The School of Greatness - How Jesse Cole Turned Baseball Into a Billion Dollar Show

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

He slept in his socks on a garage floor because it was too filthy to touch. That was Jesse Cole eight years ago, broke, sleeping on an air mattress, betting everything on a wooden bat baseball team nobody wanted. Jesse is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the man behind the Savannah Bananas, the "Find Your Yellow Tux" author who turned a dying college summer league into a movement that now plays in front of millions. He explains the moment he realized baseball itself was broken and why he studies Walt Disney more than any business book. He also opens up about the night his wife got a text from a birth mother on Mother's Day that changed their family forever. You'll hear how a bat trickster became a starting first baseman and how a Broadway A-lister ended up pitching in front of 80,000 fans. Jesse still signs autographs until the very last fan leaves, every single night. This conversation will change how you think about customers versus fans, and about what it actually costs to build something the world has never seen before. Find Your Yellow Tux Jesse's Instagram Jesse's books: Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience Find Your Yellow Tux: How to Be Successful by Standing Out In this episode you will: Discover why "whatever's normal, do the exact opposite" became the founding rule behind Banana Ball Learn how studying Walt Disney's obsession with "plussing the show" turned a dying league into a movement Hear the Mother's Day text that changed Jesse and Emily's family forever Understand why Jesse believes fans are different from customers, and why that distinction changes everything Explore the mindset shift required to go from 4,000 fans a night to 100,000 For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1963 More SOG episodes we think you’ll love! Get More From Lewis! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Everywhere I go, airports, events walking down the street, people stop me and say, Lewis, this show got me through one of the hardest seasons of my life. And it's one of the coolest things when people come up to me. So if you see me, please come up and say hi. And let me know how this show, the School of Greatness, has impacted you. It lights me up because our mission at Greatness Media is to impact 100 million lives every single week. So if today's conversation hits home for you, do me a favor and push the follow button right now. it means that the next conversation will be delivered to you and will find you exactly when you need it.

Again, thank you so much for being here and listening to The School of Greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. We thought it was a very good decision for my wife and I to get married and am going to over a million dollars in debt. Sleeping on an airbed, only selling two tickets down to our last dollar was brutal. We ran out of money. Emily turned to me and said, Jess, we have to sell our house. How did you continue to believe in yourself when everyone said no? It was chaos.

an entrepreneur, author, and the creator of Banana Ball. Transforming traditional baseball into a fast-paced entertainment experience. Please welcome me. Jesse Cole. Almost everyone said you're the craziest person. They still do. This is me. And I'm not going to hide away from this.

Everyone said, stay with that. Because that was the safe bet. I was born. I was like, why isn't there non-stop action? Why isn't there entertainment? Why aren't there things happening? How can you bring entertainment to? How we do everything?

Start small, dream date. We're not going to fail. We're going to find a way. And we're going to do it the same way we've done it from day one. Final question, Jesse. What's your definition of greatness? Such a tough question because I'm going to get criticism on that one. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.

Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Jesse Cole in the house. My man, good to see you. It's many years coming, man. I'm glad to be with you. We met eight years ago at a social media blogging conference, something it was. And I remember vividly you coming up in this outfit and saying hello to me

and you sent me the photo of us. Because we took a photo that day, so there's a photo proof of this. You must have thought this guy's a lunatic. At that point, who is? My original thought was this guy has a lot of passion, a lot of excitement. And it reminded me, not of me, but it reminded me the energy of like going for a dream so big. You even told me right then, like, I took over this like wooden bat league, this like semi-pro thing. And I'm trying to make it this new experience.

And I was just like, maybe we only had like two minutes together. I really didn't get the full context. But I remember thinking this is going to be extremely challenging. I remember thinking like this is going to be very hard to do what you were thinking about doing. But at the same time, like, if you're willing to show up every single day and believe in your dream and believe in yourself, even when everyone says no to you, that is like the true testament of someone who's able to do something great. And I think, and that's the first thing I want to ask you about because I know 100% that almost everyone said you're the craziest person ever. They still do. To take over, to take over essentially a wooden bat league that makes no money and try to make it this brand that it is today where you reinvent

a game that has been around for hundreds of years or whatever, that people have stayed true to it in a certain way for so long that nothing's really changed or evolved and innovated in it. And you wanted to do something completely different and create an experience for people that they've never had in their lives. And I bet most people said, like, don't do it. It's too much work. You're crazy. You can't do this.

It's going to be too hard. How did you learn to believe in a vision that you were, had never seen been done before in this sport? When everyone said no, and also you're, you're living on an air mattress with your wife, you've got no money. You sell everything to like go after this. And everyone's saying you're crazy. Just stick to like the safe. sales ticketing job, baseball.

Yeah. How did you continue to believe in yourself when everyone said no? Well, I think if you go back and I think a lot of the greatest creators, they're creating something that they would love. And so, you know, I played baseball in the whole life, just like you and an athlete. And, you know, there's a difference when you're playing the game. You know, when you're in the action, when you're in the arena. You know, I was on the mound and you could control the game and impact the game.

And, you know, every pitch mattered. And then I tore my shoulder when I was in college and I dream, you know, and I was talking to professional teams. And I was like, it's going to happen. Like, just believe, just like you. This is going to happen. I'm going to have this dream fulfilled. And then it was gone, right?

Like that. And I had no idea what I was going to do. And, you know, everyone said I'd go into coaching. And, you know, I tried coaching. But when I was coaching, I realized something. You know, I'm sitting in the dugout. And, you know, I have an idea of what's going on in the game. I know the players.

I know a little bit of strategy. I know what we're trying to do. And I realized, wow, I am bored out of my mind. Yeah. And because, you're not in the game. Not in the game. I'm not playing. And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, and I even know what's going to happen.

I know, all right, we're going to hit and run here. All right. We're putting in our closer in the eighth inning early. We're going to do this. We're going to move our outfielders. I know what's happening. But I'm still not in the game. And even on board.

And I'm thinking, I remember looking around. This was in the Kate Cod League and, you know, one of the old historic college summer baseball leagues, but one of the best ones. And people are all sitting on these, you know, wooden bleachers. This is not even semi-pro or is this? Well, it's the same what we ended up going into college summer baseball. But no, you can't. It was all bad. Ben.

And NCA has changed a lot. But yeah, it was just, it was college players. Played during the summer. And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, everyone's bored. Everyone's bored. Well, you know, baseball traditionalists, they're fine. But I'm like, there's not a lot of families. People are sitting.

Kids are trying to play catch up because they're not watching the game. Kids are running around trying to do things. And the actual game isn't as exciting. Now, baseball tradition is that you're kidding me, you know, and that's fine. But for me, I was bored. And I was like, why isn't their nonstop action? Why isn't their entertainment? Why aren't their things happening?

Why isn't their music playing nonstop? Why isn't all this? And, you know, maybe it's my crazy ADHD, you know, mine, but I was like, I needed more. And so I was very fortunate, you know, I got offered an opportunity to be at GM at 23 years old. And it was the worst team in the entire country. It was a team. You don't get offered that job unless it was a team in North Carolina. And basically the owner there, which, you know, so fortunate he gave me that opportunity, he said, Jesse, you know, we really have nothing to lose. And go do something.

There was $268 in the bank account my first day. The team was losing, you know, over $100,000 a year, 200 fans come to the game. So I just, I started learning everything on Walt Disney, P.T. Barnum. I studied, studied Serp the Slay, WWE, S&L. I just looked at all the entertainment. I was like, how can you bring entertainment to it? And then I just started trying things and testing things and grandma beauty pageants and, you know, flatchance fun nights and dancing players.

So we started testing things. But what I realized was like, it was fun. There was an excitement because you were about to try something out on the field. It might work, I might not, but it was in the spirit of fun and trying to get people in the crowd to pay attention. And, you know, when you say, how did I believe in it? It's because every day, I spent 10 years, 10 years in Gastonia, North Carolina, before Savannah even started going. Wow. So you're the GM for 10 years?

Yeah, GM, and then I became the manager part, and then I bought the team, and, you know, I built up in there. Wow. But, like, we had one media story in 10 years. I was, you know, we were outside of suburb of Charlotte. Charlotte got all the media. They had the professional teams. We had this little tiny team. I had a laboratory of 10 years of testing things and trying to get fans to care about a small college summer baseball team.

People forget that story. And things were failing every night. But we were growing. People were saying, what are they going to do tonight? What are they going to do tonight? Oh, yeah. I mean, we started in 2000 fans a game. Come on.

We were fourth in the country in attendance. Wow. Out of college summer baseball. But still, you know, team became profitable. And I was like, this is one. And then that's when that led to the opportunity. So I had 10 years of going from nothing. thing to seeing a fan base built from just experimentation and fun and letting the players have fun

and let them celebrate and let them dance and let them get in the crowd and deliver roses to little girls and let them do things people hadn't seen before break down the barriers between the fans and the players and so 10 years I'm curious why didn't that take off into something like it is today from that team well again you think about there was it already it was the Gastonia grisness is it the league is that why there's a few things I mean, it was in a regular college summer baseball league. And so we had to play traditional baseball. Yeah, you can't do all this.

You can't. We, and that was again watching the fans over and over again when they were leaving, when they were getting up, when they weren't paying attention, studying the fans to realize we're going to change the actual game. You know what? I realized it's like a hot dog stand. You know, we had unbelievable condiments, you know, the mustard, the relish, the ketchup, the sauerkra, whatever.

That was all the promotions, the entertainment, but the hot dogs still need to work. And that was the game of baseball. The main product. The main product, the hot dog. So there's only someone you could do a ratchup The product. Around the product. We still had to play within the rules. You had to win. You had to try to win. Yeah. And we still try to win. It's just based on entertainment first. Interesting.

And so, so yeah, it was just a regular traditional baseball. And so how did I get that belief? It was 10 years of building. And when you go to away games, you can't implement a lot of this stuff, I'm assuming. That was the before. Could you? We started banana ball. We started testing. We did a one city world tour. Mine said, start small, dream big. You know, I love that. Just that's how we do everything. Start small, dream big. So we called it a one city world tour, which is ridiculous. But we still call it. a world tour today. So it was an experiment, one game. Yeah, but world tour, because that's where we're going. It'll be all over the world. We believe it, no doubt about it. So we're setting that mindset of where we're going, but we started small. And we did a one city world tour, but we also,

at that same point, still had the college summer baseball team. So we started creating all this attention. People say, what are they doing with this game, banana ball? Fans catching foul balls for outs? What is happening? This game is crazy. And then we did seven cities, and we started playing around the country. And we started getting a lot more national attention. We had the first ESPN show, but we were still playing traditional baseball. This is, okay. So, so. So this is when you took over Savannah bananas, right? Yes, this is later with Savannah bananas. And so good context.

And so you were asking, what? So you're still playing Wooden Baton? We're still playing Wooden Battle. We're still playing one of baseball. Yes. So. But then you're like, all right, let's do this one night only. Yeah, one night only and do it.

And we'll do this. Try this holding this lab, this experiment. Wow. We tested at all. That was when it first start. When was that first night? That was 2021. So, yeah.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. The first, the first game of actual banana ball was 20-20 during COVID. in Savannah. We had the bananas play the bananas. We actually had split squad team and we did it and fans had no idea what was going on.

It was absolute chaos. Because it wasn't a normal baseball game. No, it was just we wanted to test this. It was during COVID. We can only have a thousand fans of the stadium. It was like, might as well test it. Really? So we tested it then.

But to answer, go back to your full circle. So we were doing both for years. And so in 2022, we would go to play in these other little towns and they were expecting banana ball. And we were the way team. We had to play traditional baseball fan. These stadiums were all selling out in Ashboro and Forest City. And Thomas...

They were upset. They weren't playing. The owners was... The teams were pumped. The fans were like, what did I get in? I was like, we got to make the clean break. And we left. And Lewis, the criticism we received,

you're leaving traditional baseball. We had consultants, high-paid consultants saying, no matter what you do, you need to keep playing traditional baseball. Everyone said, stay with that. Because that was the safe bet. We were selling out every game playing traditional baseball. How much were you making for the Savannah Banneras

in normal wooden bat league? Yeah, I mean, it was... It was, you know. Was this wooden bat league? Yeah, it was a little bad. You play 30 games during the summer. We were selling out 4,000 seats. How much can the team make?

Three to four million. Three to four million. We were three to four million. It was very profitable. It was a very healthy team. But it's never been about money for us. I was like, we are bringing this joy to only 100,000 fans. For the whole season.

Yeah, for the whole season. There are people around the country that we believe in this. How do we go one city at time, one fan at a time? And so that lab that was 10 years in Gastonia, we turned that lab into Savannah after, like you mentioned, sleeping on an airbed, only selling two tickets, down to our last dollar, grocery shop with just $30 a week. I mean, it was brutal.

We went through when we first came to Savannah, everyone doubted us because they're like, your college summer baseball. We had minor league baseball here. We had professional baseball. Savannah was minor league baseball for 90 years. So did it go down to what? No, they left because they left and the... So you took over, there was still an arena there.

There was a stadium. The team left and you're like, I'm going to go start this. I love what you said arena too. It goes back to your background. I love that. Yeah, no, it was a, it was an old stadium. And, you know, when we got there, so you acquired the, the, we, we thought it was a very good decision for my wife and I to get married and then go into over a million dollars in debt. We thought that was a very good decision.

Not on the wedding itself. On a team, the wedding was the wedding. But, yeah, no, we had bought the team from the league. We had to make payments over many years to buy that. Then we had to put money in to start up and all that. And it was, it was a lot. And it was myself, my wife, our 24-year-old team president. Jared who's still our president's day

and leading us in 322 year old straight out of college. And yeah, we showed up. The phone lines were cut. The internet lines were cut. The former team took everything out of the stadium. There was nothing left. What year was this?

This was in October of 2015 when we came. Wow. So really six years after that, you did the one night only. Yeah. So three years later, I first started writing down the ideas. Because we went from, we sold two tickets in our first few months, January 15th,

2016, we got the call. We ran out of money. And Emily turned to me and said, Jess, we have, we have to sell our house. So we sold our house, MTR's savings account, put that money in going more debt. And we had to get people excited to coming to a college summer baseball game. Did you think about this, what you're doing now back then in 2015, where you're like, oh, I'm going to do this? No, Nana ball wasn't even a, it wasn't even a thought. What I thought was, what if we could start from scratch and create a whole entertainment product? That's not just the gas. Estonia Grizzlies that we had seven years and all this built-in thoughts. What if we could build a new team, a new identity, a new story, a new circus, a new show, all of that. But a new sport also? No. But within baseball. Yes.

You know, and that's why. That's what you did for five years, essentially. Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Because we did that and then by watching our fans. So, you know, we sold a couple tickets and then we said, all right, we got to get our fans excited. So he said, we made every ticket all inclusive.

So he said, you come to Savannah, our games, all your burgers, hot dogs. chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, everything, $15 total. What? No ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service. Wow. That starts selling out. Well, we had to get them into, to experience it. We didn't know how to do it.

Yeah. The first night, we went through 10,000 pieces of meat in an hour. Oh, my God. Fans waited almost three hours. So we made mistakes, but we just kept going. And so, you know, when they first came out, they were like, wow, you know, we had a banana baby. We put a baby in a banana costume and lifted the baby up and saying, nah, Savannah, you know, to start the game, which makes no sense. Yeah, but we had the banana nanas.

We had senior citizen dance team. You know, we had the mananas, a male cheerleading team. We had a banana band. I thought of, you know, putting all these things into a brand to make it nonstop entertainment. But it was also, you had limitations back then because you could only do it in the beginning of the game, the end of the gang, in the arena, in the stadium. There you go. Before the stadium, you know, before the game. We used to get fine, I mean, for playing music during the games.

Wow. But you didn't care. No. We just wrote bigger, we just wrote more checks. Wow. I mean, it's, it's. So when did Savannah bananas, the brand it is now? Like, when did you realize I have to try this one night intersrimmage with each other?

Yeah. And see what we can recreate because you weren't even thinking about that when you took over this team. Yeah, well, you're always thinking about plusing. You know, I think I learned from Walt Disney and he was obsessed. He said, you know, Disneyland's a living, breathing thing. It will never be complete. We will always plus the show. They call it a show, you know, performance.

And, you know, Disney's the kind of. guy that, you know, literally they were at capacity at Disneyland three, four years. And, I mean, they were dominating. And he wanted to put a Christmas parade. And he said, it's going to cost $350,000. And all the accountants, everyone in his business was like, no, Walt, you can't do this. We're already at capacity. Why would we spend another $350,000? It makes no sense. He goes, nah, we got to give him a reason to want to come back. And that obsession, he goes, to continue invest, to continue to put things in, he was always plusing the show. So, yeah, we were selling not every single game. You know, you went from sleeping on an airbed and $30 a week grocery

shopping to having a very healthy business, successful. But like you'd maxed out. You've gotten to the top of the league of what you can make. Yeah, top ball. Three to four million a year. Yeah. Maybe can make a little more every year, but it's like it kind of maxed out. Then you get to take from your fans and you got to, you can't, you get to, it's incremental. So then we, as we as we were watching, if we kept thinking, how do we make it better for fans? How do you plus the show? How do you plus the show? So I wasn't thinking about how do we make this global or make this, you know, all over the country, I was thinking how do we make it better. And I just kept watching our fans, watching. And this is what Walt Disney did better than an else. I mean, he

literally put an apartment above the fire station at Disneyland just so he could walk the park. And Walt said, whenever I go on a ride, I'm always asking what's wrong with this thing and how it can be improved. And so I was like, all right, how do we improve this? How to make it better? How do we make better fans? And I realized that even with our big show, players dancing, the celebrations, all the promotions, fans were still leaving games early. So we started taking pictures and videotaping. every 30 minutes. First 5.30 when I get in, 6 o'clock, 6.30, 7 o'clock, 7.30. And I realized something. At 9 o'clock, you'd have your first influx of fans.

No matter what, even if we had a fireworks show or something at the end of night, 9 o'clock, 2 hours in, fans would start leaving. And 915, 930, you'd have a lot more. By 10 o'clock, you'd have 50% of your crap. No matter what. That told me right there, there's a fundamental problem with the game of baseball. It needs to be two hours. I always says before, it's like, you know, you go to a movie, And it's like, you know, you go, oh, the movie was great. Yeah, I left in the middle. No one leaves a great movie in the middle.

But baseball is, yeah, hey, had a good time. Left in the sixth inning or so, you know, got out early. You should never create something where people want to leave early. So how do you create something that's so good they want more? And so I said, all right, let's look at all the parts of a baseball game that are too long, too slow, too boring. So I remember wrote down and that's most of the game. Most of the game is too long, too slow, too boring. Other than, you know, if you ask baseball traditional, unless you're watching the playoffs or

something yeah 100% and so I started running down and what I'm so blown away by right now so I started an idea book in 2018 and I realized if you want to have good ideas you got to come up more ideas um I mentioned you earlier about the great podcast episode yeah with Andy grammar and about how many songs he wrote he was just constantly writing songs and performing them out in the streets over and over and over and quantity leads to quality so I was like I'd have more ideas so I started writing now all these ideas and in 2018 um you know I was like all right what are all the boring parts of baseball mound visits, stepping out of the box, walks, bunting's boring.

All these things, I started just writing all these down. And then one of our big premises of everything is whatever's normal do the exact office. No one gets excited about normal. When we first started in Savannah, we were doing normal social media, normal ads, normal radio, normal all that. We were getting terrible results. So I wrote down all these ideas and I said, why don't we just try them? Just see what happens. And so the first time we went to a college, we went to my old school, Wofford College.

and the coach said, yeah, we'll try this in practice. No one's there. We'll try it. So we got rained out. So the first ever intentional banana ball game got rained out on. As I learned in my wedding, they say, though, rain is good luck. So I'll take that as good luck. So I went to my other former coach at Lander.

And so we played with these guys. I said, guys, hey, we're playing a crazy game today. The goal is we just want you to have fun. Have fun, enjoy it. Let us know how it is. But this was not inner squad. This is a different team. We're testing it at a college.

And they're thinking, we're trying to display. Baseball. What do we do it? Yes. We went to it, played nine innings in 99 minutes. And the guys at the end of the set is the most fun they've ever had playing. And there was, actually, there were a few girlfriends that, like, came in and they doing their homework.

I was like, they were doing their homework down. They were, I was going to see watching. Because it was just boom. There were walk-off hits. You know, you could walk off every inning. There was out. It was past. The pitchers were to throw in every six seconds.

It was just exciting. I was like, we got something here. And so, yeah, in 2020 in the middle of COVID. This was like a scrimmage game. It was a scrimmage. No one knew about it. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, we filmed it.

We were, we filmed it. We knew it. What, 20? This is 2018. Wow. So this is, this is right after we met. And so then 2019, we just kept doing our thing. And finally, it was like 20-20.

COVID. You could be rehearsing it? Well, we just, I kept iterating. So it was like talking about ideas. We were still in a league. We were, you know, we're set in a contract. We can't get out of the league. All those things.

But you were trying to do a scrimmage every now and then. Yeah. And so COVID happened and like, you know. And baseball shuts down. Everything shuts down. And so we were allowed to have a thousand fans. we had to spread them all out. And I was like, all right, screw it.

Let's go. Let's try it. And so we did it. And it was chaos. I mean, the first, one of the first hitters, he walked and ended up being a home run because no one knew what to do with the ball. So a ball for sprint is, you get, ball for a hitter takes off full speed. And the fielding team has to throw the ball to every guy in the field before it's live.

That's cool. But they didn't know what to do at that point because it never happened before. So they're like throwing a little a sealed, I throw in a center field. The guy's running around the base is like home run. And everyone's like, what is happening? It's just chaos. But we played and the guys had fun. And we realized a few things, a few rules, iterations.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. What if we go do this on the road one time? And then one city, world four and 2021. And then sound didn't go out. There were so many issues. Fans were confused again. But they stayed till the end.

And I was like, all right, there's something here. Let's do it further. Let's keep going. In 2022, we do seven cities. And then keep iterating. 2023, we did 33 around the country. Then we added new teams at 24, our first major league stadium. 25, we started adding football stadiums.

And we built a league. And it's just the constant interoperating. just like Walt. It's like plus and improve constantly. And, you know, I want to be the fastest learning organization. This has created me because essentially in five years, you went from a three to four million dollar wooden bat league to a billion dollar brand. Now, do you think...

That makes me uncomfortable when you said to it. I hear that you saw I look away. I just, I don't like thinking. That's not how I think. Well, you could say, okay, three to four million to a billion dollar brand that impacts, you know, know how are many people yeah I I'm proud we play in front of 3.4 million fans this year and you know we're impacting so many more online and social millions of people and billions I I love that I want to bring joy to billions of people that fires me

that's that's a different thing you think Walt Disney was intimidated by the numbers well Walt Walt hated talking about money he hated it he was Roy you handle all the money I mean he didn't want a he said money doesn't excite me my ideas excite me he was fascinated and like he was terrible with money he was like this this movie I Snow White, this will cost a couple hundred thousand, it costs millions. Or, you know, Disneyland, it's going to be a couple million. It's 17 million. Like he was, because he told it, he told his team, it's like, you know, hey, I'll let you know what I'm done. Like, I'll let you know what I'm done how much it's going to cost. We're innovating here. We're innovating. You know,

the multi-plane camera, which is never invented and sound and the first, you know, animated with color, the full full length animated in Snow White in Disneyland. I mean, he was constantly doing things that never happened before. The animatronics, are you kidding me? He was so far out of his time. how can you put a price tag on something that's never been done before? And luckily, Roy, which deserves so much more credit than he got, he said, okay, we're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. And he found a way to keep the business stable enough when they were ups and downs. I mean, they were almost out of business numerous times.

I mean, there were strikes. There was, it was, but Walt said, we're going to keep going because it's best. It's best. He believed in it. So when you asked me, how do I believe in it when I'm sleeping on an airbed? You know, I saw something. We bring joy. We bring fun.

And we can see, create something that people have never seen before, never experienced before. Every single night. Wow. It'll work. And I just, Walt has built in me this trade. It's in my DNA. I will never doubt anything. And doesn't mean we don't fail.

We fail every step of the way. But we're going to keep getting up and go to the next step. Wow. So if COVID doesn't happen, where would you be? Do you think you would eventually done this? Oh, yeah. Because in 2018, we, we tested it before. Oh, I was, I was ready.

It was how do we get out of the league? How do we, you know, Our people in Savannah at first, you know, they were, they hated our name, they hated who we were, they hated what we were about until we actually delivered and we brought joy. They didn't want this. As Steve Jobs says, no one knows what they want until you show it to them. We hadn't shown them anything. When at first, that's what, no reason why we sold two tickets. We're talking about there's going to be dancing players and there's going to be entertainment and banana nanas.

They hadn't seen it. They had every right not to believe in it. And so when I'm talking about this new game where fans are catching foul balls frouts and, you know, there's nonstop. celebrating and nonstop entertainment and there's trick plays and guys catching backflips. They're like, I don't get it. What are you talking about? As Bezos said, Jeff Bezos, you need to be willing to be misunderstood. Anybody that innovated or truly invented someone that's ever been done before, they are misunderstood in the beginning.

They are always misunderstood. What's the thing you misunderstand about yourself still? Hmm. That's a good question. Misunderstand about myself. I know. I want to cut back at you. Like, what are something you think that?

Well, I say that you're so passionate. about the brand, the mission, fans first, not caring about the money, you know, and the experience of bringing joy to millions of people around the world. Yeah. And you've been going nonstop for, what it seems like five, six years since you did the first show,

the first kind of live show. And it is only, obviously, you've had lots of mistakes and challenges you've had to face, but you have been nonstop like a machine of the show of innovating. It's got to be better. It's got to be bigger. It's got to be more fans, better for the fans. It's got it been nonstop for five or six years for you for 20 years, almost 20 years, but since you launched this new version, it's been nonstop. And it's grown from an uncomfortable $3 million to a billion dollar valuation. And you're getting offers left and

right from every TV network deal, players want to play. Now everyone understands it. Not everyone. Not everyone. But the fans understand it now. The fans who have been there, yes. Is there anything you misunderstand about yourself or you don't understand about yourself at where you currently are from where you were five years ago. Yeah, it's tough. I think, you know, I'd have to go back. I think, you know, when you first start and, you know, you're trying to think about growing yourself and growing your own, you know, you want to get, think about everyone.

They want to have a bigger promotion, bigger title. They want to be all this. And, you know, people that see me in a yellow tuxedo, you know, oh, he's just, you know, maybe he's about himself. He's got an ego. And, you know, what I've realized with this. and inspired from P.T. Barnum back in the day, it was like, this actually is the,

I believe it's the best version of myself. Energy, fun, give permission to have people to have fun. How many owners are, they're dressed in their suits and they're up in the suite. Like, I want to be out with the fans, having fun that says you can dress up, you can be a little silly, you can be goofy, you can let loose. You don't need to take yourself too seriously. I think, you know, I think there's always a little bit of an imposter syndrome. You know, I'll tell you, when I came up to you in 2018,

I was a little nervous. I was, you were dominating. I mean, you were showing up every week, a huge, audience and make it an impact. And I was like, he's probably looking at this guy. Like, he's crazy. But I was like, this is me. And I'm not going to hide away from this. And it was, there were a lot of awkward, uncomfortable moments. When you go into a different room in a bigger room with people that are accomplished, you know, I know there's the perception who does this guy think he is. And so I think there's always a, you know, misunderstanding or, you know, people that look at me. And, you know, we can't always just talk about the fancy. He has to be about money. I mean, yeah,

I want to make sure we have a healthy business because I want to take care of our people. Yeah. But what I was sitting on the air bed, it was like, yeah, we got to get out of this. but like I learned in my wife how to be okay with not having a lot. And so, you know, I think the people that get to the point where they have so much, you were asking before, what are you going to fly private? I'm like, I don't know, I have my 2018 Honda cord. I drive it. I'm fine with it.

Like, it is what it is. So it's tough for me to ask that question because I guess I'm not, I heard someone say on a podcast recently, they're like, some of the greatest entrepreneurs, they aren't introspective. And which was really interesting to me. I saw that too. Yeah. And I don't remember the whole thesis.

be like introspection is more of like a modern day thing yes back in the day you talk about henry four back a day in rock and flower it's not like Walt Disney was thinking oh i wonder how i'm being right now he was just trying to create yeah something that he loved and they gave him energy i think everyone should just chase things that give them energy what fires you up every day yeah and yeah i think it's important to know who you are and what you stand for but if you focus so much focus internally and not actually just focusing on actually doing things and doing things that fire you up, you might get stuck holding yourself back. And I don't ever want to hold myself back. So you were 15 years then working in teams, smaller teams, until this kind of took off, right?

Maybe you're playing in front of three, four thousand people. Yeah, I got four thousand. A great night. It was a great night back in the day. So what is it like going from 4,000 to 100,000 within a couple of years? Yeah. And what shifted within you energetically to be able to take on that energy of 4,000 being like, this is our biggest night of the year to 100,000 every week. How do you energetically hold that space and not feel like an imposter? Yeah. It's hard.

And, you know, the first major league stadium, I'll never forget it. So that's a big jump for us. So we had a minor league stadiums 15,000, which was big. But then we went our first major league stadium. We went to Houston. The big boys. Yeah. Big boy arenas.

Yeah. And it was in 2024. and I remember it vividly, and I took our whole team and our staff up to the upper deck. That's two years ago. It's not a long ago. Yeah, 2020-free right. Feels like decades ago. I know.

I know. So we took everyone to the upper deck, the furthest seat away. And now what we don't realize is, is we travel with 200 plus people. Wow. You know, we get carried out of the Globetrotters. And again, I have respect for them, but we are completely different. In the sense, we're in a league. Every game counts.

We're doing 10 to 15 things every night. The Globe Chalers travel with 20 to 30. We travel with 200. Now we have three tours going on 16, 150 to 200 plus people. So we had 200 people at first major league state. And everyone is, you know, big eye looking around like, what are we doing? Do we belong here? Look, what are we doing? And I said, guys, we're up in the upper deck. I said, everyone's expecting us to fail. We are too big for our britches. Everyone says, you know, you can do the small stadiums, but this is too big.

And I go, I go, we're not going to fail. I go, we're going to find a way and we're going to do it the same way we've done it from day one. And it's one fan at a time. I go, we're right here in the upper deck. How are we going to make sure these people that are the first, this the way we're going to have the best experience. What's it just to be the people behind home, playing the people up here. What are we going to do differently? Remember, our head coach, Tyler Gillum, who's been with us since 2018, he's amazing, amazing individual. And he started writing thank you letters and signing them and putting them in different seats all throughout the other deck. Then our players started doing, too. It's like, what can we do? Can we put a card up here or put something up here? How can we make sure we get up here in the middle of the game? And I said,

I'm going to be up here. I'm going to spend two winnings in the upper deck every single game. I do it. Now, we put on a great. show. Ironically, we did fail. Our ticket system shut down. It completely went out. Chaos ensued. And so we put on a show. We delivered the show, but it's just chaos. And, uh, but we got through it. We got through it. We got to the next major league stadium. But, um, yeah, I think I knew. I try to put myself in those people's shoes all the way up there. And so we go to 40,000 now to 100,000 seat stadiums, which when you walk into 100,000 C stadium, you know, I just, I can't believe that us, this little small college summer team got to perform there.

but I also know no one obsesses like we do about every single seat around that stadium. And so, you know, now if you come to one of our shows, you know, most people say you're going to a sporting event, seven o'clock game, what time do you come to the game? 6.30, you know, me, okay, I get there early. There's some major league teams. 50% of their fans come after first pitch.

Wow. So I said, all right, well, we got to deliver a lot more. We got to plus the experience. So one step at a time, we started doing a bigger pre-show, and then we started adding a little bit to it. So now out of football stadium, 100,000. Our show starts at 2 o'clock. We do a rope drop.

The first thing you see when you come in, rope drops, we have all characters, cast, we do a big opening number. Really? You know, the first thing you see is our players. Our players greet you.

For the first hour, they sign autographs. Before the game. Before the game, from 2 to 3 o'clock. Then from 3 to 4.30, we do a huge stage show. 2 to 3?

The game is a 7? Yeah, players are signing. So, players are signing. People are there at 2 o'clock? Thousands. Wow. So, like, a Texas A&M, 100,000. There were 45,000 people there

there three hours before the show. Wow. So we do a whole performance show. Then we have a march and our players go through the crowd and we high five every single fan so we know who we play for. These people have come from all over the country. You know, as an athlete, often you're in your own world, how are we going to win this game? But when you realize that all those people all around that came five hours before the game,

seven hours before the game, that stay an hour and a half after the game, that flew in from all over the country for that. And you either get to high five and you get to see them, you have a different sense of purpose. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. And so we know that. And so when I talk about winning the upper deck, we put ourselves in their shoes. And we said, we're going to get up here. And so we actually have activation stations.

People realize, we have all of our players. We have activation stations throughout 100,000 seats stadium where our cast and our players, this is your zone. This is where you're throwing deeds. This is where you're throwing T-shirts. This is where you're getting up and doing selfies. This is where we're doing a sing-off. And so I knew it was going to be hard.

And we still, you know, some people, we probably don't get to touch as much as we'd like to. But I knew if we just had a focus on it, like put ourselves in their shoes and do it and give them so much more than they expected, we'll continue to find a way. Wow. It's interesting because when I got into kind of online business, I guess, 16 years ago, 17, 18 years ago, I guess. I went to my first Sertes-Lay show. Yes, not to compare you guys with that. No, I have a lot of respects to them.

A lot of admiration. What year was this? Probably 20. Okay. In 2009, probably. Vegas or? Vegas. Okay.

Yeah. I can't remember which one I saw. But I saw a bunch of them. Oh, yeah. But I remember getting there, I don't know, 30, 60 minutes earlier or something. and the cast being out in the lobby. And even out of the tickets areas, too. And I was like, and it made me apply what I learned

from Searcher Saleh into webinars, into online marketing, into live events. Where I was like, oh, and into the podcast as well, where I was like, oh, it's not about the show. The pre-show is the show. The pre-show is the show. Like our conversation out there for 30 minutes, that is the show.

in my mind. And it's not, obviously, you've got to make a great show too, but the show can be a thousand times better based on what happens before the show. 100%. You set the tone. It's intentional. You set the tone. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, how do you create that experience,

that vibe, that energy, that joy before people enter your arena. Yeah. Whatever that arena is there are you. And it seems like you guys are just lost that. We've learned and you just, and you put yourself in the shoes. I just, I'm in a world. where I want to be entertained all the time. I don't want to be bored.

Like, I am so scared of boredom. I don't know what it is in my mind. I have this fear of boredom, a fear of settling, a fear of irrelevance, that I want to have something going on. And so again, I don't need to go back to Walt Disney, but he's like, we're going to create a berm around Disneyland. But when you first come in, you're going to see the train, you're going to see the flight of the landscaping.

Then you're going to go through this little tunnel and you're going to start to smell and then you're going to start hearing sounds. And it's going to open up to mainstream. Then you're going to have the castle there. And it's just everything was intentional. And this is that that's I mean it was the pre show It is pre show no one has gone on a ride yet No one has experienced pre show

That's exactly exactly So we think about that same you know You know you got to do the unscaleable do the scalable too Yeah yeah yeah yeah People are reals our first seven years We called every single fan that bought a ticket and thanked them Hundreds of thousands of fans That's cool now during Christmas time

We'll get our players We'll do surprises and now we serve millions It's kind of hard to do that but yeah But you're pre-show We send an email what to expect to when expecting You know we set the tone there And then when they show up, you know, we're ready to go at 2 o'clock. And then your last impression leaves a lasting impression.

Every night, every show I'm out, I will say again, your what? Your last impression leaves a lasting impression. And so like every night, no matter where I'm at, I will sign to the last p.m. leaves. And it is a full day. And you're at midnight maybe. It's like every ball. Yeah, if we're at 100,000 seats day, it'll be two, three hours after the game. And we, you know, we start rehearsals seven, eight in the morning.

We're going through all of our programming, our tech record. And it's a. This is why you're going to need. a private jet in the future. Because at midnight, you're going to want to jump to the next city. But if you want to be successful, you got to do what others won't do. Of course. And to me, I'm so grateful. I remember, you know, that kid who dreamed playing at Fenway Park and getting an opportunity. I remember the kid just hoped to meet a player. I remember... Cut a foul ball or something. Just a foul ball. I remember sleeping on the airbed and having

nothing. And I think a lot of people, you know, business that becomes successful, if you haven't gone from starting from nothing and to get to that level, it's hard. It's very, it's very, it's very, easy to take it for granted and just say, you know what, I don't need to do this anymore. I've made it. And I don't want that to ever happen. I want when I'm 70, 80 years old, to still be at the end of the night. I want to be up at the upper deck with the fans singing with them, you know, and I think if myself, my wife and our team sets that tone, all of us will continue to do that. And so when people say we're a fad and you look at the graveyard of all the leagues that have failed over the years, there's hundreds. They start up, they fail. You know, I think a lot of

people would put us that we're destined to fail because we're just this, you know, new kind of fad that's, you know, this quirky little thing, but they don't know our passion, they don't know our purpose. They don't know how we put ourselves in the fan's shoes every single day. And so, and how our obsession is so much different than trying to need money or trying to drive revenue. And so I want to have this conversation of 50, 60 years when people say banana ball, it's just this fad, it's whatever. They said that back in the day because I think our obsession is going to continue to grow in our ability to plus the show and plus experience. That's what fires me up. Where does the fear of irrelevance come from?

Oh, please. You want to go? Now we're going to go deep. This is right up your alley. Why do you have a fear of being irrelevant or being, being bored or sitting? I mean, yeah, well, the board is just, I just enjoy feeling alive. I love feeling alive. But the, you know, the relevance, I was the only child when I grew up. And, you know, I didn't have a lot of friends when I was really young. And I remember, I mean, you know, my dad would come home from work and we'd play and stuff and play baseball. But, you know, I'd say, just, you know, and they're in the summer, what'd you do today? I'd say, you know, I run my bike to Alex's and then I went to Bobby's and I didn't, I didn't do that. Really? Yeah. It was, I didn't have a lot of, you know, there's, I'm not going to

make excuses. I just didn't have a lot of friends. You just kind of like a quirky kid or he just didn't fit anything. I was, so what I learned was, uh, when I had opportunities around people to try to make the most of them. And so when I was around my, my teammates, I would try to, try to get like, hey, what's up on? Let's do this. And I started, so I started building friends. But like when I was young, I was just, you know, I just wasn't around a lot of people. I was in a neighbor. There were no kids that in. I just, I didn't, I don't know, I wasn't great at it. But I learned because I was, I didn't want to feel like I didn't matter, you know, like I was just, so I started really working hard to create attention, to get excited. I mean, I

think I got 26 detentions in the seventh grade. You know, I did, I did, I would did anything to try to try to Were you like the Joker kid then? Yeah, I joked. I was trying to have fun. I was just always trying to have fun. Yeah, yeah. And so I think what I realized is I felt alive when I felt seen, heard, and that I mattered.

And so what the opposite of that is feeling irrelevant. And so when I think about now what we create, I want every single fan, everyone to feel love, to feel seen, to feel heard. You know, my dad, who I have the closest relationship in the world with. And, you know, he didn't use the word love when I was a kid. So I never really received that. He didn't say, I love you. He didn't say I love you.

And now we say every day, we have a different. Really? But I didn't get that. And so, and, you know, my birth mother wasn't in the picture as well. So I just didn't, I didn't have that. And so I think I've always searched for feeling that love. And so at the end of the night, being around fans, being around our team, coming back in and having our fans first talk with all of our closest people, I feel alive then.

A lot of love. I feel a lot of love of what we just did and how we did it together. And so that feeling of irrelevance or feeling like you didn't do anything that matters, yeah, that's going to be something that drives me. And I think I've chambled it to be a very positive, positive motivation. Your mom wasn't around? You know, my birth mother, I've had an amazing stepmother who's been tremendous in my life. But my, you know, my birth mother, you had some challenges.

and my parents got divorced when I was eight years old. And so my dad, you know, was she around before then? Before you were eight? Yeah. Yeah. Sporatically or just emotionally not available. I don't want it to. I mean, again, I don't want it too much.

But yeah, I think, you know, she did her best. And, you know, my dad helped raise me. We had the bond of baseball. And then amazingly, my stepmother came in and we, you know, we built from there. But yeah, my dad was going to the park and playing every day. And so that was it. It was playing ball, me and him. Wow.

And so when I got to take him, you know, to Fenway, our first game at Fenway, and I took him out on the field and we got to play catch at Fenway. That's cool. Those are some moments that. The field of dreams right there. Well, I grew up wanting to play for the Red Sox, that was my dream. And so to be able to now, because of what we built with Banana Ball to now sell out of Fenway Park, and be able to take my dad and take my son out there and play catch, you know, it's a full circle moment. You have a video of that playing Katha camp? You better believe I do.

Oh, my gosh. It was crazy. They were fans on tours and they were coming to our games and they were up around. And they were taking videos and they saw me playing catching light. Wow. It's pretty special. That's cool, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Biological mom stole a picture? You talked to her? Yeah. You talked to her every now and then? Here in there, yes. You're closer with your stepmom? Oh, yeah. She's been tremendously supportive.

She was the first one literally videotaping, you know, when I was pitching when I was 10 and 11 years old. She was filming all my games. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was special. Wow. Do you feel like any of that relationship is also what drives you to one?

want to be relevant or or create a deeper love or deeper. Yeah, I think we all want to feel loved. We all want to feel loved to an extent. And I think that was it. I didn't understand love too much when I was, because it just wasn't, you know, my, my birth mother, she said it to me, but I didn't understand that as much. My dad didn't.

So I just didn't understand it. It just wasn't part. And now, you know, I literally say it to my kids every day numerous times a day. I just, I'm probably giving them what I always wanted. You know, if you look deep into it. And so, yeah, I just, yeah. I think it's, I think what we built and how I built this whole world, it's all built on spreading love and spreading joy. And so, what's your relationship like with your wife?

Because I know she's obviously, she's ever, owner with you. Yeah, she's been, you know, the air mattress is with you going for this crazy drain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Baseball wasn't her first love, I'm assuming. It wasn't like, I want to go start a baseball team. When I'm an adult, you know, she's really kind of supported you on this journey. Yeah, well, and yeah, she's supported everyone. She's the heart of our organization.

For it's more in many ways. But what is your, and I know she does a lot of, you guys have foster kids. I know every game, she's a big part of giving back in a big way. How have you fallen in love with her more since you guys have been on this journey? Yeah.

From taking over in 2015 to taking over and recreating and reinventing in 2020 to where it is now, how is your relationship? relationship with love or your wife evolved over the years with all the different levels and layers. You're on adoption, to having your own did, to getting back to the charities that you guys support. We'll go back to, you know, 2015, we took over this team. We got married and we're taking over a brand new team. That's a huge venture, a scary venture.

And when we got the phone call, we're out of money. The first thing she said, we need to sell our house. So we were living in Charlotte. Her whole family had moved down. So she grew up in New York. Her whole family. Her three brothers, who she's extremely close with, her mother or dad, all live in Charlotte. And she's like, we got to sell our house there.

And we got to go in to Savannah and be there full time. So immediately she says, I'm here. Like, we're married. I'm going to do this. Leave, you know, the family, because we got to take on this. You got a house in Charlotte. Yeah, because we still had the team in Gastoni, North Carolina. So we just to, yeah, we were going, you were kind of going back and forth, but we

need to get down there. He needs to be all in. It had to be all in because we had nothing left. And so sold the house. Sold the house. Found an absolute, it was an old garage that was turned into a studio. Uh-huh. We put an airbed there and it was so gross.

Like it was, the floor was so nasty. Like, we slept in our socks. Like, you should never sleep in your socks. Not only lunatic sleep in their socks. I would have probably upset some pair of them. You got to be crazy to sleep in our socks. And so we're sleeping in our socks because we don't know where we're going to step on. You couldn't ever clean the floor because it was an old garage.

It was brutal. And so we went through that and she was there. And then during COVID, we're down there. And again, not around family, just trying to figure out how to get out with our business, live entertainment business to shut down all this is just there. And it was amazing at that point, she started learning about foster care and just studying is like 2020, 2020 in the middle of COVID. She read the book, Everything is Figure Outable. Wow.

And she said, Jesse, there's 400,000 kids in the U.S. that don't have a permanent home. We got to do something. And she's like, will you, you know, join me in this? In my mind, are you kidding me? You've supported me like crazy to coming down here with nothing. I go, I'm on. She's like, will become foster parents? In the middle of COVID.

I go, all right. You turn to launch this event. Well, again, we just started this big vision. We all like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. And so we started. We got our first call. Why did she want to foster? Because, again, there's 400,000 kids in the U.S.

in an permanent home. We got to do something. But where did that spark this? Her family. Kids that don't have water, kids that don't have education. Why foster kids? Her family. So her family is the one of the close-knit families.

Her three brothers, they were just always together. You know, they went through challenges and everything, but they were always together. And she just really. realize the power of family. She's always been family, family, family. And then when she started learning about this, she's like, no one's talking about it. It's one of these things that's out there and just there's kids. And like, she heard stories. She started listening to every podcast. She went deep. Like, like, how I go and Walt, she was learning everything about it. And so I went to,

we went to, like, an online class, I was going to do it. And so, uh, yeah. So we said yes. And we got the first call and a two and a half year old girl joined us and gashes and cuts on her all over. And she was nonverbal and it was really? Two and a half. And you guys had a son already. We got us a biological son who was a little, four months older, three months older. So three years old, roughly, almost? Yeah, yeah. And so she joined us. And immediately we learned, started learning what foster care is like.

You know, the challenges the DSS, they're understaffed, you know, being able to have visits every week. And then sometimes the parents don't show up, the kids are devised, all this, just the emotions and the pain of it. It's like, wow. And so we went through it. And then about a year later, we got another call. We're going on date night, and we got a call from a, there's a six-day old who's in the NICU, who's bad. Every drug imaginable. Six-day-old.

Six-day-old battering every drug imaginable in her sister. He did not bring her in. So we took her in. And she joined us. And, you know, we didn't know what was going to happen with her. And, you know, the goal in foster care is always reunification. You want to get the kids back to their family. That's the best thing.

And that was the goal. Six months or a year. We always thought, that's what, hey, we're just going to be it. And we're going to be foster parents again. Just help these kids in their journey when they need it the most. But, yeah, on Mother's Day, that year of our baby that, or the six-day-old. Six-day-old. had us. We're traveling. This is active

2022. And so that's our final stop of our banana ball tour. Seven cities is all we did. We're in Kansas City. It was unbelievable. We played another professional team. We beat them. It was covered on ESPN. It was unbelievable. And we're in. We're traveling. And it's, you know, me and the we got seats. It's Emily up there with Maverick, our son, and me

and with Kenna and Addy. And Emily turns to me in her phone. And she turns around and she's bawling her eyes out. It's Mother's Day. And she shows me the text. And it was from the birth mother of the baby. And it said, you know, if I think a lot of this on Mother's Day today, I couldn't imagine a better gift than for you to be the mother. Wow. My daughter. She just had this kid six days prior. She had, though, no, this is a full year later. Okay. So that's a full year later. So it was a whole year later. And she realized the maturity of that birth mother. And so at that point, we realized that now it was the goal to, you know, help. She said, I want you to be the mom.

I want you. I want you to be able to take care of the maturity of that. And so then Addy, you know, we went on a path towards adoption. And then the same thing with Kenna, we went on a path towards adoption. So we adopted them on the same day on January of 2024. So they joined our life. And, you know, we still continued foster care, but, you know, doing respite fostering from now and from time to time, like, for weekends when families needed. But we still realize there's more to do. And so, Emily, we start talking, we've got to do something more.

And so that's when I realized, well, what if we honor families every single night? We're playing all over the country. We honor a family that's, you know, had 60 kids in their home or helped adopted three or helped 20 go back to reunification, whatever is. Make them the hero, celebrate them. And so we said, we might as well call it Bananas Foster. And so we came up with the name and we started doing it. And so now, yeah, it's been to answer this long about question, it's like, I think we just have so much purpose when we're doing something that, you know, really matters. And I will always support her in this, in the family.

And she will always support with the business. And now we've brought those two together. That's cool. And so now with our family, literally those two worlds. are together with everything we do. Two that came out of foster care and a biological. We have the world. We have bananas foster.

We have banana ball. Our worlds work together in doing something that gives us a lot of purpose and fulfillment. And so for me and Emily, it's just, it's a support system. And it's very hard right now with three kids under eight years old. It's extremely hard. She traveled to all the events. She goes to a lot of them. But this year she's like, you know what?

The kids right now, this season they need me in her. And so she stepped off a little bit, which was really hard for her. And again, I had to support her in that. And she came out to me like a couple months. She was like, we got to get these kids to experience new things. And so she came up with world schooling. And so literally we took the kids to Greece to experience that. So full circle is, and I flew there.

And then I fly back to a game. And I'll fly there. And it's just, it's all part of, you know, we're figuring this out. But when you have clarity on what matters, Emily right now is I'm going to make sure this family is strong as we can. I'm going to make sure I can do everything I can to keep the family and the business as strong as we can. And we just try to figure it out, man. It's hard. How is your relationship as a married couple?

evolved over the last five years with, again, you've taken on so much more, she's taken on so much more, you're, you're, you're pulling a lot of directions. It's all exciting, but it's also a lot of time and energy. How is your definition of love evolved? And there could be, there can be resentment in different ways. Like, I'm like, you know, she's right having fun. Or she's right now with the kids in Greece experiences and I was there for the first week, but I had fly back for the SPs and do all these things. And it's like, and then she's seeing, you know, play, do all these things. And so there can be that. But what happens is when you, it's how you view things is how you do things. I believe that more than anything. And so every night, we send our roses and our in our buds.

So the roses is something great that happened during the day. And a bud is something that you're looking forward to. And so normally we'll face time or call, but if we're in a complete different time, which we are now 10 hours different, you know, we'll text it to each other. And we're constantly sharing the good in the day. We're constantly sharing what we're looking forward to. And I believe that's so much. So many people talk about all the negative things and you see it all over social media. Em was, M's like, I love social media because all she gets is positive. That's what we look for. I mean, too. It's what you seek out. I love it. I'm not getting negative politics. I'm getting positive. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do we keep the connection? You know, we really focus on the good.

We talk about the joy. We don't hide away from things that are hard. We talk about it. But then when we get together, we really lean in. You know, when I went, was with Greece to the kids, I literally shut down work for a little bit. I was like, I'm going to be here. I'm going to be fully present. You have to miss a game? I miss games. We have six teams playing, Lewis. I miss games. So who is running the production to make sure that your vision is being executed at the highest level without you there?

We have hundreds. I mean, so like we have show callers for every team. We have lead vice president. Marketing. We have video. We have creative. We've had a team that we've been working together like a core team for six, seven, eight years. And so, yeah, it might not be 100% at the level value.

I would see it. But if you get it 90%. Yeah. You got to keep learning and growing. So, yeah. So I miss a lot of games. I miss, you know, more than sometimes I like. But if you're, if you're with your family and you're growing that together,

I don't want my kids to, this is where I get, can get emotional, get tough for me, and my kids to feel like, you know, Daddy's just out another game. And, you know, I remember on the outside of Greece and, you know, Maverick goes, Daddy, when are you coming back? Because, you know, I plan what I was going. I remember when they came back as meet them. So, no. But they don't know this right now, but I ended up playing a surprise trip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, so they'll a surprise trip and I'm not telling them, I'll turn my location services off for 12 hours and show up. And because those are the moments that really matter. And so I will miss more games to go be there for them. And so my kids can know that they do matter most. Wow, man. Because you're probably away from them a lot right now, right? Especially in the growth phase, but do you get to bring them with you also?

Yeah. So they, like all the last few years they travel like crazy. But when they travel with us, man, it's... We get one hotel room. We're all in a hotel room. We've got, you know, Addy's four now, but she's wild. Yeah, yeah. And Kenna and Maverick.

And so, yeah, it's tough. And then, you know, the morning, we start rehearsals at 7, 8, 9 in the morning. We have our promo meetings, rehearsals, our tech director meetings. I mean, every show is a brand new show. We're not, this isn't, you know, I have so much respect for Broadway. So much respect for what they do. But they are executing the same show eight times a week. In the same location.

In the same location. And I go to... We're going to a brand new facility, brand new stadium, brand new video boards, brand new plazes, set up, brand new everything with a brand new show and with huge performances we've never done every single night. It is extremely hard. And so the time that we have to put in every week, like on Tuesdays today, like we spent all day creative.

I spent three hours before this part of all of our OTT meetings, talking with the clowns and what they're going to do, talking with the bananas and the party animals. We had a host meeting talking about all our new promos, all of this because this is brand new for this weekend coming up. I love it. But it's a lot. So when the family travels, you know, they get some of their dad, but probably not as much as they should.

And that hurts me. I still love it. The kids, Emily, this is how great Emily is. Just we'll get naps. At the end of the night, when I'm done signing, the best feeling in the world at midnight, 11 o'clock, I come back, we're all having dinner at all, and, you know, Kenna will put on my yellow jacket.

She'll put on my hat, you'll come over and give me a big hug. It's those feelings that the kids get to be a hard there for that. So we're trying our best, but it is hard. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. and the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now, and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation.

Yeah, my twins are nine months now. Yeah. And I'm starting to see, you know, they're not talking yet. They're just, they're just starting to crawl. They're saying some papa, mama, kind of. But every time I come back, whether from the office or on a trip, and they see me, they just light up now. Oh, yeah.

It's got to be crazy when they start talking. Oh, yeah. It's got to be the craziest thing when they can start interacting with you in a different way. It's a different level of love. And you know what my biggest fear is? What? The day I come home and they don't run out. Ooh.

Oh, girl. The day I come home. home and they're just still playing and it's not their dad's home. And so to make sure that doesn't happen, I have to make sure I'm there for them and I'm their best friend when I'm there. Yeah. And I'm their best friend. So their best friend is coming home.

Wow. Because right now when I see them, they will sprint up and hug me and they won't let go and I'll hold on until they let go. You like Disney. There you go. You're like Disney character, man. Disney character until they let go. Wow.

And so I'm still fortunate, you know, eight year old, seven year old and a four year old, I still have that. Wow. I don't want to lose that. Gosh, man, that would suck. That would really be scary, I think. It's kind of like the beginning, it's like the beginning of the end. It's like you're always trying to get back to that feeling.

And maybe when they're 20, they're not going to be. Yeah. I mean, it's evolving, but you don't want them to lose the spark on their eye when they're excited. And it's because, and the key for that is when you are there, are you there? Are you there with them? You know, I try whenever I'm with them, if they ask me something, I say yes. If I'm exhausted and they want to play a game, which is not the most fun game, I try to say yes. And, you know, a lot of times when we come home, we have a pool in the backyard and, you know, I'll just jump in my full clothes.

Like, I'll have pants on, all of a shirt, I'll just jump on because, like, they're in the pool or we're going to, like, I'm going, let's go. They come out and run. Dad, we're going swimming. Let's go. And you just, those are the moments. And when I think about the moments, like everything I do, everything we do is all about moments, creating moments to feel alive. You know, I think now more than ever, AI technology. You think about this connectivity that's happening in the world. And everyone's, you know, connected in their own world.

But it's the shared moments, the shared experiences. It's the human-to-human connection. I am betting all in on that. And so we've got to be able to do it the best with our family and make sure that we provide those. And so I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that in 10, 15 years, they remember the time that dad's jumping in the pool with them and they're creating these moments.

And, you know, dad's dancing in the middle of the night and places they never imagined, like, with them. That's what I think they're going to remember. Because when I was a kid, I remember the moments playing catch with my dad. in moments playing until, you know, literally it was almost dark and you couldn't see what we were still out there hitting. It's those moments and, you know, going to the Disney trip and just feeling things with it.

That's what I'm, that's what I'm working on. Do you feel like you're a different person in the yellow suit versus outside of the old suit? Like, do you put on a identity almost? It's a good question. Yeah, it's kind of the alter ego mindset. Yeah, I mean, I'm a dad. You know, I'm a dad when I'm, when I'm off.

Like, this is usually when I'm working. So when I'm in this and I'm going, I'm with you, I'm at stadiums. I'm in this. When you're doing business meetings, you're in this too? Oh, yeah. Pretty much every day you're in this. Every day that I'm working. Weekends, when I'm with a kid or from Greece, I'm like, no, I'm a dad.

Unless you're at a game, though, on a weekend, but yeah. Yes, weekends that there's not a game in the fall in the winter, yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is me. And again, after a game, when I'm coming from sign and then the kids are there, I can go into dad mode as well. But no, I mean, this is me, man. And I just like, I like bringing energy.

I like having fun. I like bringing joy. Do you feel like you have more confidence when you're in this outfit than when you're in normal clothes? That's a good question. People would say like, yeah, you would say, no, sometimes I could actually less. Because if I get into a room that's a little different and like, you know, I don't really think about that. But it's not. Is there anything that switches on, though?

Like when you button up, jacket, hat. On a show night, you better believe it. On a show night. So, like, I'll be in. If I'm like, all right. to meet the fans let's do this and so like there's a oh which when we do our march you know at 415 and we know there's 30 40 50 000 people outside it's go to the hours we got our band playing bands playing the music everyone's hyped up we're jumping around i mean we play they play we're

bouncing in any trot i mean we're doing like it's crazy like people say it in videos people like like that gets me fired up because then when you're going through the crowd and that we do a mark that goes all the way around the state there's just fans lined and you're feeling this i'm like are You kidding me? I can't imagine, you know, how the Beatles felt back in the day are Michael Jackson. But I'll tell you, I feel in 20, 30, 40,000 and going through it. And every time you get close to, they're yelling and screaming and yelling your names and myself and our players, man, how can you get better perfect? Like, let's go. We're going to put on a show. And we owe it to them. They're sitting out here in the sun for three hours. We've got to give them something that's unbelievable. That fires me up. And that's why, even when I'm tired, the end of the night, even after a tough show, we make mistakes, things don't go our way.

I will go out there and I'll sign for them because they showed up for us. We need to show up for them. And that's what fires me up. And that starts at the top. You know, once companies get bought by shareholders and, you know, they get investors, private equity, that all changes. They try to wait a way more money. From the top, you're not thinking about how do you care about that one fan, that single mom that showed up with their kid that had been waiting for four years on the watery list, the wait list to get tickets. And they show up that one night.

They flew from all over to get there. They deserve something special. They earn the best of you. I know you've been asked this a lot about would you ever sell or something like that. What would it take for you? Would there ever be a world where you'd sell, go public, or take a minority sell, like, let someone buy a piece of it? Never.

Never. What would it have to happen? There's nothing. There's nothing. And again, like, I know that's crazy. And people will say that's BS because, well, they're playing on a different system. They're playing a different game. They're playing for money.

They're playing for money. You know, we're fortunate. We built our business to be healthy. We're healthy. We're able to take care of our people at a level that I never even imagined. But like, I love this so much. There's a different purpose. There's a joy.

We show up every day. I get to do what I love. And so does hundreds of people. When you see the joy of our staff, you watch some of our sideline staff. They're dancing throughout the game. They're having fun. You get to dance on your job and just have fun and be with people that appreciate you. And so we sell it.

happens. All that changes. Their goals change. They want to make money. They will take away all the things that really matter to our team and matter to our fans. Trying to make a little bit more money. You'll start adding sponsorships everywhere. Doing TV rights. Hey, Jesse, there's no reason you're paying everyone's taxes. Everyone charges taxes. Just do that. No. No. You just charge shipping. Jesse. Everyone charges shipping. Just do it. No. Ticket fees, convenient fees. Just do it. Hey, it doesn't matter. People, the fans are used to it. Just do it.

It keeps saying that over and over again because it's hundreds of millions of dollars. But now it's what best are fans. You want your people to be fired up every day for who they work for and what they stand for. And our business is fans' first entertainment. That's who we are. We live by that decision. As soon as you start making decisions that aren't for your fans, you lose all that. You lose the people that help build this from nothing, from selling two tickets.

And so the... You lose the mission. You lose the mission, the purpose, the trust. drive everything and it happens look at the amount of companies that have gone private equity and they change an unbelievable book incorruptible by eric reese he shared it he shared all these companies you can just look at it they were this company and then they sold and this is what happened there's very few there's very few out there and so i just there's not one model in my world i hope that i can have this till the day i die i hope our family i hope the people that understand what matters

or most. I want to put some kind of structure that no matter what you do, you have to do it for the fans. I want to figure out that. I'll probably try to lock it up in a crazy way to keep control. So someone whoever does, try to say, you know, well, just, hey, there's $100 million here. I don't care. Keep us healthy. But if you run a business for the right reasons and do the right things, your fans will repay you. And our fans have taken care of us more than imagined. They merchandise, the tickets. We have a wait list that's now approaching $5 million. Wow. Where can you have that in the world? Let's go. And so, like, that's, That's what fires me.

I know it's like crazy. You sound like, I know people say, you're not real. Like, it's not real. And I'm like, I'm sleeping on an airbed with nothing. I could, we were good. It's so interesting because I lived in a two bedroom apartment. Yeah.

Until three years ago, you know, and until I hit 40, I was, I mean, I was in a studio in a one bedroom apartment and then two bedroom apartment for like, I'm in the 12 or 13 years. And I was happy. I didn't need more than a two bedroom apartment. Yeah. I was pretty happy. Like, I didn't need more space or this.

You're not even happier with less. Our place that we have right now. It's a little one apartment. The more you own, the more it owns you. And so I love just like, hey, this is what we have. Yeah. And again, like, as I mentioned before, like, look at the graveyard of past leagues that have failed. The ABA.

You know, they had Dr. J. did the three point line. They had everything. The World Hockey Association. You had Brett Hall, Wayne Gretzky. You go look at the XFL, the USFL. You know, they had, you know, Steve Young and Jim Kelly, World Team Tennis, Billy, They had all these, all these competitor leagues, but they were playing the same game. They were competing on the same thing.

And they were chasing sponsors, TV rights. They weren't obsessed about creating fans and creating something brand new and special. And, you know, I think about that, you know, and one, you could just keep going. All the leagues over the last 30, 40, 50 years. Isn't Liv going out of business town, too? Yes. Arena football. And they got more recent, like all these, like Liv and all these.

They put all the resources to do it. Oh, yeah. But they're doing it for different reasons. When you obsess over the right reasons and do it for the fans and build something truly special, you can be unstoppable. And you can be an enduring company. And so that's why when people say you want to sell out, you want to do this, like just study history. Yeah. Study history.

Look at everyone else and what they've done. With everything you studied around Walt Disney, what do you think Walt would think about where his vision is at today? They've had some, obviously, some amazing CEOs that we know. Yeah, yeah. But also they've gone through phases where they probably made a lot of mistakes. Yeah. Where do you think he would be proud of what Disney has become? Or what do you think if Walt was around today?

That he would be saying, guys, we're missing this. We've got to hear more of this. Like, what do you think that his original vision that he would be more obsessed about than anything today that would take Disney to a whole new level? Yeah, well, again, you've got to look at the history of Disney. So obviously they had 20 or 30 years. extremely challenging years after Walt went down. Everyone said, what would Walt do?

And they weren't actually just doing things. And they were just kind of working on their past. And Walt always said, you can't talk pigs with pigs because they, you know, did the first three little pigs and they tried to do not one. He was always against sequels, which is ironic because now, now Disney's doing tons of sequels, but they were successful. So the Crusher, yeah, yeah.

Things change. And then Mike Eisner came in. And Mike, boy, when he started, he went at it. He was so innovated. He started building new parks. He started focusing on animation. He started focusing on creating. And he did some things that didn't work.

But he was innovating. trying things and experimenting. I mean, he was made to say he was the next walled. And boy, he did it for a while. And then there was challenge. There was some turmoil that stagnant. And then Iger came in. And Iger said, you know what?

We're missing animation. What's our last? It's been years. It's something we have it. And it's like, all right, we've got to find it. Pixar, Marvel starts bringing it in and then starts creating new and completely revitalized Disney animation and frozen and everything they did. It comes to a different level.

Disney has amazing years. Then they had a couple challenging years during COVID and everything else. And now they're back on creative. You know, Josh DeMorrow, I think, a tremendous lead for them because he is going to be obsessed on creative. That's where he comes from. And so when you look at Walt, and he cares about the fans. Well, he would walk the parks every day, Josh, and shake people's hand and be like,

what is it that we're missing? How do we make it better for you? He's obsessing about that constantly. So if you look at his first shareholder call for it, he used the word fans like over 10 times. And I told them this. I said, Josh, I go, that's how you're going to be different than anyone else. Because everyone's also talking about their clients, their customers, their product. You're talking about your fans.

No matter what happens with AI, no matter what happens with all this things, you know, and everyone's chasing customers. Customers are transaction. They come and go. But fans never leave. There's something different about fans, and especially Disney fans. But like I have fans that get tattoos of every one of our teams. And one guy, he's like, Jesse, you got to stop adding teams.

I go see. That's a you problem about it. But, you know, again, there's a difference to all the fans. So to answer your question, I think Walt, if you look back, What do Walt want to do? He wanted to keep creating. He wanted to innovate. He wanted to keep moving forward, opening new doors, he would say.

If you look at what Disney has done, the amount of new theme parks, the amount of new animation, the amount of new movies, overall, in a scheme of things, how could Walt not be proud of it? Now, I think when you look at some of the challenges that they have, you know, pricing, you know, I mean, Walt is quite, it is. It is. But, you know, again, Eiser's demand. There's demand. There's an increase in price. Their attendance was going up. I mean, there was when they started doing, they were realizing.

And the value, they put so much into it. You can't just charge nothing. They also have to make money because they are a public company. They're a different model. They have to have to respond every quarter to people. This is one of the reasons why you go back to me, why I will never sell and I'll never be public. I work for the fans. And so what Josh and the team and all the CEOs have that challenge is every three months,

they got a report to the shareholders. How are they growing revenue? So how are they growing fans? That's not the question. How can they do both? How can they... They do a lot. So, like, I mean, they're investing, what, $60 billion on new enhancements and parks,

adding new cruise ships. They're adding all these new experiences. And, you know, how can anyone, not even Disney, but how can any business owner, entrepreneur, CEO think, yeah, I need to think about revenue because they're not a full owner like you that got other people that are invested and they got to make a return. Yeah. How can they think about financial growth, but also fan growth? Well, it goes hand in hand.

You know, the thing is, like, every day we're constantly trying to think, how can we provide something that's unforgettable for fans? And then how can we continue to provide new products, do service, and new experiences? So, yes, we're playing one game. But, you know, we obsess over our merchandise, which we do all in-house. We obsess of our team, Jared and Corey and the team. I mean, they are obsessed. And we are coming up with new things and we do it all in-house.

We're building our own, everything. And so, like, that's exciting for us. When we think about, you know, we're playing at football stadiums. We're selling out cruise ships, which makes no sense. But again, constraints foster creativity. We had to learn five days on how can we entertain for five straight days about playing an animal. Great constraint for us. And so we added that to Pans and our fans loved it.

And that was a whole other level. Like, you can't tell a cruise ship here. Yet we did like eat all the fees and we made it so it's very minimal profit. But like, that was a new service. So what are these new services that we can build the banana ball universe? You know, where could we play at beaches, aircraft carriers? Can we do new innovative games at football stands people that ever seen before? new, you know, all these ideas that we think about constantly, which is a whole new thing that

can, if you do it well, it'll drive fans that'll also drive revenue. Every day we're looking at how can we serve more fans. A few years ago, we sold only 100,000 tickets. Then we went to 500,000. The whole year. The whole year. Then we went to 500,000 in 2023, then a million in 2024, then 2.2 million in 2025. Now 3.4 million in 2026.

Already in the first half? Yeah, the whole year. The whole season sold out. Wow. Yeah, yeah. 3.4 million. Three about four. But next year, we'll go to four,

but it's going to be hard. So what are we going to have to do? The biggest challenge, because you have so many teams, they're baxing out their games. They're selling out of football stadiums. We're selling that everywhere we go. So it's going to be hard.

Our team 10 knows this. So where do we have to look? Do you look at international? Do you look at new opportunities? Do you look at different seasons to play? You have to look at all these other things on when you can provide something for fans that fans want. That's a great challenge.

It's very hard. You know, WWA, they maxed out of 2.5 million fans one year. Now was it? Tickets sold. Tickets sold. So what do they have to do? They got to start doing more TV rights, sell more sponsorship. That's the only way they can really grow their business because they maxed out on how many fans they can.

MLB did 80 million fans 15 years ago. They're around 70, 72 now. They maxed out. So what are you going to do? Higher Tiber rights. Higher sponsorship. All that. More expensive merch.

Yeah, yeah. We got to find out how to serve more fans. That's a hard proposition because every single league maxes out. And your ticket prices are like very minimal. 40, 50 and $60 and $60 and no ticket fees, no convenience. That's it. It's $16 is the most you can say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, we have a VIP package that's on more. And we're going to answer your question. We're going to offer more of those because fans want those. The VIP. Oh, yeah. But we're still going to keep that low price. But we're going to offer more of those because fans are creating for those. The first tickets we sell are the $100, $125 tickets, the backstage tickets.

They go faster than anything else because people want that. So we have to offer more of that. So you offer more or do you increase the price? And when do you increase the price? That's the biggest challenge. We try to go many. Perennial, we're going about three plus years without raising price. which I'm proud of, and then we do it very small.

And I always fight back with our team. I think, how do we not? And, you know, that's a constant challenge. And then you have a million people on a wait list still? Five million. Or five million. That can't go to a game. Correct.

So what, so what back in the day, Eisenner would say, well, just charge more. And I think that makes sense. Supplying demand. Supplying demand. Do that, but like, I don't feel good about that. I'm that fan, that single mom, that family that's been waiting for everyone. Like, why? Just because you're successful.

Now you're going to charge more. We try to picture a fan with us. Would a fan want that? Now, we have to at some point. You know, we might have to do a little bit here and there. We've done it throughout five, ten bucks here. Yeah, you have to at some point just because of as much as we fight back, you know, costs continue to grow.

And we want to make sure we take care of our players and take care of our expenses are going to grow. And so, yeah. My point is every other league, what they have to do is they got to find revenue on how to extract value from the fans. They got to extract ads, sponsors, TV rights, merge, separate things. They got to extract. Well, we got to figure out is how to serve more fans and how to do.

do it in a unique way. So what the challenge is, yeah, so you've got to look at all other top opportunities throughout a year or international or at different venues to serve more fans. And that's a hard, hard challenge. And I love it. It fires me up because it's very, very difficult, but on our whole team's in on it, we're going to find a way. And so we'll go to $4 million, maybe we'll go to $5 million. Maybe we'll start doing it. Let me ask you this question. In two years, if you had to sell 10 million tickets by 2028 in one year, without raising the price, how would you do it? I wouldn't do it. And here's why, because you would dilute your product.

You'd water down. So what happens is, so we have six teams now. And I'm proud of these shows. They've sold out everywhere. But they're not at the level that the bananas, we've built that for 11 years. And so, you know, they're getting the bear. It's a machine. Yeah, but like the party animals, they're selling out major league stadiums with other bananas.

They have more followers. Who do they play against them? Well, we've got the firefighters, the tailgators, the coconuts and the clowns. We got six teams in a league. They play the teams. They play you guys too. Yeah, it's elite. We play a 60 game schedule.

So the question would be, if you try to go to 10 million in two years, what you would have to do is you would have to dilute and you take away your focus and you would water down. You'd have to add some more teams. You have to play at bigger venues. The product would be more. I would not do that. You know, you look at Costco, you look at Chick-fil-A, you look at some of these companies that have grown. You know, they're very strategic. They'd make sure when they go, they're going to do it the best possible for their customers.

So you're not trying to get that many. No, well, eventually, I believe we're going to create a billion fans. Yeah. But I'm not saying we're going to do it in two, three, four, five. years. I want to try to do it in a hundred years. That excites me. I like doing it. Yes, to go from 100,000 to 3 million and five years is crazy. All right. It's crazy. But we're not going to try to jump to 10 million. We'll probably do four and then maybe we'll find a way to get five and then we'll start over here in this country and we'll do this over here. Like that that fires me up because

it's really hard and it's a way to build something that you can make sure the fans get a great show and a great experience. And if you go too fast, most companies, Boston Market, Quiznos, I could keep going. There's a huge list of all the companies like, we got something good. Let's go. And then the quality goes down. They try to do too much.

Boston market, try to serve all these other things. They just wanted the chicken. You stayed Boston chicken. You'd probably have been more successful. Do one thing. You'll spend it in Boston. Sweet potato.

Yeah, you have that. It's pretty good. But you know what I'm saying? I think that's the mindset. So I think the question is continue to growing fans every year without taking away from the fan experience. Wow. So you're not trying to grow as fast you can.

No, I want to continue to create fans and make sure we grow. and stay healthy. I want to make sure I take care of people. I want our players to need to pay more. Our staff didn't need to lay more. Like, the average bonus for our front office staff is like $30,000 to $40,000. Like, that's just everybody. Like, that's from when you start. Like, that's our average bonus or something. Like, that makes me happy. I want to continue, we have to continue to do that. So we have to continue to serve more fans. Wow. What's your biggest internal challenge with all the success you've had? The standard of the, the standard of the showing the experience. So I think that's the biggest, that the biggest challenge.

Because when it's smaller and I'm everywhere, we're everywhere, you can do it all. It was you can be there at each game, but now it's something where we're parts. So look about, so I'll go back to Walt, you know, he spent three years on Snow White, three years obsessing one project and they had so much exciting. Then they went to, they went to Pinocchio, they went to Fantasia. They had, uh, they had three movies going on at once. And all those, you know, while now they've, you know, critically acclaim, but they all, did not succeed, they actually lost money. They were failed.

He couldn't put his whole focus in it. And then when Walt solely focused on Disneyland, every single day he was walking it, he was setting up, he was visioning it, focus is everything. And so when people say, why don't you grow so? It's like, we've learned this. Going from one team to six teams is hard. Yeah.

And so I think that's the one thing that internally, I just try to, how do we make sure the show and the experience at the highest level? And we're going to have to be very strategic. How are you going to keep your focus when you're only going to expand, though? You have so many cool projects happening and so many ideas and you're You're creative and you're writing down 100 ideas.

You sound like my life right now, by the way. She asks this question. How are you going to do it there? You got a cruise ship here and you got 30 games over here and you got these teams and this and project. Disney and it's like you have so many cool. I'm on the SPs now. I'm doing this thing. I'm doing this project.

You know, how many people on your team right now? We've got 10 full time, but we got about 30. They're doing side. You have to build your team. Yeah. Tell me your first pause. What was it? Me and Robert Green.

Yeah. Yeah. It's too. Yeah. And we just started. It was just it. It was just it. the iPhone.

Yeah. It's now you both your team. And they've been, I mean, just my time here, it's a different level. So, like, I have to spend as much time as I can with the core people that can have the most impact on each show. And I have to do that. And we have to obsess it. And I have to not be afraid to coach when it's hard. Hey, like, you know, we're at the aspires and there were certain things that were missed.

Like, it was like, it was missed. And, like, our team deliver. I was so proud. But there were cameras. You guys miss it, but not everyone else missed. Well, no. Yeah, it was like camera shots and details and things, not even out of our control. So this is one of the reasons why Lewis is like, I think you've learned.

this here. You can control everything. People like, oh, you're control for you. That's not a bad thing. When you can control everything, we control our tickets, our merchandise, our show, our experience. About a product. Deal points, because we care at a different level and we obsess over it. And so that's where I'm going to make sure when we go to other places, we can't lose control. If we lose control, we're in trouble.

So you got me going today, man. What do you think will be your biggest downfall if you do what? Or if you don't, if you don't do what? Yeah, it'd be, it'd be the, It would be taking an opportunity for the wrong reasons. Going against your values. Going against your values. You know, like I said, what Roy said.

But what if it's such a big opportunity? What if it's like, man, this is a big number. This is something I never thought I could imagine. Yeah, it was Steve Jobs with Johnny Ive, you know, his creative director and he said, you know, focus is when you wake up and you're so badly want to do something and you're willing to say no. Gosh. That's, that's crazy. He's like, there were so many things that Apple had the opportunity to do.

But if you look at what they did, they would, hey, for two years, I'm going to focus on, you know, the iPod. For two years now, I'm going to focus on the iPhone, three years a long. Like, they would spend just constant, you know, they innovated more than us, but they spent obsessive focus for years on one main product. They had their other ones going, but their A team, their best of their best, was only focusing on one thing. And so, yes, we could get the biggest opportunity. We have. We've got some crazy opportunities.

I could run and say yes to it. And then what happens to the rest of it? And so, you know, where your focus goes, what does Tony Robbins say? where your energy goes, your focus goes, something like that. Yeah, where your attention goes, your energy goes or something like that. It makes sense in my head. But I mean, yeah, that's the downfall would be we take something. Like, you know, we have some movies coming up.

We have some ideas. We have some things that we're working on and some shows. And I have to remember that, hey, keep the main thing, the main thing. And I believe we can be the best in the world, creating the greatest show and greatest live experience than any other sport. And so I get to remember to keep that the main thing. That's what drives us, all of us, everything we can do. What's your three favorite baseball movies? Ooh.

Ooh. That's good. Oh, that's such a tough question because I'm going to get criticism on that one. Just what comes to your mind? Yeah, what kind of mind? I mean, you go back to the San lot was obviously, Sanlott just, and again, I've been able to connect with those guys. We've had Patrick Renner with us, the Great Hambino. He's amazing.

Oh, man. And so, yeah, that was. That's a great movie. You know what one that I watched, like, religiously, which no one will ever pick is one of the greatest baseball was for love of the game with Kevin Costner. I was just obsessed with that one because I was a pitcher. But I mean, yeah, I mean, feel the dreams. The moment with the dad is special. Bull Durham was so funny. There were moments. I mean, Major League, they're there. Geez, I'm listening literally all the baseball movies. Top three. What's your, what's your, what's a movie that inspires you the most with the vision that

you have? What's a movie that you watch, whether it be now or when you're a kid, that you're like, this, this feels like me what I'm going after. Inspires me the most. The greatest showman or just Yeah, I mean, I love the greatest show me because of what they're doing, but I don't know if it's the most inspiring movie. Rocky, I don't know. What's your? No, I mean, again, it's so crazy, Lewis, I mean, I'm so focused on what we're doing and even my family in the business that, like, I, my mind doesn't go to movies. Like, the realest reason when I saw was Michael. And Michael Jackson.

What did you think of that? There was a lot more to be told. A lot more to be told. As someone I studied Michael, I was obsessed with Michael as a kid, one of the greatest performers. You performed Michael Jackson a lot. I have, like, all these videos of you dancing. That's bad that you know that, but yes, I've done some of Michael. I was obsessed with Michael.

Grace Moore. I mean, I think, you know, there was moments in there. He goes, he goes, you know, if you see Haley's comment every year, it won't matter anymore. Not special, right? Not special. And so I think about that often. I think about a lot of those things. And he goes, I want to be the best.

I want to sell this. I want to, you know, I remember seeing a documentary about Chris Martin, Coldplay when he was a kid, he was young. He's like, we're going to sell out the biggest stadiums in the world. He was like, just his band just started. I love people that go out and say what they're going to do and they dream big and they go out and do it. And so like, yeah, you know, Michael and some of those documentaries,

I just, I love that. What was it about Michael Jack? Obviously, he's got a, you know, interesting past too, but what was it about him as a performer that inspired you so much to be obsessed about him as a performer? Well, watch this is it or watch the MJ the musical on Broadway, which is great. It was just talking about his tour.

It was such an obsession over every moment, every beat, everything that comes in, every sound effect, everything. And even right before he died, he was challenged with a lot of medical issues, you see that tour? He's like, no, we're going to hit here. No, right here. We have to hit here. It was every moment.

And I watched that. I've been fortunate to work with Passick and Paul, the writers are the greatest showman, and I've been able to sit in the room with them. And the obsession over every syllable, every piece. I mean, we've been writing together. We're writing songs. Really? Unbelievable.

And we just released our first song. Show starts now. That's cool. But when you're in rooms with people like Michael, Passick and Paul, Mandy Moore, choreographer who did the Taylor Swift tour, did La La Land and DeS was there. It's every single detail matters. The greatest performers, the greatest achievers ever, they have that same thing in common. And so I think Michael was probably the best at it.

And so when you watch a tour, there was a reason why people were fainting. It was just everything was perfection. How he'd come up on the toaster lift. How he would stand there for two minutes like he did during the Super Bowl. Two minutes. just the glass and he's waiting because he understands he's building me I love that video of the producer behind the scene

who's like come on Michael come on Michael let's do it and he's he just pulls it he sizzling and because he's feeling that moment and I tell our people all the time it's you build the moment you build the moment you build the moment it's that obsession to detail so like Michael or any of the greatest performers they all have that in common Taylor Swift

another one you watch her and you're like it's every moment her and manly that's why they work so well together I just that's what excites me because when you nail it, which doesn't happen often, there's no other feeling. You come alive. Like our first football stadium at Clemson, we had a half-time show in the middle of the game. We had singers up in the top decks. We had the whole Clemson band come together. We had both teams in a full performance. This is happening in the middle of the game with the clock still running and they're all dancing. And I wish there was a clip somewhere else. I'm jumping

on the side up and down because I'm feeling it. I'm literally jumping up and down. This is happening. I'm going nuts because I'm watching the vision of like, we're hitting that upper deck. We're hitting that upper deck we're hitting here now the whole the band comes in 200 people now 60 performers and you nail it you nail it you know those moments i feel alive for something like that how how much do you rehearse that big half an outrageous amount so you're rehearsing it where at the stadium so every show starts it's exactly like saturday live and i take it so much inspiration for them all week you're rehearsing you start you start on tuesday ideas well the ideas you start then you have your table read you probably have some set things that you're going to do you're like all new it's all new oh yeah so you have so you have

So you have like guys walk off songs, right? You have your regular hits. Like we do Hey Baby, it's a banana, we do the every game. So you have some romance, but all of the- 50% is standard. Yeah, but Tuesday is all brand new. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, for instance, we have six shows. And so we're- Every weekend? Yeah, so if you have two games a weekend, you have six shows. If we have three games a weekend, have nine shows, and you do 10 to 15 brand new every night. So we do 100 brand new things. So Tuesday, all the idea sessions, all day.

Then we start writing. The scripts, the blocking, the choreography, start doing rehearsal in Savannah for a video that Wednesday. Then we fly. Everyone's in Savannah. Oh, all six teams are in Savannah. Really? Yeah, we had to figure that one out too.

That was hard. So they're all rehearsing and practicing during the group? Oh, yeah, on one field. We had to figure that one out, yeah. Do they have different times? Oh, yeah. It's crazy. Our day's literally from like 9 a.m.

They're going, and then we have a little side feel that we built up, like, we figure it out. Because now we're all there. That's all there. 100%. You understand what it's all about. So we know the heart of who we are and what we stand for. You don't separate it.

So yeah, then we travel and then saw that at Clemson the day before we started a little bit of the rehearsals, the block and the band. It's the Banner, though, right? Well, we start that, yeah, start in Span then you go to the band, then you're going to bring the Clemson band. Then you're going to bring the performers in. Then you do it up the morning. Then you do it during the day. You do it three, four, five times. And then you just hope. With 81,000 fans there. And in the middle of the game, you hope. The last, that's what it all comes to the other. You hope that it hits.

And most times, for me, it's hard because I know I see all the things that don't hit. No, you have a hundred percent. You're always going to see things that don't hit. Like, well, whenever I'm going to ride, I'm always asking what's fun with things, how it's a group. It's so funny because I was at a, you know, we do a, we do a big event every year called the Someone of Greatness. And we do some smaller kind of mastermind events or whatever, but we're not an event company, but we like to put on a show when we do it. We want to go big. Oh, yeah. We've never made any money because we overspent on production and experience.

The Walt philosophy. Dance and art. We make it an artistic expression of life. And when you spend money on art, you don't make money unless it's like a long-term of. investments. So, and we don't sell anything at our event. Yeah, yeah. There's no upsell. There's no nothing. It's all fans. The worst business model. Yeah, but you're creating community. There's a purpose of what. You're creating a new back. Yeah, 100%. And it's so funny because, you know, so I relate to this because we're rehearsing for two days before, but we're

really rehearsing all year round. And then we only have like two days on location. While you're building the set and the production and there's tons of moving parts to try to get the essence of the feeling you want to create. Yes. And you hope that when it starts at 9 a.m., like the music cues hit, the performance, like everything works with all those rehearsals.

So I understand that feeling. And I was in Australia last week had a little speaking tour. Yeah. And I wasn't putting on the event, but the guy who was putting on the event, it's just so funny because I noticed when something's not working also

from behind the scenes. Yeah. And we were doing like this little kind of VIP meet and greet Q&A at the end. and I could see because at one point we were given the mics to like do Q&A

and the mic wasn't on and I could just see him scratching the mic like without anyone noticing I could just I looked over and see him scratching it and just kind of tapping and then looking over and I go I just laugh and I look at him

I go you're obsessive like me of the little details the mic has not turned on like right when you needed to be turned on and I could just see it and we just got to have this laughing moment of like production mind, you know.

You always see it. But I think what you said earlier was really brilliant. He said, you know, you have this feeling that you want to mind. I think most people like they're like, I want to build this, I want to create this, I want to do this. But it's working backwards from that feeling. Like, what's that feeling that you, like, if you work backwards, I had to, when I was struggling, I was, you know, starting a Gastonia and it was just me. It was like a few of, like, we were just, I was burnt out almost every night.

Really? Oh, man, I was just, I was doing everything. I was doing sales. I was doing sponsorship. I was doing finance. I was burnt out. And finally I was just like, all right, what day? are the days that I feel good and I looked at my schedule and it was days that I was

coming up with ideas or I was out sharing what we're doing talking to people or you know I was promoting I was doing all that or I was learning I was doing that and so I created you know my energy list and it's all things that are creating sharing and growing and what I realized what you just said there it's like work backwards from that and work backwards from the feeling that you want to have yes and like I can I vividly can remember that feeling of Clemson jumping up and I feel I feel it right now because it everything came together and it's like okay why how do you

you work backwards from that. What are you trying to create? I was like what I felt was everyone together was doing something together. We were building something together. It wasn't just one person doing this, one person doing this. It was hundreds of people on the field, people up in the stands, everyone in this moment together. And it's like, okay, I always want to create those shared, emotional, powerful moments where you feel alive. And so that's what I work backwards from. Because if I can have one of those a day, one of those a week, it's a great week. It's a great day. That's a big. Wow. So everyone, there's what hundreds of players now? Yeah, yeah, 160 players, 150 cast members.

How does this work then? Do you pay their rent? Or do they have to move there and then they find an apartment, they find a house, and they just, they live their life, they're getting a salary. Yeah, yeah, so you're not paying for. Yeah, I mean, we pay them year round, we pay them year round, they have full health insurance, they have all the benefits, all that stuff. But yeah, we're really proud of where it's come. Because, you know, you look at where baseball leagues and minor leagues and everything else, I mean, it's just at such a low level. And we're continuing to grow at a higher level and only ever imagined.

and very grateful for that. Now, I'm curious, I'm curious about this, because most people think of it as, obviously, they're coming to watch baseball, but you look at it more as entertainment, I'm assuming. Yeah. Yes, baseball is the game we're playing, I guess. Oh, banana ball.

We don't use the term baseball. It's not baseball, yeah. Okay, it's banana ball. But are you trying to get your guys to be better at dancing and entertaining and performing, or trying to have them better at banana ball with playing baseball within,

your level of banana ball. D, all of the above. Really? So, like, yes. I mean, right now, I'm assuming they're better baseball players within banana ball rather than. They all start as baseball players. Yes.

They become banana ball players. And what we hope is they all obsess over, putting on the greatest performance, the greatest show, and creating fans. And so we're very intentional. I mean, we, in our spring training, we spend days going through who we are, what we stand for, what great banana balls. In the middle of the season, I meet with them. I talk.

We literally have everything timed, how the long the games are, how many tricks plays we're doing all of this. I mean, it's a constant metric of how do we make the game better. I mean, we're having games over 30 trip plays. That's a back flip catches behind. We have first baseman catching the ball behind on a ball thrown like this. We've had double plays where a guy catches a bare hand at first base on a 90 mile. It's crazy. Wow. Bare hand back flip catches. They're doing things every night I've never seen before in a baseball field. I love that. Because that's how we can't get bored. You know, going back to the feeling of boredom. If we've seen it all, you want to watch to see what's happening. Oh, yeah, 100%. I don't want

to miss something. What's going to happen? If me and our team we don't want to miss anything, good luck for the fans their first time coming. What do you think will happen when all of your players get better at dancing and performing and the entertainment side just as good as they are at the baseball side? Well, well, you plus so. Or better. Yeah. So here's a here's a good thing that I learned in bring on, we talk a lot about raising the bar and we talk about who's going to be the bar raisers. And so like, for instance, we had Ziggy, Alex Ziegler, and so he was the bat trickster. I thought it. He was on the internet doing bat trick things. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, and he balanced and he

can do all these things. And so he's a bat trickster. But can he hit the ball? Yeah, he played baseball. So he could, yeah, he could, yeah, he had a home run at Clemson, I think last year, which is awesome. So we won't say how short the fence was because it was a football stadium, but he had a home run. So my point was, uh, he, I watched, I said, guys, just continue to try things and show things. Again, go into SD jaws. People don't know what they want until you show it to him. So he was in the off season and he was just catching balls like this and catching balls like this. and catching balls like this. So I said, Ziggy, what is that?

He goes, I just been working on it. So I call our coach. I go, let's put Ziggy at first. He goes Ziggy first? And I go, yeah. He's catching him behind his back. He's catching behind his back. So he goes over there.

And he's just practicing over and over and over again. And the first time a guy throws a ball over and he immediately turns and catches it like that against Alex. We were all like, what? And then the next day, he catches ball like this. He's now our regular first baseman. Oh, that's cool. professionally he's doing it he raised the bar

and now everyone else needs to learn how to do that at first year he's like I can do a backflip I'm gonna try to catch a ball doing a backflip he's better doing it then he's like I'm gonna try it without a glove to the bear hat then he's like I saw the Sequin Barclay where a guy jumped over backwards I'm gonna jump backwards and catch the ball between my legs

he did the Sequin Barkley raises the bar in the Elfield rack raises the bar he's trying to do aerial catches and all these other things so for instance everyone you look at raising the bar Derek Clenna I don't know if you know the name but Derek Clenna was a Broadway A list is a Broadway A-lister

and passing and Paul, we were writing and coming up with ideas and he goes, have you heard of Derek Clinton? I go, no, start showing me. I'm like, he was on Wicked, literally, and Moulon Rouge and like A-lister. But he played baseball at UCLA.

Wow. 13 years ago. And I was like, Derek, and we connect to you. I go crazy idea. Why don't you come down to a tryout? Come sing. He comes down to a tryout.

Shut up. And he takes a mic out, sings, and it's the best I've ever heard singing on a field because it's Broadway, full, unbelievable. And then he pitches. I was like, your arm works.

And he's not throwing 90 miles an hour, but the arm works. Yeah, yeah. So he talked and he said, want to give this shot? Is he playing now? It's a full-time player with the big... Come on. He was on Broadway, now he's with you guys? He left Broadway.

Now he's a full-down. He's a pitcher? Oh, yeah. Does he sing like in the middle of the inning? Oh, yeah. Derek has generated hundreds of millions of views. He has gone from thousands of balls to hundreds of thousands of followers. He, we wrote our song, show starts now.

He's saying, clad the ESP's. live. That's incredible. And it's, wow, he raised the bar. So now that we have a singer player, what's next? You mean a dancer player? Well, yeah, we have great dances coaches. We have other things that we have cast that's unbelievable that are doing things that, you know, I've never seen before. And we've got two Broadway type guys that are host for the Indianapolis clowns. We've got the number one juggler in the world, Spencer, who's with us juggling for the Indianapolis clowns, which was the former Negro lead team that was all about entertainment. We've got an acrobat who was from Circus Saleh. We've got one of the best contortionists in the world that's with us.

that we're going to give him his first at bat this week. So he's got to come up to bat and hopefully he'll be like, enter something. Hopefully he'll be completely flat on the ground with no strikes. So we'll see what happens. And so you keep pushing the envelope and raising the bar. And that's, so who's going to raise the bar in your position? Who's going to raise the bar here?

And that's what excites me. This is cool, man. I got to get you to see a show. I got to get you to see a show. Yeah, I got to come out. It's been powerful, Jesse. I've got a couple final questions for you. This one's called The Three Truths.

Imagine it's your last day on Earth. many years away. Yeah. And you get to create and manifest everything you want in this life. From personal to, to banana ball to everything, it comes true. Beyond your wildest dreams. Imagine six years ago when you did your first game to where it is now, how much it's grown.

And imagine 50 years from now where it could be. Yeah. But on your last day, you have to take all of your information with you. Yeah. This conversation, your books. anything you ever say, video's gone. Yeah. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world.

Oh, geez. Yeah, yeah, you've asked before. I don't, you only get to leave behind three lessons that we would get to remember of your content. What would those three truths be for you? Yeah, I mean, I go back to, you know, the first thing we ever put on our fans' first playbook. I wrote, be patient in what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. And so I think that's something that I've really learned that has been powerful for us. again, this isn't so eloquent, but do what gives you energy.

You know, I think that's just something that I've, um, and, you know, again, there's lots of all these sayings that I, I think our staff could all say on my sayings, but, you know, I don't want to use those. I just like to keep things simple and spread joy. Just spread joy, man. And it's, it's, you know, it's how you show up. How you do anything is how you do everything. And if you spread joy, you bring energy and you give to others, I think anything is possible.

Good things. have good things happen. You've got Banana Bowl, I believe. Is it on ESPN in October? Do we know where it's at? Disney, the Banana Bowl, yes. What is this? Banana Bowl.

It's the biggest event in banana ball history. Have you done this before? It's our WrestleMania, no. So what is it going to be? What can people expect when we'll watch it? What can you do? We're bringing all six teams, all of our cast. There'll be hundreds of people.

It's going to be the biggest performance of our lives. We're going to, we're going to picture a Super Bowl halftime show, but we're going to do the final inning show with all original music. and it is going to be over the top and it's going to be larger than life. And it is the scariest thing I've ever done because it's the biggest stakes. And if you go back to first WrestleMania, the first Super Bowl, all those moments, this is it for us. And to show that it's so much more than just one team, so much more than just one person, it's a movement.

And the banana ball universe is here to stay. That's our first night we're going to go out and prove it. Wow. Where is it going to be? Do we know yet? Do we know? We can't share. it is something that has changed.

It's not public yet. It's not public and it's changed a lot over time. He's on nowhere. Well, there's a lot of things that have changed and there's intentionality on where it's going to be and we're pretty close to be able to announce that. Wow, that's cool. Yeah.

But it'll be televised or it'll be... Oh, it'll be all over Disney. It'll be all global. It'll be Disney and there'll be things that we've never done before, bigger than we've ever done them before. And I'm hoping for that feeling that I had at Clemson and I'm jumping up and down.

Wow. But it's going to be extremely hard. And if we deliver, it'll be something. that people will never forget. Wow. It would be cool if it was at Disney, huh? Yeah.

Well, we played games in the wide world of sports, but yeah, you can't have it at a, I don't think Magic Kingdom there we could fit, we could fit the fields and all that stuff there, maybe one day. What, um, by the end of Banana Bowl, what is the feeling you want to have after you, after it's midnight, all the fans leave, and you've accomplished your first ever banana bowl. What do you want to feel? and yeah what do you want for you? I'm going to hug my dad

and hug Emily, hung the kids. I've had these feelings before so when you do something that's really hard and you work really hard for it and you get to feel it and you get to peel how far you've come and we've come from nothing we've come from a wild journey.

A lot of criticism every step of the way people told us that we couldn't do it and when you do something that is beyond anything you ever imagine and you, the key is to not you know, be at the top of that mountain, be by yourself. And to be with my dad, my family, and then all the people that have worked so hard in this, as much as it's going to be amazing seeing the thousands of fans at the end of the night,

it's going to be coming back to have our final fans first chat. Cheersing everyone, being around everyone and saying, look at what we just knew. Wow. That's going to be. And the song that we wrote was, look what we made. Dream it up. It could look something like this. long ago we said we make it someday.

Hey, hey, look what we made. Wow. And that's the song we're going to perform the final song. That is cool. Yeah, it's going to be pretty special. Wow, man. This is amazing. Yeah.

I want to acknowledge you, Jesse, for the journey you've been on, man. It's been crazy, you know, since, well, I met you in 2018 for a few minutes. We've been connected over the years on social media and texts and things like that, just seeing what you've been up to. But it's, it's inspiring to see you've stuck true to your values and you've just gone for it. You've gone for it and you've been riding the wave and you haven't allowed outside forces to get you off path. And I think a lot of people get caught up in shiny objects for the wrong reasons. You've been, you know, caught up in your own shiny object for the right reasons and stuck true to yourself. So I want to acknowledge you for staying true to yourself for not doing it

for the money, but doing it for people and bringing as much joy to as many people as possible. And I cannot wait to get to a game one day. So we're going to have to a point. You're going to be ready. You're going to get you going. I'm going to get you going. Put me in. Both guys and singing. Well, you may go on board. Let's go. I'm in for this. We're going to have some fun. For people that haven't seen a banana ball yet, how can they follow the journey, get on a wait list, social media, where should they go to experience what you're talking about if they've never seen it? And then how can they come to a game or be a part of the universe? I appreciate using the banana ball universe. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're easy to find. You search banana balls or Savannah bananas. And, you know, even I think my first. I think my, my first.

them. I mean, email's still out there everywhere. It's crazy. But yeah, we post every day. You know, one of the things I believe is you learn by doing. And so when we first started social media, we didn't know what we're doing. We said we're going to post every day, try to spread joy, try to make baseball fun, and show what we're doing. And now, you know, fortunate over 40 million followers that have been following us on this journey. And so, yeah, we are very visible. We're very out there. I think that's one of the biggest things that is our differentiator. You know, when many people put barriers between people, we try to, you know, break down those barriers and allow our fans to be around us and interact and we love it. It gives us joy and purpose. So, um, very accessible,

probably too much, uh, to it instead, but, uh, I love it and the joy I feel when fans come up to me. And, you know, think about this. How many people in their life? Someone, you get to feel it. I know, because of what you do, but how many people come up to say, thank you? You know, just to come up, I wish everyone in the world could get thanked every day for what they do. And we get to feel that. So I'm very great. Gosh, man, it's a, it's a blessing. Anytime I, I don't really leave much, um, like I, you know, I work out at home. My trainer comes to me. I come to the office.

I go home and with my kids. Yes. I don't go out as much in any of the time I travel or I go out and someone comes up to me and tells me how the show's impacted. The impact their life, yeah. There's no better feeling to meet someone that you've made a difference in their life. There's no better feeling. And so if you get to this every week and high five thousands of people who are having the best

time ever, there's nothing else you'd rather do. A hundred percent. It's fuel. If someone gave you a billion dollars right now to sell it. you'd be like, I don't know what else I would do. I would go redo this whole thing again. 100%. Because it's not about the money.

It's about the impact. And that's what helps me when there's constant criticism. Because we still get criticism. You know, every day, we get criticism. Because, you know, the only people that get criticized are the people that actually do something. Yeah. And so we're going to keep doing. I'm going to have that fuel from those people.

And, you know, that's, that drives us. If you don't want to, you know, I just, I so believe in just showing up constant with people that believe in what you believe in. And I realize that we're going to continue to get criticized. The bigger the stage, the bigger the criticism. but the people that believe in you and you feel that every day that come and thank you, that's who we're work for. That's who it is.

Yeah. I'm just curious, how many followers does all of MLB or MLB teams have combined? Do you know? It's not a, I was curious. No, I don't know. I honestly, like, I think a lot of people, they spend a lot of time focusing on their competitors. You know, I'm just obsessed over our fans or what we say, our customers. But like, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, they probably have a lot. But I know we, I know our party animals have, I was told, more than every major league baseball team on TikTok and they're our second team. So like it shows you we've been able to grow by giving something that fans, you know, want. Wow. That's amazing, that it. Well, they can follow you. Yellow Tux, Jesse, all over social media. You got a lot of great content.

And the thing I look about your content, you tell a lot of great stories. Yeah, thank you. So you're in the stadiums. You're on location, sharing stories, which I think is just really the hell. Well, think about this. Who's, if you will look back, who's the biggest inspiration from you? Like, in your, like, maybe not just personal, but maybe even someone big. Like, for me, it's Walt Disney.

Yeah. Is there anybody doubt like that's not really... I mean, like, you know, LeBron James, I like, there's an athlete. Anyone from way back? Any from, like, anyone that... Michael Jordan was like, you know, when I was growing up, he was the guy. And you had to see it a little bit with The Last Dance, but think about this. Yeah, the Last Dance was good.

We didn't tell many stories, though, during growing... Yes, that's what I'm saying. Just saw him play. If Walt Disney and his journey of building Snow White, Disneyland was sharing the ups and the downs and when they mess up... Incredible. That's what I realized, like, I had such a great gift to be able to read a lot, but wine on this journey. Like, it's hard. We're going through it.

I just love, I think it's something I love sharing it because I know other people are going through some things. Yeah, man. It inspires me. I'm like, I think back, man, if Walt Sher really felt in the day. Incredible. Yeah. You're a great storyteller, man. That's awesome. Thank you. Find your yellow tucks.com. We can learn more about you and what you're building as well. But Yellow Tech's Jesse on socials. Final question, Jesse, what's your definition of greatness? You know, it's funny. I think about, I've watched so many of your shows. I probably, I know some people are probably prepared. pair on these? Like I was just like, I want to be here. The way I,

greatness is someone being the best version themselves and truly being able to give and go all out and just really, I think about what we do and I think about, I've misrounded by a lot of greatness. And they are, they've been in tune with everything that lights them up, that makes them feel alive and they give everything they got at the best version of themselves. And I think that's something that, you know, you could look at greatness as, you know, success, fulfillment, joy. And I think all that comes to. But someone that's truly great is able to put in tune everything that they have, everything that they can give to the world and they give their best.

I think that's what that's what greatness can be. So I probably should have thought of that more in detail. It's all good. It's funny. No, it's so funny. Like, I know you ask those questions, but I was like, I'm just going to be present with you and I'm not going to like think about stuff, but, uh, it's beautiful, man. What do you, what do you define greatest says? My current definition, because it is a change. It probably has a, about that's where I figure where you are in your world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. And for me, it's discovering your unique deets and gifts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To pursue your dreams in that pursuit, making the maximum impact on the people around you. Yeah, yeah, for me, that's what it is. Because I feel like you were born to discover what our gifts are. Yeah. And I feel like it's a waste if we don't pursue those gifts. But I think it's a similarity in what we, because if I said to you, the best version of yourself, you have to have your unique gifts. Yes. All right. I think it's a waste if you just do it for selfish reasons for you to look good rather

than help people around you. Yeah, yeah. So that's the current. But who knows, maybe in 30 years, I'll be like. Well, it's interesting. Well, I wrote my, in my first book, I wrote my obituary. And I was 30 years old or whatever I was. That's different.

That's completely different. Because, you know, at a 30 year, your different mindset is you grow and you evolve. And I was like, how do you, how will be remembered? And so, like, great is like right now I'm just talking with you. I'm like, all right, what's the best version of yourself? But like, you know, if you think about it in five years, I'd be like, ooh, this is greatness. Of course. But again, when I surround myself with greatness, I see an unbelievable obsession, an obsession

with how to make something truly special and indifferent and unique. It's an obsession. And I don't find anybody that's truly great that is not obsessed. And people look at obsession as a bad thing. I think it's a beautiful thing. I think if you can find something that you're truly obsessed with, boy, what a gift. Not many people have that. And so that's, you know, it's, I think that.

that's a really good point. I think in five, 10 years. We'll see how you evolve and how you define things. Yes, sir. Man, we jam, man. Appreciate you, man. Appreciate you, man. So good. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact

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