591: How to Make Your Dreams a Reality with Jesse Cole

Hello and welcome to the achieve your goals podcast. The show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level as well as interview world class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves. And we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go.

Hello friends. Welcome to the achieve your goals podcast. I am so, so, so excited for today's conversation that you are about to listen to. In fact, if you're watching this, I'm smiling almost the entire time. I was like a kid, I was so enthralled in our guest's story. Our guest today is Jesse Cole. He's the founder of Fans first Entertainment and the owner of the world famous Savannah Bananas, as well as the party animals and the firefighters with the mantra fans first entertain always. The Bananas are on a mission to make baseball fun by creating the greatest show in sports. Now, if you're not a baseball fan, which I'm technically not, keep listening, okay? Because this is about Jesse. This is about who he is and how he thinks. And you're going to learn so much from someone who went from struggling selling their house to make their dream come true to now selling out a stadium last week with 148,000 fans. And he's got 15 million followers on social media. In fact, the team has sold out every game since their inaugural season in Savannah and has since grown a ticket wait list to more than 3.5 million fans. Yeah, their weightless has 3.5 million fans. He's been on the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, HBO Real Sports, and Access Hollywood. In addition to Banana Land, which is a five part documentary original series on ESPN plus. And Jesse and the Savannah Bananas are just getting started. He's also the not so proud promoter of Grandma beauty pageant, the human horse race and the living pinata and flatulence fun night. You'll hear him mention that today. But in addition to the wildly successful banana ball, Jesse continues to create raving fans all over the world as a bestselling author of his book fans first find your yellow Tux and his third book, banana Ball and as a highly sought after international keynote speaker for some of the world's largest and most respected organizations, which is where I met him. We were both speaking at an event and he approached me backstage with a camera rolling I did not know the camera was rolling. And he showed me his journal from 10 years ago when he read the Miracle Morning. And he said it helped him achieve his goals and his dreams. And most of all, Jesse's a raving fan of his wife, Emily, their three kids, and his favorite peerless promoters like Walt Disney and P.T. barnum. Again today, prepare to be entertained and inspired by someone who has created the life of his dreams in a way that most people can only imagine and dream of. One of my favorite people, the one and only Mr. Jesse Cole.

All right, so, Jesse, so you were just telling me your kid are six and seven.

I have a seven, six and a three year old.

Seven, six and three. And you homeschool them and what your wife say, you tell me.

Well, our life's crazy. So, yeah, our biological son, two foster daughters that we adopted. So they are all homeschooling now. So we are traveling every single week all over the country. And, yeah, it's not a typical homeschooling setup where it's like you do three, four hours, it's like, no, we're on the road today. We're traveling today. The game starts at 7. We're going to get home at 1 today. You're going to be with the players here early on the field. Then we're going to try to go to a zoo. We'll mix in a zoo briefly this morning, and we'll see what we can do. And it's just adjusting our life, and it's crazy, but it works for us.

It'll be so interesting to see in 10, 20 years how they look back on, like, man, I had such an unconventional childhood, but it was wild, right? Like, they call that world schooling in a way, right? Where you're just, like, learning through osmosis and observation. And, I mean, dude, the one thing they're learning is how to watch their dad pursue his dreams at the highest level possible, which is pretty cool.

No, we're very fortunate. But, yes, when my son's just playing catch at Fenway park, he has no idea it's playing catch at what Fenway park means and what that looks like. But I take in those moments. You know, we're so fortunate. We capture a lot of these moments because, you know, I think when I was younger, you know, there's a few pictures, there's no videos, really, when I was much younger. And so to capture these, to see what they were part of and interacting with our players and former MVPs and All Stars and celebrities and the people they get to interact with and just key to teach them to be humble, but also to appreciate what they're a part of. And so it's been a fun ride. We're learning more every day.

Yeah. No, I mean, it is wild. So let's start with where you're at now. And then I want to kind of work backwards. Right. So you're famous for being the founder of Banana Bowl. You are selling out stadiums across the country. In fact, you just celebrated. Right. Your biggest audience ever. Am I right? At the Panthers stadium? Yeah.

It doesn't make any sense. We just sold out two NFL stadiums back to back. 148,000 fans, two games. It's crazy.

It doesn't make sense. I'm like, I was trying to explain to my kids. I literally was telling them about our interview today, and I go, 148,000. The city I grew up in had 13,000 people, y'.

All.

That'd be like 10 of my or more than 10 of my town that I grew up in. So you've got millions of fans, or right before we met, your interview had just gone live on 60 Minutes. You're on ESPN as well. Like, right around that same time. What is life like right now? Take a minute. Put your hands on your heart before you answer this pause, and just what is life like right now, being you in this moment in time?

Well, for me, I'm still that only child kid that was dreaming big and having fun. And, you know, it's hard for me to think about where it is now because it's all been just a journey. You know, nine years ago, my wife and I were sleeping on an airbed. You know, we only sold a handful of tickets when we first came to Savannah, it was a brutal struggle, but we had a bigger belief that we can make baseball fun and create something truly special. And each day it's been iteration. How do you get better? And, you know, obsession with learning from Walt Disney and P.T. barnum and Jeff Bezos and, you know, Steve Jobs and the greatest innovators. And we just kept learning. So now, you know, we're having opportunities we've, you know, never had before. And yes, to sell out major league stadiums, to sell out NFL stadiums, to create a new sport and play it all over the world. And it's unbelievable, but I'm still that, you know, person who's obsessed with just creating a great fan experience and more than anything, just creating something that I would love. You know, I think the greatest creators create things that they love that get them excited. I wanted to look at the sport as something that could be fun, to bring people together. And so every day it's trying to get a little bit better. So we're traveling constantly. We travel with over 200 plus people. We have multiple tours. Even our second team, the Party Animals, they have more followers than every major league baseball team on TikTok. I mean, they sold out their entire tour. You know, we're starting the league next year. There's a lot of opportunities with TV and all these other things that are happening, but for me, it's not about that. It's about, you know, one fan at a time. Every game is someone's first game, and every day we have an opportunity to create a special moment for a fan. And. And that's what fires me up and that's what excites me. That's when I go to the ballpark. I don't care if it's 40, 50, 140,000 fans. It's those moments and that's what we're trying to create.

I love that. For those that aren't familiar, what is banana ball and when and how did you come up with it?

Simple. You know, I played baseball my whole life. Very fortunate. Got a full college scholarship, went down south, played division one. And, you know, that was my dream. I was. It was going to play major league Baseball. I grew up south of Boston and so I had the big dream to play for the Red Sox. You know, I envisioned it over and over again with the 37th round pick, the Boston Red Sox. I was never going to be an early round pick. I was going to be later. All right. But I pictured myself getting drafted. High school. I had scouts coming to my games, you know, major league scouts. When I was in college, there were scouts. I was getting letters. I remember getting Christmas cards from the New York Mets. Like, it was like, this dream is going to happen.

Yeah.

And then I tore my shoulder and just like that, three pairs and it was done. And I had no idea what I was going to do. Nowhere near what you went through. But it was a moment where it was like, this was my life. What do I do now? Yeah. This was all I knew I would play baseball. And so I thought I was gonna get into coaching. And I had the biggest. Aha. Because I did go into coaching for a short period of time. I was coaching in the Cape Cod League and sitting in the dugout. And this is Cape Cody, some of the best college players in the country. Everyone goes and plays major league baseball like they are the best and the Best. So I'm sitting with the best players in the country, the best seat in the house, and I'm bored out of my mind. Wow. Playing the game is one thing. When you're playing, you're on the mound, you know, I could dictate what was going to go on. I could control the game. I could know what I was going to pitch, know what I was gonna do. But I was sitting there watching. I was bored. And I just had that, aha, right, like that. I was like, if I'm bored and I know the game, I understand it. And I got the best scene in the house with the best players. Right now I'm bored. There's gotta be a lot of other people that are bored with the game of baseball as well.

Wow.

Now, when this was happening, this was in the heyday, Major League Baseball had the most fans they ever had. They had 80 million fans. They were dominating, but I still just felt it. And so I said, well, I got an opportunity to be a GM of a team at 23 years old in college summer baseball. And so how do you get opportunity? Well, it's the worst team in the entire country. No one wanted the job. Hell, so I got it. $268 in the bank account, 200 fans coming to the games. Team had lost over $100,000. And I just said, we got to fix it. So I was like, I got to learn from outside the baseball business. This is a low level. Baseball was college summer baseball that I was running. And so I started reading every book by Walt Disney, P.T. barnum Circus, LA, WWE, Grateful Dead, sort of learning of the greatest entertainers. And I said, we can't be a baseball team. You have to be about entertainment. And so what people don't realize is that we spent 10 years with this small team in Gastonia. I think we got one news piece of news coverage. But I learned there and tried things like the Grandma beauty pageants and the flatulence fun nights and the Salute to Underwear nights and Dig to China nights. I mean, we tried it all and there's all hundreds of stories and hundreds of failures that happened there. But I learned how to get people excited about coming to a baseball game. And so we started selling out some games back in Gastonia, over 2000 fans and for a small state. And that was a big deal. And I just always wondered, what if I could start from scratch, brand new team and do it right? And luckily I met my amazing future wife, Emily. She became our director of Fun in Gastonia. And you know, she Wear a hot dog costume every day. I mean, when you can find a woman that is confident and doesn't care what she looks like, is just having fun, that's the right girl for me. Oh, man, that's awesome. And I fell in love pretty quickly. And I proposed to her at one of our last games at Gastonia. Sold out crowd. I stopped the game, had a ring inside a baseball, and actually had a fireworks show go off in the middle of the game, which completely delayed the game. But I was like, this is our moment. We're making this special. And she surprised me with a trip to come to Savannah, Georgia, just out of nowhere. Never been to Savannah. And I was like, oh, there's a minor league team there, the Mets affiliate. We gotta go check it out. She's like, I knew you would say that. So I got tickets.

Nice.

I realized she probably didn't have to get tickets because there's only 200 people, like 150 people in the stadium. It's like a tumbleweed going through it. And it was dead air. And it was a beautiful, majestic 1926 ballpark. Babe Ruth played there, Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig, you could feel all the history. And I said, if this team ever leaves, we gotta come here. And lo and behold, they asked for a $38 million stadium from the city, said, we're not building you a $38 million stadium. So they left and they took everything out of the stadium. We convinced the city for us to come in. We showed up, the phone lines were cut, they cut the Internet lines, they took everything out of the ballpark. It was abandoned. And it was myself, my wife, our 24 year old team president, three 22 year olds straight out of college. And here we go. Here's the new dream, the new team. And that's when we began to fail. And we sold two tickets in our first three months. And we got the call on January 15, 2016, that we were over drafted our account, we were out of money. And Emily turned to me and said, we have to sell our house. And so we sold our house, emptied out our savings account, and we had to figure out how to make it work. And at that same time, there was a book that I read. And the book was the Miracle Morning.

And I like where this is going. Keep going.

Yes. And that stood out. I started writing right when we started in that 2015, which I showed you, I started writing every morning and documenting it. What was crazy, that whole first year, when we ran out of money, we were sleeping on an air bed we were grocery shopping, which is $30 a week. I have every day documented on what we went through. And it was a crazy journey. We had to figure out how to do something different because when we came in, we were expected to be fail like everyone else. We were the same baseball team. We were doing the normal things, the normal marketing, the normal sales. We were scared to step out. I wasn't wearing the yellow tuxedo. We were just like everyone else. And that's how you fail. You do the same things everyone else. So that's how it started back, you know, in 2016. Wild.

So we're at. So it's nine years since then. When did you start to gain traction? When did you get a defining moment, an aha or met someone that changed things? Like what was that? Like when did that happen?

February 25, 2016. So again, I remember dates because it was so January 15 when we ran out of money. And then February 25 was when we named the team the Bananas. We announced the team and.

And why the Bananas, by the way? I got, I got to know, like, where did that come from?

Well, we had a thousand plus suggestions from the community and nobody wanted bananas. They wanted spirits, ports, anchors, Braves. I'm like, there's already a team in our state called we're not going to be the Braves. Hundreds of suggestions. But there was one from a 62 year old nurse, Lynn Moses Bananas. And we looked at it and we said, go bananas. Said we could have a senior citizen dance team called the Banana Nanas.

Nice.

We could have a banana baby that we lift up every night. We could have a banana band. We could have a male cheerleading team called the Mananas. We could have a mascot named named Split. We could do music videos to Can't Stop the Peeling. We could throw bananas from the top deck. People could catch you in their pants. It could be banana in the pants. And we just started thinking of all these ideas. We said, it's crazy and we need a crazy. We need attention because attention beats marketing 1000% of the time. So we decided to go with it. And we went with it. And that first shipment of T shirts that came in, there were too many n's in bananas. We literally misspelled our own name. We misspelled our own name. All right. Colossal Failure.

Oh, my God.

The hats didn't get there in time. And we announced that name. We actually invited some of our closest friends, family members to be at that meeting just so they could cheer. We brought in ringers because we knew we were going to get ripped apart. And, boy, did we ever.

Wow.

The owner should be thrown out of town. Your embarrassment to the city. You'll never sell a ticket. Leave our town now. Everywhere. Just ripped apart. But we got attention. They finally knew we were here. Okay? And on ESPN SportsCenter said, Logo of the year, Savannah Bananas. So national. We were loved locally. Get us out of this town. Hell, a week later, I was walking through town. It was a St. Patrick's Day parade. Or a couple weeks later, it was myself and our team. We're wearing our green banana shirts, right? We're getting booed walking down the street.

No way.

Everyone. I'm like, whoa. You know, just getting booed at, like, walking down the street is a whole new feeling to your psyche. That was an adjustment, but we got attention. And so what we did was we actually announced. At that time, when we announced the name, we announced a sellout, and they were like, they've never sold at the stadium. So how did you do that? We got the hospital to buy all the tickets. We didn't tell anyone. It was just the hospital buying all the tickets. We're like, hospital, we need your help here. Please support us. We'll do this. We'll do this. What it is. It's all. We've already. People like, wait. They sold out a game? The other teams never sold out a game in all the minor league history. So now we created some demand, a little bit excitement. Wow. Well, opening night, we sold out. And we were wearing green uniforms because we weren't quite right. So literally, from the bed end, we were playing with it all. And what we did, Hal, is we made every single ticket all inclusive. Every ticket includes all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda.

That was that early on.

Oh, yeah. First. First game.

Oh, first game.

Wow. $15 total for all your food, your ticket. No ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service. We knew because the name of our company is Fans First Entertainment, we had to make it Fans First. So we sold out that opening night, and we played terrible. We made six errors. But they watched the Banana Nanas dance on the field in the rain, which was interesting because they were wearing white jerseys. That was a whole nother thing. But we watched that happen. They watched as the players went into the crowd and delivered roses to little girls. They watched as we lifted up the banana, baby. They watched as we went all in on the experience. We had the first banana instead of the first pitch. A kid threw a banana. We went all in on it, and they started telling everybody. So you asked, when did it Become success. That first year, we started selling out every game, which was crazy. So we failed the first six, nine months. I'm literally into seven figure debt. Sleeping on an airbed throw show $30. But then as soon as they felt the experience. And that's the difference. The experience is everything. We invest in the experience. We spend $0 on marketing, but we spend everything on the experience. That's the difference.

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Yeah, I think about Tesla. Tesla spends $0 on marketing, right? But it's all word of mouth because the experience of driving a Tesla is phenomenal.

I'm an owner, but mega, tremendous.

Amazing. So. So this is 2016 and who were you playing against? Other minor league.

At point, we were a regular traditional. There was no banana ball.

Okay.

We were a regular traditional baseball team. And so we were playing in the Coastal Plain League, a college summer league. So we were basically when guys played at college, wherever they play at the summer, they play to get in front of scouts and to play more during the summer. So we were that league. So it was a low level. This isn't minor league. These guys can't be paid. It was college summer baseball. So we had to figure out how to Entertain at a 1926 ballpark, no video board. How to make it a great experience. And that was really, again, after the 10 years in Gastonia, another long time learning here in Savannah before we went and created banana ball.

Now, what were you doing when you thought of this, what were you doing before banana ball?

It was 10 years of playing regular baseball in Gastonia in the.

Oh, I see. Okay, got it.

Ten years of that. And then we joined Savannah. Played in the same coastal Plane league. Four, five, six years of that. And then what happened was we saw fans were leaving games early.

Yeah.

Even with the non stop entertainment. We had a banana band, we had the bananas. We had dancing players, we had a break dancing coach. We were selling out games, but fans were still leaving early.

Interesting.

And I thought about, I was like, no one in the world goes to like, is like, goes to a movie. And it's like, how was the movie? Oh, it was great. I left in the middle.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't go to a great concert. You're like, oh, that Coldplay. Unbelievable. Yeah, I left three quarters the way through. Sure. Like you don't do it. But baseball games, you do it all the time. Yeah. That's a fundamental problem with the game. So I realized there was a fundamental problem with the game that we had to change the rules to make the game more exciting. So what I started looking at, we actually videotaped. We took pictures every 30 minutes and video of our grandstands for an entire season to watch when people got up, when they left. And we realized at 9 o', clock, that was the first influx of people two hours in. Then at 9:30, good luck, it's all over. And so at that point I was like, all right, let's create a two hour game. No blowouts. So if you win the inning, you get a point. So if a team score six runs, they can only get one point in an inning. So there's never really. Oh, yes, interesting. So every innings, every inning's exciting. No mound visits. Boring. No walks. Because in an athletic sporting event, there shouldn't be a play called a walk. All right, so we eliminated walks. They're boring. No stepping out of the box. Waste of time. No bunting. Bunting sucks. At least that's what we say. And it creates attention. If you bunch, you'll get thrown out of the game. Got it. If a fan catches a foul ball, it's an out. Yeah. Involve the fans. It's fans first. And so we developed a game that we believed what would be the perfect game. Under 2 hours, non stop excitement. And let's just test it. And we tested in 2018 behind closed doors. And we played the first game, nine innings in 99 minutes. And the players said it was the most fun they've ever had playing a game.

Wow.

Bingo. In front of no fans. Yeah. So then covert hits. Covet's just chaos. And so we were allowed to have a few fans. And I was like, let's just test it for a few fans on Covet. I mean, no one's really watching the world shutting down. Let's just do it. And we tested it and there were a lot of things that didn't go right. We were learning the rules, but our fans are like, whoa, what was that? And they were intrigued. It was creating talking points. They were like, this is different. They were staying till the end. 98 stayed till the end. Yeah. So then we said, all right, let's just do one more test again. So we did a one city world tour. Start small, dream big. That's our whole mindset with everything. One city world tour. We still announced in a world tour how we haven't played anywhere other than the United States. We're going to. You better believe we'll be international, but we believe we're going to. So it's called the world tour because that's where we're going to go.

Where did you play? Where was the world tour spot?

The first spot we ever did was Mobile, Alabama. Okay. Of all places. Because the mayor read my book, my first book, and he was like, I'm a fan, I'll give you a shot. He goes, what will it take? I go, what do you mean, what will it take? He goes, well, can we help you financially? I go, what do you have in mind?

Yeah, yeah.

I had no idea that even worked. And so they set a great precedent. They started contributing because we started bringing fans in from all over. Did it a lot of failures. Sound didn't work challenges. But we sold out both nights. Seven thousand fans went to seven cities. The next year got a little better major league spring training homes. Then went to 33 cities all over the country, half million fans. Then went to a million fans. Last year started selling on major league stadiums, one major league stadium at a time. And then this year, 17 major league stadiums, double nights, four NFL state, three NFL stadiums, college football stadium, 2.2 million fans. And so. And we brought on more teams and now we start the league. So it's just iteration. And we failed every step of the way. People don't realize we have failed literally every step of the way. Our first ticket launch failed. Our first major league stadium. The tickets didn't work. Our first merchandise launch failed. Our first game on espn. The transmission went out. On espn. I mean, literally, transmission went out.

Oh, my gosh.

We failed every step of the way. But. But we're not afraid to fail and we're not afraid to try and test and get better. And that's why we are where we are.

Well, you're the epitome of one of my favorite books that I read probably, I don't even know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Failing Forward by John Maxwell.

Yeah. Love John.

Yeah. And you're, you are the epitome of failing forward. Like, I'm going to try this crazy stuff and, oh, this worked. This didn't. Neither did this. Neither did this, but this one did. We'll do that again. You know, the key in life is.

How many at bats can you get? I think so many people, you know, they might only doing the same thing over and over again, and they're taking the same at bat over and over again. It's how many at bats can you get? Pete Rose had more hits than anyone that ever played major league baseball for 4,000 hits. He also had 14,000 at bats. He had 2,000 more at bats than anybody that else ever played the game. So he broke the record for most hits because he kept coming up to bat. He was good enough to keep coming up to bat. So I just. Look, how many at bats can we get every week? You know, we do 10 to 15 things every night we've never done in front of a live crowd. So this weekend we have two tours going on. We got five games. We'll do 75 plus brand new things. 30, 40, 50 of them might not work, but 10, 20 could be gold. That will get better for the next time.

Yeah, it's like a standup comedian, right? You know, you tell 20 jokes, you're like, all right, these 10 sucked. These 10 we're keeping and do. And just you keep iterating. Right. As you said. I mean, I could say a lot of great things about you, Jesse, in terms of your drive, your resilience, but I want to touch on the creativity. Right. You obviously are a very creative, imaginative human being or spiritual being. I know you mentioned that you studied P.T. barnum, right? Creator of the Greatest show on Earth, Walt Disney. And then now you are an author that you're synthesizing everything you learned from them and then everything you've put into your own life and your own business and what's worked and what hasn't? Where does that creative spark come from? And how much of it do you credit to just being inspired by and modeling Disney and Barn and Bailey?

It's 100. So many of the people that I've learned from, including you. And I'm not trying to just flatter you. Like, I think the greatest deal of my creativity has happened in the mornings. And because of I changed my ritual, I changed my tradition. I start my mornings on purpose now. You know, go back, go back when I was in my 20s, it was, you know, get up and, you know, whether it's, go on social media, check other stuff, do whatever. And once I started committing to writing, you know, write it down, make it happen. It was a book that I read a long time ago and, you know, writing down goals. And I started just writing and then I also started writing down ideas. If you want to be creative, you have to work your idea muscle. Everybody has creativity. When people say I'm not creative, no, you just don't work your ideal muscle enough. Because I wasn't unbelievably creative when I started. I think creativity comes from constraints as well. You know, when you're a low level college summer baseball team that no one really cares about, you better find a way to get creative. Or when you're seeing that fans are leaving games early, you got to find a way to get creative. And so the question is your willingness to try things and test things and fail. So in the mornings, I committed to not only writing writing goals and writing vision, but I started writing down 10 ideas every single day.

Yes. Yes.

And that was probably the biggest game changer in my life because now it's helped a lot of organization. Every week we are coming to the table with ideas. If someone's in our office on a Tuesday, it is crazy. So yesterday there are idea sessions, OTT sessions, we call them now, over the top ideas, all over. It's all morning and every group. You got the party animals doing it. You got the firefighters, you got the tailgaters, you got the bananas. We got our creative team, we got our players, and we come together and build this unbelievable, craziest amount of ideas to put into a script. And so I just started that and I started running on 10 ideas a day. I would have a bucket. What's my bucket? What am I trying to figure out today? It was like the firefighters calendar crew, because we built a whole group of guys called the calendar crew that are model and do whatever. And it's like, what are the things they can do? Every game to create fans that are really wild and fun. Yeah. And you start doing them. So to answer your question, I think it just comes down to, for me, what gives me energy is creating, sharing and growing. And that's my energy list. And I had to figure out that because when I have go through bad spots, when I'm really struggling, it's because I'm doing things that don't give me energy. And so creating. Right now, we're creating, which I love. We're going back, sharing and growing. This hits all three. So when I'm talking to someone that I've learned from, that I've grown from, that I can go have a good conversation. That hits all but creating every morning, writing down new ideas. Create before you consume. Most people go and consume. I start creating and I start writing down and sharing. Can I work with our team and tell them ideas and share and talk about this? Get on stage, do all those things. Growing. I'm rereading, probably this is the 10th time, the huge 700 page Neil Gabler biography of Walt Disney. And again, I'm still finding new things. Every single. I'm writing down notes. I'm growing and I'm learning. And I listened to Jimmy Fallon on a podcast this morning about his struggles growing up. So, like, that's growing. And so it's constantly. If you put that into your system, your input affects your output. And so constantly creating before I consuming, bringing good things into me, my vitamins of reading and learning and listening to podcasts. And then hopefully it helps me put out good in the world as well.

You said something in there, which is that most people start the day consuming, not creating. Right. And it's so true. As soon as we start consuming, we go from being proactive to reactive. And our brain, literally, it's like, I'm not a neuroscientist, but I just know from experience, like, it shifts into, like, reactive mode and I lose my creative abilities. I have to, like, get them back. I gotta, like, shut the phone off, meditate, journal, read. And what's ideal is that you don't have to get them back. You actually start with that. You also mentioned your input determines your output. And I know that for me, when I stop reading or like, I go on like a reading, my brain just goes. I just don't think of it.

Yeah, yeah.

And then as soon as I start reading, I'm like, oh, I now connect. Ooh, that applies to me in my life based on what he did. I could do that here. And it's like, yeah, you working your idea muscle. It's. I love. What I'm realizing is your answers to the question of, like, where's that spark of creativity come from? Is that you generate it. It'd be like, if you saw someone that had big muscles, and you're like, hey, dude, where did those big muscles come from? And they're like, every day, I actively do things that produce muscle. Right. Like, you actively are like, your life is centered around your miracle morning. That's centered around creating 100.

Well, what do you want to be prolific at? You know, I learned this from Taylor Swift. You know, it's crazy. I study Taylor Swift. Like, crazy. Because I. You study the best in the game.

Totally.

So, like, Mr. Beast, I study him. I mean, I know him and Taylor Swift a lot younger than me, but they're the best in YouTube in the world, and probably the best. And when it comes to music and creating fans than anyone in the world right now. So, you know, Taylor Swift, she realized that her superpower by songwriting, it wasn't necessarily a single one of the tours, it was songwriting. So she wanted to become prolific at that. So every day, writing, writing, writing, that was her craft. So how do you master your craft? What's the craft that you're going to work on? And for me, what I realized, it is this ideas of creating this game, this entertainment, the show, and if every day I can create again. We're trying to create the greatest show in sports with every moment to entertain you. So if I spend my time every day working on ideas, like today, literally probably four hours I spent, which I never get this much white space, which was amazing to me. Eye opening. Working on the firefighter show. They have their first headliner. They sold out. So they're a third team. They sold out their whole tour and they have their headliner tour. It starts next week, and we've already got a bunch of stuff. It's like, I gotta bear down. What is every moment? What is every touch point? What is the fire line doing? What is the mascot doing? What is the calendar crew doing? What is our dalmatian bat dog doing? Which I haven't announced yet, but I just did. So we're gonna have literally a Dalmatian.

You heard it here first, folks.

So, like, the first ever trained dalmatian battle exam. Like, how can you make him different than a regular bat dog? Like, literally crafting that and creating that and going that. If that is what I believe I can be prolific at, that is my craft, then you have to put and commit the time to it every day. This isn't a thing like you know, again you're going to do it like a bodybuilder. Oh, I'm going to get a huge workout in tonight. Might be great. That won't make an impact in the long run. It's the every day that a lot of people know, it's just, it's hard to practice and that's what I try to practice every day. And that's where you came in with the mornings. Because now with three kids under seven, I have to get going at 4:30 or 5:00 if I want to win the morning to win the day. And it is essential. And it's harder now. It's so much harder than it was without kids. It's not even close because with a three year old getting up and whenever she wants to get up and running into my office, it's a challenge. But you have to find a website. I'm doing hour of this really good. Do an hour. If it's 30 minutes, do it 30 minutes really well. And I would have to work on that. But I think about you and that craft that you helped teach me many years ago. It's made such an impact on my life.

It's amazing. I have a just a personal curiosity that I want to ask you about. So if anybody hasn't seen banana ball, just go to YouTube, type in banana ball. Dancing is a huge part of your entertainment in the games. And so what I just was personally wondering, I was like how does this work? How does he find baseball players that are really good at baseball and that are really not just good at dancing but like they're entertainers. Like they're funny and they're quirky and they're weird, they're dancing and. And so I'm curious, what's the system behind it? Is it like okay, you come in as baseball players and then like you take dance lessons and how does it all work?

This is the same conversation we were just having. That's which I love. This is working on a craft. So for instance, you have to be a great baseball player to play banana ball. People don't realize our guys throw in low to mid 90s. We have first round picks, second round picks, third round picks. Like we have some of the tal top talent that just, they just never made it to the majors. But they're here. But you're the average of the five people you surround yourself. And so literally we have these guys who are great baseball players but every day we're doing Rehearsals. See, people don't realize, like we do rehearsals. We do new dances, new entrances, new scoring celebrations every single day. So every day you're around people and you're doing it, you're practicing it. Our guys do trick plays. We got our center fielder and left fielder do backflip catches. They do aerial catches. They're catching the balls between the leg. They never did that before. It's unbelievably hard. But every day their practices are dramatically different than what a regular baseball players are. They come in. Our breakdancing coach is one of the best dance instructors. He actually, last night he got four stars for America's Got Talent. So he actually moved on. It was great to see. They all voted him forward. It was awesome to watch it. Society. So he teaches our players to dance every day. He's working with them and teaching them. He teaches our mananas, literally, our dad bod cheerleading squad. Who can't dance.

Cheerleading squad.

But now they can dance. And their videos, they had danced at Clemson in front of 81,000 to a man, I feel like a woman. And it got over 40 million views because it showed just dad bods having fun dancing. And they learned it, they did it in front of people. So my point, it goes into these guys. It's what are you doing every day to work on a craft that's different than everyone else? If sometimes when you're working on the same craft, it's hard. It's hard to break through. It is very hard to break through. We're working on a differentiated craft every night. Having players dance, having players do walk ups. No one else in the world is working on that. And so that makes it easier to stand out. And same thing with all the ideas. I think in the show, most people are not thinking that way or even looking at that way. And so it's an easier way to stand out when you work on a craft that's differentiated.

So I want to ask you a weird question that just came up for me about AI. All right? And it actually is because yesterday I was thinking about what my next solo podcast is going to be out, and I was surveying my miracle morning community. And a lot of people are worried about AI. They're worried that AI is going to take their job. Right? Which I think is a valid concern. And Goldman Sachs says 300 million jobs are going to be replaced by AI.

Right?

So it's. Everybody's afraid your job cannot be replaced by AI. Right. I mean, I don't know. The yellow tux robot. I'm sure you know, the next 20 years might be a thing, but here's what I want to offer people, right? What I want to invite you to share your perspective. Like, if someone is like, my job could get replaced by AI, and I. Maybe even how you. If you do use AI and you're thinking like, I'm just thinking again. Wow. I'm looking at Jesse Cole. The way you think is so outside the box. It's so creative and it's experiential. Like I said, you're not at risk of being replaced by AI. And I'm wondering which mindsets that you bring to your work. Can people apply to their work? And before you answer, I want to say one more qualifying thing.

Yes.

Which is one thing that came up for me yesterday. I was thinking about the podcast and what I'd want to say is to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset, right? Like, if somebody works in a. They're like, I'm a data analysis and I can now replace me. What do I do? It's like, you actually have to get outside the box and you have to start thinking about, like, how could I add value in the world outside of what I've ever done before? And you have to almost reinvent yourself. So that's one way that I was thinking about it. And again, you are highly qualified to talk about becoming irreplaceable.

Well, it's a balance. You know, it's interesting when I look at Walt Disney, my biggest mentor, he embraced technology better than anyone else. Going from Technicolor, going from how he developed the animations. You know, obviously he was animatronics with Disneyland. I mean, he did things. He was so far ahead of his time. And I haven't, to give an example, for the first nine years in Savannah, we didn't have a video board, and I didn't want one. I said, I want to figure out how to entertain without a video board. I want to figure out without people having to watch a screen. Wow. So this can kind of go into the way. I'm going to answer this question. Yes, AI. If you're not using AI, you're behind. And I use it every day to help with idea generation. So I'll say, hey, I'm thinking this. Can you grind this? I use it with different ideas and. And it drives. There's so many stories that I could share, but I'll share one that I haven't. I don't know if I've publicly even shared this much. So we did a Banana Land at Sea cruise, and of Course, why not do a cruise ship for our fans? This is a crazy idea, but again, constraints foster creativity. I said, our biggest fans, can we take them on a cruise ship? We don't play any banana ball, but we got to figure out how to entertain them for four to five days. Is that going to make us better or not? And if we can figure out how to do that, what could then that lead us to the opportunity to do so? We sold out a cruise ship this past year. We're doing another one next year. And we had to create. We did a Broadway theatrical show. We created that from scratch. Our players, we had players involved in so many things. We had them all over the ship. We just made it an immersive experience. The first night, a woman comes up to me and I don't recognize this woman at all. And you can see she's kind of got tears in her eyes. And she comes over and she goes, can I give you a hug? And I said, yeah, of course. And, you know, I gave her a hug. And she goes, the reason I'm here on this cruise is because of you. And I go, oh, well, thank you so much. That's very, very kind. She's like, no, you don't understand. She goes, this past year, we had a game in Sacramento, and my sister was the biggest Bananas fan ever. She watched every game. She was obsessed. She watched every game. She was all into it, and so she got us tickets. I never watched the games much. I didn't know much about it, but I was going to go with her. And the day before the game, she tragically died. And I was lost, but I knew I had to go to the game. And I came to the game and you saw me in the concourse, and you just came up to me out of nowhere and said, can I give you a hug? Oh, now it was starting to come back to me because I remember she was kind of just looking around, kind of just lost. And you gave me that hug, and you have no idea how much that meant to me. Because after that hug, I realized that I can have fun, I can enjoy this. And I had so much fun at that game that helped me get out and recover from my sister, who my closest person in my life. And she went on a cruise solely just to repay that hug to me, give that hug back. And I think about that moment and I share that, because our players, our cast, our staff have those moments every single night with thousands of fans. And when you talk about AI and when you talk about what you know, that's Going to do those moments. Good luck. I. There's a feeling and there's an emotion that comes to that, that delivers that. If you're worried about your job, if you're worried about what's next, if you focus on how you make people feel. I said nothing matters more than making people feel like they matter. I will struggle with that because there's a different emotional connection that you can have with someone. And so for every day we try to bring people together, I bring joy and bring fun and make them feel like they matter. And so as an entrepreneur mindset, whatever you're doing, if you can find a way to connect with people to create an experience, not just a product which AI can create an experience, a feeling, yeah, I think you'll be okay for the years to come. All right.

Oh, man. Where can people get tickets to a banana ball game? I know it's hard. It's like I. I've looked. It's like sold out. Sold out. Sold out, Sold out.

Yeah. I appreciate. The waitlist is at 3.5 million right now. So it's something I would never imagine. The biggest thing we have to overcome is the secondary market. Right now, people go in the secondary market and tickets are $500, $700. They're ridiculous. So we're going to develop our own secondary market with no ticket fees, no convenient fees and face value, face value tickets. And so if people have an extra ticket that they can't go, that'll be an opportunity. But right now it's join the waitlist. We're going to give them all the opportunity in the future to come to tickets and go for that. That's the key right now. But again, we're very, very grateful to be in the spot we're at.

Banana Ball.com is where people can go to join the wait list and check it out.

Yes, banana ball.com Savannah bananas. Any of our teams. We're pretty easy to find these days.

And then you've written three books. Fans first, Banana ball and find your yellow tucks. Which of those is your favorite? If somebody wanted to get a little bit of Jesse Cole's mindset, Fans first through and through.

That that's the core of who we are. It's the name of our company that drives everything. At the end of each night, we have all the fans and our players. We put our arms up in the air. 40,000. We all go fans first because that's what, that's what we stand for. It's so crazy to say our fans are cheering. It but they're all about what we're trying to do and we're in this together. That's the story. That's how it's all formed. Fans versus everything.

Who is that book for?

It's built in the sense of business. It's built in the sense to look at it from a business sense on how do you create fans and don't just chase customers. But it really does share the journey in a fun way. There's a halftime show in the middle of the book. It's which we do halftime shows at some of our games. So it's. We break all the rules on what a conventional baseball game is, but it's written to be entertaining, just like a banana show.

Have you ever thought about Jesse? This came up for me just now. So basketball is my favorite sport personally. Right. Have you thought about applying this to the other sports?

We have got a lot of those emails and messages and questions from football to golf to tennis. I think we have a few from basketball. But going back to working on the craft, I think it's the singular focus. We got a long way to go and our goal is not to become a billion dollar company. It's to create a billion fans. And we got a long way to go. So that's what we're focusing on right now.

It's not a no, it's a once we've mastered banana ball and we got a billion fans, then maybe we'll think about banana baseball or banana basketball.

We'll never master it. Every single day we're learning, my friend. I'll tell you. We'll never master it. So I'm going to do it till the day I die.

Last question, man, is just if people want more Jesse Cole in their life, I know that I do. And I'm blessed that I get to text you when I need some Jesse Cole in my life. You know you're not giving out your cell phone today, but what's the best way for people to follow you? Social media, email, website, what's the best thing?

My cell phone is in the book Fans first, by the way. So I do get text messages and calls every day because I did put it out there. But yeah, I mean my mindset, I stay till the last fan at the end of each night. I'll stay and sign till the last fan every night. I mean I'm. I try to be as available because I think back to the Walt Disney's. If I, if I were able to learn from him and he would share the journey. So for me I share the journey. So on LinkedIn, I started nine years ago, every day, every other day, I'm posting Instagram. I'm just sharing things I'm learning, things I'm seeing because it's something that hopefully it's a way to give back as you're learning. Which, you know, I was so grateful to have from so many coming up as well.

Amazing. Well, you are an inspiration to me, dude. I seriously, I'm so inspired by you. Not just as a entrepreneur who really serves people, but as a husband, as a father with your foster kids, with your biological son. Yeah, you're a special human being, man. I hope you receive that. I hope you feel that. And yeah, I'm grateful to know you.

I appreciate you, you know, the impact you've made on me, my friend. So it's been game changing, so this is a lot of fun.

All right, well, hey, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in to this episode. You just met one of my favorite people, Jesse Cole, founder of Banana Ball, husband, father. Go follow him, grab his book. Fans first off of Amazon or wherever you buy your books. And I love you so much. I will talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about the achieve your goals podcast and to get access today's show notes, transcript and exclusive content from Hal Elrod, visit HalElrod.com podcast thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the achievement achieve your goals podcast.