I Love Marketing Meet Up Group with Jesse Cole

Sessions every month. I am going to go ahead and read the introduction for our guest. He's a remarkable person so we're going to get right to it. So Jesse Cole is our guest and he's the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas. It's a baseball team. His teams have welcomed more than 1 million fans to their ballparks and they've been featured on MSNBC, CNN, ESPN and an entrepreneur magazine. The Bananas have been awarded Organization of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Business of the Year and they won the CPL championship in their very first year. Fans First Entertainment has been featured on the Inc. 5000 lists as one of the fastest growing companies in the America. The Savannah Bananas currently have sold out every game, every game since their first season, which is back in 2016 and they have a waiting list in the thousands for tickets. Jesse released his first book, Find you'd Yellow how to Be Successful by Standing out in January of 2018 with the World Book Tour at Epcot. Jesse has been featured on over 500 podcasts and is an in demand keynote speaker all over the country, sharing the fans first experience on how to stand out, be different and create raving fans of both customers and employees. Jesse is the host of the Business Done Differently podcast and has interviewed over 100 of some of the world's leading entrepreneurs, authors and speakers. And I'll conclude with a fun fact.

Okay.

Jesse Cole owns seven yellow tuxedos and he proposed to his wife Emily in the yellow tux in front of a sold out crowd. And of course she said yes with an exclamation point. The two later married at their stadium. In 2018, they welcomed their first baby, Banana, whose name is Maverick. So here is Mr. Dean Jackson interviewing Jesse Cole.

Love it. Wow, those are some nice things. Jesse, I can't wait to hear what you have to say.

I hope it's true.

Yeah, I love it. Welcome. I'm so excited that we finally get to connect. You've been in my radar and watching you from afar for a long time. So I'm glad that we're able to. I was able to reach out and get you to join us here.

Well, I'm fans of this group. I'm fans of this podcast. I'm fired up to be with you guys.

I love it.

So it's so hard to know where to start here. But let's start with what the heck is going on with the yellow tux and this whole thing that you've created here. Let's start with that with where this all came from. Because there's such a great story to unpack here.

Sure. Well, my yellow tux is my uniform. Basically, I played baseball my whole life. Tore my shoulder, ended my career, never played baseball again. And you know, I always realized that when you play sports, you have a uniform that means it's game time. And when I got into the business, I, as a 23 year old, I became a GM of a baseball team in Gastonia, North Carolina. And the only way you become a GM of a baseball team at 23 is it has to be the worst team in the entire country. So I took over the worst team. They were terrible. I mean, Dean, it was terrible and I took over that. And you know, there's only $268 in the bank account, only 200 fans coming to the games, and we were failing. And so I read every book I could, not on the baseball industry, but on marketing and promotion. And mostly I read every book about P.T. barnum and Walt Disney. And they became my two biggest mentors. I actually still have two custom posters in my office with P.T. barnum. It says, showmanship. Something terrible happens. Without promotion, nothing. And then next to Walt Disney, and next to Walt Disney, it says vision. It's kind of fun to do the impossible. And so by channeling PT Barnum and learning a lot about putting on a show and creating attention, I said, if we're not going to be a baseball team anymore, I said, we're failing as a baseball team. We're the lowest level of baseball possible. We need to make it about entertainment. What business are you really in? So I said, if I'm going to be this ringleader, this owner of this team, I got to own it and find what my uniform is. And so I found this. And this is what I wear. We teach our team to always be on stage and. And so I'm in the crowd, involved with the fans, and I feel more comfortable in this than anything else. And I do believe everyone has something that makes them stand out. Often we're just kind of afraid to do it because the looks that I get, Dean, walking through an airport or from people, what is wrong with this guy? But you know, hey.

Are you a Seinfeld fan?

I'm not a huge Seinfeld fan.

There was an episode where Kramer was walking around at the coat from Joseph and the amazing technical dream coat. He was walking up and down the street and people thought he was a pimp.

Hopefully I haven't been confused as that. Hopefully.

Right, exactly. So when you over this, this is where we can start then. 23 years old. Tim, read the the bio. You've had sold out games for your entire career at in Savannah. You mentioned Gastonias were the first place where you start out. 23 years old, taking over as the GM. You've had no experience in being the GM. You're a baseball player. You've experienced it from the dugout. Was there a part of you that thought, okay, I'm going to see what do people do to market baseball teams? Or did you start out kind of going down the traditional path of what are you supposed to do? Did you immediately say, I got to do something different? And what was that like, spark?

Well, I started meeting with people in the community. So, you know, again, what did Yogi Berra say? You can observe a lot just by watching and by seeing the numbers that only 200 fans were coming to the games. I knew there was a problem. But then I started meeting with the community and I started having these meetings with people, business leaders, nonprofits. And what they started saying is, we just don't like baseball. We don't like baseball. And I go, what? You know, it's too long, it's too slow, it's too boring. And I heard it over and over again. And dean, we're like the lowest level of baseball. Like, there's major league and triple A and double A and like high A and professional independent. We're college summer baseball down here. Yeah, you can't compete in that game. So I just kept hearing over and over again. And what I learned was that the starting point of all innovation, you know, all, you know, trying to create fans is you got to find what that fans frustration is, what that friction point is, and do the exact opposite. And so I heard over and over again, it's long, slow and boring. So I said, how do I convince people that it's not like a baseball game? And so I remember calling the owner of the team 23, and I was like, ken, we can no longer be a baseball team. He goes, well, what do you have in mind? I said, well, I think our players should do choreographed dances. We should have grandma beauty pageants. I should get in the dunk tank. We should serve garbage can nachos. We should bury diamond rings in the infield dirt and make it a circus. And he said, well, we got nothing to lose. And he gave me the shot. And we started failing pretty quickly doing all that. But we started getting our fans to think differently. And then it took a little while and we learned a lot and started selling out in Gastonia. And that eventually brought us to Savannah. Wow.

Was there. You mentioned P.T. barnum. There was a documentary I remember seeing a few years ago about a baseball team in San Francisco, Portland.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball. On Netflix. Yeah.

Yeah. What a great, great story that was. So was that. Did you know about that and kind of see that as a inspiration or a model or Bill Veeck, the.

Yeah, well, Bill Beck. I read all his books. I learned from him, obviously. But I didn't know about Bing Russell, but obviously, when I saw that, me and our staff, we probably watched that 30 times. But you look at what business you're in and then try to reimagine it, because baseball, we saw the writing on the wall. Attendance was declining. There was no one coming to our games. It was too long, it was too slow. It was too boring. You got nickel and dimed. And so we said, what do we do that's opposite? And so that's the starting point. We said, let's eliminate that. And I remember the first thing was I got to convince the players to do choreographed dances. And that was a really interesting challenge. But once we got. People say, oh, yeah, our players dance.

They're like, okay, huddle up, huddle up.

Here's what was the first practice. I brought a dance instructor, and I go, guys, before we practice, we're gonna learn how to dance. And they looked at me like, what are you talking about? And I said, guys, the fans will like this. I think they'll like this. And they tried to dance. A few guys said, we're never gonna do this. But after the first game, they signed more autographs. The second game, they signed more autographs. By the third game, I'm walking through the crowd, and a husband and wife are talking. And the wife goes, shut up, honey. They're about to dance. And I was like, we got something right now. And so it was a constant testing experimentation. And you test on what you believe is a better experience. You know, I couldn't be a fan of baseball if I couldn't watch the game. Then I had to say, all right, what. What can we do that I want to be a fan of it? And I played the game. I played my whole life. So we looked at every frustration point, and it started with, the game is too long, too slow, and too boring. And started testing against that hypothesis that let's make it fast, nonstop, exciting, and see where we can go from there.

Wow. So you came right out of the gate like that, and it was, how many people are at your first how did this kind of build. You were going, how bad?

800, maybe. I mean, flatulence Fun Night failed miserably, where we actually gave away whoopee cushions and had a bean burritian contest that failed miserably. Salute to Underwear Night, where we actually had people wear their underwear on the outside. It was the most unfamily friendly night we could have ever done. Like, we did a lot of these experiments that failed. But people started to say, hey, you never know what's going to happen at a game. Expect the. Expect the unexpected. And so that was it. We started creating more of an attention plan, not a marketing plan. And we said, what are we going to do this month to create attention? And I know you guys have probably talked about numerous times in the group. I believe attention beats marketing 1000% of the time. We had to get the eyes and the ears of our fans before we could get their hearts. So we went after all these approaches. What could we do to create attention? And then we learned from that. Attention.

And listen, that's part of the thing about the master move is knowing that attention is what's the most valuable. That's why you look at people. I mean, build the big radio audiences. Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, when he was alive, doing it. Part of the thing was, it wasn't that they were winning the hearts and minds. They were getting attention because the people who hated them just as much as the people who loved them were getting on the thing to say, you're not going to believe what Rush Limbaugh said today or what happened on Howard Stern. And you said it about the baseball park. You want people to leave going, you're not going to believe what happened last year.

And we got criticized, Dean. We got criticized a lot. I mean, baseball traditionalists hated us. You know, what are you guys doing to the game? But, I mean, you know, the criticism I believe you're not getting criticized. You're playing it too safe. So we started being very clear, who are we not for? We weren't for baseball traditionalists. We were people that wanted to have fun. And so once we got clear on that and started defining, hey, we're going to try to be the most fun team in baseball. We're going to try to make baseball fun. And, you know, the group I know doesn't know, like, five years ago, I was sleeping on an airbed. I had to sell our house. So we failed very miserably. And I can share more about that. But it's become clear through all that failure, what has Been working best for us.

I love it. So how long until you started turning the tide in in Gastonia? What year was that?

That was 2007. We started getting attention and so, you know, I think by the second year we said we're going to be the best dressed team in baseball. So we got the guys tuxedo uniforms and they played in that and that created attention. We did dig to China night where we actually buried a trip to China in the infield dirt. And we let fans dig for the trip to China. But when the woman won, Melissa Capps, she found out it was just a one way flight to China. No flight back and no accommodations. We got her to China, but that wasn't it. That got a lot of attention and we got her cruise, we took care of her, but we started doing that and went from 600, 800 fans to 1000 to 1500 to 2000. We started focusing on scarcity and saying, all right, we're gonna sell out these five games. We're gonna focus on that to create that attention where hey, look, they're selling out. And then eventually again it got to being a very successful brand that we ended up selling because so Savannah became, you know, our next adventure.

Oh, that's awesome. So then you got and well, all of this, you, while it was, you were improving the, the show of stuff. You weren't sacrificing the baseball though too. Right. Because with Tim was saying you won a championship so you're still playing at the high level.

Yeah, well, that's mostly in Savannah. You know, Gastonia, we had some tough years, but we weren't smart enough to realize this. But when we focus solely on trying to create the most fun team in baseball and have the most fun and create the best culture, the baseball took care of itself.

Yeah.

So we don't focus on the baseball. We focus on the fun. We focus on how are we making a better environment for the guys. And I think obviously in this group there's so many leaders. They know if it's a better environment for your people, they'll perform better. And so we became very clear and I know we've bounced around a little bit, but in Savannah, you know, you can't get a uniform on until you go through an hour, at least minimum hour orientation of the bananas way and how we go fans first and we share stories of what fans first means. And for the group here, that's the name of our company is fans first Entertainment. It started as a terrible law firm name, Team Cole and Associates. But that really didn't fit our brand. So we changed Colin Associates. Yeah, it was terrible. It's like a law firm accounting office. But we changed it to fans first entertainment with very simple. Our mission is fans first Entertainment always. And every decision we make is at fans first. We weren't focused on creating customers. We were focused on creating fans. And that became kind of the driver of our company, the name of our company, our mission. And so any player, any person that joins our team, they will go through a full fans first you on how do you create fans and how you create these remarkable experiences? Because that's for us as again bounced around and I can tell the struggles in Savannah. You know, we spend $0 on marketing right now, but we invest everything on the experience on our.

It is our marketing. I mean that's part of the.

Yeah.

Is that we tell people that. That the main thing is that you've got to have a dream come true experience. That that's really what you're trying to create. We had an episode and we've had so many great people on the podcast. But Richard Branson, one of the things that he said, because they really don't, you know, he looks at everything as marketing. But his advice was, first of all, you got to have something that you want to scream about on the mountaintops. You got to love what it is that you've. That you've got. And that sounds like what you're. What you're saying there. That whole experience for people.

I love that so much.

Yeah. So, okay, let's start. Let's go where you got the opportunity in Savannah. So you were 2007, you were building and developing all your model, your observations, everything you did. How did you get the opportunity in Savannah?

So it was the summer of 2014. It was our last game in Gastonia. A sold out crowd. Our director of fun, Emily McDonald was with us and we had fallen in love. So she joined our team, was our director of fun. And it was the last night and I proposed in front of that sold out crowd. The middle of the game, dropped down to a knee, had the ring and a baseball, opened the ring up and proposed in the yellow tuxedo. And we had a fireworks show go off for 10 minutes in the middle of the game. The umpires were furious as we delayed the game, but it was our moment and she said yes. And after that night, when I was sleeping, she said, wow, you did this special thing. She planned a trip to Savannah and. And we came to Savannah, Georgia and fell in love with the city and walked into this ballpark. I'm actually under the stadium right now. Walked into this ballpark.

That's a great bunker you got.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's this old, like it's a 1926 ballpark. And we walked in and there was professional baseball, which we're not. It was the New York Mets affiliate. And we walked in, beautiful Saturday night and big majestic brick columns, and it's just gorgeous. And you can feel the history. Babe Ruth played here, Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams. We're walking in, we walk up the steps to this big 4,000 plus state stadium. And all of a sudden we see there's only 100 people in the ballpark. And I looked at Emily, I said, what's going on here? And I called the commissioner I league, and I said, if this team leaves for any reason, we're coming here. And the team.

With a real, real.

Professional baseball was the New York Mets affiliate playing, and there was only 100 people there. And so they, they left. The city said, they said, we only, we need a $40 million stadium to be successful in Savannah. And Savannah's like, we're not building you. The city's like, why would we build you a stadium? And so they left and we convinced the city to let this little small college summer baseball team come in. So we bought an expansion franchise. My wife and I actually went from zero debt to $1.8 million in debt between buying a team Savannah. It was brutal. And so we came in on October 5, 2015. I'll never forget it. I walk in, it's myself, my wife, our 24 year old president, and three 22 year olds out of college. What a crew we had. And we walked in and the former team had cut the phone lines, cut the Internet lines. They took everything out of the ballpark. And we walked into an abandoned storage building, grabbed a picnic table, and started calling people in the community and saying, we're here. And the problem, Dean, is what? They could care less. We sold only two tickets in our first three months. Wow, bigger debt. Two tickets in three months. And then by January of 2016, we got the phone call that maybe some of you on the call have got, but we overdrafted our account and we were completely out of money. And that was five years ago. And I know you know the story, Dean, but yeah, Emily turned to me and said, we have to sell our house. So we sold our dream house, emptied out our savings account, and found a dump down here that was on the market for three years. No one wanted it we got an air bed. We were sleeping on an air bed. Sleeping with our socks on because there were cockroaches. It was a disaster. We were living on $30 a week. And that was just five and a half years ago. And we knew we had to create something big and different to create attention is made special. And so that's when we went all out on going with the bananas and going a whole different route. And fortunately, now, after the failures, it's worked out okay. Wow.

So you were already. I mean, you'd already been a convert to this model of getting. Making the things fun and. Yeah. Going from the ground up. Then what was getting the city involved in the. In this whole. I know that you had mentioned that not everybody was thrilled with the. With Bananas as the.

No, no.

Already the yellow tux guy.

I was the yellow tux guy. But we weren't the Bananas. We came into town trying to convince people to buy tickets, and we were marketing like everyone else. This was the problem. This is why I believe whatever's normal do the exact opposite. Because normal gets normal results. Because what we did, we were too scared. I actually wasn't wearing the yellow tux when I first came in. I was afraid. I was like, I just got to.

Kind of fit in your Persona back there.

Yeah, Yeah. I wanted. I wanted to connect. It was in a new kid in a new town. I was too scared of that. So I was, like, kind of meeting with people and they're like, we're not interested. We don't want to buy tickets. You're the lowest level of baseball. I'm like, I know it's going to be fun. Zero interest. We were doing social media marketing like everyone else. We're doing newspaper advertising, radio advertising, everything. And we failed. And it was until that we named the team the Bananas and then had an entire plan on how to go all out on fans first that it started to work out. But yeah, Dean, when we came up with Savannah Bananas, we got hit with so many messages. The owner should be thrown out of town. You guys are embarrassment to city. Leave our town now. Whoever came up with his name should be fired. I mean, we were ridiculed like crazy, but people were at least talking about us. And then once we started to have fun and, you know, we offered the former president an internship with us. I think it was Obama back then. We started just having fun and making big announcements. Hey, we're fun. You know, we announced the Banana Nanas, our senior citizen dance team, and they have to be 75 years old and Dance to Bruno Mars. We announced our male cheerleading team, the Mananas, which is now just the dad Bod cheerleading squad.

Manhanas.

Yes, yes. And then we announced the biggest thing again, friction points. We said, we need to. The former team was giving away free tickets. No one was coming. They were doing like everyone. They did free tickets, two for Tuesdays dollar tickets. All these deals were like, we can't play that game. So we said, what can we do dramatically different to play a different game? And we said, well, what's a big friction point in a ballpark experience? And this is again the starting point for us. What are the friction points? And most people, you go to a sporting event, you get nickel and dimes, right? You know, you Pay, you pay $5 for parking, you pay $20 for your ticket, you pay $4 for a program, $5 for a burger, $6 for a. Whatever it is. We said, well, what if we eliminated all that? So we said, what if our ticket included all of your hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda water, popcorn, dessert. There were no ticket fees, no convenient fees, everything.

Free parking.

Free parking. Everything for $15. Right. And that's what we did. We didn't know the numbers. We had no idea how to do it. In fact, the first night we did it, people waited three hours to get food. It was a disaster. But we knew the vision. Yeah, we knew the vision that'd be a better experience. So we tested that. And now every single ticket, if you come to a bananas game, includes all your food. And so we had to find a way to dramatically be different. If they hadn't experienced the show, we had to be with a different value. And so we played that game.

Oh, I love that. That whole going through that exercise. Did you. One of the things that we talk about is the client experience timeline that we look at it from the moment somebody arrives at the ballpark or the moment they arrive at the decision they want to come to the ballpark, that whole journey from where do we get tickets? How's the ticket buying experience? What about when we arrive? What Mapping that out and we look at having it, we divide it into two parts. The line is the sequence of how they'll experience this. Above the line is the thing that they'll actually see and feel and hear. And then below the line are all the systems and the processes that have to support this so that that vision is reached every time. So imagine you went through something like that. If you start to say what would be a dream come true if you could come to the come to the park.

And that's, that's how we try to imagine it. Yeah. What's that? What's that wow experience? What's that? Fans first experience.

And so you heard the story about the Airbnb guys that, you know, when they were creating the experience for Airbnb, their idea was what would be an 11 star experience and just jump it up. And that whole. You get picked up by a limo and you're. Yeah.

Well, I think the biggest thing we learned from Walt Disney is the power of plussing. And so I just recorded a whole podcast on this because it's like Disney believed that we're always plussing the show. You always need to plus the show. It's a living, breathing thing. If you don't plus the show, it's gonna cost you 10 times more to get someone back. And so we developed this whole plussing mentality. And at first, you know, you bought your ticket, it was a regular payment confirmation. And then we said, no, let's map it. Let's map everything to what would be remarkable enough to create fans. We don't have marketing dollars. We were in $1.8 million of debt. We were failing. So we said, how do we get an army of marketers that are fans? And so, yeah, you know, when you buy a ticket online from us, you immediately get a video. And we do a different one each year, but the video starts like, Dina goes with me. Congrats. You just made the best decision of your day right now. As your ticket order came in, a high priority siren went off at our stadium and our bananiacs rushed to your ticket ticket laboratory to produce your tickets. Then a banana nana slowly walked in and hand selected your tickets and placed them on a silk pillow. And we raised the silk pillow up in the air and we sang Na Na to celebrate the birth of a new fan. And then we walked your tickets down to our vault where they're being watched under maximum security, ready for you to go bananas. And that was the video they would get. And so that was a plus. And then the next plus was, well, why don't we call every single person that buys a ticket? And our staff was like, how do we do that? I'm like, that's 100,000 people. And so he said, well, what if we split it up and figure it out?

Oh, we muted the wrong guy.

You're trying to mute the background.

And yeah, let's not cut Jesse off.

I've been muted many times before. It's okay, I'm used to it. But yeah, Then we start doing thank you calls. And then, you know, when they come to our games, we send a playlist of music to listen to and like, you know, bananas, you know, this is bananas. B A N a N a s It can't stop the peeling. You know our voicemail, when you call our voicemail, it's Savannah na na na. You've reached the Savannah Bananas na na na. Please leave your message. You know, and then our hold music is ring ring ring ring ring ring ring. Banana phone. And people call us every two weeks and actually want to be put on hold. It's the weirdest thing.

Yeah.

So you look at those points. We didn't do any of that in the beginning, but we started plussing and thinking about every touch point and that's why we hired a professional high fiver. Like which doesn't make any sense. And but like we invest in a six year old who's our professional high fiver and we invest in those. So people talk about it. That's his job. Yeah, that's his job. His jersey says high and his number says five and he's the high fiver. And so. And his job, he's like, how many do I eat high five today? I'm like, all right, well let's get 2,000. He goes, can I have a snack in between. I go, yes you can. And he gets snacks in between and we actually pay him, which is breaking probably every child labor law there is. Uh, oh, okay. But anyways, it's those moments. Our ticket takers are in a full banana take banana costume. We used to have banana tickets that were scratch and sniff and smell like bananas in our bathrooms. Our rival is making bacon, so we have makin bacon urinal cake. So our fans are actually peeing on our rival. Like it's those little details that you try to have fun that people might leave the bathroom and say, oh, that was pretty interesting.

Yeah. Wow. So when you started doing this now in Savannah, before you were able to pull this around and because of all the publicity and all the stuff that you were doing around the name, were you able. Did you open up the doors to a sold out game your very. Your first season in Savannah?

Yeah, the first, the first night we opened up, we got our attention. They sold out. And then it proceeded to rain for two straight hours. So the fans rushed the stadium. We were wearing green uniforms because we weren't quite ripe and the team actually played terrible. We made six errors, but I looked up at 9 o' clock at night and not one fan had Left and they were ready for the show. And a quick story from opening 19. A young woman came up to me and she said, hey, can I get an autograph from one of your players? And we always say, fans first. We try to get autographs. And I said, yes, I can take care of it. She goes, it would mean a lot. And I go, yeah, of course. She goes, well, I'm here in tribute for my fiance. I'm with his whole family. He just tragically passed last week, but he'd come to every opening night here since he was a kid and we're here to support him. And she goes, if you get a ball, I mean a lot. I go, of course. And she goes, well, one more thing. You know, my fiance's name was Drew Moody and you have a player on your roster named Drew Moody. And so I was like, wow. So I went. Drew wasn't with us yet because he was still playing for University of Georgia, but his younger brother, Logan Moody was with us. So I went and told Logan the story. Logan was an 18 year old. He walked up into the stands, he said, I want to deliver the baseball. And he sat with her for an entire half inning, which is about 20 minutes, talked to her and I watched him give her a big hug. And he walked down and I said, wow, Logan, what was that? And he goes, fans first, right?

Oh, boy.

And he was 18 years old and he understood kind of what we were trying to do and create fans first experiences. And that happened opening night. And I knew from that night people staying and everything I knew was me pretty special. And after that night, tickets just went wild and the season sold out. And now, you know, the waitlist, the wait list is actually over 12,000. I was told by our ticket team today.

Holy cow, that's amazing. So what do you think? Let's kind of think about deconstructing this for people and you know, if you're starting like you know any regular business because any. You're proving there's nothing magic that it was baseball. Because I look at you and I hear you and I talk about it and there's. I believe you could come into any business and create the exact same.

I'd fail in the beginning pretty bad. I don't think I could take more debt. But Dean, I'll try. He'll say, right, well, we'll see.

What would, what would be your advice to start if you. If you were coming into take over somebody else's business, what would be the kind of thought process that you, that you have that you go through.

You know, it's funny for a lot of you guys are entrepreneurs. You're in it. You don't really think about how to teach it. But as I've been able to look back and been an opportunity to speak a good amount, you know, I've realized that there's obviously, we look at most people trying to create customers, clients, and vendors. We're trying to create fans. It's a different conversation. Customers are transactional. They come and go. But fans never leave. Most companies, they have conversations on how they can drive more revenue, create more sales. But how many companies have conversations and how they can create more fans? We have idea paloozas every single month where we get the whole team together and we say, what are things we can do to create more fans? In every part of our business, it's a different conversation. And so from there, you know, we said, all right, if I want to break it down, if there's, like, notes, I would say there's three E's that I think you can focus on. Eliminate friction, entertain always, and experiment constantly. And I think if you want me, I can go through them kind of briefly.

Let's do this, too. While we're doing it, what I'd love is. This is fantastic. The time's just flying here. What I'd love to see in the chat here, just type in the type of business that you're in so we can riff on some of these ideas. Kind of think, like, what. What kind of business are we talking about? And I'd love to hear your. While you're sharing those three, let's just kind of get that loaded up, and then we can talk about it here.

So love it. I'm seeing a lot. Okay, beautiful. So eliminate friction. Starting point. What are the. What. What are the friction points in your industry? What are the frustration points? So we start there. What are the friction points? You know, and for us, we looked at baseball too long, too slow, and too boring. Number two, you get nickel and dimed. Number three, which many people may not see. I don't believe anybody in the world wakes up and wants to be sold to, advertised to, or promoted to. Yeah. When you go to a ballpark, what do you see all over the outfield walls? Right.

Ads everywhere, because they've got that captured attention.

Let's bring in some revenue. Hey, guys, how can we create some more sponsorship revenue? Not how do we create more fans.

Different conversations, these impressions.

Yeah, let's monetize. Let's make more money. And so we did the craziest thing at the worst timing ever. On February 25, 2020 two weeks before the pandemic, we announced we were becoming the first ever ad free stadium and ad free team. And we got ripped up heart by the industry. People were like, you're traders. What are you doing? We threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars right before we went into a pandemic. But we said a, we don't believe people want to be sold to, marketed to or advertised to. How do we create something, a better experience? The only person we work for is our fans. We don't work for our sponsors. And so when you come to our ballpark, you will not be advertised to, you will not be sold to. It's a time to escape and have fun. We made that decision. What happened, Dean Merchandise went skyrocketed even more from all over the world. And now merchandise has become a seven figure brand in itself. And it's well outdone our advertising. But it was the courage to attack that friction point. So we're continuing to attack that. And I don't want to keep going here, but we're also attacking the game of baseball. We invented a new game, banana ball, which is two hours long. If fans catch a foul ball, it's an out. All right, you can steal the fans. Get involved. Yeah. Yes. Get the fans first. You can steal first. It's a two hour, fast paced game and you could search it. But we developed that because we realized we watch our fans, we videotape our fans in the crowd and we realize every 30 minutes we take pictures. No matter how much entertainment, the breakdancing first bass coach, the banana nanas, all that fans still leave early. And so we had to get better. So we're going to attack that friction point, that one more and. And we did a banana ball game two weeks ago and 98% of our fans stayed till the end of the game versus 60% during a regular game. So anyways, eliminate friction. So whatever industry you're on, you know, put yourself in the customer's shoes. We go undercover every night at our stadium. I got next Wednesday, I'll take off the tux, I'll park with the fans, I'll walk in with the fans, I'll sit with the fans, I'll eat with the fans, and I'll take notes all night. Not on what we're doing well, on what the friction points are.

Ah, this guy's frustrated. Looks like with this. Or this is. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Or this is a friction point. He's in line here. Look at how he's acting. Oh, he's saying this to his friend. And all those. When Walt Disney was alive, he said, when he's going to Disney, I said, whenever I go on a ride, I always ask, what's wrong with this thing? And how can it be improved? He was constantly attacking friction. So I know I've spent a lot of time on that, but I think anybody can look at their industry and put yourself in your shoes and say, what frustrates me.

You ever watch that show Hotel Impossible?

I'm aware of it. I don't think I've watched it much, but definitely aware of it.

I had Anthony on the podcast years ago when the show first came out, and that's constantly. What he's doing is looking for friction. His every episode of the show is him arriving at a new property with the eyes of somebody coming as a guest. Like, what? What do you see? And he's observing as a hotel general manager, he's like, this sign is crooked. Look at these flowers are dead. This is. There's dirt here. He can tell just in approaching a hotel whether there's an engaged general manager. Somebody cares about this property by the way you arrive. He did one in Miami, and there was in South Beach. All the hotels are right up on the road, and there's parking off site. So he pulls up, there's a sign that says valet. And he pulls in, and he gets out of the car, and he's waiting and waiting. And we've all been at valet parking, and if there's nobody there, any second, a guy in a polo shirt is going to come running around the corner. But they show the ticker. 12 minutes. He's waiting there, pokes his head into the entry and says, is there a valet go, oh, yeah, just leave your keys with us at the reception. And so now you. Every single person arriving at the hotel is having some level of that. And how he solved it was he took a little rider, put it under the valet sign that said leave keys at reception, and now nobody's going to have that same confusion, friction. Just little things like that can make difference in any business.

And you don't know. You don't know until you get in their shoes.

That's the thing, those eyes. That's exactly right.

My car bottomed out when I was undercover because I went to a parking spot where we don't normally park. And then as I walked in, we have parking penguins at every one of our games. People that park your car dressed up as penguins. It makes no sense, but we think it's funny. And they pass out freezy pops to little kids and say, stay cool tonight. But I pulled up and I was walking in and our two parking penguins had their back towards me and the fans, they were eating burgers. All right, I took pictures of this. I was blown away because you have this perfect vision that doesn't always get executed when you put yourself in the customer's shoes. And so that's very important for us on stage.

That whole Disney thing, every time you're above the surface, you're on stage.

There you go, there you go.

I'm looking through what kind of businesses we're talking about just to spur some ideas. So there's finance and medical, spa, dental coaching, legal, teaching, English speaking, marketing, tutoring.

Well, finance is, I mean, it's like, you know, I don't like to give names, but you know, my bank, and we'll just call it bank of America. I don't want to give, I don't want to give any bank names away. But what do you want to do with your finance or bank? You want to be able to talk to someone and how many times do you call and say, you know, listen closely as menu options are changed. Dial 1 for this, dial 4 for this, give your organ number for this. Like, what are they asking for? And so that's a little friction point. Anything that keeps you from being able to do what you want to with a brand is a friction point. And so like finance, you know, how quickly can people, you answer people's questions, you know, and often that's just done on the website. You know, often it's, you know, it's, you know, so those things I look at from the first impressions, I love it. Legal, Legal. Literally paying emails, like I saw some with legal, like, are all right, hey, this, this email, 5 minutes is going to cost you this. 10 minutes is going to cost you this. So now it's like you want help but you don't want to talk to him as much. Like that's a broken system too. Charging for minutes. You know, I think a lot of those things are frustrations. If you put yourself in the shoes like, that stinks. I just wanted an email.

Oh, it took you 45 minutes of that. That you're 10 minutes and they're building 10 minute increments or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So then you don't have to do marketing because you create a better experience.

And you know, that's funny thinking about Richard Branson again. What they did with Virgin Airlines was thinking, what does everybody hate about travel, about flying. And what does everybody love about flying? Like, everybody loves new planes. Everybody loves leather seats, and everybody loves wide things and leg room and their own, you know, their own entertainment system and change tickets whenever you want. And all of that, looking at it, removing all of that friction, making the best things.

Actually, the other E's, I think someone's saying, what are the other E's?

Okay, yeah, let's go.

Oh, okay. Two elements. And this one, eliminate friction, is kind of tough for me because you talk about the negative. The next one I love is entertain always. And I think people have all. You're in a yellow tux. You run a baseball team, an entertainment team. I'm in. You know, I'm a dentist. I'm a. In finance. I had to look up the definition of entertain because I'm like, oh, you're in the entertainment business. The definition of entertain is to provide enjoyment and to provide amusement. Aren't we all in the entertainment business? Yeah.

And it would hurt. Would it hurt that in addition to whatever you are, to also be in the entertainment business while that's happening?

I mean, I think if we think of everyone, that we're a host of a party at our house. No matter what we do, we're a host of a party. And you entertain people at your house. And so how do you treat them? You know, what's the experience? You take their coat. What's the last impression when they leave? Do you thank them? Do you give them a hug? And I think a lot of times, I think Shep Hyken said it best. The last impression leaves a lasting impression. We look to entertain at every single touch point. And so to make it kind of, that's who we are. And I think we all have those. So, you know, when people have their last experience with you, is there something fun that's sent? What's your email signature? How do you enter invoices? Like, you know, we were bad at this for a while. And invoices, I think, are a great opportunity to entertain. And I can share one of our bananas invoices if you want. I think that might be an example. All right, let's see. Let me pull up one.

We got Jesse permission to share here.

Is that.

I don't know whether. Denise, maybe we'll have to give you permission.

Oh, I can't. I don't know if I. Well, I got it up on my screen.

I thought you were going to share the screen.

No, I can. It's actually. Well, it's got a name of a Company on there. But I'll just read it. Read. Okay, I'll just read it. It's. Congrats. This is your day. The day you've been waiting for. Today is the day you get to pay. You may think you've had days like this. The day you bought your first house, the day you bought your first car, or maybe your first all inclusive vacation. But nothing is quite like bananas Payday. So pull out your money, order, savings bond, bitcoin gold, cash, credit card or check and make that payment like we know you can. We believe in you. This is your moment. Now seize it. Your life will never be the same. Love, Jesse Cole.

I love that.

And so just an invoice.

Does the mail that goes with it or is it the.

Oh yeah, there's a body that has it. But this is the invoice that they open or if we ever mail it. And so. So again we get responses from our invoices, not just paying like, oh, that made me laugh today. Thank you. It's those little things that we think matter. And that's why I believe every company's in the entertainment business.

We love it. That's so great. Looking for those opportunities, like looking at all the assets that you have. That moment when somebody gets their ticket with the video, like you were talking. The famous cd, baby.

Yes. That's where we were inspired from it.

Exactly. And that's the thing is looking paying attention when you're inspired by something. I've constantly observed this. I was in London, and outside of London, there's a place called the Cowley Manor Inn, which is this country spa that's an old English mansion that's been converted to this. And when I walked in and sat down at the desk to register, there was a little stack of cards, right? Like half of an eight and a half by 11 that said today's available spa appointments. And it had the times and what was available at the things. So I'm checking in at 2:45 and I see a thing that said massage 3:30. And immediately I thought, oh, I've got, I can go drop my bags off and I can get a massage. And that 100% of the reason that I got it was because it was there at the moment that I checked in. Now it's a little bit of a system for them to do that every day and print that out. And there's probably people that would argue and say, well, can't we just have a standardized postcard that says welcome to the spa, here's our services and you See, I mean, you're smiling because I know, you know, the difference in that, that the little bit of extra effort that it takes to make it today's or to make it personal is a. Is a big thing.

Well, I think another Disney thing. Every. Everything speaks and those details matter. Every day we paint our bases yellow. Like, like a little detail. I don't know how many people actually see it, but we paint our bases yellow. It's just, you know, to stay on brand and have fun. I love, I love that team. I think one thing to think about is too, like, what's your s'? More? You know, we all know s', mores, you know, and, you know, as a kid, we had him. The great scene in sandlot. We thought about this and actually put it into practical use. We said, we're gonna have s' mores as a last impression, free s'. Mores. And so we set up all these little fires after our game, like, little. And we realized we could only service like 10 people at once. And their hands got messy and I was playing with fire. It didn't actually work. All right. But it was that extra idea. And so we said, what's our s' more here? What can you do? And so, like during games, we hire a mobile car wash and to pick one or two fans and just wash their car. So when they randomly, randomly, we don't tell anybody, but at the end of the night, they'll go there and they're like, we have a little note said, hey, thank you. Your car was washed. We appreciate you being a Bananas fan. And it's a little note. And so those touches. And now we give away banana cream, banana whoopi, the moon pies. And so you give away these free things and it's that extra little s' more that they weren't expecting. And I think that's the last impression that we're constantly investing in. Not the marketing, but the time and the money to come up with those ideas.

What do you think holds people back? What do you think holds people back from succeeding like this? Like in doing, you know, coming up.

With two things, I would think, I guess it's direct roi. You don't see it. It's playing a long game as Amazon focuses on all the time. You don't. I don't see the direct ROI of handing someone a banana moon pie or handing someone a free cookie at the end of the night. And also it's fear of. No one else is doing this. We get letters and emails from the league every day about Things they say we shouldn't be doing because we push the envelope. But I think it's fear of what happened. This was tough. Putting on a yellow tuxedo and speaking and knowing that people think that I'm all about attention and all about. It's all about myself. Well, actually, it's draw people into what we're trying to do. It's draw people into the message. And so, you know, I think Jeff Bezos said it best. You need to be willing to be misunderstood. And I think most people, when they come up with something brand new or different, they are misunderstood. A dentist. There's a singing dentist. I know that I saw a dentist on here. There's a singing dentist who got national exposure. He was all over Good Morning America Today show. Most people were probably like, oh, that's fun. But some people were like, dentists shouldn't be singing. Do your job, dentist. Do your job. And that's it. But he got national attention and his business grew dramatically because he was willing to have fun. And I think that's the question that we want to have is, does the message, does the purpose, does the impact matter that much that we're willing to be misunderstood, get some criticism and jump into the deep end?

I did a video in Toronto. I spend summers up in Toronto, normally, and in Yorkville. And there's a cafe. This great Italian guy, young guy, has a little cafe. The whole front opens up, and there's just a little seating area in there. But you would. You walk by and he was calling out to people, like, he would be like, you know, as the ladies are walking by, going, ciao, bella. Like, everybody greeting everybody, right? With this, with these great things. And I sat there and they had a table that was sort of half in, half out of the thing. And I could see the ladies coming up the sidewalk before he. They're in his eyesight. And I could see them kind of like, you know, getting ready. And then when he comes, because they know what's coming, and he's like, so. And I would call it. I did the video about return on enthusiasm.

Oh, I like that.

Is that this guy is just enthusiastic. You walk in and he's greeting everybody and smiling at everybody's like. And Italian itself is such a sing songy, happy kind of language that it's different than going to, you know, just a regular coffee stand or taking anything like that. It's. It's different, you know.

Oh, good. So good turn on enthusiasm. That, That's. That's. That's a key. I love that.

Yeah. Our friend Sally Hogshead has a new book coming out called different is Better than Better. And that is so great. I wonder, is she on with us? I don't know whether she was able to come on the call. She ended up having a. Broke her arm, which. That's a problem. So I know she's got a surgery coming up, but.

Oh, Dean, do you want me to finish the last e just to.

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Just the last one we've learned is experiment constantly. And again, Bezos, our success is a direct function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day. And so we actually judge our people by the experiments and the stories. We incentivize stories over sales. So what fans for stories are they creating? And that's mostly based on experiments. So everything we do when we meet weekly, monthly with our team, we said, what experiments are you doing in your department this year? What are you inventing on behalf of our fans? And so that is huge. And like, you know, for instance, we started doing a live stream of our games. We said, what are we going to do that no one else is going to do? What's normal? Do the exact opposite. And we said, well, can we mic up players every game? Can we have a drone flying during the game? Can we let our fans choose who's going to pitch, who's going to hit? And we asked all these questions and started asking, what if? And then we said, all right, what experiment are we doing today? What experiment are we doing tomorrow? Our director of entertainment, he knows we have to do one new promo every game that we've never done in front of a live audience. And most of them failed badly. But it teaches that idea of experimentation is how we're gonna get better and improve the experience. We don't want people to ever become, say, we're not relevant anymore or we're not enjoying the experience because they're not doing anything new. And so the experimentation, I think, helps build fans on a regular basis.

Imagine, do you get everybody on the team, players, staff, everybody involved in proposing experiments?

Yeah, yeah, we had to. I mean, like, you know, oh, you got this one guy who's thinking about ideas. Yes, I do. Ten ideas every morning. I'm sick. But we get our team together. So, for instance, one example, we've never done it with our team until this year. Our actual players. We've always done it with our staffs and different marketing and operations, merchandise. We get our team together. So, all right, guys, you know, again, we want to be the most fun team in baseball. I want this to be the most fun you've ever had playing baseball. I want this to be the best summer of your life. Let's come up with some ideas on how we can do that. First, let's think about celebrations. When you guys score a run, what's some unique ways that we can celebrate like no other team in the country? I said, everyone bring three ideas. And so you have 30 players. That's 90 ideas. We started putting them on a whiteboard. This is before, like, the game. It's ridiculous at like 4 o'. Clock. And one guy's like, all right, we're gonna run through the crowd, the whole team. We're gonna get a shopping cart and ship someone around the crowd. We're gonna do the Lambo leap. We're gonna take pictures. We're gonna bring a selfie stick. Take pictures. And. And they just started coming with ideas. And every night they test a new celebration that they've never done before. It's because the players took ownership that what could they come up with? And now they're fitting on a brand. They're going crazy on TikTok. And it's just. They get to see that feedback loop is, you know, now We've got more TikTok followers than every Major League baseball team. So whenever they do that.

Yeah.

Now when they do one of these TikToks, they see get a hundred thousand views, and they're like, oh, it works. And so getting the players involved was huge. And it didn't happen until this year, to be honest with you.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

This whole. And then you keep the keepers and something becomes a standard thing. But it's that whole. We always encourage people to look at that experience timeline as a living, breathing document that you can innovate within that. Look at the benchmarks, the. The categories, the where things are. First of all, looking for friction and then looking for opportunity. Like what you were saying about the car washes and those. Everybody in every business has that opportunity.

Well, I think it's what Andy Stanley said, do for one what you wish you could do for many. And that guides us. Every night, our players, we have 12 players go into the stands and deliver roses to little girls. They get down to a knee and they drop it down. And then we have one player go on a date with a fan, and one. It's usually a grandma, but sometimes it's like a little girl, and they get to have dinner, and only one person gets it. But it's an experience. Hopefully they'll never forget. That will create a fan for life. And so I think often we said, how do we scale that? How do we do that for so many people? Well, just come up with some unique, unique moments that could be special for one.

And then the people around it, they're telling that story too, about, you're right.

You'Re right, you're right.

That's a way for everybody there. Let's talk about kind of the mindsets and emotions, how you get, how you kind of manage that among yourself or what. What kind of do you come into this with on a daily basis? I guess, you know, you're.

Do you.

Are you an affirmation guy? Are you.

Yeah, I guess I'm an enneagram 3. Most people think I'm an enneagram 7, but I am still driven by success. Affirmations. Yeah. We actually did the love language test with everyone on our staff, which is good. You know, we say, love your customers more than you love your product, but love your people, love your team even more than you love your customers. And so if that's true, do you know what your people love? And so we didn't know it. So our fans, first director said, I want to do a love language test of all of our people. And so we did a test of the entire team, and it was great. We found out that 90% of our people were words of affirmation was number one. And it was funny. Our president was words of affirmation was number one, but touch was on the bottom. He goes, guys, tell me you love me, but don't you ever touch me. Yeah, don't you ever touch me. But yeah, so we learned that. And you know, again, I remember we ask our team every year what was their favorite moment of their year. And I will never forget our director of operations, and we hosted huge concerts here, sold out crowds. And he goes, jesse, it was after our first concert, and you put your arm on my shoulder and said that you were proud of me and that I did well tonight. He goes, that was my best moment. And I go, wow. And I was like, it was just something I never really remembered. But, you know, we think as leaders, how do we tell people, you know, that we care about, recognize them?

Isn't that interesting how knowing that little bit of information, like if that person was words of affirmation and touch, you just like full HD appreciated them and what. You could do that same thing if people are gifts and quality time or. Yeah, you know, looking at that, I see how that would. How that would work.

And you have a database, you know, when you. We have all of our fans, we have all of our team. When they join our team, even in the interview process, we ask all these questions so we get to know them. When they first show up that first day, we try to create the biggest fan of them. So we map their entire day, you know, when they first come in, we actually have everyone in costume, Silly string. We have their favorite breakfast, we have a whole breakfast ceremony, you know, and we map their day. At the end of the day, we have a big cheers. Their name goes up on the wall. And so again, I think if you want to create great fans of your customers, you got to create great fans of your people first. And that's part of our strategy, how we do things. But I don't know if that was the whole question. I think you asked some affirmations. I'm an energy guy. I just try to thrive. I try to do things that give me energy. I was terrible at operations, I'm terrible at finances, I'm terrible at. I don't touch those things details. I stay in my energy. So I created my energy list. What are the things that give me energy? And I realized it was creating, sharing and growing. Whenever I'm coming with ideas, creating new visions, sharing with our team, leading on a speech on a podcast, or growing, reading, learning, listening to your podcast, other podcasts. I try to spend most of my day doing that and hire other people to do everything else. So when I go home. Yeah, yeah. And I go home to my 23 year olds, you know, I have, I have energy, I have energy to be there for them because I'm doing the things I gave them.

Because everything you're doing all day is energy. So you follow your thinking. We're a lot alike in that. In my world, I'm. The ideas are what. That's the thing is I really like the coming up with what, what we could do, possibilities, getting all of those things. But I definitely need and am surrounded by who's. Who can then make all of that come true. Because I'm not the person who can focus enough to do any of it right. That's the reality. So what's your best piece of advice for say a startup or somebody who's thinking, you know what, I'm gonna take something on here and I wanna take this approach.

It's not the most poetic, but I would ask this question and I'd put it right on top of the front page of your paper and look at it on a regular basis what makes you different. And what we did is we actually challenged our team and it's on our website, on our about us. We wrote all the different things that we're different. You know, we're the only all inclusive ballpark. We have no ads at our ballpark. We have, you know, grandma coaches, eight year old coaches, we play in kilts. You know, we wrote all those things and I think everyone tries to be a little bit better, a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper. What can you be the only at? And when you're the only, you don't have to market, you don't have to do everything else. You're the only because everyone's doing the marketing for you. So what makes you different? What can you be the only. I think for a startup if you're trying to be a me too, it's hard work but it's a bloody ocean as the blue ocean strategy.

Right? Exactly. Yeah. I love it. Tim, I'm going to see here have you been looking in the comments of anything that we want to address and do on that and we have time to open up for some questions if anybody wants.

Yes, there's been two or three questions in the chat in the last hour so let me hit you with those first. A couple of them you'll be able to answer probably pretty quickly. But how would one try out for the team?

Oh, how would one?

I guess there's some aspiring baseball players out there, you know who would love to be on your team. So how would you do that?

I'll tell you, our first year we probably just said yes. We had no one interested in playing for the Bananas our first year. So first year, no try on aid to just show up. We'll put a uniform on you now. Yeah, now we had. Our coach told us we had 1200 players reach out for a 30 man roster. Wow. Now it's pretty extensive I think. I guess there's now a wait list on that. But there's no tryouts. We are developing our pro team, not our college teams to take the show all over the country. We believe we can stand out there and bring banana ball. But we do have, we might have a tryout for that pro team in the fall. That's a fun question.

So if Dean Jackson showed up. Dean Jackson showed up. He's not going to, he doesn't want to play. But how would you utilize Dean Jackson in, in with your team if he was there for one night, what would you do?

Well, we do, we do have a manana tryout every Single game. All right, so we have a man and a tryout for the dad Bod cheerleading squad. So that's one opportunity. Number two. Number two, we have the first banana. Which, you know, be honored to have you, Dean, throw out the first banana. But I'll just tell you, we plus that because, you know, normally you throw a first baseball. We did a first banana, but that's been boring after five years. So now we blindfold the person throws the first banana.

Hey.

We put them on all fours and we put the banana somewhere on the field. And we have the fans yell and cheer to where the banana is.

Warmer.

Colder.

No.

If you want that, Dean, we're all in. My man.

That's great. I can.

I could see that, Dean. I could see that. Okay, another question, and I think you've already kind of answered this with your, like that invoice, what you write on the invoice, but can people in finance do something crazy? A question by Mac Minney and people in finance do something crazy.

Money's so serious, Jesse. That's just.

I have a challenge with professional. I don't think anyone comes home and said, honey, I met the most professional person today. I think we want people that are unique, fun and different finance. I know there's regulations, and I actually have a brother in law who's in finance and he's kind of stepped out. I would look at what are all the rules of your industry and which ones can you break? So what are all the rules? Which ones can you actually break? So with finance, I think there's an opportunity with those just the. Everything's so rigid. So I think it really starts with the questions. If I were looking at and say, what would make you stand out? How do you make your experience a little better, a little bit more fun? So I'd have to dive into it. But I think there's a huge opportunity because it's a traditional industry, just like baseball, that's done things the same way, the same regulations. Look at opportunities.

I would look at. I wonder. There's an element of that in Dave Ramsey, let's say, in that having people come to Financial Peace Plaza and everybody at the end of the. When they get debt free, everybody yells, you know, we're debt free. They come and sign the wall and get everybody involved in that culture of, you know, Dave's way, he's kind of the leader. That's. It's not an easy or it's not a soft message for people. Right.

But again, sometimes, who are you not for? If you're not for. You're very clear. So, like, I think the celebration is so key. Like, how can there be more celebrating in finance? How can there be more celebrating? I mean, I think. I think the challenge is saying, I'm in the finance industry. That's the challenge. We're not in the baseball industry. So, hey, we just happen to give finance advice, and we just happen to help people grow their wealth. But what we really do is we do this, this, this, and this. And we're all about entertaining every step of the way to create fun. Oh, we just happen to play baseball, right?

Yeah. And I think when you really like. It's my observation, if I'm thinking about what you're doing, it's not that people have to be crazy or be. Because what you're doing is. I don't hate to use the word appropriately, but I mean, it's sort of appropriately crazy in that there are things that they're coming to the ballpark to have fun and to, you know, there's.

I mean, Dean, every night I throw this into the crowd. So this is. This is our Dolce and Banana underwear. So every night people think Dolce and Banana, and we have the big banana and the small banana. And the big banana outsells the small banana dramatically. But, you know, people think they're gonna get a T shirt and they get this, you know, what's. Everyone gives you. Here's a mug. Here's. Here's. What are the unique item you could be known for that actually spreads your message in a fun way. And I think this. This is on brand for us, and it's crazy. It actually sells in the merch, which is wild.

Right. I would say that Joe polish is fun too. And that's something, I think when you look at the things that, you know, were. Yeah, that's. It's been a fun thing. Joe's kind of in, you know, has that same kind of mindset. I love it. You know, we can meet Joe when he's back from sabbatical and stuff. He would have loved to have been here today. I know. For sure.

Let me. Let me just give proper.

Hey, there you go.

Proper. Proper attention.

I love it.

So another question from Jenny by Koffzer. Would you please speak about the friction? She's not real specific about what, but about the friction or friction.

Yeah, I think the definition. There's a great book too, by Jeff Rosenblum, Friction, which we have our team read, which really determines how to create passion brands. But, you know, I mean, friction again, I see it as anything that keeps you from doing what you wanted with a business. And so anything that either makes something longer, you know, whether, you know, Amazon, they eliminate the friction and make it one click buying, you know, all those things. How do they have a bigger selection? And so we look at the friction points that keep you from getting to do what you want to do as a ballpark and enjoy. So every frustration point, you know, every pay point is a pain point. So like I said, the invoice every time someone has to pay is a potential pain point. So that is a friction point in itself. So how do you make the pay point? How do you get someone so excited to throw you money? Because they're excited for the process of that and the experience of that.

We have an experience. I have a client who owns a waste management company, a local waste management company. And he had sends out paper invoices, you know, thousands of people. And every month it just goes out the one sheet of paper with the invoice. But for the same amount of money, you could put five pieces of paper inside of this. And he owns several businesses within the same community. So we started sending as an insert with the invoice and a treasure for trash certificate, gift cards and things so that people are getting a treasure for their trash. They're trading, basically they're trash and getting, you know, it pays to have your have your trash done with us. So that kind of. Looking for those kind of fun opportunities. You're right.

I remember I worked with a car dealership and they had their whole team and all their spouses say, what are the things you hate about the car buying process? And they got hundreds of responses and then they just attacked every one of those friction points. If you were to say, what are things that you hate about working with a financial advisor? What are the things you hate about lawyers? What are the things you hate about going to an accounting office? And if you could write all those and then attack those, I think you have a good chance of winning in your market.

I have a quick idea about your ideation process. Are you familiar with Crispin Porter Boguski, the ad? So this is great. They have a book called Hoopla and it's a big coffee table type of book. But they did all the advertising for, for Burger King and they, when they were launching the chicken sandwich, they did a website called Subservient Chicken. And it was a. You'd go there, it was back when video was just kind of getting started and you'd see just this image of what looks Like a guy in a chicken suit in an apartment. On the video, with just a search bar and the slogan of Burger King, of course, is have it your way. So they were saying, have it your way. Command the chicken to do whatever you want. And you would type in jump up and down. And the chicken would jump up and down and they would say, chase your tail, and it would chase its tail. And all it was was this brilliantly, you know, weaved together series of videos that were just searchable, and you start on a mark and end on a mark. So it just seemed like you were actually commanding the chicken. And how they got all the data was they took a picture of it, the guy standing in there, 10 lines underneath it. They handed out a thousand sheets of paper to everybody to fill in 10 commands. And then they just coded the long tail of all of the. What people were asking it to do. So it was really kind of brilliant. But their approach, instead of their. People have to come up with a. They have to come up with a hundred ideas that are not television and radio before they're allowed to even think about television radio. And that was what that came out of, you know, is setting up, thinking outside of the box things non traditionally.

Dean, that's so good that, you know, the former team, when they cut the phone lines and cut the Internet lines, they took away the video board. And so we had no video board. And so we forced to it. And six years later, we have not bought a video board because it's forced us to think of five stages at our ballpark, not just the main stage. Think of the parking lot, the plaza, the concourse, the grandstand, and the field and entertain on all five of those stages. And. And so constraints foster creativity. So by taking away tv, radio, I made them come up creative. So I love that idea to come up with better ideas.

That's awesome. Okay, Tim.

Yes. There are some more questions. Dr. Donice Worden, a genius network member, same question about medicine. How to make health fun but still credible. Any ideas?

I think that's a question. If you're part of that, ask the team. Ask that exact question to your team. I'm not dodging the question. We could go on a brainstorm session, but we have idea paloozas and say, hey, guys. Hey. I just heard this crazy guy in a yellow tuxedo talk about idea paloozas. Let's have an idea and let's have an idea session and say, what are some things that we could come up with? And I think the best way to have an idea Session is very important to have people come to the session with ideas. You can't just say, let's go brainstorm, and then it just kind of goes in a tangent. Have people come things, and you pitch, and there's no skunking allowed. You can't say, that's a terrible idea. Say the yes and approach. And so if you were to ask this question with your team, how do you make it more fun? And then the biggest thing is to theme it out. Say, how do we make the first impression, the reception spot? Or how do we make. Whatever your part, I'd have to look at your journey or. But whatever that part, how do we make this one part more fun? You know, we think about what's our finale at the ballpark, how do we make our grandstand part more fun, how do we make our player celebration more fun? And when you look at each of those areas, it's easier to go deep on a theme and pick one or two that you can actually experiment with.

You know, it's an interesting thing if you think about medicine is. I think making it more real is. Is a good way of doing it. I remember, so I've got a concierge doctors come into my house tomorrow. But I said to him, I remember getting blood panels or getting blood work done. Whenever you would go to the doctor, they'll pull out the blood panel and they'll go down the list and say, well, your lipids are good. This is your kidney things, this blood. And they're looking at these levels. And it's all like, you know, you're leaning in and he's feeling like. Feeling like. But. But I don't think it's as good as if it was regular, you know, of the things like, what are we actually looking for, you know, is there. How do we use real language to describe what this means instead of the actual, you know, the numbers themselves not make it about that in the context of this is the number, but how bad is. Is bad? Or what could go. What is this one attached to? And can I have anything to do with it? And what are the most important, the baseline ones. And I know that Denise has a. A great, you know, thing. She did one of our talks at Genius Network that, you know, lays out the foundational things. So she's very good at communicating in a real way of bringing things to. To people. I think that's important that people understand because you get people, especially in finance and medicine and business even, or accounting or other things, people often use jargon or industry terms that they assume everybody knows, but it doesn't. It's not the way people really talk.

You know, Dr. Donis wrote in the chat, even with my cancer patients, we have fun. Always can find some humor or light. Nice.

That's awesome.

Yep.

Okay, here's another question from Russ Hanish. Russ is ELF coaching member, so he's really cool. Jesse, you've got so much awesome energy. What drugs are. Oh no, he didn't put that. Wait, what do you do for energy? That's the question.

Oh man. Good question. I used to not have a lot of energy. I used to be really. I was bad energy. I wasn't good energy. I'd wake up every morning, I'd look at social media, I'd go see what's going on in the news. I would start my day with other people's priorities. I know this group's probably very familiar with Hal Elrod and his miracle morning. I read his book. I developed my own miracle morning where I read every morning. I write, I do a thank you letter every day. I've been doing that since 2016, the thank you experiment. So with gratitude. And I do 10 ideas every morning and read and I run every morning. So I start my day well. I don't look at email, don't do anything until at least 8 o' clock and that gets me going. I have a three year old son and a three year old foster daughter. So as soon as they're ready to go at 7:30, I got to be full energy. So I get up early and get my work done. And then the rest of the day, like I said, I work on my energy list. This today, right now. I don't know how long we've been on this, but I still have energy because. Energy, absolutely. Yeah. So you do what gives you energy? Create your energy list. I think, I think if it's a serious question, I think, you know, write down, you look at the end of a day and you write down the days that you have your best days, what did you do? Why not just best days? What days do you feel full of energy for your family? What were you doing? What were you working on? And the days that you feel burnt out, write down what were you working on? And then as you mentioned, and I know you, Dean, you came up with this, you know, the who over the what.

Yeah, yeah.

The who or the how. Yeah. So we started literally thinking about, all right, how do I get these people to do these details, these other things that I'm not good at and focus solely on doing this. So it helps with my energy. So I don't know if that was just a fun question or serious question. I turned it into serious. But.

But I think you're absolutely right that that's where if people observe nobody. There's no low energy when you're doing things that are engaging and exciting and fun. You know, every. Everybody's got time for that, even when they are low energy. The thing that I always look at it is how would your mood change if right now, the Publisher's Clearinghouse Prize patrol van pulled up outside your door and you're the winner of the. The Publisher Clearinghouse Sweepstakes? You know, that's kind of a funny way to think that if you were just given $10 million, you'd finally have. You'd. Funnily enough, you'd have some energy. Right. And anytime that our energy is drained or dipping, it's because we're having to wade into something that is not in our natural fun zone. Coming up with ideas and brainstorming. And you never get tired at the games when things are going on you right in the middle of it. It's just such a energizing thing. And the energy drain that you have afterwards is different than the kind of energy drain when you're in the middle of. You're not doing the right thing.

Yeah, I mean, I've been. I've had 500 plus games over the 15 years, and I'm still dancing harder than I probably ever danced with the fans after the game at 10:30 at night. And I think that's, you know, and you get that feedback loop and your fans are telling you, I mean, a fan came up to me the other day with his wife and his three kids, and he said, he goes, thanks so much. I go, thank you. And he goes, yeah, we drove 40 hours from Utah for this game. We're driving 40 hours back tomorrow. And it was everything we hoped it would be. And I was like, you know, you have this obligation that, like, wow, if you're coming here, I better be dancing. I better be doing more selfies, I better be having more fun, delivering more roses. And so that's the mindset we try to take with it now.

You're becoming a destination. People have to come and experience this.

And again, five years ago, sleeping on an airbed. So I'll share that we were struggling, but yeah, every night that's anywhere between 25 and 30 states, people come to our games here in Savannah.

Wow. Amazing. Well, Jesse, you've been very generous with your time and this has been fun. I love it. I'm so glad we got to connect. I'm glad you're able to. To join us. Let me show everybody. This has been a fantastic book that everybody could go and get right now. Find your yellow tux. Hey, do you wear the yellow tux 247 all the time, or is this your, like, work uniform?

It's my work uniform. Whenever I'm working and on stage at home with the kids, I take this off. Right.

Okay, I got it. Do you know Scott Ginsburg, by the way?

Oh, I know the name, but I'm not sure I know him correctly.

Oh, he's a guy. He wears a name tag 24 7.

Oh, yes. Heard the story, Scott.

That was his. You got a lot of the same kind of energy as a cool. He's a cool guy, too, but that kind of is, you know, you're committed to this. It's fun to see, you know, so exciting. Energy is fantastic. Is there anything else that. Where can people get the Savannah Bananas merch? I think this is. You got some fans here that are gonna love that.

Oh, yeah, we're easy to find. Savannah Bananas. And like I said, I hope. Our goal. I know you guys are spread out all over the country and all over the world. Our goal is to take this show to more people. We get such a joy of that. So hopefully someday we can come over and say hello and say I heard you back this time, and that'd be fun.

That's awesome. Awesome. Well, Jesse, I appreciate it. It was so good to. So good to meet you. I know we're going to stay connected. Happy to know you now. And I can't wait to come up to Savannah and see one of your games. And I will crawl around and look for that.

We'll make it happen.

There we go.

Look for that banana, guys, you're the best. Seriously great. A great group. You're doing amazing things. Thank you, guys.

Thanks so much. Okay. So good. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, team. Thank you. This was awesome. I love it. What a great opportunity for us. That was a good.

That was amazing.

I wish Joe could have been here for this one because he would have loved this.

Joe would have loved that. He would have. Let me. Let me just kind of bring him into the equation one more time.

Yeah.

So.

Whoops.

Excuse me. I love it.

Yeah. So. So did he leave?

Yeah, he's gone.

Okay.

He left. So we can actually stay on and chat with Don east or something if we want.

Hey, there we go. You want to do that?

You know, Dean, let me ask you something, because I wanted to ask him or talk to him about this for a second, but since we have a minute. The Milwaukee Bucks just won the national basketball.

How exciting is that?

They lost the first two games to Phoenix. And I. And I remember I was watching ESPN and it showed. And they were criticizing the coach of the Bucks because what he was saying to the team was, be loose, have fun, you know, and they said, wow, they've just lost two games and it looks like they're going to get swept. And then they show the coach of the Phoenix, and he was more uptight. He was more X's and O's and stuff. And one's not riding.