How the Savannah Bananas Changed the Game

The first book I ever wrote was The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. In fact, maybe we'll cut on the screen, or maybe you can see it there, but there's a list of all my books. The one furthest to the left, the first one in the sequence, is The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. And admittedly, it was a little bit sophomoric. Shocker. But it was also my attempt to spit in the face of traditional beliefs. I believe so many entrepreneurs struggle with their businesses to be successful because they follow what we see in the media. I call them the MDEs, or the media darling entrepreneurs, versus the TPEs, the toilet paper entrepreneurs. The media darling entrepreneurs are the folks who are fabled for their success, yet we don't account for what they had to go through to get where they are. We often look at their success. Oh, look at Sara Blakely, she's got a billion-dollar company. I need to start that and have my billion-dollar company. Oh, look at Elon Musk. He starts companies over and over again. He's worth, probably one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Look at Jeff Bezos. It's easy to look at entrepreneurs and where they are today and skip the journey that took them to get there. It's also very common to discount good fortune, good timing, good luck. Imagine if Jeff Bezos was born and raised in North Korea. Would he have the success with Amazon? Would Amazon exist? You know, of course not. There are certain privilege, certain opportunities, certain lottery wins that individuals have based upon many factors, and that puts them in a position for tremendous success. I am not discounting the effort required. I'm just saying we overlook a lot of parts, and we discount some assets that we already have, that you already have, that can bring tremendous value to your business, and you think it's valueless. This is the journey of the TPE. The toilet paper entrepreneur who uses the weaknesses to their advantage. I wanted to show you this. Eradicating entrepreneurial poverty, that is my life's mission. So many entrepreneurs have a vision of one day, financial freedom, personal freedom, the ability to do what I want, when I want, in the way I want, to have impact on our community, our planet. And yet, they're here, the struggle. They're not financially free, they're financially strapped more than ever. They're not personally free, they're working more than ever. And having impact, forget it, there isn't any time left. That's what I call entrepreneurial poverty. And "The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur" was my first book, it's the journey of eradicating that, of making that gap closed. You deserve financial freedom, you deserve personal freedom, you must have impact. And this, I hope, this training we go through together, this deep dive, will bring exactly that to you. Let's start off by digging into one of the biggest financial misconceptions: that it takes money to make money. And I would argue it takes the lack of money to invoke innovation, which makes the most money. You see, when you challenge the industry norms, when you redefine them, the biggest opportunity sits there. I'll share a story that perhaps you're already partly familiar with because I talk about them regularly, but it's such a good example of the lack of money and how it can serve you. It's the Savannah Bananas baseball team. Now, if you're not familiar with them, my God, stop this video video for 3 or 4 seconds and Google those guys. They're unbelievable. They are the Harlem Globetrotters for baseball. But the story about how they got started is what is really remarkable to me. The founders of the organization are Emily Kohl and Jesse Kohl, a husband and wife team, and they decided because of their passion for baseball that they would buy a baseball team, specifically a minor league baseball team. Now to give you context, the average baseball team in the minor leagues gets, if they're lucky, 300 guests, 300 attendance to a game, more likely about 100 people watching the game. You sell a ticket for maybe $10. So you're making $1,000 to maybe $3,000 per game. That's before your costs. That's your gross revenue. You gotta maintain the field. You may have to pay staff and other things to put on the game. Well, when Jesse and Emily Cole bought their team, which was the Savannah Sand Gnats, That's a sexy name. When they bought that team, they had those responsibilities cost-wise plus more. They actually had a stadium to maintain. They identified, my gosh, we don't have enough money to run or maintain our scoreboard. We can't show the score. We're not making enough money with our 100 or 200 guests. So instead of saying, clearly we can't do this because it takes money to make money, they said, how can this be to our advantage? They said, financially, we're We can't do what everyone else is doing. What can we do that will cost nothing? What they did is they invited the audience to become the participants. They would invite fans down from the stands to show the score between innings. Kind of like a boxing match between rounds where you see the model holding the number up for the round. Same idea. And the audience was engaged. They decided to start a cheer squad that cost nothing called the Grandma Bananas. You had to be 80 years or older. Teeth were optional. And people went crazy over it. I was so grateful that I threw out the opening pitch back, I think it was in 2020, maybe it was 2019, for a Savannah Bananas baseball game. Ah, I gotta find that baseball bat I have because they signed the bat, not the team, but the entire staff. Because these are the people that put on the event. And, uh, right before I threw out the opening pitch, the baseball that was in my hand was swapped with a roll of toilet paper. And I threw out a roll of toilet paper as the opening pitch. And that's just where the antics started. The whole event was packed with these fans engaged in the audience. When I talk about fans, there was 5,000 people in the audience. In fact, the Savannah Bananas has sold out every single season for the last 6 consecutive seasons. They are making a mint. Actually, they started a world tour. They performed recently in Fenway with 33,000 fans there. They've redefined baseball because they didn't have the money. As a toilet paper entrepreneur, as an innovative entrepreneur, scrappiness is your biggest advantage. It redefines the industry. One last tidbit about the Savannah Bananas. As they were going through this experience, as they were redefining baseball, as they became the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, The pundits, the established teams in the minor league were making fun of them. This is outrageous. This is so dumb. No one will ever come to this. As they had their poultry 100 to 200 guests attend their games. And the Savannah Bananas has 5,000 plus. Try to get a ticket to a game, forget it. I think a ticket, if you can buy it directly, is maybe $20 or $30 a game. It's very affordable for most people. But they're sold out instantly. Scalpers are selling them for over $1,000 a game now. That's how valuable that brand has become because they challenged the industry norms due to the lack of money. If you have a lack of money, it's your advantage. There's one more story I wanna share. It's about Bryn Davis. Bryn is a friend of mine from the past. He started a company called Bryn and Dane's. It was healthy fast food. I know, kind of shocking. And when he was starting the business, he consulted with me and said, "How do I build this vision I have?" And we came to the conclusion, you start it with popcorn because it was all he could afford. Bryn set up a popcorn stand and started selling popcorn and ultimately it became Shake's. And finally, over time, he learned the process of food and hospitality in his little stand, and he was able to generate enough money to ultimately buy his first location. And the company grew from there. Starting off with a lack of money forces you to learn the fundamentals too. And I'll tell you, that is your advantage. I met Mel Robbins back about 15, 20 years ago. We were both on a show called The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. And I followed her career ever since. My wife in particular has fallen in love with her online podcasts and quick psychology. They're great tips. And one of the things she shared that landed with me specifically was, "No one is coming." So many of us wait for someone else to save us. No one is coming. We want someone to swoop in and save us from financial woe. No one is coming. We want someone to come in and just set up our business for us, to be that big customer, to be the investor. No one is coming. Well, one person is. You. You are there for the business. This all depends on you. Go about this as if you're the only one that cares. Because guess what? You're the only one who cares. Everyone else has to care about themselves. And if you care about your business so much and care for it so well that it cares for other people, that's when they'll start caring. That make sense? No one else is coming. You have to go this alone, and that's a wonderful thing. Now, one thing people do is they look for partners. Partners can be a wonderful shoulder to cry on and can be a great tandem. But many partnerships struggle, so I want to give you a tip, a really simple TPE strategy for partnerships. Instead of going into a partnership 50/50, we're going to split it up all fair for everybody. Instead, based upon contribution, both of you as the founding members, if there's two, get say 10%, and the remaining 80% stays in the organization. And then the 80%, over the next 4 years, 20% at a time, is allocated out based upon performance of the individuals. You two decide what the performance is. Maybe one person is responsible for sales. Here's the sales expectations. One person is responsible for product development. That's the expectations. The end of each year, did you meet the metrics or not? If you fall short, you get less equity. If you beat it, you get more equity. And you keep dividing that up until the end of 4 years. You see, anyone can be enthusiastic for the short period. Anyone can fake it for 90 days. But there's a certain point where we default to who we naturally are and how we perform. And isn't it a shame after 3 to 4 years where partnerships collapse because one partner's doing everything and the other one isn't pulling their weight? Well, this could have been prevented with this partnership agreement. Now remember, no one is coming except for you. You have to be all in on this. You have to care for it more than anything in the world to give it life, your business. So no one cares as much as you and you gotta give it life. How do you go about it? Step 1, you start earlier than you think you should. And that sounds also counterintuitive. Shouldn't we— we have to have the right education, we need to know what we're doing. No, no, sell the tell. So this is the technique when starting a business. A lot of business owners invest a lot of resources and money in getting a business established, and they don't even know if the market wants it. I had a friend who started a meatball business that was unfortunately a total calamity because he didn't know if the market really wanted it first, and he invested all this money in, and it didn't work. So how do you sell the tell? This is where you go to prospective consumers and say, hey, I have a concept I'm gonna be rolling out. This is what I'm gonna be doing, and when I do this, I expect to charge a certain dollar amount. I expect to have certain offering parameters. I expect XYZ. Lay it out and then say, I plan to do this. Is this something you're interested in? Also, if you can, specify the price you're going to charge. I anticipate I would charge $1,000 for this. But are you interested in purchasing it? And if you are, would you be willing to do it now for a discount? What's so interesting is if you ask people, do you like the idea? What do you think? Everyone will love it. That doesn't matter, particularly your friends. Your friends are liars, okay? They're trying to support you emotionally, but they don't want it. The real question is wallets. Are you willing to open your wallet? So I have a phrase: don't trust people's words, trust their wallets. So go to prospective customers, particularly people you don't know who don't have any social consequence. They can tell you the raw, honest truth and say, hey, here's what I'm planning on doing. Would you be interested in departing with some money right now? Would you be willing to put down a deposit? And in exchange, I'll discount the fees from what the long-term fees will be because you're taking on the early risk. If no one's willing to depart with money, they are telling you through their actions you ain't got it yet. But the good thing is you haven't invested much time or effort into it. You just have the concept. So build out the concept until that's convincing. When you have a convincing concept, then go about the effort of creating it. But you only know you have a convincing concept when you start generating some money. You're basically running your own Kickstarter campaign here. You're raising the funds before you deliver. That's the ultimate way a TPE starts a business. Don't wait till one day. Don't wait till some future day. Because no one is coming, start earlier than anticipated. Start today. Get that pitch going. Now the other question you have as you're starting your business or restarting your business or you have an established business that you're trying to reinvent to some degree is what should the offering be? What should the product be? Here's the mistake most entrepreneurs make. They say, I'm just gonna copy what's working for everybody else. I mean, I look at someone else's website, I'm like, oh, their website's really good. Let me take the best of what they have and the best of another competitor and now I have the best of all the best. And unnoticeable, and it sucks. Because the customer doesn't care about more of the same. The customer cares about something that serves them. So when it comes to creating another offering, look at what's already out there. Get a sense for what's already established. Then ask yourself, how do I differentiate? Inevitably, there's a ripple effect. As new innovations, new products, new ideas come out from your competition, there'll be consequences. Someone comes out with a new shoe, that may require a better new sock. Someone comes out with a new vehicle, that may require new roadways, new communication tools, new windows and windshields. There's often a ripple effect. But also look at what your competition's doing that is unified. Often competition will copy themselves. Talk about unification. Gosh, you look at a car head on, it's almost impossible to tell who the manufacturer is if you don't see the logo. Look 'em from the side, forget it, they all look the same. Until Tesla came out with the cyber weirdo truck. But everyone notices. How do you break the rules of the industry? How do you redefine it? What is the problem that's still out there? What's the new problem that's being triggered? What we need to do is look for what is forgotten. So one thing is experience the product. Maybe you can consume from your competitors. Maybe you just have experience on its own. But what still frustrates you? What's the problem you're still experiencing? And can you solve that? If you notice it, then you can fix it. I'm working with an entrepreneur right now who's a new innovative product. What we did first is we scoured the web, we made phone calls trying to find this particular product. They're out there, they're homemade products, but there's no ship provider except for one company that he found in Texas that won't ship out of their town because it's too fragile. And we said, my gosh, how do you make this product in a non-fragile way that can ship anywhere in the world? And that's what this entrepreneur is working on. He wanted the product, can't acquire it, found the weakness of the competition, fragility, and is now looking to solve it. What is the competition not doing? That is your opportunity. One more mega tip for you. We wanna be cost conscious. And we do, start off with a service-based business. Service-based businesses only require perhaps you, maybe a couple tools, maybe if it's a cleaning service, you need a mop and a bucket, maybe if it's a tech service, you'd need access to a computer, but it doesn't require a lot of inventory, it doesn't have a lot of costs. Other businesses like manufacturing, retail, requires you to get inventory. It can be a heavy cost burden, so it may not be a good starting point. Even if you want to have a retail business, Can you start a service that builds into that? Maybe some kind of service that analyzes retail shops and helps them sell more. And in the process, you learn how to stage your own retail shop while making income consulting with other retail shops. Here's the summary. Service-based businesses inevitably are cheaper to start. Admittedly, product-based businesses often can scale a lot bigger. So if you want the best of both worlds, start as a service-based business and transition into a product-based service-based business. But you may find that service-based business you started is serving you pretty well and you don't want to change. Now let's get the rubber on the road and take action on this. So how do we do that? Well, we're not going to use a business plan. I know, Mike, my God. Yeah, we're not going to use a business plan as we're all told to do. Problem with business plans is they try to forecast the future, and I'll tell you, if you can forecast one day, just get in the stock market, you're instantly a billionaire. It's very hard to forecast. They're non-dynamic documents. They do have important elements, so we're going to leverage it, but in a tacking strategy. Tacking is where we do this. Our first little paper slide of the day. You put an X on the map of where you want to go. This is where you're starting. Most businesses try to go in a straight line. That never works. There's obstacles in the way. There's problems. There's changing economies. There's changes in the environment. Things just happen. So Instead of going like this, we're going to put an X on the map, start here, and we're going to go in 90-day increments. Now, we're not going to go directly toward the target. We're going to leverage what the economy's like, who's the competition, what are the obstacles in the way that we must avoid. Then we're going to go for another 90 days, and we're going to avoid obstacles and blockages and so forth, and we're going to go for 90 days. And we're gonna zigzag our way there. And your pattern to get there may be something like this. This is what sailors use. They move in short increments, they then adjust the sails to capture the wind, they avoid obstacles, and they move in a zigzag pattern and always get to their destination. In our business, we're gonna use a tacking strategy. What do we do, need to do in the next 90 days to outsmart the competition, outwork the competition, to offer something different or better. But how are we gonna differentiate from the competition? What are we gonna do in the next 90 days to assure our revenue, to bring on the right clients, and so forth? What are we gonna do in the next 90 days to assure profitability, to make sure that we're cash flowing well, that the business is healthy? What are we gonna do in the next 90 days to secure product, employees, whatever we need to keep the business going? Then after 90 days, we go through that same evaluation set again. Customers, and profit, and revenue, and employees, and staff, and products, and, and, and, and, and, and after 90 days we adjust again. This is a living, breathing document. And if you move in 90-day increments, and then after 90 days take a pause, sit back, observe what needs to be tweaked, and then make adjustments and implement accordingly, you're gonna zigzag your way to where you need to be. Remember, the media darling entrepreneurs we see are the final endpoint. Those people are here and we're like, oh, I want to go there, so I'll just go there. No, we're here. We need to get there. Now you have the strategies to do it TPE style.