But in regards to the nine rules of Banana Ball, again, that concept started from the first E of creating raving fans from the book, Eliminate Friction. And even though we were, you know, again, from sleeping on an airbed seven years ago, and I still, it's literally almost seven years ago to the day that we got the call, that we were out of money and we had to sell our house. And I remember as Emily Turner me and said, we got to sell the house and we got to put our last dollar into the team. And she said, we only have $30 to grocery shop.

And I go, for the whole week, I go, that's not even food. And I remember going through like Walmart. and looking at these like boxed vehicles. That's where we were seven years ago. And so fortunately after that, we got people to experience and they came out and they had fun and we started selling out games. But I realized as we were selling out every game, fans were still leaving games early. And again, as someone is so obsessed with the experience, you don't go to Top Gun Maverick.

And in the middle of the movie, say, ah, that was a great movie. I'm going to take off now. Like, you don't leave a great show in the middle, but you leave baseball games in the minute and say, I had fun. That was a problem that no one was addressing. So I said, well, what if we looked at every bad part, boring part, slow part, long part of baseball and did the exact opposite? I said, what if we set a set? Because we started videotaping our grandstands, which is crazy.

But every 30 minutes, we videotaped our grandstands to see when people would get up and leave. And we were realizing at two hours in, there was another influx of about 20% of our fans. At 930, two and a half hours in, 40%. So I said, let's go all in two hours. And everyone said, that's too short. And I go, no, I want fans to want more, not to have enough. And so we made a two-hour time limit. And then we said, well, blowouts are brutal.

What if we have every inning count? And if you win the inning, you can score a point. And what if you can have walk-offs every inning and have Gatorade showers? And now, like, in the third inning, we'll score a run. And our whole team will run through the crowd celebrating. And like, we won the World Series. And everyone's like, now it's at the top of the fourth. Like, it doesn't make any sense.

Walk, the most boring rule in sports. Like, walk, walk. Not even rule. It's just, it's not athletic. You walk to first. Like, what is that? So we turned it into a sprint, which is a whole. another rule. And then fans first, fans catch a foul ball, it's an out. So, which we had six of

those happen on tour, which is, imagine you come into the game and you actually, a game ended with a fan catching a foul ball. Like, it's crazy. Like that is like, again, I vision as like a tight game, base is loaded, one run game, and a guy fouls off and a feel, a fan makes like a diving catch. And all of a sudden, the players running the crown and they're lifting them up on their shoulders. The media is interviewing the fan, the fans, the celebrity, you make them the star. You know, I always visualize the perfect situation. That hasn't happened yet. But that's what we came up with. And we knew traditional wouldn't like it. But I'll tell you, 98% of our fans now stay till the end of the game. Ninety-eight percent. And watch any major league baseball game other

than a World Series game. And you're not going to have that. And so we've, we still got a lot to learn. We still get new rules we're going to adapt. But we've only played 30. So we believe we're in the first inning of what we're trying to do. And we're going to go after non-traditional with fans, people that want to have fun. Real quick, I know we got to run to your next thing, but at the end of the series, they interview your, you're very emotional,

and then we find out you get a call from the Boston Red Sox. What's going on with all of that? Yeah, so as a kid that grew up right outside of Boston, I was five years old when I got to be a bat boy for one game, the Red Sox. I got to sit next to Lee Smith, and I was a fan of Mo Vaughn and Roger Clemens and all those guys. I had a dream of getting drafted by the Red Sox.

And I thought that dream was ever true. I had some opportunities in professional baseball and then I tore my shoulder. And Fenway was always my goal because my dad took me there. And my parents were divorced. I was an only child. My mother had some serious challenges. And baseball was everything. My dad took me to Fenway probably a hundred plus times.

You know, there were $5 bleacher tickets back then. So it was very attainable to do. And so my dad, I'm always this kid still just trying to make my dad. dad proud. And I've heard you and your dad and I could tell there's probably a little bit of that as well. And for all the times that we were at Fenway, and he saw me pitch at Fenway when I was 20 years old, he saw me as a bat boy. And I pictured that call in the 47th round, it wasn't going to be a early draft pick. The Boston Red Sox select Jesse Cole. I visualize it over and over again. And, you know, I said, that would be a great dream. And right after the tour, I get a call from

the Red Sox and they said, what would it take to get you guys to play at Fenway? And in my mind, I'm covering the phone. I'm like, what would it take? And I was blown away. And then I got another call from someone else. And this is the C suite of the Red Sox. And they invited us to come up to a game. My dad, myself, my wife, Emily, our kids. And they put us in the owner's box and they had to speak to the team. And the president came in and said, what's it going to take to get you guys to play at Fenway. And since that point, we've been reached out to by over 12 major league teams with offers to play at their stadiums. I've had great conversations with the Red Sox. And that dream means so much more to me. And I got emotional and I think about it because it was just about me

in the beginning getting drafted. Now it's so much bigger. You know, we have a team, a cast of 125 people. We have a full-time team that's close to 50 now, part-time team over 200. And now fans kind of all over the country and to do that at Fenway and bring them on the field and say look at what we just did that that's pretty special for me and my dad as a kid when i would come up to bat in t-ball he tells a story the first time i was nervous and you're looking at a guy again he doesn't seem too nervous you know i love what i do but i was a very nervous only child back in the day and i came up to bat the first game of t-ball and i was dragging my bat right like walking up to the plate like the slowest walk you probably all can visualize what it looks like and my dad tells a

story. He yelled from the grandstand, Jess, swing hard in case you hit it. And I was like, what? And everyone laughs. And I come up and every time I came up to bad as a kid, my dad would say swing hard in case you hit it. And I swung as hard as you could at five years old and I kept swinging all the way through high school and college and still today. And to be able to take that type of swing and connect with so many people, it was going to be a memory. I'll never forget. Oh, man. So cool. One more, Jesse. Someone who's a bit of earlier in their career, maybe a recent college grad, they want to leave a dent. They want to do some stuff like you've done.

Maybe not in the baseball industry or owning a team, but in general, they want to impact people like you do. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to that person? I think it's almost a great way to wrap this all together from what we were talking about in the beginning. Give without wanting anything in return. So often we get reached out to. And I'm very proud of the wait list that we have for tickets that's in the hundreds of thousands.

But I'm more proud we have a wait list now to work with us. That's over 3,000 people. And people constantly reach out to us. They want to work with the bananas. And so forth, and the social media has driven that. But they talk about what they can do. And they don't necessarily think about, I'm going to start offering something. I'm going to start giving something.

If I'm a graphic designer, I'm going to start designing some. I had a young kid, a high school kid who started doing videos of my speeches and cutting them in and doing this. He's like, hey, I just love what you spoke and I just wanted to send these to you. And he did graphic design and just sent it to me with quotes that I said. And I was like, I want to find you a job. Like, I want to find an opportunity for you. So for someone young and you find something that you look up to, that you like, that you admire, start just giving, giving, giving. When I started when I was 23 years old as a general manager of a team in Gastonia, I wasn't able to pay myself for the first three and a half months.

There was only $268 of the bank account. There was no money coming in. But I pushed and pushed and pushed. And I was like, all right, I've got to sell something every day. I got to do something. I've got to give, give, give, give, give. And so I think if anybody can take that mindset, not what's my starting salary, not what can I get out of this? But how can I give?

As you know, how many interviews are you up to now? Over 500. You've given so much more, so much more than anybody could ever ask for. And when you started the same thing. And you didn't get anything in return. another than your great knowledge that you gained in the beginning. And so I think that's the best advice for someone young. Give, give, give, be patient and what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. And that's in the back of our fans first playbook that we share

with everyone on our team. Man, I love you, dude. I really do, man. I am so, you're, you inspire me. And it's, the cool thing is, since we get to talk semi regularly, like, you are legitimately getting better. You're getting better each time. And I know that is not an accident. You're wiser. You bring just better stuff each day. And I think that's an inspiration too for people to say, if you're intentional and you work at this, even if you're at really high heights, you can keep getting better. I want to acknowledge that, man. That's really cool. And I really value you so much. And we definitely got to get to a Dave concert. We've got to go to a concert.

And obviously a banana's baseball game. I really appreciate this, man. I encourage everybody get Jesse's books. I just saw online, too. It looks like you've got a third one coming out next year. Is that if that's accurate? Yeah, but find your yellow tucks. Fans First Change.

Looks like Banana Ball is in 2023. So I highly recommend people get this stuff, man. It's so good. And obviously on ESPN Plus 2, you can still watch all of your, that series is really, really well done. Thank you. I'd love to share one more things. You're just talking. Remind me of, you know, what are you doing when no one else is watching? You know, when you think about yourself and the preparation you do for every interview and the preparation for every speech, and I've listened to everything that goes into when you give a keynote, that is where the real difference comes.

And no one sees me at 445 until 6.30, 7 o'clock in the morning and the ideas and the reading, the listening to your podcast listening to, no one sees that. And I think that for another young person coming up. What are you doing when no one's watching? There's no trophy. There's no recognition. There's no acknowledgement. It's that work plus the giving that I think is unstoppable. And you do it and some of the best leaders do it. And I think that that's something I just love to share to put out in the world. So true, man. It's so true. All right, man. I know you got a crazy day. I really appreciate this. And let's definitely continue. I know we will as we progress. Now you're the best, my friend. Appreciate you. Love it. All right, man. I love Jesse Cole.

And if you couldn't tell from our conversation, and I greatly appreciate how thoughtful and kind he is to regularly send text messages with videos about specific episodes of this podcast and how they've helped them. It means so much to me to have an impact on someone of his caliber and what he's accomplishing the world because he's an inspiration to me. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did a few takeaways. from my notes. He said so many business owners are focused on short-term profits. We, the Savannah Bananas and Jesse,

are focused on long-term fans. And I don't think this just applies to owning a baseball team. This can apply to any leader in any job. If you think about creating fans, your customers becoming fans, the people who work for you, what can you do to show them how you

appreciate them, how you love them, how you care for them. You can do that in any business. And then if you're not getting criticized, then you're playing it too safe. I'd ask you, when is the last time you were criticized for pushing it too far? And if it hasn't happened recently, you probably aren't pushing hard enough. Then ideas are about quantity. Jesse writes down 10 new ideas every morning no matter what. And most of his ideas are terrible ones. But you have to get through the quantity to get to the quality. Like most things, you've got to get the reps. You've got to work that muscle and you work it and work it. It gets stronger. It gets better and better. That's why I said to Jesse at the end of our conversation. He has become a much better communicator

than he was when we first started talking many years ago. And he was great. And he was great. then and he's gotten even better because he works that muscle on a regular basis and that happens in so many different skill areas of our lives and all of us could be better at working that idea muscle but you got to do it each day and you got to get through the quantity to get through the quality thank I want to say once again thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two hey you should listen to this episode of the learning leader show with Jesse Cole I think he'll help you become a

effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to go to Ryanhawk.net and write reviews on Apple Podcasts and rate the show, hopefully five stars, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.