He turned a broke team into a billion dollars

All right.

This episode is a Billy of the Week. Me and Sam are so inspired by this one story, this one entrepreneur. I'm almost like slightly intimidated, Sam, by this story. It's like, oh my God, the bar has been raised of what I need to go do.

The person who we talked about, I pray this makes it to them and I pray that they come on the pod. And after listening to this, you're going to agree that we have to get them on.

Amen.

Also, the last 2 minutes of this podcast, we need you guys to listen. We left you guys a message.

Yes. All right. Enjoy. This is the most inspiring business that I saw when I was looking in the world of sports. There's a lot of things that made a lot of money. This one not only makes a lot of money, I literally in my notes wrote down in all caps, this guy deserves $1 billion and I want to be like him. I don't even think I've ever had that thought before. Right? Like, you know, there's a lot of people who hate billionaires.

There's—

I don't— I'm not like that at all. I think it's great. You know, creators of successful business, but I've never heard a story and thought, goddamn, we need to give— it's like if there was a Nobel Prize for business, we need to give it to this guy.

This guy we're going to talk about, it's one of these stories that I think I know all about it. And then I go and like deep dive and I'm like, so much better than I thought.

Yeah. So much more to know.

It's also another one of those stories where I almost didn't want to talk about it because I thought that like, oh, everyone has talked about it, but it's just too good. And there's more to it than I even realized.

And I want to have him on. So I was like, should we tell the whole story? But Well, whatever. Got to do it. Okay, here we go. We're talking about Savannah Bananas. So this is a business in baseball. This story is pretty incredible. So should we tell it from beginning, middle to end, or where should I start here?

Yeah, let's give a, let's give an origin story and then where they are now.

Okay. Actually, I'll start with the where they are now, then we'll go to the origin story. So the where they are now is the most impressive metric. They have a 3 million person waiting list to buy tickets to their events. You can't buy it if you want to. You basically have to win the lottery in order to go to their event now. And that's kind of a, you know, this is a business that's probably worth close to $1 billion, I would say, based on what I could tell. And it's about $100 million in revenue.

I think they do between $70 and $100 million in revenue is my guess. I don't know what that would be worth, but it's definitely plausible that it will be worth $1 billion soon, if it's not already.

It's got more social media. They have more followers on TikTok and social media that follow their their brand, their team, than every single professional baseball team, including the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Dodgers combined. All MLB teams combined. These guys have more, more engagement. So it's a very, very impressive business. Okay, so what's the origin story of the Savannah Bananas? So starts off with this guy Jesse, and Jesse's the founder. He's himself like a college baseball player. He wants to go like, you know, wants to make it. And I think he gets onto like a college summer team or like a minor league team.

Cape Cod. It's called the— it's called Cape Cod Summer League. It's like the premier, like, summer league for amateur baseball.

And premier is so generous. Like, that's like saying we're the premier podcast of the world. Like, premier. So there's Major League Baseball, then there's like AAA, AA, Single-A, then there's like another thing, and then there's college summer league under all of that.

Does me filming this from my bedroom not scream premier?

Yeah, Sam in like his mother's bedroom or something. I don't know what's going on. So So he's playing, and then basically as he moves up in competition, he's benched. Basically, he's like not good enough to play. There's like better players. And he realizes while he's sitting on the bench, he's like, man, the sport I loved and I've, you know, built my life around, had so much fun doing, like, man, when you're watching, it's pretty boring. Like, it's, it's really fun for the 10 guys out there, but damn, baseball's pretty boring to watch.

He said one story, he goes, I'm on the team and and I'm supposed to be like in it, and this is so boring. What is going on?

Yeah, so he just has this thought, this realization. And anyways, he gets his first job as a general manager for a college summer league team called the Gastonia Grizzlies. Not— we're not even at the Savannah Bananas yet. He's— he gets to manage this team. Now you might think, well, how's this young kid get to be the GM of this college summer league team? Well, the team averaged 200 fans per game and had like $268 in the checking account. So, you know, this team was basically on the brink. It was struggling. He comes on, he's not even going to get paid at the beginning, and he's going to be a manager of the team. And so he immediately starts hustling like any entrepreneur does. He starts thinking, all right, how are we going to turn this around? We got to get fans to come to the game, buy tickets. We got to sell some, you know, merch. We got— what are we going to do? How are we going to actually get this to work? And so he starts doing a bunch of things that, um, you know, he starts getting innovative. So he— by day he's working this job, and by night he's reading books about Disney and, um, P.T. Barnum, and, you know, the WWE and the UFC and Apple. And then, you know, even things like the Grateful Dead and the Beatles, like, how did they build their fan base? And he starts trying things, and he starts trying all kinds of fun— you know, hey, how about a fan comes out and throws out the first pitch? Hey, what if we— what if we do this, you know, this this promotion where, you know, dollar hot dogs, whatever, little things like that. And it starts to work. And so I'll fast forward through this part. He basically starts to turn around the Gastonia Grizzlies, turns it from a team that's about to go out of business to like, you know, small amount of cash flow. But again, this is a summer league team. They're basically like, you know, they play 30 games. It's only in the summer. There's only so much they're going to be able to do. But he's, you know, he's doing well. He's doing well with it.

He had like good ideas. There was like a Dig to China night. And I read about this or listened to it on the Acquired podcast. And they're like, so you, what did you do? He was like, well, I put a ticket to China or like a gift certificate or something like that to buy a one-way ticket.

Yeah.

And they were like, so did anyone take it? He was like, well, no, it was a one-way ticket and there was no accommodation. And so no one actually went.

But basically after the game, fans got to come out of the crowd and dig to China.

Yeah. So he does things like that. And then he had like a grandma beauty pageant contest. He did like cute stuff like that.

Yeah, and it, it actually starts to work. So he turns around the attendance, um, and he's like, I'm going to do anything I can to make noise. So he's like, how do I hijack existing news stories? So in baseball at the time, there was a big scandal around HGH, so human growth hormone. And he's like, okay, we need to get in on this story. So he's like, we fired our mascot, the, the bear, the grizzly bear. He's like, for taking BG— for BGH, bear growth hormone. And he's just doing anything he can to drum up any kind of interest in this stuff. And it starts to work. And he basically spends nearly a decade. This is one thing I didn't understand. I didn't actually know. He spends about 10 years tinkering and experimenting with these things before he ever— he's like, I had one media story cover me in my first 10 years. He's like, but I got to experiment. Um, you know, I got to, I got to do things. And along the way, uh, what happens? So he ends up meeting his wife. So he ends up meeting his future wife. Um, how did he do that? Well, he's like, I need to— he's like, I want to network and I want to get to know people in minor league baseball, the one rung up from where he was. So he decides to host a free seminar, and he gets the minor league baseball people to come, and he's telling them all about grandma beauty pageants and bear growth hormone and the dig to China. And they're like, what the hell is this guy talking about? But he's like, hey, we turned attendance from 200 fans a game to like a few thousand people per game, right? Like we 10x'd, we 10x'd plus our average game attendance. And they're like, okay, well, maybe this guy's not so crazy. And there's a woman there from Cal Ripken Baseball, and she calls one of her employees and she's like, hey, I think her name's Emily. She's like, Emily, I just met your future husband. And she's like, what? She's like, I just met this guy. He's as crazy and passionate and, like, nuts about baseball as you are. Look, you got to meet this guy. Just call him, talk business idea. And they do. And so he ends up hiring her. And for the first year, they're just like, you know, like totally whatever. Uh, they just keep it professional or whatever, but eventually they end up dating. He ends up proposing to her at one of the games on the field. She says yes. And she's as like part of the like proposal, they're happy. She's like, oh, I'm going to plan a weekend trip to Savannah and we're going to go Savannah, Georgia. We'll just have fun there. And so they go from, or I think they were in South Carolina, they go from South Carolina to Georgia. And, um, while they're there, she's like, hey, you know, this is their idea of romance. She's like, let's go check out this minor league baseball stadium. And they check it out, and they're just blown away. They're like, wow, this is— it's like Field of Dreams. They walk in and they're like, this is an incredible place. I could feel the history. I could feel— feels like Babe Ruth played here. Like, this is incredible. We gotta have a stadium like this. And they approached the stadium owner, and they're like, hey, is there any availability? They're like, no, no, we rent it out to this minor league baseball team. So like, okay, if anything ever changes, if they ever leave, you call me. And they're like, all right, sure, buddy. And, um, sure enough, like, I don't know, a year later or something like that, the minor league baseball team goes to the city and demands like, we want a new stadium. We need like a $35 million stadium. And the mayor was like, dude, you're a minor league baseball team. We're not giving you a $35 million stadium. And so they pack up and leave and they call this guy and he comes and he basically cuts a deal. To sign a $20,000 a year lease to create a team in Savannah, Georgia. All right.

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I've never been to a minor league. Have you?

Yeah, I went to— I've been to the Cape Cod League. The games that I've been to, to say that like you're buying a team, that's like a little ambitious. Like it's, it's very grassroots. It's, it's bleachers.

You're missing the things that high school and high school has. My kid is playing. That's a pretty strong draw.

That's why you go, right?

That's why I'm going. And then college is, I go here. It's us. That's we. Minor League Baseball doesn't have either of those advantages, right?

Yeah, no, it's like pretty whack. It's like, I mean, you really have to care about baseball. And like, while all this is going on, we've had Dan from Overtime on. Yeah. And he's kind of explained that basically, like, basketball and football has killed it lately because they understand highlight reels and they understand action and they're doing a really good job of telling some stories. Baseball doesn't. So over the last like 15 years, as social media has gotten popular, baseball has absolutely gotten left behind a bit. And you know, it's supposed to be America's pastime. It's not really America's pastime at the moment, in my opinion. And like, so as past time, it's definitely the past. It's the, it's a past time for sure.

Uh, it's like space, like 5 times between those 2 words.

And so, yeah, it's ambitious to say that he was like buying something. I think he said when he bought the team that he was like, we I bought it, but it's really just like seller financing, meaning the guy like gave it to me and I gave him a small percentage of some profits, which there was basically none.

Yeah, exactly. Uh, I think that was maybe the first team. And this team, they, they kind of like— it was, they didn't buy an existing team, they created one as part of like the Coastal Plain League, but they owed the league like a few hundred thousand dollars to, to like start this expansion team basically. But he had a little reputation from the Grizzlies, right? He had a little, he had something, which is why he was able to convince the stadium to give him the lease and the league to give him a team. But now he's got to make it happen. And so he starts, and it doesn't start well. I think in the first few months he said he sold literally 2 tickets. And he's like, it was awful. Like, we couldn't give away the tickets. And so he, he tried to like hosted a fan event and he like promoted it. He's knocking on doors, he going on radio and he's trying to promote this fan event. For the new team of Savannah. It was called like the Savannah minor league baseball team. It was not called the Savannah Bananas yet. He's like, so few people showed up to our fan event that the conference center, they like didn't even charge me for the food. They felt so bad. Like, they felt so bad how poorly the event went. And basically these guys run out of money, so they're like, they're on the brink.

These guys being the husband and wife.

Him and his wife. Sorry, him and his wife. They're running out of money. and his wife is like, all right, um, let's sell the house. And he's like, what? And she's like, yeah, let's do it. We are all in. And so they sell their house, they move into a garage that's kind of turned into a studio apartment. They sleep on a twin air mattress. He's like, dude, we were sleeping in socks every night. Like, he's like, you know, nobody sleeps in socks. We had to sleep in socks.

Air mattress and a twin.

Air mattress and a twin mattress. They use all their savings, they just try to keep the team alive. And he's like, I dude, I kept going because he's like, I would read books and he's like, Walt Disney went bankrupt with his like, I forgot what it's called, like Laugh-O-Matic or whatever his thing was called. Uh, he's like, P.T. Barnum struggled. Like, this is just our struggle era. Like, this is our struggle season. Like, we will do this.

We got to coin that term. This is our struggle season.

Yeah, exactly. The pain cave. He's in the pain cave and he decides, um, he's like, okay, first thing we need to do is we need to come up with a team name. And so they do. He's like, all right, we're going to go to the community because he's trying to get the community on their side. Community didn't really like them. They had lost their minor league baseball team, and instead they had this, like, college— like, this, like, this other team that was like, you know, the Savannah baseball team. And so he's trying to get them on board, and so he has, like, a naming contest. And a 62-year-old nurse submits the name, and it was mostly names like the Pirates and, like, just, like, standard baseball team names, right? Like, nothing out of the ordinary. The 62-year-old nurse submits Bananas. And he's like, Savannah Bananas. I like it. And everyone's like, no, you can't do that. He's like, and we have— he's like, we have the nanas. That's our dance team. It's a bunch of grandmas, the nanas. He's like, and then we have male cheerleaders, the man nanas. And he starts coming up with all these ideas about, like, how he's going to use this. And he ends up— I think he goes to a design agency. Did you hear this part? Like, there's a lot of this, by the way, is from the Acquired podcast. They did a great job. With, uh, sitting down with him. Uh, so shout out to our friends at the Acquired podcast. Um, but one of the things he talks about is like, he, they were skimpy on everything, right? Sleeping on the air mattress. But he's like, the brand is going to really matter for this. And so he goes to an agency, they quote him $12,000. He's like, cool, me and my wife live off $40 a week right now. So, um, I don't have, I don't have a thousand. I definitely don't have 12 of those thousands. Like, I don't really know what I'm going to do here. And so they're like, dude, we can't do that. Just make a simple logo. We'll just do it ourselves. He's like, no, no, no. Like, this is going to be the logo that we print on everything. Like, I got to find a way to do this. He ends up paying for it. He gets the logo and he's like so proud of it, which is kind of amazing because now, you know, years later, they do like tens of millions, like $20, $30 million a year in just merch sales, right? Like the brand has totally taken off.

Is it the same logo?

I don't know if it's the exact same or if they like touched it up, but the core of it's the same. So anyways, he starts doing, and he starts basically coming up with all these different ways to make baseball less boring, right? So like, What does he actually do? So he's like, all right, he studies the end-to-end experience of an event. So he's like, first of all, when you buy the ticket, you see the ticket price is whatever, $80. But then when you check out, it's like $98. And because all these fees and taxes or whatever. So Savannah Bananas, here's what we do. It's a flat $25 ticket and we pay your taxes. So you will, it's $25 and you pay $25. And they pay now millions of dollars a year. Just paying the sales tax for their fans, uh, which is like kind of amazing. But it says something like about what they represent. And, you know, I think their company name is even called like Fan First, you know, LLC, Fan First Entertainment or something like that. That became the North Star.

He's got this quote where he was like, I read that like in order to get big muscles, you gotta like, you know, flex your muscle and work out every day. And I needed ideas. And so I had this thing where I was like, I think he said starting in 2016, 2016, right when the Savannah Bananas got going, he was like, I'm gonna write down 10 new ideas every single day because it's easy to do 5 or 3 a day. But once you get to 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, you really have to start working hard. And I needed to flex that muscle every day 'cause I needed really good ideas all the time to figure out how to make this great. And I think around this time when he's doing it, lemme give you the exact quote on that.

So he goes, I started an idea book in 2016. I had 10 ideas a day. A lot are bad ideas, 70, 80% terrible. But you got to work your idea muscle. And by the way, this is— everybody says the same thing. Go listen to the MrBeast podcast we did. He's like, every day I would wake up and I would come up with 20, 30, 40 YouTube video ideas. He's like, I just realized that the idea of what the video is about is the most important thing. So I'm going to think of more ideas. I'm going to open up a dictionary, a thesaurus, go to a random page, whatever word I pick, I'm going to brainstorm it. And on the podcast we did with him, we pulled up a random word generator. And we started pulling up or putting random words and he started coming up with video ideas on the spot. He's like, I've been doing this since I was 12.

Dude, this is awesome. And I think what I didn't realize was around this time when it got going, it was a real baseball team. So they were, they're still playing normal baseball, but then he was like, okay, what all is boring about this? He's like, can you believe that this is supposed to be an athletic sport and you can walk someone? Like they just get to like walk. Like they could walk to base. That's ridiculous. Or he was like, he said, I brought my stopwatch and I timed how long it took a pitch to like get to, you know, the pitcher to like get going and then for a strike or hit to happen. And I noticed that the, the, the batters can step out of the box. Ridiculous. That took 27 seconds every time. And he like starts like nailing the experience down perfectly because it's sort of like when you own a baseball team, you're like, oh no, it ain't broke. We're not going to fix it. Like, just don't worry about any of that nonsense. And he was like, no, no, no, it's all broken.

Everything is broken.

We have to figure this out.

The more accurate thing is it's broke, but that's always the, that's the way we've always done it.

And so he comes up with all these crazy ideas and I didn't realize all of the rules, but it was something like, uh, foul balls caught by fans count as being out. Walks are, uh, are, are, are the fourth ball is you still have to sprint and I think you can get called out.

Games are capped and the defense has to, they throw the ball amongst all the, all the defenders have to basically touch the ball, uh, in order, in between a walk, you know what I mean?

That's crazy.

If you bunt, you're ejected because there's nothing wimpier than a bunt.

And then he also says, games have to be capped at 2 hours. And on that podcast, he was like, everyone said it had to be 2.5 hours. It had to be this. And he's like, no, but children need to be home at bed by this time. And this is going to be a family event. Therefore, it has to be a strict 2 hours. And he called the whole thing. I didn't realize it had a name. It's called Banana Ball. And so at first it was like calling it—

now they have that kind of their own format of a game, basically. And now they have their own league and all this. So it definitely elevated. Over time. But yeah, he did, he did all those things. He also would do things like, they, he has a team, his team would basically, it started off with he would watch security footage after the game. So he's like, oh, I could use the cameras in the stadium and I can see when people leave. I could see when they get bored. I could see when they go to the seat. I could see how long the concessions take. And so he started furiously watching security footage to understand the fan experience. And now today, he has, uh, a team that basically they take a snapshot of every, all the bleachers, every, like, uh, I forgot like what interval, like every 10 minutes, 15 minutes or something like that in order so he could see when people get bored, when they get disengaged, when they leave. And he uses that, then he reverse engineers, okay, what's going on in the game right now? And how do I like do that better? Not to use MrBeast again, but he did remember when we were sitting there, he was showing us the same thing about his videos, right? He's like, here's the retention curve. And like, see this dip? And we're like, yeah, so what? It's a little wiggle. He's like, no, no, no. That dip is like 3 million people stopped watching the video. He's like, that dip, this dip, this is horror. You know, right? He's like, this is the worst thing in the world is this dip. So it was like, what is that? That's the ad read. He's like, so we need to make our ad read as entertaining as the content.

And the takeaway that I had with MrBeast then, as well as what I have with this guy, is, uh, you say to yourself, when I get big, I'll worry about that stuff. It's the other way. It's the other way around. You worry about that stuff and then you get big.

Yeah, there's a, you remember like the Steve Jobs quote about like what his, his product strategy basically. And he used to say, uh, everything had to be insanely great. If you've talked to people who worked with Steve Jobs, they say he used to always say this phrase, insanely great. And normally when people hear insanely great, they're like, yeah, I'm going to do that because they're focused on the word great and nobody can disagree with great.

Yeah.

Who doesn't want great? I want great. You want great. We all want great. Fantastic. It's the insane part. That's the part nobody wants to do. That's the price tag. When you go look at the thing, it's like, are you willing to be like kind of insane about the level of details? Right? Steve Jobs basically saying we're not shipping the Macintosh because the inside casing of the machine is not finished. And they're like, Steve, nobody's ever going to see the inside. He's like, but we saw it, you know, like, so we're not shipping this until that's finished. It's like, it's a little insane, right? You're going to try to do insane things. You know, when, when they were doing the iPhone, I remember there's like all these stories about the touch keyboard. So they were like, Steve, like, we'll put a little keyboard on there, like the BlackBerry. And he's like, no, we're not doing the keyboard. They're like, well, but Steve, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, we could do this digital keyboard, but it's not so great. And he's like, no, we need to make it and it needs to be insanely great. And they thought like, we don't even know if this is technically possible. We're not just, we're not trying to be lazy here. Uh, but he's like, that's what we're doing. So you got to figure it out. That's the job. And, uh, you know, so it's the insane part of insanely great that actually matters.

Well, I had two takeaways from reading about this guy, but that's the first one, which is, so I, I mean, I run a business, you run businesses, and the hard part is whether to be a dictator or like an elected official. Like, do you just tell people, this is what we are doing, get on board? Or do you delegate and say, let's surface some of the best ideas and, uh, we'll kind of figure out what to do. and this guy does not seem like he takes the first route. He seems like he has a vision and he says, this is what we're doing. How wonderful is this? Let's do it. And oftentimes when you have a company, I will say ideas and people shit on it and they'll say, here's all of the reasons why we can't do it. And you know the phrase like, look, do you just want a yes man or what? And I'm like, yeah, I do. I want a yes man. I just, that's all I want. I want a yes man. Uh, and that's what this guy kind of did. Like, Dude, have you heard some of his other stories? Like, there's, there's this guy Jesse. He's got so many, like, layers and layers of little stories. Like, for example, I think at the game— I've actually never been to a game, but I think at the game they have like the 11 rules. And he's like, we did. He's like, what? He said we picked 11 because K, which stands for strikeout, and potassium, which is what is in a banana, that's the 11th letter in the alphabet. Like, there's like all these like weird symbolism where if I told an employee that, they'd be like, Dude, can you just like leave my office and let me like design this logo?

Yeah, dude, I feel you when you're like, you have an idea that's like a little— either it's just, I can't prove that this is right. Like nobody can prove it's an unprovable thing or it seems like a little much. Right. And you know, maybe it seems, maybe it's even something that's unserious. Like maybe we should be focusing on the serious things. And this is like, this is extra in some way, but you're convinced that, you know, you feel like. This will be cool if we do it, this will be special if we do it, this will be unique if we do it. And the amount of energy that it takes to kind of like bring people on board is so hard that, you know what I did? I basically changed my criteria of who I hire. I realized I could not change myself to turn that switch off, and I can't change like the process where I'm like, no, I will just like magically change people's minds. Like I, so I basically changed my criteria for hiring where I, you know, I used to have the Buffett thing, which is like energy, intelligence, integrity. Like those are the 3 things you want. And I just added the 4th one, which is like, are you down? And I'm basically like, are you just down where if we just have an idea, you're down to do it? That doesn't mean you say yes to every idea. That's not what that means. It just means like, look, sometimes there's no evidence. Sometimes this is extra. Sometimes this is unproven. Sometimes this sounds bad, but like we got to try and have some faith that like we're going to figure it out as we go. Like sometimes this sounds way out of our league and we're punching way above our weight. But like, why not? Why not try this? And so like, and which is, you've met Ben. Ben is like the most down guy in the world. I don't know if you've met Diego, but Diego's the same way where it's like, there's probably more skilled people than them about like certain tasks. Sure. But I know they're down, which means I can bring a fragile new idea, like a newborn around them. And they know how to raise that baby. They're not going to be like, oh, what is this? Right? Like, because those ideas are so fragile that if you know, the other people on your team are not down, what happens is it's not that they even shoot your ideas down. It's that you censor yourself. You're like, I'm not even going to bring it up, right? Like there's a part of you subconsciously—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

That just doesn't even bring the ideas to the table, doesn't have the conviction to say it because you kind of know where they're at, right? It's like a friend who's easily offended. You're like, I'm just not even going to bring up— bring this up because I kind of know where this goes.

It's hard to convince people to do stuff just because. So at a company like particular— I mean, obviously in tech where you're like, show me the data and I'm like, There is no data, brother. It's just soul. Like, like, it just feels like the right thing to do. And it's hard to convince people to do that. And in fact, we should have this guy Cole come on the pod and really just talk about management. That would be actually quite interesting. Well, how do you—

I was going to ask you, you did a pod with the guy from the Un— what's it called? Unreasonable Hospitality. What is it called?

It's good. Yeah. So his name is Will Gudera. It's going to be such a good podcast. So this guy, Will, he started he was a chef, but he was most famous for owning 11 Madison Avenue, which is— or 11 Madison Avenue. Yes, it's called— so it was awarded the best restaurant in the world. But then he was famous because of two things. One, he wrote the book on reasonable hospitality. And two, that book inspired one of the best episodes from the TV show The Bear, where the kind of dummy cousin goes to this restaurant to learn how to be a good restaurateur. And he starts by like polishing the forks. And the next step is like doing the second lowest job. And then the One up, one up, and they just sweat the details on everything. And Will was amazing. And we had this whole podcast, it's going to be out, I think, in 2 weeks or so. And this whole podcast was about how can tech companies do that? And so his story was he started by, uh, overhearing a tourist at his restaurant say, uh, you know, this, this trip was amazing. I got all this famous food, but I didn't get to do one thing. I just wanted to get a New York street hot dog. And Will, the owner, overheard that and he ran outside and he bought a $3 hot dog. And he chopped it up in a really pretty way and put a pretty garnish, and he served it to the tourists, and they were like, mind blown. And he was like, up that emotion. That is what we are doing from now on. And so he gave— he had a budget at his company, at his restaurant to do crazy stuff. And so instead of coming in and giving children crayons, he would give them an Etch A Sketch or— and he would have like the Etch A Sketch waiting at the table for them. Just all these little small details that people normally forget. To do, and he would just sweat the details on them. And that's the idea of unreasonable hospitality, which is to go above and beyond for your customers, which is exactly what Savannah Bananas is all about.

Our friend George Mack has this great phrase, which is, um, they only remember your weird. And I, I love that because he basically, what he was, what he means by that is, look, if you just do the expected norms, you don't, it's like table stakes things. You get literally zero credit for that. If you don't do them, you get docked. But if you do them, you didn't get any points on the board yet. It's still love, love, right? Like you have not actually done anything until you've done something weird. Now, weird can be really good. It could be just— it has to be out of the ordinary. And that's all people will remember about you. So whether you're building a personal brand or a product or you're the Savannah Bananas and you say, we pay your sales tax, that's weird. That's memorable. That's something I'm talking about. And it was a decision he made. 10 years ago to do that. And it's a decision that cost him money. But how much did it build in goodwill and brand? How much did it show, not tell, that, hey, we actually give a shit about our fans? Because every single sports team will say, fans are the most important thing. We really care about our fans as they gouge the shit out of them, right? Like, the actions and the words go in two different directions. And just by doing something weird, like a statement, um, that was made by, let's say, like, paying the sales tax for the fan. or, you know, being like, hey, this, you pay this one ticket price and then it's all-you-can-eat concessions when you come in, right? Like doing things that were remarkable, worthy of remark, um, is, is what gets you the credit. It's, you're got it. You're only remembered for doing what's weird. Did you pick anything else up from that guy, Will, about like, did it give you an idea of something to do in your business?

Well, he did a couple of, he said, let me tell you two things. He said one thing that was amazing. He said, uh, I forget the exact quote, but it was something like, every mistake is an amazing opportunity to blow someone away because he was like, people will remember the mistake that you make and then they will remember you going above and beyond to fix it. But then when he talked about the customer experience, I had this idea and we're implementing this at Hampton. So at Hampton, the way it works is you apply to join and 3 days later we'll review your application and invite you if you are on paper, if you are in one of our cities and you have the revenue. Threshold, we will send you an email and say you can sign up to interview with one of our folks to see if you're any good or a good fit. And so we had this idea, what if everyone who applied on Hampton, which is dozens and hundreds of people a day sometimes, what if within 10 minutes we phone call them and say, I just saw your application come through, here's the process. I just want to let you know we see you. And this isn't just some form that no one pays attention to. I see you. I'm going to take great care to, like, handle you. You may not get in, but like, I'm here and I pay attention. And so that's an example of what it inspired me to do. But the idea that Will had that really inspired me was how you train your staff. He was like, I just have to train my staff like crazy to care about this stuff. He's like, basically, I'm like a propagandist where like, I have to repeat the same phrases over and over and over and over again to get them to buy into these ideas. And so this is where the idea— it's so funny you said insanely great. That's the exact same thing with unreasonable hospitality. He was like, everyone likes hospitality, Right. But the unreasonable part is the hard part. And so that was actually really cool. That was actually really wise of you to catch that insane part. That's actually the brilliance with him. It was unreasonable. And so this is like the part that we're actually describing here with Cole, which is like, it's easy to say these crazy ideas. It's actually hard to be wacky enough to like follow through on all of them. Yeah.

Dan Porter, who's, who's probably our closest friend who does this, who's like actually done this and he did it with Overtime. When he was on the pod last time, I don't think you were there, but he said a very similar thing. He goes, if your strategy is something that everybody agrees with, it's not a strategy. So he's like, you know, anybody's like, you know, we're going to have great customer service. He's like, cool, you and 100 other companies in your space would all agree that's a good strategy. So he's like, it's therefore not a strategy at all. He's like, you have to have something that people would disagree with. So he's like, for example, for Overtime, In the first year, we replied, I think, to a million comments on social. He's like, that's a strategy that people would disagree with. Some people would say that's a waste of time, right? Like, people would say, like, that's not worth— and he's like, I was doing it myself, the founder, the CEO. Like, that is a strategy you could disagree with. You could say that's stupid, that's foolish. And he's like, it doesn't have to be that it is stupid or foolish. It just has to be not something that everybody already agrees is is the thing to do. And so, you know, same thing, unreasonable, which is like, yeah, we all agree that we should have great hospitality. How many people would agree that we should be listening for when the guy says, oh man, I'm on my flights out tonight and I haven't tried the New York hot dogs. I really wanted one to then be like, leave the kitchen, go get a hot dog from a street vendor, come in, break the food code, cut it up, you know, serve it on a dish. That's the part that others wouldn't even think of, let alone, uh, and, and, you know, definitely wouldn't institutionalize as like part of their core strategy to do things like that.

And Will, Will gave a really tactical bit. That I would be curious to hear Cole's opinion, the founder of Savannah Bananas. I was like, okay, so walk me through the profitable, the profitability of this. Like, it sounds like you're like—

Cole, is that his name? Jesse? Jesse Cole.

Jesse Cole. Sorry.

Oh, you're doing the last name thing. Got it.

Uh, not on purpose. I wasn't trying to be that cool. Jesse. His name's Jesse. Jesse Cole. He had two last names or two first names. Um, Will said something. I was like, Will, how much of your money do you spend on this? He was like, well, I basically allocate 5%. So if I'm a 20% margin business, I'm willing to go down to a 15% margin business. I'm gonna use that 5% to do wacky stuff. And I anticipate that it will take most companies 6 to 12 months to make that money back and for it to prove to be profitable. And so I'd be curious what this guy says. Uh, did it take 12 months to become like some of these, uh, weird norms that he was trying to create within his organization? Did it take 12 months for the customers to catch on and for that story to get out to people and then to start coming back via more tickets.

I mean, how do you measure showmanship? Because this guy, this guy's pure showmanship. And if anyone listens to this podcast, you know me and Sam, we are— we appreciate good showmanship. And that's what literally this guy is. He's like a modern-day P.T. Barnum.

So where are they now? So they're at like, what, $100 million in revenue? And they're like— I live in Manhattan and one of their buses drove by yesterday.

Give you a sense of what's going on. So yeah, the revenues, let's call it like our estimate, somewhere between $70 and $100 million. I believe that the company is probably worth $500 million to $1 billion. They own 100% of it. If you just take their low— so last year, 2 million people came to their games, 2 million fans. So it's basically doubled. It went $500K, 1 million, 2 million. This year should be over 3 million. If you just take the lowest possible ticket price they could have, $25, which their normal tickets are $35 to $40. You know, but, but if you just take the lowest ticket price, $25, 2 million, that's $50 million in just ticket sales. Then you have tens of millions in merch. They have a 3 million person waiting list. They are now doing a world tour. So it's been up till now just like kind of a North America thing. But they've been, you know, they went from like these minor league stadiums to doing the biggest ballparks in the country. I mean, in a 2-day span, they did 150,000 people. Watching their games. Like, it's insane what's going on. Like, we talked about Savannah Bananas 2 years ago, 3 years ago. It wasn't this. And, and, you know, he started this thing, I think, I think he started with the Gastonia Grizzlies or whatever, like in 2008 or something like that. Like, it's been a long time that this guy's been doing this, which is why I had in all caps, this guy deserves a billion dollars. You do that, you do, you do what he did, you deserve a billion dollars.

It's very inspirational because he definitely has like that everyday guy type of vibe. I kind of get emotional, like, reading about his story. I'm like, I like— I'm, I'm on your team. I don't care what you do. I'm, I'm bought into you.

Yeah.

And then the husband and wife bit is really great. Like, I'm all in on this guy.

Yeah, he's amazing.

I have a question, though. Do you think that this is going to be like WWE, WWF, where it becomes like a sustained thing where it lasts forever? Or is this going to be like a Harlem Globetrotters where, like, the shtick gets tired?

I think both. I think it is Harlem Globetrotters, not WWE, but I don't think it needs to end. So, you know, because like, I take my kids to all kinds of like entertainment. We took my kids to Monster Jam last weekend.

Can you explain Monster Jam to all of our foreign listeners, please?

This is, by the way, this is amazing because this is normally the type of thing you're explaining to me.

Oh yeah, please do it.

All right. So what is Monster Jam? Monterey Dam is basically the best day ever for any little boy that loves like Hot Wheels and trucks, which is, from my count in my son's school, like 50% of all young boys love cars and trucks. Um, and so what, you know, you're normally at home playing with these like little like 2-inch Hot Wheels cars, right? Or maybe a remote control car. And then suddenly your parents take you to the Oakland Coliseum. And you walk in and it's literally a circle of like— it's a dirt— like, it's like a pitcher's mound. It's just a dirt mound in the middle of the arena. There's nothing else there. There's not like— it's just one dirt mound. And then they have like these characters, like the WWE, they have these like 8 or 10 trucks that will kind of like come out. And there's Megalodon, he's the shark one, and all the kids are doing the shark, shark.

Yeah, I was Grave Digger for Halloween once.

Yeah, my son has like a Gravedigger thing. And I mean, Gravedigger's like their Undertaker. So he's like their like star, you know, star thing. And they basically, the trucks come out and they're, you know, like, um, like 2 times the size of a Hummer, I would say. Like maybe 3 times.

I don't know.

It's not, it's not that big. It's like, you know, big, but not that big. And they basically do tricks and trucks like that can only do so many tricks. It's like, they went on their back wheels, they went on their front wheels.

Dude, they do backflips now. Yeah.

Like they try to do like a flip and then half the time they crashed out. And then they're like, a crew comes out like with fire extinguishers and like tows the truck away. And now, you know, you're not going to see Gravedigger for the rest of the show. But they have like, then they have like guys come out on like dirt bikes and do tricks, which are way cooler as well. So it's this 2-hour family event. You get your kids, you know, like a, what's it called? Like a snow cone, popcorn, and they get to see crazy trucks and they're sitting there with the earmuffs on because it's too loud. And then they leave and you buy the merch or you buy them a car and they're like super happy and you're out $400. Okay, so that's, that's what Monster Jam is.

Dude, a Grave Digger, when he goes, it rattles your soul. That's how loud it is. Like, it's not just a loudness, it's a, it's a feeling.

Dude, I had my headphones on too.

It's so loud.

I was a kid.

You feel it. You, it's like a train when it goes by you. Like, you feel the rattle. It's amazing. And I'm just Googling it. So I'm just, you know, it's grain of salt, but I think it says it sells 4 million tickets a year. There's no way. Is that true?

Yeah, I believe that. I believe that. Wow. I mean, it was, there was probably 10,000 people at the event I was at. And you know, they're doing that. They were there for 3 days and then they're going to the next city and it's just a traveling circus of monster, monster trucks. So I don't see any reason why the traveling circus of, um, of banana ball can't be a sustained thing. So I do think what it is, the category is more like Harlem Globetrotters. It's a family show. You're gonna come, you're gonna have a great 2 or 3 hours, you're gonna be entertained, you're gonna laugh, you're gonna have the dances, it's gonna be some catchy things in your head, you're gonna remember a few of the characters, and then you're gonna go home. And like, you're not gonna— you're not— it's not something you're gonna tune into, you know, 3 nights a week like the NBA. Uh, that's fine, it doesn't need to be that. It's an amazing live touring show, man.

So the guy who owns, um, Monster Jam, he also owns the Barnum and Bailey Circus. And he's on Forbes as being worth $3 or $4 billion.

Who is he?

His name— it's called Feld Entertainment. So Feld owns Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. They own the Monster Jam, they own Monster Energy Supercross, and they own Sesame Street Live. And the owner's name, Kenneth Feld, and it's just a huge 3,000-person company according to Wikipedia.

Yeah. Unbelievable. And this is also stuff that's like super AI-proof, right? Like live out-of-home entertainment. It's only going to go like up, you know, you know what I mean? Like, because people are always craving something that's different than what they have in abundance, which is like digital online entertainment. And so, and then these are, these things are scarce. Like there's not that many. And especially if you could do the, what WWE has done or what, you know, Monster Jam has done where you start to like become fans of certain whether it's players, teams, characters in the show, that's, you know, that's always going to be, um, you know, an entertaining thing.

By the way, his father started Ringling Brothers, uh, Circus, and his son Kenneth eventually took it over, and that's now— they're the ones who own Monster Jam.

Just imagine, like, it's like the family business. The family business is like, we run Monster Jam. We started the Ringling Brothers Circus. Like, the dinner table, like, what's going on?

It's so much better than what we do. Can you like, or the baseball, like I, so I, I wonder the Cole family, the owners of Savannah Banana, I imagine they have children now. I wonder how awesome that is to see your parents do a job like that.

Yeah. It's also tough. I mean, you're on the road like all the time. It's live events. It's messy, right? You don't get to just like push a button and like, oop, we send the, we sent the newsletter to 3 million people. Like, oh, I pushed the button and like the ads are running all night and then the editors are when I ran The Hustle, we called the send button on like Salehoo or whatever.

We said, we're going to click the money button. You guys ready? We're going to click the money button. Click the money button. And we would just call it the money button because I know every time I hit send, there was that one point we were making like $30,000 or $40,000 a day. I was like, all right, click the money button. Boom.

Right.

And this guy does not have a money button. He has a money bus where he has to get on the bus for 2 weeks.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's a little different. A lot more money probably than what I made. But, uh, yeah, it's a money bus.

All right. We, um, we ended up spending the whole episode on the Savannah Badass, but that's cool. I think we should just call it that.

Is that it? Is that the pod then?

Yeah, I think we should all go and just brainstorm ideas for the craziest marketing things we could do in our business now. I think we should all go write down 20 totally out of the box ideas and do that every day for the next 60 days until you have like you know, 3, 3 ideas that are going to be like, you know, attention getting and unreasonable in some way.

And I, here's, um, all right. So we did this thing called the gentleman's agreement, by the way, where people would, uh, click like on our YouTube page if they've ever watched more than one video of ours. And, uh, that was, that was the way of paying it forward. I have a, I have a request, Sean, for our listeners. You and I have, well, this, we'll do it. We'll do a two-part one. The first is, if you have a connection to Jesse Cole, I want him on the pod. We want him on the pod. I don't have any connections to him. Do you?

No.

Yeah. So I would love to get him on the pod. If you get— if you can help us get him on the pod, we will. That's— that's you fulfilling the gentleman's agreement, and we will thank you. But I think we got to do a second one now with Spotify, right?

Yeah. So people don't know this because, you know, you're busy, you have lives, and you eat food and you sleep. But we doubled on Spotify last month. Spotify is growing like crazy as a podcasting platform. And it used to be like 5% of our streams, then it became 10% of our streams, 15%. It's like 25, 30% of our streams now. It is growing. It is exploding. We added our video to Spotify. So if you have Spotify, you can watch the podcast there. There's comments there. We're replying to comments and we're really investing in Spotify. We think Spotify is kind of amazing for this. And we would love to grow more on Spotify. And so if you like to listen to Spotify, if you listen to music on Spotify, if you got a Spotify account, get on there and just type My First Million and click follow. It's just a follow button. It's totally free. Nothing else. But you will have reserved your space in the Gentleman's Hall of Fame, which we are creating.

And here's what we'll do. The Gentleman's Hall of Fame.

I didn't know where that sentence was going. And I just let it run.

The Gentleman's Hall of Fame. It's going to, uh, In my head, when I think of a Gentleman's Hall of Fame, it's a little bit different than a bunch of nerds clicking a button on their Spotify.

I'm hurting a gentleman's club, you might say.

A gentleman's club. It's good. I thought it was going to look a little different than just a bunch of neckbeards clicking like on Spotify, but also leave a comment on Spotify for this episode and we'll actually reply to all of them so long as it's not like 5,000. So as long as it's less than 5,000, we'll reply to every single comment, even if it's just like, Hey, what's up?

Just say— hold on, would Jesse Cole say as long as it's less than $5,000? Were you listening to the podcast, sir? What kind of— what kind of not Savannah-worthy comment was— it's not called reasonable hospitality, Sam.

Yeah, we're gonna tiptoe our way in.

This is me getting in the pool at the pool party this weekend and Half an hour in, I'm still under the nipple line and I'm just like, hey, I just take my time. Okay. I just need my time to get in. I will get in.

Okay. Every comment, seriously, make a comment on Spotify because that actually signals— we're testing something.

Now we need to blow past 5,000 just so Sam gets to taste this.

That signals that you're listening on Spotify and I think it's going to go make us go up in the rankings. I think last week or two weeks ago, I think we were the 35th or something. Most popular podcast in the world on Spotify. All categories. All categories, not just business. And so we're going to, we're going to game the system in front of everyone. So just comment on Spotify and we'll reply. All right, that's it. That's the pod.