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Episode 72: Finding Your Yellow Tux- the Uncommon Path of Jesse Cole
140 Plays5 years ago
Logistics are important, but logistics can kill dreams. Focus on the dream and figure out the logistics as you go. One thing we have learned over the years, there is no one road map to leading an Uncommon Life. But if you stay on the sidelines, dreams will never come true.
In this episode, we’re talking with someone who has figured this out and is living his dreams with a “do and learn” approach that he wants to share. We’re talking with Jesse Cole, who is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas. He’s here to talk with us about the huge impact a fans-first approach can have.
Here’s a taste of his story. The previous occupants of the Savanah baseball stadium where the Bananas play were lucky to have a few hundred fans in attendance. Jesse and his wife have built a brand that packs the stadium with a waiting list in the thousands.
His teams have welcomed more than one million fans to their ballparks and have been featured on MSNBC, CNN, ESPN, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Jesse released his first book “Find Your Yellow Tux – How to Be Successful by Standing Out” in January of 2018 with a World Book Tour…at Epcot.
Cole 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.
Cole 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.
what you will learn in this episode:- Why a focus on attention beats a focus on marketing
- How to take a “do and learn” approach to business and life
- Learning the length of your risk-tolerance “runway”
- Building on capacity as a state of mind
- Focusing on what, not how
- How to build a fan-first business model
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
A life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Phillip Ramsey. Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project where I'm your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. I am grateful that you tuned in. Brian and I are advisors who try to help you figure out that you are your best asset.
00:00:50
Speaker
There is not a lot of people out there like that. So every day we get to work with people and individuals and spark a fire of passion inside them and also use their own money to help them fuel that passion to make more money. And when you start making more money tomorrow, you can see how the future starts getting a little brighter and you get more excited about life.
00:01:11
Speaker
And life is short. I mean, life can be short. Come on. And then you know what is interesting? As this whole traditional advising, when they go into this whole thing, at the end of the day, they amass all this wealth. And you're not guaranteed tomorrow. And the statistics show, seven years after you retire, if you're just sitting on the couch watching TV, you're going to pass away. So why not try to just double down on the passions and the gifts that you have currently and use your money to do so? That's where Brian and I love
00:01:40
Speaker
And that's why we started the Uncommon Wealth Partners. That is our business. And every day we get to do that. So thank you for tuning into the show. Again, ratings are huge for us. And if you leave a rating and do a writing rating, we are going to give you an hour of our time as a thank you. We will pick those as we see fit. Honestly, I'd probably do that for everybody. So I probably shouldn't say that because we don't have that much time. But that's it. So let's get our guest on the show and we'll go from there.
00:02:08
Speaker
All right.
Meet Jesse Cole: Entrepreneurial Beginnings
00:02:09
Speaker
I am super excited about this because I am a huge baseball guy. And so we have on the show, the one and only Jesse Cole. He is the owner of the Savannah Bananas. You heard that right. They have sold out every game and he is the author of Find Your Yellow Tucks. So I can't wait to jump into this. And if you're not sure who the Savannah Bananas are, they are a baseball team in the Coastal Plains League. So welcome to the show, Jesse Cole.
00:02:36
Speaker
Excited to be with you guys and have some fun. Oh, yeah. We're going to have it. And I'm just going to say it right now. Do you or do you not, for our listeners, have a yellow tuxedo on? It's almost the only thing I own. Yes, I have a yellow tuxedo. I own seven of these. And this is my uniform. So whenever I'm working, whenever I'm at the stadium, whenever I'm on a show, this is my uniform. That means it's showtime. So I'm going to bring it for you guys today.
00:02:59
Speaker
Oh, I love that. Jesse? I know. I just want to hug you. You are a brother from another mother. Okay. Have you always been unique and uncommon? Like in your grade school, you were just swimming upstream. I have a feeling. Is that true? I got 26 detentions in seventh grade.
00:03:17
Speaker
So I was, I guess, a little bit of a troublemaker. My friends were all very, very creative. They're filmmakers, they're in ad agencies. We did things that were very, very uncommon. Luckily, they let us get through high school because we actually got good, good grades. We just caused a little bit of a ruckus. So yes, I was uncommon. I was the only child who tried to do a little crazy things. And yeah, it's helped me because I think the more that you can break the rules and be a little bit of a troublemaker in business, it can help you be even more successful. Amen.
00:03:46
Speaker
I just got somebody I just love this guy. I just gonna let so let's go Where were you before like seems like high school talked through college and before the Savannah bananas happened?
00:03:57
Speaker
So yeah, I was a big baseball buff. I grew up in Massachusetts, only a child. My parents got divorced, so my dad raised me. And my father actually ended up buying a baseball facility, an indoor baseball facility, so I could work out year round. And I fell in love with the game. My dad used to always say when I came up to the plate, he goes, Jesse,
00:04:16
Speaker
swing hard in case you hit it and that was the mentality that i probably swung harder than any kid in massachusetts at that time and luckily a few times i actually hit the ball so i was fortunate to get a full scholarship to come down south play baseball division one baseball down at wofford college and
00:04:35
Speaker
right from the start i was pitching friday night i was the number one starter and i was also hitting and i started getting letters from the Padres the braves the pirates i remember getting christmas cards from the new york meds and i was like wow my is gonna come true i get a chance to play professional baseball and then my senior year the best thing that ever happened to me i tore everything in my shoulder and that ended my career just like that
00:04:57
Speaker
And I repeat that, that was the best thing that ever happened to me because that's when I was able to go on the path that I was supposed to go on. So that happened all pretty quickly. It was devastating, but it was amazing when you look back at it in retrospect.
00:05:08
Speaker
It's interesting because sometimes when people are like, hey, I just got laid off. I'm like, I'm so grateful. And they're like, I'm sorry, what? I'm like, that's the best thing that could have ever happened to you. Because now we get to go in and try to figure out what your passions are and what God's called you to do. But in that time, when you tore everything, it's easy to say, hey, that was the best thing that ever happened to me now. But talk our listeners through what was really going on. Were you in a dark place? How do you pick the pieces up?
00:05:35
Speaker
There it is. Oh, I actually have video of it. What's amazing is that, again, breaking the rules. When I went to school, I went to school to play baseball. Luckily, I got good grades, so I was able to be okay, but there were no majors at my school that I was interested in. Literally, my junior year, my professors, my advisors were like, Jesse, you need to pick a major. I'm here to play baseball. They're like, you need to pick a major.
00:05:54
Speaker
And I was like, well, business econ, you have to take two calculus classes in macroeconomics. What does calculus have to do with business? And I was like, there's nothing I'm interested in. So I didn't have a major. So what I did was I saw something. I was like, hey, what about this, humanities? He goes, oh, no one's ever done that. I go, what do you mean? He goes, no, that's creating your own major. I go, what do you mean? He goes, you can create your own major, but you have to do independent studies. You have to do a thesis. You have to do a big speech at a capstone project. I go, I'll take it. And he's like, you're the first person ever to choose that. I go, yes.
00:06:23
Speaker
So, I created independent studies and what I was doing was filming it. I was filming a documentary film my senior year and it was on coaching leadership and how it compared to leadership in government, leadership in business and leadership in the military. And I was reading every book I could and filming. And I was filming our final season or my final season and I was filming the coaches, I was filming how they reacted to players and I was the guy, you know, ready to pitch, you know, the number one guy and then all of a sudden,
00:06:47
Speaker
I found out the news about my shoulder and I got the MRI and I turned the camera on myself in my dorm room and I have it. I saw it actually just about a whole month ago and I'm crying. I'm emotional. I'm like, I don't
Building Uncommon Wealth Partners and Personal Life
00:07:00
Speaker
know what I'm going to do. This was my life. I have no idea. My dad's always told me to stay positive and I'll get through this. But right now I just don't know what I'm going to do. And so I have it on film and it went into the documentary. And I'm so glad I have that because I look at that. I was like, man, I had no path. I had no clarity. I was lost.
00:07:17
Speaker
And then look what happened and i think it's time i go through a dark spot and you know just five years ago my wife and i sell our house empty our savings account cuz the team ran out of money we were sleeping on an air bed living on thirty dollars a week i'm going to wal-mart with you can get real food for thirty dollars a week and even just you know little less than a year ago i'm still covered in the devastation everything was happened.
00:07:37
Speaker
I get giddy. I get excited because I think about those challenges and what happened to me when I was just in college that I thought my life was over and it was the start of a much better life and that's how we anticipate and that's how we look at it now. I love it. Okay, I want to bring something up probably a little bit sooner than we normally bring up in our shows.
00:07:56
Speaker
but your wife, your spouse, and how big of an encouragement and supporter she has been. When you tore everything, were you dating at the time? Did you know your wife? Where were you out in the relationship? You could say I was dating. I was in college, so I was, let's say, dating. Yes, I was doing a lot of dating in college. But not your wife, or dating her and a lot of other people.
00:08:16
Speaker
We wouldn't have made it if she met me back then. I was dating for a while and when I took over a team, a failing team in Gastonia, North Carolina in 2007, 2008, with only 200 fans coming to the games, my first day as a 23-year-old general manager, there was only $268 in the bank account. We had three full-time employees and payroll was on Friday.
00:08:38
Speaker
So that's how I started. But we were able to turn it around. There's some funny stories there of things that we did, like Flash Island's Fun Night and Salute's Underwear Night. We did some ridiculous things. But regardless, what happened is after our first year, we completely turned it around and we started really reimagining what business we're really in and what business it was. It was entertainment business, not baseball business. We held the conference and I'm speaking at the conference and
00:09:01
Speaker
There's a lot of minor league teams there. And I'm talking about our grandma beauty pageants and our dancing players and all the craziness we did at the stadium. And Emily was working for a minor league team in Augusta, and Emily's my wife. And her boss ran out of the conference, literally ran after hearing me speak and called her and said, I met the guy you're going to marry.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yes. Wow. Yes. Why do you think he said that? Because she's just so similar to you? Or what did he say? Yeah. So Emily was she. Amy Venuto was her boss. And Emily was, geez, 22, 21 years old at the time. I was 24, 25. And she
00:09:40
Speaker
Emily was just a go getter. So she was, I mean, let's put it this way, when she joined our team in Gastonia, a couple years later, she wanted to become our director of fun. And she literally put on a hot dog costume every day. Now think about this, a young, you know, beautiful woman in the industry, it doesn't want to show her beauty wants to dress up as a hot dog every day at the ballpark. So like just from that, you can see that we're so more into entertaining our fans and creating a great experience than, you know, trying to be something for ourselves.
00:10:07
Speaker
and so her boss saw this guy is all about entertaining all about the fans you are the same way you guys both have energy enthusiasm and passion this industry you're gonna be together and low and behold she what she was right as i proposed about four five years later at a sold out game in the yellow tuxedo in front of a
00:10:24
Speaker
you know, 4,000 fans and stopped the game in the middle of the game. It had the ring inside of baseball and had her family down, my family, and that was where we met. So I literally dropped down to a knee and as she ran over, which she didn't say, yeah, she just hugged me. I had a fireworks show go off in the middle of the game and the umpires and the players are like, what are we going to play again? I'm like, guys, this is our moment. We're taking this right now. And so- Don't you take this away from us? You take this away from us. And so that moment proposed and she eventually, she did say yes, I guess, because she hugged and was so happy about it.
00:10:54
Speaker
That night, when I was asleep, she planned a surprise trip to Savannah, Georgia for the next weekend, and that was my first time in Savannah, and that's where I went to that stadium and fell in love with that city, and that's where we decided we were going to start the Savannah Bananas.
The Savannah Bananas: A Viral Sensation
00:11:07
Speaker
And it wasn't Savannah Bananas at the time.
00:11:09
Speaker
Now, there was a former professional team. I mean, the stadium, 1926 Grayson Stadium, Babe Ruth played there, Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Derek, they all played there and literally, they had professional baseball for 90 years and no one was coming to the games. The night we walked up, it was 80 degrees, beautiful Saturday night. There was less than 100 people in the stadium. You could picture a tumbleweed growing, going across the grandstand.
00:11:31
Speaker
And because it wasn't about the fans. It was just about baseball. It wasn't about anything fun and exciting. And so they left because they wanted a brand new $40 million stadium. The city is like, we're not building you a $40 million stadium. And so we convinced the city to give this small college summer team a chance. And that's when we came in in October of 2015.
00:11:52
Speaker
So when you went down there, you both, you and Emily were like, I want to take this. Or was this as an opportunity that kind of opened itself up throughout the time? And then obviously you got married in the middle of that. So here's the context. So in August of 2014, I proposed, she said yes.
00:12:11
Speaker
We went and visited Savannah that next weekend. We said, wow, this could be an amazing opportunity. The stadium has been neglected. They're not caring about the fans the way they should. We found out shortly after that they were leaving, started meeting with the city. And then by that final year, 2015 was their final season.
00:12:27
Speaker
We reached an agreement with the city. On October 5th, we got the keys. We showed up, myself, Emily, our 24-year-old president, and three 22-year-olds straight out of college. They gave us the keys. We found out that everything was taken out of the stadium. The phone lines were cut by the former team, the internet.
00:12:45
Speaker
It's nothing like, so we grabbed a picnic table from outside in the park and we brought it into an abandoned storage building and started calling the community with our cell phones trying to get people to be a part of us. And that was October 5th. On October 10th, we got married. Emily and I, on October 10th, we got married.
00:13:02
Speaker
at our stadium in Gastonia, our former team, and a huge rainstorm. It was epic. And then for the next three months, we called everyone in the community in Savannah, but only sold two total tickets. It was like a donation. They were like, here you go, guys, you're not doing anything. And then on January 15, 2016, just a few months later, we got the phone call at 4.45 p.m. on a Friday that we'd overdrafted our account and we were completely out of money. And that's when Emily turned to me and said, Jesse, we have to sell our house.
00:13:28
Speaker
And so we had our dream house in Charlotte with our other team in Gastonia. We sold that and then got an air bed, went down to Savannah, put the little money that we had in our accounts into the team and just prayed and hoped. And it was like, all right, we got to go all in. And we went all in there.
00:13:45
Speaker
When's the first game? So that's January. Yeah, so that's January. We weren't even a team yet. So February 25th is when we named the team the Bananas, but our first game was like May 30th. So there was no money, there was no team name. We just got married and we're sleeping on an air bed with pennies in our account. And you wouldn't trade it for the world. And she's still married to me.
00:14:09
Speaker
And I'm still wearing this yellow tux today as we speak. And yeah, it was, I mean, I remember vividly those nights and we weren't sleeping. I mean, we're on an air bed. So if I got off to get water, it came back to me. She was airborne anyways. But those nights just walking around just trying to figure out what we're going to do. And we just kept saying,
00:14:26
Speaker
You know, what we do is special, but we just have to get the eyes and the ears of this community. If we get the eyes and the ears, we can get their hearts, but we first have to get the eyes and the ears. And so we knew that it wasn't about marketing. We were marketing like everyone else, newspaper, radio, social media. We were failing. We had to create attention. We knew if we went all in on attention, then we'd get them to experience our product. If they experienced our product, they would do all the marketing for us.
00:14:50
Speaker
And so that's why, you know, we got thousands of suggestions for team names and only one person said bananas. And we knew that we'd be ridiculed for naming the team after a fruit, but we had a much bigger vision. We thought, you know, we could have a senior citizen dance team called the Banana Nana's, you know, that are in their sixties and seventies and dance to Justin Timberlake. You know, we had a vision of having a male cheerleading team called the Manana's, but now they're just referred to as the dad bod cheerleading squad.
00:15:17
Speaker
We had an idea of having a mascot and naming them Split and the Go bananas taglines and having frozen bananas and having banana beer and all these ideas that we could have fun with bananas and we knew that we could make it special. We just had to get there. I want to go one step back because Philip knows this about me. I love naming things. It's like one of my top three favorite things in the world is to name something. So who actually brought the name to the table? I'm really curious.
00:15:44
Speaker
a nurse in town named Lynn Moses. So we were specific when we had a launch event, free food, free drinks at the conference. And we sent it out to everyone. I think about 86 people showed up total. And we said, we need a name that we need to be dramatically different. It can't be like anything else. We wanted fun, outrageous, bizarre, because that's who we are. And then we got 999 normal names.
00:16:07
Speaker
And then, uh, Lynn Moses said, you know, I heard that and I was like, you know, what if we just did something silly? That was kind of fun. And she said it. And then as soon as we saw it, we said, yes, we started creating an entire business plan, a strategy based on the fun and the craziness of the bananas.
00:16:22
Speaker
I'm going to take a hard left and Brian and I will be buying apparel from the Savannah Bananas right after this interview. So we're going to say two things. We're doing this. I love the story. You know what's funny about the merchandise. So the first shipment of t-shirts that we had come in. So February 25th, we were announcing the name. Now again, we're coming off a small team in Gastonia that, you know, did very little merchandise.
00:16:44
Speaker
So we're getting ready to announce the name. We have their t-shirts come in the week before. And the first shipment of t-shirts, there were too many N's in bananas. Bananas was spelled wrong. So the first 100, 200 shirts, we couldn't even say. They were wrong. I want one of those ones. Those are classic. So it was a disaster. But when we announced the name on February 25, 2016, as soon as we announced it,
00:17:06
Speaker
Um, locally, all over social media, Facebook media, the owners should be thrown out of town. You guys are an embarrassment to this city. You'll never sell locally. We're getting ripped apart. But Emily goes, Jesse, you want to believe what's happening? And she shows me her phone, her email. Every few seconds merchandise orders are coming from all over the world. And I was like, what's going on? She's like, and then Jared, our president runs over, he goes, Jesse, we're number one trending on Twitter. There was a Republican debate debate that night.
00:17:33
Speaker
and we were number one trending on Twitter and then Sports Center reached out and we were on Sports Center for 15 minutes and then on Good Morning America's page today shows page and it was like it was wild so we're doing merchandise all over the world we had no idea what we're doing and we're charging at that point five dollars shipping to ship to Australia to the UK that we were losing our shirts
00:17:51
Speaker
losing money. And so we learned a business there. And what's so crazy is like, we had no idea. So we had our one of our staff members, his wife was working a night job, she would come over all day and print out all the orders and start doing the merchandise. And we had a huge Excel sheet spread out on like big tables, trying to figure out what we're doing. And the post office was getting so upset with us because of how many boxes there were. So we had to set up a whole another plan with them. And what's so funny, we had no idea you could never plan that.
00:18:18
Speaker
But now as we move forward, do and then learn. Start experimenting, start testing, start trying things and learn. Jump in the deep end. Now our merchandise and just to be clear, there's no shipping fees because everything, we have no ticket fees, no convenient fees. Every ticket at our ballpark's all inclusive. We are so against friction.
00:18:37
Speaker
So, there's no shipping fees. Every single shipment comes in a yellow custom box with a big stamp delivered fresh. You get a free koozie, a free decal, a little letter from our director of
Leadership and Overcoming Challenges
00:18:47
Speaker
merch. We've taken it to a whole other level, and our merchandise business is more than our former team did in total revenue, including every ticket, every sponsorship, every food event, everything.
00:18:57
Speaker
and it's become a big business and it's because we've learned how to make it a better experience and get better and get better and get better and I think that's what I try to teach everyone like how many experiments are you doing this year, this month, this week, this day to get better and see what actually works. Ship it for customers and learn. I love it.
00:19:14
Speaker
I freaking love it. So if you do a rating and you write on our show and you give us a review, I'm sending you a Savannah banana barrel. I'm all in. Okay. Listen, I love, you just said this something and I'm super triggered right now about this, but do and learn. I think one of the biggest
00:19:32
Speaker
leadership qualities that one can have is making decisions, adapting after the decisions are made. Even if it's a bad decision, well, we made it. And the waffling is just brutal. So do and learn, I'm all about that. So tell me, when was it? So we talk about this uncommon path. A lot of people just have different risk tolerances, right? So you had a very high risk tolerance and praise the Lord, so did your wife. You sold your house and you went all in.
00:20:01
Speaker
Right. Well, you did have another option. It was like shut it all down. But you didn't and you did it. I love it. But some of our clients don't have that risk tolerance. And so we call this the runway. How long is your runway? And even when you did have that risk tolerance, when you sold the house, your runway is something at this point is like there's a timeline when money runs out. So when was it?
00:20:23
Speaker
in your path in this journey that you felt like the plane was off the runway like, hey, we got this. It's at least in the air and things are looking up because there's always this like, hey, we just sold the house. Was it right when Lynn
00:20:40
Speaker
Bless your heart. I mean, February 25th. Yeah, good question. February 25th was really special. Obviously, the amount of merchandise we did, we were like, oh my goodness, we've never seen this ever before. But then about two weeks later, we announced that a game had sold out. And people were like, what a game has never sold out in like the history of that ballpark. And really what we did was
00:21:01
Speaker
We went to the hospital and they committed to buying 3,000 tickets and then plus the other thousand tickets we had in season ticket holders and members and other groups, we announced they would sold out and people were like, wait, this team is getting tons of attention. They just sold out a game. And then all of a sudden people were like,
00:21:16
Speaker
whoa all right something's happening here so at that point just a few weeks later we knew that we would be okay but going into it as far as the runway i don't know we wrote a check of the little money that we had to cover the team as far as payroll for maybe two more payrolls um and again we only had we only had four people uh and it was you know they were 22 years old so
00:21:36
Speaker
It wasn't a ton of pay at that point. Two years later, put it in context, we let our staff dictate their own salary to us. And we said yes to every single raise when most of them were between 25 and 30%. So we changed our model a little bit to be all about our people. But back then, it was lower than we would have liked. So that's where we had about two more payrolls. But we had some big things that came up like selling out that game. And obviously, merchandise hasn't slowed down. So the key was we knew we had to be all fans first.
00:22:01
Speaker
And once we got people in that ballpark, I'll never forget opening night 2016 at poor, poor rain, of course, pouring rain, people rush to the ballpark. And we didn't know, like we never ran a game at the stadium, this big old stadium. They rush in the ballpark. We hadn't even opened the gates and we're doing all, all, all inclusive. So again, as I mentioned, every single ticket or a ballpark, because
00:22:22
Speaker
Nickel and dime, most people get nickel and dime. Yeah, you get nickel and dime. Yes. So again, eliminate all friction. So our ballpark experience, every single burger, hot dog, grilled chicken sandwich, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, and your ticket, and free parking, everything else is all included for $18 total, right? So that's our model, but we had no idea how to do it.
00:22:42
Speaker
So that first night, we realized we went through 10,000 pieces of meat in the first hour. We probably had 2,000 pieces of meat. The line went for hours. It was a brutal experience. But there was one thing that I remember. The game didn't start on time because of the rain. The game started about 8.30, 9 o'clock. I'm on the field. We're having the players introduced out of a trolley, an old school Savannah trolley. And I look up.
00:23:02
Speaker
and not one fan had left. And there's hundreds of people in banana costumes. There's one guy that shaped his whole beard like a yellow banana. I'm like, we have something crazy. And they stayed till the end of the game. And there were so many stories from that first year. And I was like, wow. And they left and they told everyone about the bananas and the breakdancing first base coach. And the fact that the players did the Britney Spears dance hit me baby one more time. And they talked about it. And then from that point on, every game sold out. And the waiting list now is in the thousands.
00:23:31
Speaker
because people, you know, you can't see it anywhere else because it's a different experience. So we invested in the experience. That's why we have a 20-piece pep band. That's why we're, you know, we have more dance teams than, you know, you combine two NBA teams. We have more dance teams than they have. I mean, we've created this whole circus-like experience. We invest there.
00:23:48
Speaker
We even have a professional high-fiber who's a six-year-old, and his job is paid to high-five fans. It was tough this year during COVID, so he came in. He didn't want to lose his job, so he said, can I be the professional air high-fiver? And I said, yes. Literally, we still paid him, which is breaking every child labor law, but he actually goes and acts like he's air high-fiving people at the ballpark this past summer.
00:24:08
Speaker
Because we were best in the experience, and then all your fans go and tell everyone about that experience. And that continues this unbelievable cycle of creating great buzz for the team. And that's what's happened. Gosh. Wow. I don't really even know what to say. I just so love you. I know. I'm like, you know, I just keep talking. Oh, Jesse, you're like the epitome of uncommon. And that's why we got hooked up with you. Yeah. I love it. Tell me this. How are you and Emily doing? How many kids do you guys have? How many children? All that.
00:24:37
Speaker
We have an amazing two and a half year old, Maverick, who Emily going back to having an amazing wife. So he was born on May 4th, 2018. And our first game that season opening night was like May 31st. And so we have a banana baby before every game. And so what we do is we actually get a baby, put them in a banana costume, bring them to home plate, have all the players on the ground lift their hands up in the air as we play.
00:25:08
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I convinced Emily. I said, Em, you know Mavericks, the banana baby. She goes, Jesse, he's going to be 27 days old. I go perfect. Take care of. She goes, Jesse, he's 27 days old.
00:25:19
Speaker
I go, M, he is the banana baby. She's like, okay, there's actually a few funny videos we did of filming it, but so we brought him out opening night and he became the banana baby. And then the next year, we actually opening night, we had him do the famous, the world's slowest race where we have a turtle mascot, race, race toddlers in crawling. So he was crawling and we had three other toddlers and Maverick gets out to a lead and another toddler passes him.
00:25:44
Speaker
You know, like a nine-month-old toddler. And the fans start booing this toddler. I'm like, this has been a scarless kid for life because he has been losing. And then the next year, this past year, when he was two, we brought him onto the field to say, play ball, go bananas. He said, play ball, go nanas. And so every year, he's a part of the experience.
Family and Innovation with Banana Ball
00:26:03
Speaker
Fans have sent him yellow tuxedos, which really small ones. And I thank them, but I go, guys, he really needs a green tuxedo because he's not quite right.
00:26:13
Speaker
And yeah, so we have a two and a half year old and we just officially got licensed to become foster parents. So we're expecting a call any minute. The reality like it could be it could be it could be tomorrow. And we're going to go on that path because my wife is she's supporting me with everything. This has been a dream of hers for many years. And the reality is there's over 500,000 kids in the US alone who don't have a home. And I think we have a more obligation to help there. And so we're going to do their best in that. And so we could have two, three, four, five, six, seven more kids.
00:26:42
Speaker
uh in the future but uh we're excited for that journey. Wow I'm like I'm letting you well I'm I'm interested in the baseball just because I don't know enough like are is this are your players paid or is this like like you know uh I've been away minor league or you know good question
00:26:59
Speaker
Yes and no. So, what we started as is a collegiate summer baseball team. And so, we get the top college players from all over the country. So, give an example, when Russell Wilson was at NC State, he played baseball for me and the former team in Gastonia. So, he made the right decision. He batted 205 for us. So, he made the right decision going to football. But, you know, we've had, for the bananas, we had a first rounder of the Braves, second rounder, fourth rounder. I mean, we've had a lot of top draft picks at college. But now, one of the biggest things, guys,
00:27:29
Speaker
When you go through any challenges, limitations, I think it's a great opportunity to really look big picture, to look at the whole chessboard. And this past year with COVID, we were able to really look at the whole chessboard. And where most teams, they are irrelevant for six, nine months a year, they're not playing games. We asked that question said, well, why is there an offseason?
00:27:51
Speaker
And then we said, well, we've reached our capacity in Savannah, but capacity is a state of mind. So people would say, yeah, you're like, no, we barely touched our capacity. Our capacity is all over the world. There's stadiums that are open and no one's coming to all over the world. So we asked all those questions. And so we started testing our vision. We developed a brand new game called Banana Ball because baseball is still too long, too slow and too boring. And I'm sorry, I know you guys like baseball, but to too many fans
00:28:16
Speaker
No, I don't. I haven't watched the game in a couple of years. It's not that I don't like it. I just wish there was like a mound of balls on the pitching mound and they were just whacking, just taking them and just zinging them in there. 100%. So we developed a new game because the reality is, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but back in the day when, before COVID, when we went to movies, you'd ever say, oh, I love this movie so much. I'm going to leave in the middle.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yet in baseball games, you watch fans leave in the middle of the game over and over and over again. But baseball has done nothing and I mean nothing to fix it. And so we said, let's take that on. So we developed a new game called Banana Ball with nine new rules. We played it this year in front of fans and our fans went nuts and not one fan left.
00:28:59
Speaker
That was the craziest thing about it. We didn't see one fan left before the game was over. That's a whole other topic conversation. But we invented that and then we said, all right, let's keep inventing. Why don't we play year round? So we decided to have a game in November to test and we called it fans giving. And we said the bananas would play the pilgrims.
00:29:17
Speaker
And we had no idea who would play, but we knew we had to find players. We also decided to do something really stupid. And we said, let's do this in honor of Thanksgiving, in honor of the Pilgrims. And so we're going to starve our fans for 66 minutes in honor of the 66-day journey the Pilgrims made to our country and then have a giant feast. So we had rations of bread and candy corn and muffins and
00:29:39
Speaker
and then we had a feast but our success was not ready for that terrible idea of a feast and that was another disaster but regardless that game sold out half our capacity two thousand fans in less than a day to come to a game in november people were flying and fall over so we proved that we can have year-round games and then we announced we're going to take the show on the road in the middle of a pandemic we're going to do a one city world tour
00:29:58
Speaker
And so we announced a one city world tour and get over 1000 nominations heard from 300 cities, 15 countries. I was like, sorry, Australia, we're not gonna be able to go to see you guys in 2021, maybe in a few years. But we chose one city who literally rolled out the yellow carpet for us welcomed us in. And literally within a few days, we had over 1000 on the waitlist for tickets to go see the bananas as the home team in a city that's almost 10 hours away, Mobile, Alabama.
00:30:23
Speaker
And so all those things are proven. So now we're going to have a big tryout in February, invite players from all over the world. And I'm saying all over the world because I hope we get people from all over. I know, obviously, COVID is a challenge. And then we're going to pay them. It's going to be our premier team. And we're using the word premier on purpose. And words are very intentional, as you guys know, on common life. I mean, there's a reason why you're using that title. We're not saying professional because I don't think anybody needs more professional in their life. No one comes home and says, honey, I met the most professional person today.
00:30:50
Speaker
No, we want different, we want fun, we want unique. So we're calling this our premier team because our premier team is going to be playing banana ball. There are going to be more bat flips, more celebrations. There's going to be more hijinks, shenanigans, more fun, more talent and more entertaining. And this is going to be the highest level of the bananas. And we're testing that all this spring.
00:31:08
Speaker
Wow. Kind of reminds me of like, uh, I got into in a brief period of my life, the, uh, WWE, uh, and just the experience of, you know, that. And so, uh, and that's, you know what, there's a reason why the WWE dominates. I've listened to probably in this ironic in the last month, every single podcast, Stephanie McMahon's been on what they're doing as far as their global brand and how they're growing it and using their live events and storytelling, which is so key. Um, we're, we're following the combination of WWE and Disney in Disney world.
00:31:37
Speaker
And so our ballpark, unlike WWE, they don't have a really home core and a home field. So Savannah, our ballpark will be Banana Land, which will be year round attractions, year round games. And then we will take the show on the road like WWE with live events year round. Wow. I got to put in a plug because we are in Iowa and you know where I'm going with this, the field of dreams.
00:31:59
Speaker
We need a little Savannah banana, banana ball in Iowa. I think, uh, you know, we did hear that some of our suggestions. So it's, it's on the list. I don't know if it's in the 2022 or 2023 list or later, but it's on the list. You know, I think how exciting would that be though? I mean, so when we travel, we'll bring our 20 piece pep band. We'll bring our break dancing first base coach. We'll bring our man in as our banana Nana's.
00:32:21
Speaker
we'll bring all of our characters. We have a professional wrestler, a luchador, who's our intimidation coach. We have a grandma coach in her sixties. I mean, we'll bring all these characters. And I think the circus stopped with PT Barnum was one of my biggest mentors. And, you know, a few years ago, I went 146 years. I'm hoping that we pick it up and just make it as baseball as our platform. But the circus will be coming back to town. And I think I can't tell you how excited we are to do this.
00:32:45
Speaker
I am going to, Philip is going to cringe because he knows I can't handle anything else right now. I want to throw out the first pitch when you guys come to the field of dreams. Even if it's a couple years, I'm committed
Vision, Community Engagement, and Future Goals
00:32:59
Speaker
to this. We don't do the first pitch, but we do the first pitch. We've had a lot of people, Josh Redick and mayors and a lot of people throw out the first banana.
00:33:06
Speaker
So the first pitch, you know, the first pitch would have to be a dizzy bat into the first pitch to see where I'm into that. Let me just say this because you can just stay at my house. You and Emily and your son just come on over. You can stay here. We'll host you. All right. That's so cool. I want to pivot because, I mean, this is no small feat. I mean, you're talking about a lot of logistics running these events.
00:33:29
Speaker
High pressure, you're very open. Yeah, we've failed a ton of times. What do you guys do internally to manage all this, to keep tabs of all this stuff? Yeah, the biggest key and the biggest thing we did this past summer was I got our whole leadership group, read a vision book together, and we determined our vision. Actually, we put it out there. It's accountable.
00:33:50
Speaker
The key is to focus on what, not how. Most leaders, what happens is they think of an idea and then immediately they start looking at all the how, all the roadblocks. For instance, if you guys are in Iowa, if you're in Iowa and you want to go to Savannah, say we're going to Savannah, we're going to see a bananas game. Well, the way you get there, that could change. You may drive and there may be traffic, there may be roadblocks, you may take detours. Fly, there might be a delay, you might have to fly into another city and then come to Savannah.
00:34:19
Speaker
There's all different ways you can get there, but if you focus so much on all those possible detours, all those possible challenges and obstacles, you'll never actually get there. You have to start going and figuring out the how as you're on your way. And so for us, we said, here's our 2025 vision. Here's where we are going. We're going to be a 24-7 365 brand that plays year-round games with no off season. We're going to turn our ballpark into banana land with attractions and all these different things that we talk about. It's on our website. You can find it on our About Us. We have our full vision. We did a video for it.
00:34:48
Speaker
We also did a whole graphic layout of it and we shared it with our team and I watched our team get so inspired, so fired up because you know what? They know where we're going. So let's go figure it out together. Let's not get bogged down with the hows. Let's get bogged down on the what and the excitement and the why we're going missing the impact and that has driven us. So that's logistics are certainly important, but logistics can kill dreams. Focus on the dream first, not the logistics. I got chills.
00:35:14
Speaker
This is amazing. How many employees do you have currently, Jesse? We have about 18 full-time amazing teammates, and we're hiring interns year-round, and then we have about 150 part-time. We just hired two more full-time in the past month, which I think if you look at every sports team in the country, they're letting people go. We are hiring more, because again, we're hiring for that vision where we're going. We're not hiring for our current state.
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, we took a seven-figure hit this past year. We couldn't play at full capacity. But our accountant called me the other day, said, Jesse, do you know that you guys were profitable this year? I go, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, you might be the only sports team in the country. I go, I'll take it. He goes, it was very, very little profit. I go, hey, that's OK. I'm not worried about the profit. I'm worried about our people. I told our people before, right when we hit the pandemic. And this was right after, guys. If you want a little context, on February 25, 2020, we announced we created the first ever ad-free ballpark.
00:36:08
Speaker
So we said, we're getting rid of all of our sponsorship, literally threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars. What a stupid thing to do two weeks before a pandemic. But we said, we don't believe anybody goes to a ballpark and wants to be sold, advertised to or marketed to. They want to escape and have fun. So we threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars. Five days later, we surprised our entire team with a trip to Disney World and including their spouses and significant others. So we spent another countless dollars on a trip to Disney. And we got all these ideas, all these visions. Then one week later, March 12th, it's a pandemic.
00:36:38
Speaker
the next week our team's home and we're having, you know, Zooms every single day. And I told the first Zoom, the first call, I said, guys, here's what our commitment is to you. You know what happened five years ago with Emily and I having to sell our house. We will do that again if we have to, but you guys are safe with us.
00:36:55
Speaker
But our jobs will change. Right now, we're not ticket people. We're not merchandise people. We are all entertainers and fans first. What are we going to do to entertain our fans at this point? We're all in this together. And I go, what are we going to work towards? A lot of teams are going to say, hey, we just can't do it. We're going to shut down. We're going to sit on the sidelines and be a spectator and everything. I go, that's not who we are. And that's not what we're made of. So what's going to happen, guys, is on opening night, when we play in 2020, we're going to have a national anthem. And it's not just going to be one person singing on the field.
00:37:22
Speaker
Every single person, every fan, every player, every coach, every one of us are going to be singing together saying that we did this work together. That's what we're working towards. We owe this to our fans. We owe this to ourselves to work towards it. And it's time to get to work. So cool, man. That's so cool.
00:37:38
Speaker
So tell us where you're going now and tell us how we can be a part of it. I think everybody that's going to hear this is going to be all about this and wanting to help you achieve what you want to do mainly because of the leadership. Here's the deal. At the end of the day, we need more leaders. We need more uncommon people.
00:37:56
Speaker
to look at this world and just see like, you know what? I see a little different. Like I see a different slant on this and we need to impact more people. You need to impact more people. I think our goal for the 10 year goal is to impact 25,000 families just with this uncommon path. Like because once you're in this passion and your drive, it is easy to sell. People are drawn to it very quickly. So where are you going? And yeah, let's just talk about that. What's your vision in that?
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'll just all move back to the vision. You know, again, what we realized and I'll never forget two moments this past summer in the middle of COVID. And again, we found a way we found a way before we played in front of more fans than any baseball team in the country with zero positive cases of COVID. And we found a way and we did it. And I remember the second game of the year, a gentleman comes up to me with his wife and his three kids.
00:38:43
Speaker
And he goes, thank you so much, Jesse. It was such a great time. I go, man, thank you. He goes, not really. We just drove 40 hours from Utah for this game. And we're driving 40 hours back tomorrow. And it was everything that we hoped it would be. In my mind, I'm like, I want to drive 40 minutes to go to certain things. You drove 40 hours? And he was like, yes, we needed this. We needed this for our family. And you guys delivered everything we could hope for.
00:39:06
Speaker
And then the last game of the year, a season ticket holder, big guy, comes up to me and a tear coming down his face and he says, Jesse, I just want you to know that you guys saved my life. And I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I was in a really dark place back in April and May and really dark place when I found out that you guys were going to play.
00:39:27
Speaker
And when I found out that this was going to happen, you guys gave me something to look forward to. And when I came on our first night and was able to dance, sing and have fun, I was able to escape and feel like I was a part of something again. And as you've seen in every single game, you guys saved my life this year. Wow. And I share those two moments. And again, we've had the countless of those moments because I realized that we have a moral obligation
00:39:52
Speaker
to share what we do and to do more of it and affect and impact more people. So you guys for giving me this opportunity as a platform to share, hopefully provide some value. Hopefully that does that. Because there's nothing like in a given night when we get the whole stadium doing our hey baby dance, which is a tradition. And everyone goes, hey, hey baby. Ooh, ah. And you'll see an 80-year-old doing it right next to an eight-year-old. And you'll see enough sold out night, 4,000 plus people dancing together. Our whole players, all our players, our staff.
00:40:22
Speaker
It's something that I think we need more of. We need more opportunities to have pure joy, to be escaped, to not be lost in a phone, to not be lost in what you have to do, to be able to enjoy the moment. And we hope we can provide more of those all over the world. So, you know, however anyone wants to join in and help with that, and more than anything, maybe just provide it themselves. If we give more of that, we're going to save a lot of lives and actually bring a lot more joy to so many more people. I got it. I know we're wrapping up here, but I got to ask one more question. I'm just dying because you're in Savannah, Georgia, right? That's correct.
00:40:51
Speaker
Okay. You're at like what, right across the street from the masters. How far away are you from Augusta? Oh geez. That's actually, that's actually surprising about three or four hours. Oh, okay. So a little farther than I thought. But anyways, my point is, I think like one of the best tour stops now is the, um, is the garbage. I can't think of the name of it in Arizona. Oh, the waste management, the 16th. Yeah, the waste management has now become like, you know, the WWE for golf. Uh,
00:41:19
Speaker
But, like, you're looking at how, you know, the comparison to Augusta is, you know, obviously storied. I'm not trying to diminish that in any way. But probably one of the, you know, most rules, stuffiest, you know, kind of counter to what you're doing, right? And the numbers in golf, the numbers in baseball. Are you guys, I gotta think you're getting approached by other teams, other sports, you know, especially through this year with what you're doing.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, we've been fortunate to hear from a lot of people. I know a lot of what we do is a little crazy for the other sports, for the higher level. We hear from a lot of big time businesses. I'm fortunate I get asked to speak in front of billion dollar businesses and so many different industries about how to create these raving fans and how to think differently and act differently in business.
00:42:05
Speaker
But yeah, we hear from sports teams, but you know the reality is it's a you know We're kind of just focusing on we don't focus on competition. We're just focusing on doing our thing learning from other industries So I get really excited when you know completely different industries reach out to me like even like you guys It's like how does this fit with a financial advisor or the people that you're serving? But there is there's so many parallels, and I think that's where we learn the most is outside of our industries
00:42:30
Speaker
Well, I think for us in our business, we're always trying to think about how can we make this simpler? How do we demystify some of this stuff? Because I think a lot of people, it's just complex or complicated. My mind is just racing right now of how can we bring more of this?
00:42:49
Speaker
you know, mindset to money, you know, because especially when you look at the people that, you know, don't really have a chance to save, they're not, it's not taught in schools. And there's just so many different barriers that we're not talking about as regards to money. You know, and barriers that you've broken down in your business, you know, and so I think it's just refreshing to hear, you know, you and your passion and obviously is translating over the microphone and
00:43:11
Speaker
And I can share if you want. The topic of speech that I'm doing so much these days, virtually, and it fits exactly what you're trying to do as far as simplifying and helping from education and financial and all that, it's the four E's to create raving fans and the four E's. Number one, eliminate friction. Literally look at every friction point there is in this experience. And I go through a whole list of how you could do that. Number two is entertain always. It's like, well, how do you even entertain?
00:43:36
Speaker
And I challenge every single business in the entertainment business because the definition of entertainment is to provide enjoyment or provide amusement. So how can you do that more from your specter? And then the third, experiment constantly. As Jeff Bezos said, our success is dependent on the amount of experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day. And the final one is empower action.
00:43:55
Speaker
And how do you actually empower? And we talk about how we empower our team from what's a person's first day with us. We actually have them do something that they've never done before that can actually take care of fans or take care of our people in a different way. And so when you put together, eliminate friction, entertain, always experiment constantly and empower action, though it's a way that you can really accomplish more than you ever imagined.
00:44:14
Speaker
I love it. I'm going to just say this because we got to wrap it up, but you're my favorite. And I do want to just thank you and Emily for the sacrifice that you have put on the line to be uncommon and to impact many, many other people in such a positive way. Like that is why we started Uncomma Wealth Partners.
00:44:35
Speaker
and we need way more of it. And just the sacrifice alone, I'd say the trials produce endurance and character and steadfastness even more than the joys. And so not only have you overcome those with the torn ligament, but you and Emily together have been unified in the sacrifice and then building something that's bigger than you. And so, man, kudos to you. Thank you for your time and thank you for being with us today.
00:45:00
Speaker
Thank you, guys. Seriously, I appreciate what you're doing and sharing. We need more of this in the world. So I appreciate you both. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jesse. You've been listening to UncomiLife Project. I've been your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Tune in next time. Until then, go be uncommon. Thanks, everybody.
00:45:14
Speaker
That's all for this episode of the Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.