Bananas’ founder Jesse Cole: I have no interest in money | Forward Progress

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1:00Hey, it's Thursday, which means we're coming at you with a short, feel-good story from a past guest. Hope you enjoy the clip. This week, Jesse Cole.

1:13Why is your biggest fear becoming irrelevant?

1:22Feeling like you don't matter is a truly sad thing for me.

1:26Jesse Cole:And I share with our team often that nothing matters more than making people feel like they matter. How do you make people feel like they matter? And I think often as a kid, I probably felt that when I was alone, that I didn't matter. My parents got divorced. I thought it was because of me. And that idea of feeling like you're irrelevant or you don't matter or what you do doesn't have a purpose or meaning to people in their lives, that kills me in my core because it's the why behind everything. Why are we doing what we do? For me, money has, I have no interest in money. It's Walt Disney said, money doesn't excite me, my ideas excite me.

2:07Jesse Cole:For me, it's doing something that can bring people together to bring joy, bring fun. I think about that all the time. And if all of a sudden we're irrelevant, then we're not doing that at all. And so I never want to get to that point where there's nothing. It's just like, oh, we're going through the motions. To me, that's a failure. Making the decision to produce and fund your own broadcasts. Explain the thinking behind that. We've learned betting on yourself for the long game is always the path we want to take. And so, you know, from the beginning, we had to figure out how to do our own food at the stadium.

2:43Jesse Cole:And so we did all you can eat. And we thought that was a better experience. And, you know, get all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, everything all included. when we started$15? We said, let's do that. We had no idea how to do that. No one's made their whole stadium all inclusive. But we said, if we figure this out, would this be a great experience? And then we got frustrated on the idea of tickets. You know, we had an opportunity to partner with some of the big ticket companies. And they're like, all right, it's going to cost you a couple of dollars per ticket, plus this, plus this.

3:11Jesse Cole:And I go, so if we sell 100 ,000 tickets, it's going to cost us a couple hundred thousand dollars? We don't have that. And they go, oh, just put it on your fan. I go, no, we're not putting it on our fan. I said, there's got to be a better way. And so we ended up buying a small ticket company and building it ourself with no ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. It shut down numerous times in the beginning. It broke. The all-you-can-eat people waited for three hours the first night. It always struggles in the beginning. You've got to get through the messy to get to the great. Our merchandise.

3:40Jesse Cole:We've been reached out to by so many groups. Hey, we'll do all your merchandise. We'll do all your ship. We'll do our fervil. No. We want to have a custom box that goes with a free koozie, a decal, a personal letter. For our first six years, we called every single fan that bought merchandise and thanked them with a personal phone call. I go, we want to do that. Our broadcast. Oh, no, just give it to someone else. They'll do it. No. We want to figure out how we can do it the best for the fan and not be told what we can't do and what we could do or what everyone else is doing. When you become part of a bigger system, you're just a cog.

4:09Jesse Cole:You're just a cog. And I was like, we want to be the only one that can do something special. And so it's a long game. We leave millions of dollars on the table. It's very messy in the beginning, but once you start to learn it and get better at it, then you have this amazing thing that you've built that truly cares about fans that you can do your way and what you believe is best for the fans. What was the hardest lesson you learned during the process of figuring out that, hey, better to do this all in-house? I mean, when me and more importantly, our staff gets yelled at, screamed at, fans have spit in our staff's faces.

4:50That eats me up because of a decision we made.

4:54Jesse Cole:Our staff has to take the consequences from the fans to say, this is not a good experience right now. Is there one that comes to mind? Oh, I mean, you know, the biggest one is we wanted to do so our tickets. We wanted to do our ticket experience different. And so what we learned or what we saw is that, hey, reserve seating at stadiums. There's empty seats. watch a major league game, look behind home plate early in the game, and a lot of the seats are empty. And because, oh, I've got my seat. I don't have to come. I don't need to get there early. I'll show up whenever I need to show up. And I said, no, there's got to be a better way.

5:28Jesse Cole:What if we do open seating so the biggest fans get there early and they fill up all the seats and it's a better energy, better experience? We've done that for nine years until recently. And we just stopped. Why? Because what happened is the excitement for the bananas and the banana ball experience reached more of a fever pitch It was unsafe. People have been saving seats. Other fans get in fights. No, that's my seat. That's not my seat. I watched what we believed would be a great experience. Got to a point where it's no longer a great experience. And we made that switch for the first game ever at Fenway Park.

5:59Jesse Cole:So on the biggest test, we made that switch at Fenway Park. Because what I was scared of, fans wouldn't show up early. They wouldn't get in their seats. It would take away from the whole excitement of a banana ball game. I was wrong. The whole stadium was full by 6.30. 30 minutes before the game, 20 ,000 people came three hours before the game. There was still the excitement. How did you combat scalpers? That was the whole process. Yeah, I mean, it's been a very tough journey. We haven't completely figured out. We're not even close. The reality is when you have demand on tickets, now again, from just selling two tickets when we first started to now a wait list that's approaching 3 million.

6:38Jesse Cole:Real people, 3 million on our wait list to get tickets, which is staggering. When there's tickets to an event, there's 100, 200 ,000 people that are trying to get tickets for a 10 ,000 seat stadium, a 20 ,000 seat stadium. So what happens is we sell those tickets to our fans at an unbelievably reasonable level,$35,$40,$50, no taxes, no ticket fees, no convenient fees. And then they put them on the secondary market and people are paying$5,$6,$7,$800 over$1 ,000. dollars. And so the biggest challenge that I have is every day, if you look at any of our social media posts, oh yeah, they're fun, but they charge$600 for tickets.

7:14Jesse Cole:They charge 700. We get attacked for something that we don't even do. And so it was two years ago, a ticket broker reached out to me, a CEO of a big ticket company and said, hey, we'll pay you a million dollars right now. Let's get 40, 50 tickets for every game. We'll double the price, what you're charging, a million dollars right now. I wrote back, not interested immediately. It wasn't a second that I thought about it because That's not who we are. That's not what the fans are about. We've never made decisions for short-term profits over long-term fans. Now, the challenge we have with scalpers and everything is individuals could buy four tickets, but at the last minute they find out they only need two, they need three.

7:48Jesse Cole:They know they can make$1 ,000 selling those. How do we stop that? And so how do you do what's truly fans first? And so we're working on it, but you've got to think, do you want to hurt a majority of fans just because of some fans that are doing it? And that's that balance that we're playing. And so we're eventually going to figure it out, but it's going to be a journey to get there. What rule changes are you most proud of? The game of banana ball is what I'm most proud of and what we've built. I mean, you see all the dancing and all the entertainment and everything else. But the game of banana ball, because I've seen what's happened for fans and I see kids now playing it all over.

8:24Jesse Cole:It's truly special. And when I look at the game, we just looked at it like we do our fan experience. What are all the friction points in a fan experience? Games too long, too slow, too boring. You get nickel and dimed at a ballpark. There's ads everywhere, which we eliminated. You know, we just kept limiting. You took them out of the outfield wall. Yeah, we eliminated all of our ads. I don't think anyone comes to a ballpark to be sold to, marketed to, or advertised to. Oh, I can't wait to get to the ballpark to look at the ads on the outfield wall. Nobody, all right? So we eliminated that. And then now, right now, we keep all our games on YouTube.

8:52Jesse Cole:You know, right now, you try to watch a sporting event. Good luck. Where is it? Where do I find it? You know, what paywall do I have to get through to watch a sporting event? And we said, no, we're going to keep it for free for our fans every single game. And we're losing millions of dollars by not taking the huge broadcast rights to do that. Now we're going to find a balance where we can have non-exclusive. But anyways, that's the whole process. So when it gets to banana ball, we approached it the same exact way. We said, what are all the friction points in a regular baseball game? What are all the things that are slow, long, and boring?

9:23Jesse Cole:How do we eliminate them or change them? So it literally started with, okay, when we created the rules for banana ball, the average major league game was over three hours and 10 minutes. I said, this is ridiculous. And I saw that fans were leaving games early, even our games with all like the entertainment and the dancing and the fun, they were leaving our games early. And so we actually took pictures of our grandstand every 30 minutes for a whole year. And we watched and we kept track of when fans were leaving. And so we realized around nine o 'clock, they start a seven o 'clock game. So I'm proud of the first rule, a two hour time limit.

9:54Jesse Cole:People know, hey, when the game's over, They can see there's 10 minutes left. I'm going to stay till the end because it's almost over. In a regular baseball game, you don't have that. But then everything else. I mean, stepping out of a box. I watched one player step out of a box, taking 30 seconds in between each pitch. That's ridiculous. So he said, you can't step out of a box. It's a strike. The walks. Imagine a sporting event, Graham. Sporting event. It's called a walk. All right, everybody. It's time for the walk. Like, what? That's a sporting event run. So we eliminated that, made that into a sprint where you literally got to throw the ball all the way around and run around the bases, and it's a crazy play at second.

10:28Jesse Cole:So I think there's all these rules that we try to eliminate the friction, but the one that everyone talks about most proud of is that we had the courage to involve the fans directly in the game, and if a fan catches a foul ball, it's an out. And to see what's happened and the amount of gloves that are coming to our games now, just like back in the day, and kids fired up, I'm gonna catch a foul ball today. And to see a 15-year-old catch a foul ball to win a game, and at Cleveland, Major League Stadium, of a 71-year-old catch a ball to win a game is how you write that up. And so all those rules, you look at what are the friction points, and then what would be something great for the fans, and that's kind of how we built Banana Ball.

11:07Jesse Cole:In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pibb, sweet cherry, bold outbursts, the kind of flavor that gets attention. Bold kick of cherry. Hey, yo, Mr. Pibb. Life is full of choices, But the choice between getting crispy chicken nuggets or a Crunchwrap slider isn't one you'll have to make. The new Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider at Taco Bell. All white meat chicken nuggets, breaded in tortilla chips, wrapped up, sauce and all, inside a slider-sized Crunchwrap. Choose from creamy chipotle or jalapeno honey mustard. Well, there we go. Life still full of choices. The new Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider.

11:44A brand new classic. Only at Taco Bell. And participate in U.S. Taco Bell locations for limited time and while supplies last. How true is it that you almost view yourself more as a traveling circus than a team with the amount of people that you travel with now?

11:59Jesse Cole:So in extensive research that I've done, obviously, WWE and Grateful Dead, I've probably learned more from the Grateful Dead than most people realize. And explain that with regards to the touring. With the Grateful Dead, they were fascinating on how they did things. So basically, they started and said, we're going to do tickets ourselves. So they started doing it themselves. They were just calling Ticket Masters. They aren't doing the experience. there. They started actually doing, they allowed people to come in and record their shows. So everyone was like against this. You could not record the shows.

12:28Jesse Cole:You could not do this. They're like, no, if you want to spread the music and share it all in. And so they actually gave a spot for them to record and help them do that. I mean, they innovated every step of the way because they were interested in the fans. And then what they did, the biggest thing for me is that what people don't realize the Grateful Dead, if they go do three shows in a row at one place, they don't repeat songs. It's a different show every single night, different set list. So you can go to all three nights and you can get three different experiences. And I said, that is what we need to create.

12:58Jesse Cole:Because I studied the Harlem Globetrotters and I realized what they did in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, they changed the game of basketball. They were the most popular sports team in the world. Wilt Chamberlain chose to play for them before blowing the NBA. I'm going to play the Globetrotters first. I mean, they beat the Lakers. They played in Madison Square Garden. They sold it out twice. They played in front of 75 ,000 people in Berlin. They were huge. But then they said, you know what? Well, this is hard. It's like, what if we replicate this? We can really grow. We're going to have two Globetrotters teams.

13:26Jesse Cole:We're going to have three Globetrotters teams. We're going to develop the generals. And the Globetrotters are going to win every night. We're going to do the same show. And it's going to be easy to replicate wherever we go. And they did that. And they had huge success in the 40s, 50s, and 60s while they were still a new thing and all. And then something happened. People got bored of the show. They started seeing it. They don't need to see it as well. They lost some of their relevancy. And so for me, I talked to them and I asked questions. And I said, well, what does your tour look like now? They're like, oh, we travel with 30 people.

13:53Jesse Cole:You know, people have done the tour before and it's how we do. And he says, yeah, we just come in and this is what we do. I'm like, no, we gotta go the opposite. We gotta go big. And so we bring everybody. We bring the band. We bring the banana-nanas. We bring the man-nanas. We bring the DJs. We bring the breakdancing coaches. We bring our entertainment team, our promotions team. We bring it all because we want to deliver a unique, different show, just like the Grateful Dead, every single night. And to do that, we've got to bring our whole cast. And so, yeah, we travel with over 200 people for Major League Stadiums, which is completely unscathable in the scheme of things.

14:26Jesse Cole:But it's delivering a better show for our fans, and we've got to do that and figure it out as we go. That's it for now. But if you're hungry for more In-Depth with Graham Bensinger interviews, head over to YouTube.com slash Graham Bensinger You can dive into our deep library, which includes more than 2 ,000 clips spanning 12-plus years. Thanks again for listening.

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