Jesse Cole: Savannah Bananas Founder

22:39Jesse Cole:She knows me better than I do. I think about, yeah, I didn't have someone telling me they loved me as a kid. And, you know, my dad and I say to each other all the time now, I don't think we ever said it to each other. It never happened. I didn't have it. And then my mom, who wasn't around later on, she just started saying it to me. I'm like, we don't even know each other that well. So I didn't have that direct love every day. So I didn't have that nourishment of, hey, I'm with you. We got this. We're doing this together. So, yeah, I mean, my kids, the people that are close to me, you know, whenever I do something, I'm like, was that good?

23:12Jesse Cole:Like, I'm like, I ask those questions, which is an insecurity. And I get it. I realize it. But I want to make sure that, you know, they feel like I'm doing right for them and right for us and right for our family. So you wrote in your book that you were considered one of the best players in Massachusetts. You probably were one of the top five pitchers in the state. How do you then find out your baseball career is over? Yeah, I was fortunate. You know, in Massachusetts, the baseball talent wasn't as high as other states. And so I stood out, you know, throwing 90 miles an hour back then, stood out.

23:47Jesse Cole:And I had scouts at my games. And it was, hey, this is the way my life's going to go. I'm going to have that opportunity. And I can't tell you how many times I dreamed, you know, in the 37th round, the Boston Red Sox select. And it was always a late round. I was never going to be an early pick. So I always envisioned late. I pictured that over and over and over again. And I visualized it. And I was like, this is happening. And then going to Wofford, all of a sudden scouts at my games. I'm getting letters. And the New York Mets were sending me Christmas cards every year. of Shea Stadium in the snow and I was like wow like this this can actually happen and then boom I started having shoulder pain Tried coming back and then boom my arms kept getting bruised up when I was pitching it was just terrible and it was misdiagnosed They kept giving me shots of cortisone.

24:30Jesse Cole:It just wasn't happened and finally I got the MRI with the die and they said I had three complete tears and I Remember because I was filming the documentary for my major that I created on leadership and and I became a character in that coming back and see how I handled it but also how the coaches and I turned the camera right on me as I found out that I would never play the game again and It was devastating. I was emotional. I got lost I you know I remember saying my dad always tell told me to stay positive But I don't know how I stay positive right now because this was the one path that I saw in my life And now just like that it's over and And still to this day it bothers you No to this day.

25:15Jesse Cole:It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh, I'm very easy to it's very easy for me to go back and say if that Didn't happen and I stayed healthy and I got to play pro ball for a few years Whatever it is my life the impact what we're doing would never have happened not even close It's the best thing that ever happened to be from a professional standpoint What do you think would have happened had you stayed with it? I would have played ball I probably would have gone into coaching. So I would have played ball for a while. I would have coached. My dad was a coach, and I was around a lot of great coaches.

25:42Jesse Cole:And I would have been a fine coach. I was hardworking, but I wouldn't have changed the game the way that we've done and made the impact that I think we'd be able to do. Do you remember back then when you got the news what the lowest point was? This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19 ,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs. So you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride.

26:16Jesse Cole:Download the State Farm app or go online at statefarm.com. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Pool days call for cookouts and lots of laundry. This Memorial Day at Lowe's. Save$80 on a Charbroil Performance Series 4 Burner Gas Grill. Now just$199. Plus, get up to 45 % off select major appliances to keep dishes, clothes, and food fresh. Having fun in the sun is easy with us in your corner. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid through 527. While supplies last, selection varies by location. See associate or lowes.com for details.

26:56Jesse Cole:Well, I had to get surgery, and so I'm barely able to move my shoulder, and I couldn't shave, couldn't do anything. And I had no path and I was finishing out my major. And it was kind of despair. It was just like, what's next? And I had an option to go into coaching. I was like, all right, I guess I'll try that. But going into something where you're not excited about is something that I never, ever want to do ever again. Because I went and I was like, fine, I'll go into coaching. And I went into it. I coached for a summer, which again, And then helped another big aha for me in creating Banana Ball and what we're trying to do.

27:33Jesse Cole:But looking back, that was a really challenging time when you have a clear path, you have a clear vision, and then all of a sudden that vision's gone and you don't have the next vision at that point. And I didn't have that next vision at all. What are you thinking at the time? Again, it was just like, I guess I'll go into coaching because that's what everyone assumes I will go into. Been around coaches, can play the ball, understand the game. That's what I'm going to. It's like, okay, I'll do what everyone expects of me. And that's not a recipe for success. You wrote in your book that you miss playing in the worst way.

28:08Still?

28:09Jesse Cole:I've been able to reframe that as a new stage. I miss being on stage and the opportunity to perform and to do something pretty special. I miss the parts of the game when you're not, you're fully in it, you're fully immersed and nothing else, you're not focused on anything else. I mean, I've had games when I'm pitching, and I don't notice anything else other than the glove, and I'm just there. And I'm actually singing a song in my head. And I'm literally singing. It was always Send Me In My Way by Rusted Root. I don't know why I was singing that song, but that song always stayed in my head. And I would sing it through like seven, eight innings, and then I'd pitch a great game, and I was like fully into something.

28:45Jesse Cole:And now, more than ever, as we're in phones and everything else, being that fully immersed in something, that deep, deep thought and focus was pretty special. I think I miss those moments, but those were fleeting. All of a sudden, if you're having a game and you're getting shelled and balls going left and right, it's hard to do that. So it happened a few times. I miss those parts. Any ability to recreate that in what you do now? Oh, 1 ,000%. But can you be fully present in it? Especially in your role, though, when you're running the whole... Oh, yeah. It happens almost every game during yellow when the lights turn off and everyone in the stadium puts on their flashlights and they're all singing Yellow and I'm looking around, there's a moment where I get lost in what we've created and what we're a part in.

29:30Jesse Cole:Everyone doing something together, I get lost. And I always have to kick myself out because I got to lead us in and finish the moment. But yeah, that happens almost every night because I can look around and feel it and see what we're a part of and feel like it's truly, truly special. You singing the song to yourself in those moments? I'm singing Yellow by Coldplay. I mean, I'm singing that song, and I'm feeling it, and I'm looking around, and I'm seeing everyone else singing. It's something that I feel what we're able to create now and feel everyone truly, truly in something, singing, dancing, where nothing else in the world matters.

30:05Jesse Cole:That's where I get to experience those moments. How do you think you were influenced by your early roles at the minor league clubs? Well, Gastonia, which was a college summer baseball team, one of the lowest levels of baseball there was, I spent 10 plus there, 10 plus years learning there. People don't even realize, like, overnight success, the bananas. I spent 10 years where I think we had one media story in 10 years. And it was, I mean, to be blunt, it was kind of a little club when you came in, right? I mean, it was like, it wasn't like you were going to the Yankees of minor league baseball.

30:43Jesse Cole:I mean, the only way you get a job at 23 years old as the GM is it has to be one of the worst teams in the entire country. And so I became the GM at 23. There was literally 200 fans coming to the games, max$268 in the bank account my first day. And the team had lost$150 ,000 the previous year. They hadn't even brought in that much revenue to give you a perspective of how tough that team was, but it was the perfect place to learn. How so? I had nothing to lose. You can only go up. You don't want to take over something when it's at the highest. You want to take over something where it's at its lowest and then be able to learn and grow.

31:18Jesse Cole:And so I was able to try everything. And because I wasn't able to pay myself for three months, four months, I remember I started in September of 07. I think it was the middle or end of December I took my first paycheck. That's how tough it was. We had two other full-time employees, and we had to figure out how to get people excited about coming to a low-level baseball team. And that's where I realized that I had to do something else, and I had to get a new form of education. Which was what? P.T. Barnum, Walt Disney, Cirque du Soleil, WWE, Grateful Dead, everybody in the entertainment business.

31:58Jesse Cole:It was then I realized that baseball, we could never win on baseball. because we were never going to be the best baseball team. You got the Yankees, the Red Sox, you got Major League, you got AAA, AA, single A, you got pro ball all over the country. We're college summer baseball. You can't sell baseball. You got to sell something different. And so I learned that from, you know, P.T. Barnum and Walt and all that. I said, all right, what would they do? And what do you mean you learned that from them? Like what was, like you just decided then you're going to start reading or watching docs on these?

32:29Jesse Cole:Well, yeah, I mean, I think it was very, you know, I always kind of was a big fan of Disney World. You know, my dad took me there as a kid, and I was just, I was the person that would, like, go to the Walt Museum parts and MGM Studios, and I would look, like, I was fascinated by the building of Disney World and what it was. So I was always fascinated by that. And what was it, the big kahuna medallion? Yeah, so at Typhoon Lagoon, I became the big kahuna. So we went to Typhoon Lagoon, and they asked all these trivia questions. And the kid who won got to be the big kahuna and got to go in the park early, and they got a medallion.

32:59Jesse Cole:And it was this huge, magical moment. And we went, and I didn't get the answers. And this kid guy go, I want to go back to Typhoon Lumen the next day. I'm going to get it. And I went back the next day. I had a magical moment. I'll never forget that as a kid. And so I was always enamored with Disney. And so I thought a little bit, like, if we were going to go into the baseball business, could we Disney-fy it? Could we make it special and magical? And so I was like, all right, well, let's start reading more, because I need to educate myself on Walt. And then I thought about P.T. Barnum, because running a circus and bringing people together to see something different, I was like, all right, well, how can we think of it from there?

33:32Jesse Cole:And so I just started reading those books immediately and thinking, what are the wild, crazy ideas that we can do to get people to realize this isn't just low-level baseball. There's something else here. And what were the early things you took from that education that you started immediately applying? Well, it was, I mean, P.T. Barnum was all about attention. You know, I learned right away, attention beats marketing 1000 % of the time. And that's what you've always said. You like don't have a marketing spend. You have an attention plan. Yes, 100%. And that means what? So, so, so PT Barnum said without promotion, something terrible happens, nothing.

34:08Jesse Cole:And so I realized very quickly that we had to promote in a different way and think of things that could create attention. So like the first things I did never got huge attention because I was learning, but like we, it was when HGH was huge. This was back in 07. And so you had steroids and HGH. So I fired our mascot for BGH, bear growth hormone, because it was a bear. I fired him, immediately fired him. I had a picture of him walking out. So I fired our mascot, which made no sense. But literally, he's gone. I'm like, we're bringing in a new one, which ironically brought in one that was ripped, and his name was Chisel.

34:38Jesse Cole:So that's a whole other story. But I started creating attention. And I said, all right, well, what if we bury a diamond ring in the infield dirt? Let's do that, and let's do a dig for the diamond, which has been done before. But I thought about that, and I said, well, what if we did a dig to China night? and we actually, I reached out to a travel agency and I said, I need some help. I want to give away a trip to China. They go, what do you mean? I was like, can you get me just a flight to China? They go, we can get you a flight to China. They go, you don't want accommodations? I go, nope, just that.

35:04Jesse Cole:And so literally, so I literally put in the infielder, I said, dig to China night. You're going to get a trip to China and had all these people digging. And this woman pulled it up and it said, a one-way flight to China, no flight back and no accommodations. So I got her to China. We eventually gave her a cruise instead. She wasn't just going to go to China on the way. But you create attention because you create a story. And so I started creating all that. I mean, we did Flatulence Fun Night, where we literally had whoopee cushion giveaways. We had a bean burrito eating contest. We did Salute to Underwear Night, one of my first years, where we literally threw out underwear in the crowd.

35:34Jesse Cole:If people wear underwear over their pants or their shorts, they got a free giveaway. And it was the most unfamily-friendly night we've ever done. But the reality is people started saying, what are they doing over there? And it started creating a little bit of attention. I started thinking, what would PT do? It was a little wild. That doesn't make sense. What about the players dancing? And I started asking all these questions by just thinking, what are the things that you normally would see at a baseball game? And what would be the exact opposite? And that was 10 years of trial and experimentation.

36:01I was talking to your mentor and I guess then owner of the team, Ken, yesterday, and he brought up the Midnight Madness game and the community give back. What stands out from each of those?

36:17Jesse Cole:Well, I said, how could we create some attention and do something people would never do and find a new way to get fans to come to a game? And so I was thinking about, you know, all right, games are always at 7 o 'clock. What if you did a game at midnight? And I told him about it. He goes, who's going to come? I go, people will come. He goes, no one's going to come. I go, they'll come. I go, just give me this chance. And he always gave me chances. And I said, so I found a new way of getting people in. So there were some manufacturing companies in Gastonia. I went to those that had three shifts.

36:48Jesse Cole:And I said, hey, have you ever done anything for your second shift that gets out at 10 o 'clock? They go, oh, it's really tough because they work. I was like, I've got the perfect opportunity for you. We're having a midnight game. And so I got a company to buy 2 ,000 tickets for their second shift. It's already a success. And then we said, all right, how do you make it fun for everyone else? I mean, the idea of doing last call at 2 a.m. at a baseball game is very funny. And so we just made it into a whole experience, an event, and had 3 ,000 or 4 ,000 people show up. It was huge. And he said that was the biggest night Gastonia ever had.

37:16Yeah. And then the community give back night, he's like, I thought he was batshit crazy when he comes to me and says he wants to give free admission and food for the first thousand people.

37:28Jesse Cole:Yeah, it was the last game of the year. And I said, hey, we're a part of this community. Let's find a way to give back to them and give them an opportunity to it. And he goes, how's that going to work? And I go, oh, don't worry, we'll get sponsors. This is a great thing for sponsors to look good. they're going to take care of all these tickets. And I go, we're going to feed everybody. And he goes, what do you mean? I go, we're going to have the biggest night in history and it's going to be a huge success. And I believed in it because I had sponsors that said, we'd love to do this. And if you have enough tickets out in the right places with the right people that believe in it.

37:55Jesse Cole:And so I said, it's going to be huge. And Sundays were like our worst day. Like it was 200, 300 people. And he's like, all right, I guess we got nothing to lose. And he, yeah, he tells me all the time when he pulled up and he saw me right out in front and there's a line that wrapped all the way around the stadium. And I had this big grin just smiling at him. He said, I'll never forget that face that you gave me. And it ended up being the biggest night we've ever had. He was doing something that was attracting new demographics to ballparks at a time when people were not coming out to the ballpark unless they were diehard baseball fans.

38:27And that's not who he was attracting. He was attracting the families. He was attracting the grandparents. He was attracting the little kids. The whole community was coming out to his ballpark to see something that they hadn't seen before, to be entertained. And that's not what any of the rest of us were focusing on, even in minor league baseball, when we're kind of the joke and the fun, whereas major league baseball is more serious. Even when I was working in minor league baseball, we were not doing it even close to the level that he had done. And so you start to get a little bit of buzz for some of what you're doing.

39:01Tell about the first email you get from Emily.

39:06Jesse Cole:so I was always trying to learn and trying to you know not just Wald and PT Barnum and Amazon and Apple and all those I was I was trying to learn from others and then on what to do but also what not to do so we hosted a minor league uh basically a summer ball conference and we brought all the teams together and I said let's just host it in our stadium and get other people to come in and tell about things they did that worked out well things that didn't work well et cetera. So I hosted it. And luckily, the team that she was working for, her boss came. And I'm speaking about our grandma beauty pageants and our donut burgers and our donut dogs and all the things that we do.

39:41Jesse Cole:And her boss left the conference in the middle of my talk, called Emily and said, I met the guy you're going to marry. And so I don't get that. Yes. Because you've said that before. Like, what sense does that make? So from what we've been told from her and her boss was like, she just said, I saw his energy, his fun, and his passion for what we're doing. And I saw you. And I was like, you guys both have this enthusiasm, energy for this. And like, I, she said, she just saw it. And like, this is, again, it doesn't make sense to me either. Why would someone call in the middle of that and say, but she called Emily.

40:12Jesse Cole:Emily started laughing. It goes, Amy, what are you talking about? And she said, you guys are so aligned with your visions and your missions and what you want to do in this workspace. And I really think that you would hit it off. And obviously she was right. And what are you thinking at the time? I mean, for me, it was not, I'm going into this looking for marriage, but he was brilliant at what he was doing. And I was intrigued to just share ideas and just learn from him. And so of course, you know, the passion has grown from there, but we really were aligned in what we both wanted. And so the conversation and and everything, it just started right away because we were both so interested in the same things.

40:56Jesse Cole:So Emily emailed me and said, hey, I heard about your grandma beauty pageant. How do you guys do that? I'm always trying to work with seniors as well, senior citizens, how do you do that? And I told her what we did and how it failed and how some of it succeeded. And she's like, okay, great. We just kept in touch from there. And that started how we got to know each other. And what was the point you realized this email correspondence was turning into something more? Nothing until, well, I mean, literally, I mean, when she said, I want to come see you, she's like, I'd love to see your game, or I'd love to meet you before I, you know, during the season.

41:31Jesse Cole:So she came down, it was in 2010, and it was about the year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. And I was also... Thriller dances on the field, right? So I was very, very inspired by MJ. I was the one that like literally when Black and White premiered in 1992, like right after The Simpsons, I was watching it. Like I was I was obsessed with the performance level of MJ. And so I was like, we got to do a tribute to him. And so I learned the whole thriller dance. And I was like, guys, tonight, it's an MJ tribute. We're going to do the whole thriller dance. And so I'm on the field teaching them the whole the whole thriller dance.

42:07Jesse Cole:And it's one hundred and eight degrees. Wait, back up a moment here. Like, why aren't the players, like, F off? Like, why? Oh, at first. Oh, yes. But I was two years into teaching them dancing. And they finally, oh, yeah, the first time I had the players dance, we brought a dance instructor in. And the guy said, we're not doing this. And I only got four out of the 20 guys to actually dance. Yeah. But, you know, after a game of dancing, they signed more autographs. And they became more popular. And then by the, you know, the third game, I'm walking through the stands. And the husband and wife are talking.

42:36Jesse Cole:The wife goes, shut up, honey. They're about to dance. I was like, all right, we're onto something. And so the dancing took off. And so I knew dance was a part. That became a differentiator for us, a meaningful differentiator. We're the only baseball team in the world that had dancing players. And it's easy to get the players on board when they see the traction. It's getting in the now virality of the moves. They were now, well, it wasn't viral back in Gastonia, but they were popular. And the fans cheered, and it was fun. And guys, you know, you play baseball your whole life. Sometimes you just want to do something a little silly.

43:02Jesse Cole:And I found enough guys to want to do that. So I was like, all right, we're doing the thriller dance. So, yes, I learned the whole thriller dance, and I'm there teaching it, and I'm sweating outrageously because it's over 100 degrees. And then Emily walks in and meets me. And I go, hey, hey, nice to meet you. And I'm just gross. And I gave her a little tour of our old little ballpark. And I was like, oh, it's going to be a lot of fun. You know, can't wait for you to see it tonight. She goes, oh, no, I'm not staying for the game. I go, you're not staying for the game? She goes, I'm going to the Charlotte Knights game down the road.

43:29Jesse Cole:I go, all right, have fun. And for me, that was like, come on. Like, we're putting on a show here, and you're leaving. And so she left and went to that game. And you guys were both in relationships at the time. We were both in relationships, and it was nothing. And then we went to the minor league promo seminar, and that's where I saw her from across the room. It was straight out of a movie. I wouldn't say love at first sight, but it was definitely our movie moment where we both came into that opening happy hour at the conference and kind of locked eyes from across the room and recognized each other, even though it had been a year or two since we'd seen each other.

44:03Jesse Cole:And, you know, she's wearing a hoodie and a hat. And, you know, there's not many females in the industry at this time. And the ones that are in the industry, you know, they want to stand out. But Emily didn't care about any of that. She's in a hoodie and a hat. She's running the table. There's like eight other guys. She's the magnet at the table. I'm like, who's this girl with all this confidence? And so it was that whole weekend that we just couldn't stop talking. And I knew there was something special. What do you think attracted you to him back then? He's just brilliant. And he's so fun and energetic that being around him is just different than anybody I'd ever been around.

44:37You know, you get in his circle and it's just this different aura. You're just excited and you're happy and you feel like you could run through a wall. And it's still like that with him. And that's how it was in the beginning. It just felt different and exciting and new. And I just wanted to be around him all the time. Why do you think the relationship works?

44:57Jesse Cole:Well, how it started is we both had dreams and passion for doing something truly special. We loved people. We were big into hosting parties, celebrating, being around people like we thrived in social environments. you know, environments. And so we were really into that. And then, you know, I think for her, it was someone she got to, you know, be around that had really big aspirations and big dreams. And I think her previous relationship, she might not have had that as much. And so for her, it was like, wow, this is someone that can dream big. And then for me, it was like, this is the most confident, engaged.

45:32Jesse Cole:We had so much in common. We couldn't stop talking about traveling and doing things and creating things. I was just enamored. Why did you do journal entries the first 365 days of marriage? I wanted to capture it and save it as a memento. So I started writing a few years before that, started writing journals, and I was like, if I can capture every night, every day of what we experienced, our first year of marriage, and then give it to her on the last day, I think that'd be really special to look back on. And so, yeah, and that ended up being one of the hardest years of our life and what we went through.

46:05Jesse Cole:And I'm actually so grateful that we have it to look back because reading it's like the most positive thing in the world. But I'm like, we're sleeping on an airbed. We're out of money. We have nothing left. And I'm like, oh, we had a nice dinner tonight. And again, it goes back to the optimism probably a lot from my dad and also from Walt Disney and his positivity. So it was a trip that the two of you took as a couple early on to Savannah that understandably altered the course of your life. Explain what went on there. So we had been working together for almost two years, and we were already in love.

46:43Jesse Cole:She was our director of fun. I was the crazy managing partner, part owner of the team, and I had planned to propose to her at the stadium. And so where we met in Gastonia, we met at first time when I was teaching the Thriller Dance. So I was like, might as well propose here. It was where we met. And that's the same spot. So in front of a sold-out crowd, I was wearing the yellow tux and proposed. She said yes. Had to move it up? We did have to move it up because we were getting blown out. And that's one of the other reasons why I wanted to change the game. But yeah, it was a bad game. And so I moved it up.

47:12Jesse Cole:And Emily wanted to keep popping popcorn. And I said, no, we really need you on the field because we're going to honor everyone. She's like, can I just get, I got to take care of these fans. I was like, please, it would mean a little bit if you could come on. She's like, fine, fine, I'll go on the field. And my friends were there. My family was there. Her family was there. We had everyone there. So they all knew. And yeah, I proposed and had the ring inside of baseball and dropped down to the knee. And thank goodness. She never said yes. so I'm hoping we're still good. But she ran over and hugged me, kissed me.

47:38Jesse Cole:I had fireworks go off in the middle of the game, and the umpires are wondering, are we still going to play this game? I'm like, this is our moment. Let us live this. Let's experience that. And so it was really a whirlwind of night. It was amazing in front of everybody, our extended family, our baseball family, everybody. And so that night when I finally got home, I fell asleep. I was exhausted. And I guess she was planning a trip. She was like, I can't believe this proposal, everything you did. The season's over. I want to do something. And so that night she planned a trip for us to go to Savannah out of nowhere, you know She but we'd never been there together never experienced it And so it's like all right.

48:10Jesse Cole:This sounds amazing We went down there and I said Emma, you know that there's a game. There's a there We just finished our season like well, we got to go to the game We got to see the stadium and so we went to the minor league game the Savannah Sand Nats And we walked in a beautiful Saturday night and there was literally less than 200 people in the stadium And it was that moment. I looked around I was like this, you know majestic old stadium but it had character. And for me, coming from a high school Legion Park to a minor league stadium, even though it's a 100-year ballpark, I was blown away.

48:38Jesse Cole:And so it was then that I told the commissioner of the league if this team ever leaves, we're going to come here and we want this market. And so it was that point that weekend that we saw a different vision of what it could be. And we're so fortunate that within a few months, the team asked for a brand new stadium. The city said no, and they said, we're out of here. And I convinced the city to let us come to Savannah. Expedia and Visit Scotland invite you to come experience the beauty that awaits in Scotland the sweep of wild coastlines quiet locks and untamed landscapes fresh cuisine that feels rooted in the land come experience the kind of stillness that stays with you long after you leave plan your Scottish escape today at Expedia.com slash VisitScotland Comcast is delivering extraordinary experiences in live sports through the incredible broadcast and storytelling from NBC, innovative and personalized viewing features on Xfinity and Peacock, and the country's most reliable Wi-Fi.

49:42Jesse Cole:Viewers can enjoy every game-changing play faster and more seamlessly than ever, all in a network built to deliver unforgettable moments as close to live as possible. The ultimate experience for the American sports fan. Learn more at comcastcorporation.com slash sports. Okay, and so explain what was involved with that. So it was a lot of work. We're a college summer baseball team. Yeah. Savannah had minor league professional baseball for 90 years, and we're a college summer baseball team. And I'm trying to convince the city to go from professional to college summer baseball. And I knew the only way we could do it wasn't any marketing plan, wasn't any attention plan.

50:19Jesse Cole:We've got to get them to feel it and experience it. So I convinced them to come to Gastonia and see a game this coming year. And they came to a game, sold out crowd. They watched the dancing. They watched the fun. They watched all of it. And they said, this is crazy. I don't know if this is work, but we should give it a shot. And we had Joe Shearhaus, who was Department of Rec and Leisure Services, that convinced everyone. And they were telling him no. He's like, give them a shot. He convinced the city to do a lease with us. And that's when we got the keys in October of 2015. And you get the keys.

50:51Jesse Cole:And what happens from there? you have this big vision of you're walking into this majestic stadium what it's going to be like this is yours you get to run the ship here this is it and we walk in and uh the phone lines were cut the internet lines were cut everything was taken out of the ballpark there wasn't anything left it was a disaster zone and why was that well i think it was a series of things i think the former team wasn't too happy and so they uh they took everything and you know they weren't happy with the situation and I think they had a lot of the equipment and they just said we're taking everything and good luck guys start from scratch.

51:25Jesse Cole:Are you calling the other team and screaming? No that relationship was over we tried kind of a relationship trying to say hey can we work together and it wasn't it wasn't gonna work so yeah what do we do I looked around and we saw a picnic table out in the park and I said let's bring this in this will be where we'll work from we brought it into the storage building we had our cell phones then we went out and took pictures of all the billboards that were up and all the season ticket stickers that were on. It was like, all right, well, we don't have a database. We don't have anything, but this is a start.

51:52Jesse Cole:And so we said, let's just start calling. And we realized that most of them, like they weren't ticket holders anymore or they were sponsors that didn't pay anymore. They weren't a part of it all. So we literally had nothing. And so all we could do was just say, hey, we got to get as many meetings as possible. We got to get on the community. We got to try to start this thing from scratch. And that's when it got really hard. When we first launched the team, We did not have a name. We did not have an identity. And for any company, that's a pretty tough start. And so those first months, we're trying to prove ourselves to the community of Savannah.

52:24But nobody knows who we are. Nobody knows what we're about to bring to the table. And so it was really hard. Nobody trusted us. Sometimes we wouldn't even get to the meeting. We would call people and they would just hang up on us.

52:35Jesse Cole:We got thrown out of offices. I mean, literally. I mean, we weren't even, we weren't. And I wasn't even wearing the yellow tuxedo. I was too scared to wear it at that point. I was dressing up like trying to be a professional. And there was just no interest. You know, going from professional baseball, no one understood what we were. There were false rumors saying, I heard you guys don't even sell alcohol. There's no drinks at your stadium. It's just going to be college-based. No, there will be drinks. It's going to be fun. And they just, but they had no reason to. I don't blame the community one bit.

53:04Jesse Cole:They hadn't seen anything. You can talk, talk, talk all you want. But if you don't experience something, how can you believe it? And so it's like, you know, I'll believe it when I see it. And the reality is they hadn't seen it. And so we kept talking, kept sharing, kept talking, kept sharing. And it just got so bad. No one was buying anything. I mean, we couldn't convince anybody to buy tickets. We had one gentleman buy a couple tickets. It was like, here you go, guys. We were these outsiders who were coming into Savannah. And it was bleak for a little while, to the point where we overdrafted our account and could not make payroll.

53:36Jesse Cole:So then January 15, 2016, was the phone call. And at 4.45 p.m., I got the call that we overdrafted our account and we were missing payroll. And literally, pay was happening that day. So I immediately transferred the few dollars I had in my account, put it in there to cover payroll. And we didn't know what to do. And that's when Emily turned to me and said, Jess, we have to sell our house. We need to get money to be able to fund this. We have nothing left. And so we put the house in the market and said, let's go. Let's go all in. What was the moment during that period that most tested your resolve or determination to stick with it?

54:16Jesse Cole:I think it was the doubters. So like when we go into a bank, per se, and we'd say, hey, we're going to do our banking with you. We're going to do this. And we knew they were a partner of the previous team. And they said, now, you guys, we don't know if you're going to make it that long. We're just not interested in partnering with you. and every meeting people selling us they're not going to work with us every single one even we went to a point where we said hey we need a food and bev company to run our food and bev and we literally said hey we'll give you all the food and bev it'll be a great situation and we it was the the conference center and we went over there and we had an event to and only 100 people showed up to announce that hey we're the new team only 100 people showed up and they had tons of food and it It was like they had crab cakes and they had all this food.

55:06Jesse Cole:And it was like a really nice spread. They didn't even bill us because they felt so bad. And they said they're not going to work with us. At that point, I'm like, they're not even letting us pay for something. They don't want to work with us. No one wants to work with us. To me, that was like a test of resolve. It was like, okay, let's do this. It fired me up because I was like, if everyone's doubting, boy, this is going to be a great story if we make this success. And there was never a point where you questioned yourself? There was no opportunity to. I mean, it's very simple. We were an outrageous amount of debt.

55:43Jesse Cole:We had bought this expansion team. We owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the team. We owed tons of money for just keeping the business going. And there was no option. We had three 22-year-olds straight out of college that literally they took this job. Their family questioned them. All their parents said, why are you taking this job? We had a 24-year-old president left a minor league team. We had a responsibility. I think that was the biggest struggle for us was feeling like we would let them down. There were many, many nights that we did not sleep at all and would just go for walks in the middle of the night together to clear our head and figure out what our next steps were.

56:19And it was never that we thought it would completely fail because we were so blindly optimistic. We did believe in this product so much. It was just figuring out how to get there.

56:29Jesse Cole:And so there was nothing like there was no like, oh, we got to give up. It's like, no, we're these people in this community. Let's do it. And I know that isn't the best, like, oh, we were down and out. We weren't down and out because we believed that we would make it successful. We never thought that this is something we're going to quit. It never crossed our mind. I mean, somebody would have had to drag us out of there and say, no, really, you're done for us to leave. We were so determined and so believed that it was going to work. Like I said, blindly optimistic to the point where we would have done anything.

57:04We sold our house and put all of our savings in. I mean, we were all in. That's how much we believed in it. Tell about the inability to sleep during that period and the walks on like around the island.

57:17Jesse Cole:Yeah. So we had to get a dump to live in because we couldn't afford anything. And so we found a place that was on the market for years and went down to basically they were giving it away. So we got it for nothing. Jesse walked in and walked right back out and said, we cannot live here. And of course, we lived there. For how long? Oh, gosh, a long time. And we got an airbed because we didn't have a bed. And so Emily got a twin airbed, which is hilarious because you could have gone to at least a queen. So we got a twin airbed. And you had a house before this. Yes, we had a house with a real bed.

57:51Jesse Cole:But we were basically living in a garage. We were in a garage. Which is all the harder when you've already experienced. We had success. We had success in Gastonia. You can say what you want. I mean, it was the fourth highest attended team in the country. We were having some pretty good success. And then we go to Savannah and fail. And we're sleeping on an airbed. We're grocery shopping with just$30 a week. So literally a$20 bill and a$10 bill for 42 meals. That was going on for months. And yeah, we didn't sleep at all. I mean, you couldn't sleep on the airbed. And it was I mean there were nights like I said there was one night Emily recalls vividly and I'll I'll never forget a cockroach was right on They call them palmetto bugs down in Savannah But it looked like a cockroach was right on my nose and she woke up yelling because it was on my in the middle of the night Like that we were sleeping with our socks.

58:39Jesse Cole:It was so gross You don't sleep with your socks like you've got to be a real lunatic to sleep with your socks Sorry, and and so we were sleeping with our socks because it was so gross that we got up the whole place was just disgusting And so yes in the middle night like we just say we can't sleep So we just walk around we just go outside and just walk and just say, what are we going to do? And there were many nights we just walked and we had nothing to say. We were just thinking and we didn't know what to do. As a leader, as an entrepreneur, if you are all in on this product or this thought, then living in a not great house and eating not great food for a while is just what you do.

59:14We were so convinced that this was our path, that living in a place that should have been condemned, And we weren't even there enough to really let it bother us. So as horrible as the house was, it wasn't a thing that I look back on as a breaking point for us.

59:31Jesse Cole:How long did that go on for? You know, probably months. Probably two, three, four months. We had to get to that first game. That first game was where we just had that circled. Get to the first game so we can show these people what we can do. What was the moment where you saw stuff start to turn? When we came out with the name Bananas, of course, we received a ton of criticism. A ton. I mean, we were getting hate mail and letters and... Which is the stupidest thing ever, isn't it? But people are very passionate about their team names and they're protective over certain things. And so to be called the Savannah Bananas, a lot of people were not proud of that in the beginning.

1:00:10But that was the turning point for us. As much as we received criticism then, we were on people's radars, both locally and across the country. I mean, we were on ESPN the next day. And for them to say, is this the new logo of the year, that just kind of catapulted how many people were aware of us. And with awareness then comes success eventually, or it can. And that's what happened here is that more and more people started talking about us. Whether it was a joke at first or not, we were on people's radar. And that was the turning point for us. How did Profit First, that book, impact you?

1:00:45Jesse Cole:Yeah. Yeah, Mike Michalowicz has become a good friend. And when I first read that book, the chapter that stood out more, you need to enjoy saving more than you enjoyed spending. And I remember I had a cell phone charger that was literally hanging on by a wire. It was falling. It was falling apart. And I was like, we need to get one. I'm like, no, one more day. One more day. One more day. Let's head over and over again. And Jesse and I would high five each other at the end of the day that we had made it one more day with that phone charger before you had to go buy another one. I mean, that was the mentality back then was I can't go buy a phone charger because I have to save everything to put into this team.

1:01:22But we made it a game and we made it fun and we cheered each other on. And so living by a lot of those philosophies, I think, helped get us through the financial time.

1:01:30Jesse Cole:How do we save money for one more day, one more day? And we took that into our company. We said, do we need to get it? No, let's not buy it. and every single thing we would try not to buy. I mean, literally, I would get suits traded for me. I'd like the cleaning and washing. I would get our printing traded for free. I was trying to get everything for free and no cost because we didn't have any money. There was no money coming in. And so that profit first, and then the mindset is you put money into different buckets so you can save them. But it was the saving mindset that really changed everything for me.

1:01:58Jesse Cole:How hard were you working then? As soon as you wake up, you're thinking about it. As soon as you go to bed, you're thinking about it. And then you wake up in the middle of the night, you're thinking about it. So you could think about the amount of hours that is. It's theoretically, it's you're working nonstop because there's only one way to get out of this is you've got to think your way out of it. You've got to actually act your way out of it. And that's what we had to do. Does the idea in your head that you could be working even a little bit less now bother you?

1:02:29Jesse Cole:It's all relative. I think there's the grind. They talk about it, but that's not the best and most efficient way of working. You know what? Right now, it's unbelievably focused on energy. And I do things that give me energy every single day. So I follow my energy list. So I do things that are either creating, sharing, or growing. And so that's what I may work very hard, but I don't feel it because I have energy. Back when we started and we were struggling, I was doing everything. Operations, hiring, sponsorship, all the things that I didn't love. And so I would be worn out at the end of the day.

1:03:01Jesse Cole:So it was a different level of work. I might work just as hard now, but I don't feel it because I'm doing things that give me energy. Emily says you guys basically haven't taken a weekend off in two decades. Why do you struggle? Hats, come on. All right, I'm going to call her out on that. Why do you struggle so much with taking your foot off the gas? I love it. There are certain things that lift you up. I have never felt like I'm working one day of my life because the literally is it it it lifts me up with unbelievable amounts of energy. When I think about what we can do and what we're doing and how we can create fans and bring people together, like it never feels like work.

1:03:38I have I've never felt like I'm working.

1:03:42Jesse Cole:And that's why, you know, when so I don't even realize it when she says that we get off and probably, you know, we're with the kids. But, yeah, that night, if there's a game on and I'm not there for some reason, I'm watching. I'm taking notes. Yeah. Yeah. And because it intrigues me, we can get this better. We can make this better. We can make this better. So that is a level of work. You ever ask yourself, like, what the hell are we doing? We don't we don't want to back off right now because we still care about it so much. I think as our kids have come into our life and as our family grows and as they get older, there will be more of a harmony.

1:04:13I try not to say balance because to me it's it's more of a harmony. Our kids grow up at the ballpark. We do take calls for work at home. You know, we have to harmonize those things together. And that can be beautiful if you do it right. And so we're constantly working on that. We're a work in progress on that balance, that harmony. But there will probably be a little bit less intensity for us over the next couple of years. Do you think so? Our kids are at such crucial ages where we know we have to be present for them and we want to be. And so you can't be everywhere all the time. To what extent do you feel like you're able to enjoy the fruits of your labor?

1:04:53Jesse Cole:there's moments, but they're fleeting, because I always see what things could be and how they could be better. So this was very similar to Walt. You know, he said, whenever I go on a ride, I'm always asking, how can this thing be improved? Every time he would go on, he'd try to look at everything. So, you know, he couldn't necessarily enjoy the Jungle Cruise, because he realized that it should be a five minute ride. And the one he went on was only two minutes and a half, because they rushed through it. And so, but he knows that there's a better way. So I will enjoy moments, but I'll also be thinking in that moment, ooh, if we change this, this could be even better for the fans.

1:05:28Jesse Cole:This could be a better experience. But that is enjoyment for me. I enjoy the idea of thinking of how things can be better. How are you hard on yourself? Every day. I have an expectation. I think - Which is what?

1:05:49Jesse Cole:Well, you would say if you were looking on the outside probably that I'm a perfectionist and I know that's almost impossible to achieve. So I always visualize what the perfect experience could be for a fan from the first time they interact with us to the last, from when they first get out of the car to what they see, to what they hear, to what they feel, to what they smell. And if a tent is a little bit off or if the music isn't coming great out of that speaker or all those, that irks me more than anything because I know that's not the experience that our fans deserve. And so I look at all of those moments.

1:06:24Jesse Cole:And so it's hard for me to truly get into enjoyment mode when I'm in improvement mode. And that's what I'm thinking about. In what ways are you a tough boss? Standards. Standards. You know, one of our fans' first principles is uphold the highest standards. So the only thing I can do is try to role model that and expect the highest standards of myself and What I applaud our team is when they call me out as hard as that is I'll never forget when an intern came up to me And it was right before it was right after a game and a fan came in and a fan is Wanting to talk to me, but I had to run to get to somewhere else immediately and this fans trying to talk to me I'm kind of talking like this and and all of a sudden I'm like this and And I was like, thank you.

1:07:11Jesse Cole:But then I had to go. And Barry, this intern, came up to me and said, hey, Jesse, I just want to let you know your body language for that fan was not fans first. You should have been squared up and focused in that moment. And I was like, you're right. I should have been. And I think about that from time to time on how can you take that constructive criticism to be better for a fan or better for a team member. And so I am a hard boss because I have high standards. But I don't even like that terminology, boss, because I've never, even just saying that right now, that irked me because I've never used that term.

1:07:45Jesse Cole:When people say, I want to work for you, I go, no, you work with me. We work together. I don't want to be a boss. I don't want to be a manager. I hate the term manager. People aren't managed. People want to be led. There's a big difference. We don't want to manage. We don't have any managers in any of our titles with our team. There's no general manager. We don't call our coach a manager. And so just thinking about that language of what we use, I don't want to be a manager. I don't want to be a boss. I want to be a leader, but I want to feel like that we can work with some people together and build something together.

1:08:15Jesse Cole:And the expectations of the people you lead are what? As high as can be, because our fans deserve that. And I think as soon as you lay off the expectations, then the experience will change. We have just learned that the more we can be open with somebody about all of the possible constraints of the position, the better off they're going to be in the long run. So we try really hard to scare them, for lack of better term, up front before they come in. Hey, these are all of the challenges that are going to be there, including how you communicate with your leader and the feedback that you get and how fast we move.

1:08:58and it helps people weed themselves out by saying, that's just not my lifestyle. It's not what I'm looking to do right now. And because we are so purposeful on that initial conversation, fortunately, we've been able to get the right people on the bus with us and they've stayed long-term because they knew what they were gonna get on the front end.

1:09:19Jesse Cole:They may say it's hard, but after two, three, four years, I hope they look back and say, wow, that really helped me be the best version of myself and really deliver at a level I didn't even know it was possible. I was talking to your dad yesterday, and he said, I don't know if he can handle not having everyone care as much about the details as him. Yeah. Your thoughts? Yeah, he's spot on. Because, so my dad watches every single broadcast, and he notices all the little things. And you guys talk how often? Every day. We don't miss a day. and after, you know, broadcast, we'll go over the notes and it, it, it fires me up because, you know, we're building this ourself, which is unbelievably hard.

1:10:04Jesse Cole:Everything we do is ourself. We're building our broadcast ourself. We have our ticket system ourself. We're doing our merchandise ourself. We're doing our show ourselves. We're doing it all ourselves, which is hard, but I still have a standard of what it could be. And so when you watch these little things and my dad would watch these notes, it's like, whew, it fires us up because we know it's not there. And so having people on our team, if they don't care about those little things, then it's hard for me to think, do you really want to be part of this team long-term? Because if you don't want that little thing to be better and you aren't willing to work for it, you know, do you have the care factor that we're looking for?

1:10:37Jesse Cole:And that's something I look at everyone. What's your care factor? How much do you care about this experience for the fans? How much do you care about your work? And ask you, when you do something, I ask the one question I ask our team, are you proud of this? Often before someone sends me a video, I go, before you send it, especially, are you truly proud of it? Because if they're truly proud of it, then I can really get in and say, all right, what makes you proud of this? How is this the highest standard? How is this the best that you can be? And so it's just part of a standard that I believe in.

1:11:04Jesse Cole:And I think that's made us help develop us to where we are today. How often do you screw up hires? If we mess up on hire in a weird way, I get fired up because, oh, what do we learn from this? How will we make Next Hire better. So I'll give you an example. We were having challenges bringing on directors of entertainment to lead our company. And we were struggling with things. And I was like, you know, you could really say, oh, it's on them. But it was on me. Because I didn't lay out a clear vision. And I didn't lay out clear expectations. And I didn't lay out the challenges of this job. Hey, I can be a micro leader.

1:11:34Jesse Cole:By the way, don't use the manager. I can be a micro leader. I'm going to look at every detail. I'm going to look at everything. All right. I'm going to demand a what? Hey, we don't have tons of resources. We're going to have to outthink and not outspend. I realized I had to lay that out. And so now with our director of entertainment now, Zach, who's been with us for years, I had a piece of paper, one page that said, here are all the challenges with this position. Here's what we're going to have to do differently than anyone else. Here are the expectations and here's where I think we're going to go.

1:12:01Jesse Cole:And I shared that. I said, are you sure you're good with all this? He goes, let's do it. And that set the tone on how we're going to work together and build something truly special. And me and him have a tremendous relationship because of that. So now we have VCs, vision, challenge, expectations for almost all of our hires. And we set the tone and it's very clear in the beginning. Hey, this job's not for you. Great. I even put out when we were hiring a position earlier, I put out something that said, do not apply for this job. That was the post. Do not apply for this job. These are all the reasons why you should not work for us.

1:12:33Jesse Cole:And I put that out there and we got a lot less applicants, But the ones we got were tremendous. And we still have that person that did that first one is still with us, and she's doing tremendous. At some point, is the micro leading, does that create diminishing returns? You have to be at a level of empowering at some point. So there's micro leading until someone has the ability to lead that way as well. They have to have the same expectations of the people that work with them. And so after every game, we do an LCP, more acronyms, but learn change plus. Every game, we look at everything from the pre-show, the during game, and the post game, and say, what did we learn?

1:13:12Jesse Cole:What would we change? And what would we plus? Make a little bit better. And so every single game, we don't miss a game. That's leading at the little details. We do 100, 200 promotions at a game. I mean, we do tons of things. But we have to look at every single one, and we take notes of that. And so that is something we've built with our entertainment team to make sure that we understand how those details and how micro leading and making sure each thing can get a little bit better, that will take us to the next level. I've been told you can be pretty direct, even to individuals in group settings.

1:13:45But then I've also been told that Emily kind of balances things, knows when to rein you in. And somebody told me that. Somebody else said that she tends to smooth out Jesse's rough edges. What do you think?

1:14:01Jesse Cole:A thousand percent. How so? Well, Emily sees the whole picture a lot. I get so focused on how to make something better, how to improve something, that sometimes I just go right at it. Whereas Emily can see the whole picture and say, all right, Jesse, how is this going to be perceived? How is this person going to go? How is that interaction going to go? People are watching this. Again, she understands that my words now are valued more. As you grow in a company and people see you grow, new customers are joining our company every single day. And so if I haven't talked a lot with them and I say, hey, we've got to get this better, and that's one of my first interactions with them, that can be intimidating.

1:14:39Jesse Cole:And so she sees, all right, Jessie, let's think about this. Hey, help me understand what's happening here. I'd love to help you with this. And just different, more approaches. I think that's what any partner should do in life is that you should be looking out for your partner's best interest. And so he's my business partner and my life partner. And so I'm constantly trying to see how is he perceived? How is he coming off here? I know what he's thinking before he says it. And so if what he says comes out wrong, I will try to jump in and either soften that blow or explain because his brain is just moving so fast that sometimes it doesn't come out clear or it doesn't come out nice enough for people.

1:15:18And so I try to be right there to kind of soften that blow or just help communicate for him because I want people to see how wonderful he is and how brilliant he is. And sometimes he's just going too fast for his own good that it doesn't come out right. So yeah, as a partner, I'm constantly in that protection mode.

1:15:34Jesse Cole:You know, coming up with three brothers, family, she was always taking care of everybody. And so Emily is a tremendous balance on that and understands that, Hey, I'm going into a difficult conversation. All right, Jesse, think about this, think about this, think about this before you go directly into it. And I have to do that. But I also understand too, the balance that clarity is kind. If I'm not clear on what I wanted to see or what I didn't want to see and what I think could be better, then that also is not fair to the person I'm speaking to. So it's a real balance, which we're still learning.

1:16:03Jesse Cole:And I think that's what makes it great is that Emily understands that whole picture. Why is your biggest fear becoming irrelevant? Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control.

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1:17:01Jesse Cole:Feeling like you don't matter is a truly sad thing for me. 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.

1:17:44Jesse Cole:It's Walt Disney said, money doesn't excite me, my ideas excite me. 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 everything that we've done that where we've truly failed it's when we either partnered with someone or didn't fully bet on ourself because we believe that we care about the end fan the end customer as you would say more than anything and so you know from the beginning we had to figure out how to do our own food at the stadium and so we did all you can eat and we thought that was a better experience and get all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, everything all included.

1:18:44Jesse Cole:When we started at$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. We had an opportunity to partner with some of the big ticket companies. And they're like, all right, it's gonna cost you a couple of dollars per ticket, plus this, plus this. And I go, so if we sell 100 ,000 tickets, it's gonna 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.

1:19:14Jesse Cole: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, 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 favor. No. No, we want to have a custom box that goes with a free koozie, a decal, a personal letter.

1:19:42Jesse Cole: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. 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.

1:20:13Jesse Cole: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. That eats me up because of a decision we made, 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?

1:20:54Jesse Cole: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 And 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. 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?

1:21:27Jesse Cole:We've done that for nine years until recently. And we just stopped. Why? because what happened is our, the excitement for the bananas and the banana ball experience reached more of a fever pitch. It was unsafe. Fans would sprint in. We had a few, I'll never forget in Kansas City, they stormed the gates. Our fans stormed the gates. That was another moment where Emily had to grab me and said, Jesse, just relax, calm, think about it. Everyone's watching you, how you handle this. And I'm like, this isn't how it's supposed to go. And we've seen that. And our fans have tried to get seats. People have been saving seats.

1:21:58Jesse Cole: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. 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 that now they went to their seats.

1:22:30Jesse Cole:And now our ticket team, our staff, they don't get yelled at by fans about seating. It's a calmer, more exciting, more better experience. And so we make those mistakes, but we're willing to correct them and tell our fans we made a mistake. 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 waitlist that's approaching 3 million, real people, 3 million on our waitlist to get tickets, which is staggering.

1:23:07Jesse Cole: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 convenience fees. And then they put them on the secondary market and people are paying$5,$6,$7,$800 over$1 ,000. 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. They charge$700. We get attacked for something that we don't even do.

1:23:43Jesse Cole: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.

1:24:13Jesse 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 do you think you end up doing? Well, I mean, there's ways that we can make tickets transferable in a certain way in a certain portal so they can't be transferred, so they can't go to certain places, so they have to stay in our...

1:24:42Jesse Cole:Because we own the ticket system. We own that. There's ways to do that. But again, what about someone wants to, hey, I got tickets for you, mom. You're good. And then if they can't do that, then that takes away from someone with good intentions. I got tickets for my family. And I need to send it to you because you're coming in town to this and so and so. So we have to figure out how to make it the right transfers. So how do you do it? But not the right transfers. Oh, we don't know that answer. Okay. Oh, just like the all you could eat. Just like the merchandise. Just like the world tour. Just like anything.

1:25:08Jesse Cole:We don't know the answer right away. You have to try things. You have to test things. You have to experiment. So we will start experiments every year. We will try this. We'll try this. Say, all right, what happened there? What happened there? It could take 3, 5, 10, 15 years. But if we do figure it out, it's going to be amazing. It's just going to take some time. 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, 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 looking out of the outfield wall yeah we eliminated all of our ads because 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 on the outfield wall nobody all right so we eliminated that and then now right now we keep all our games on YouTube you know right now you try to watch a sporting event.

1:26:10Jesse Cole: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 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. How do we eliminate them or change them?

1:26:41Jesse Cole: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 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 in a seven o 'clock game. So I'm proud of the first rule, a two-hour time limit.

1:27:10Jesse 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.

1:27:44Jesse Cole:So I think there's all these rules that we tried to eliminate the friction. But the one that everyone talks about most proud of is that, you know, 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 going to 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, 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.

1:28:19Jesse Cole:And that's kind of how we built Banana Ball. What was the rule change that there was the most internal debate around? Good question. The scoring was a big, big challenge for us. So when we first came up banana ball, not many people know this, it was first team to five and every inning counted for a point. Every inning still counts for a point. But what happens at the seventh inning? You've already won three or four points. The game's theoretically over. So your game's over in the seventh inning because the eighth and ninth inning, the other team can only get two points. So we have games just ending and people are like, why is this game over?

1:28:53Jesse Cole:And so there was a lot of question marks on how do we fix that? And it was, I remember one idea session I was writing in the morning. I was like, all right, how do we change this? How do we change that? I said, what if the last inning, every run counts as a point. So now, no matter if you're down 3-1, 4-1, you change it. So that was one. And what I forgot to do is we put it into play and I didn't tell everybody on the staff. So literally our marketing team is like, why are we still playing right now? And I remember afterwards, I had to apologize. I'm so sorry, guys. We talked about this with the coaches and the umpires, but this is, they're like, no, it's a great rule, but we were so confused in the booth.

1:29:25Jesse Cole:And again, we adjusted. And again, learn by doing, learn by doing. How true is it that you almost see yourself more as a traveling circus than a team with the amount of people that you travel with now? So an extensive research I've done, obviously, WWE and, you know, Grateful Dead. I 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, said, we're going to do tickets ourselves. So they started doing it themselves. They're just going calling Ticket Masters.

1:29:57Jesse Cole: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. You could not do this. They're like, no, if you want to spread the music and share it, all of them. And so they actually gave a spot for them to record and help them do that process. They developed their own sound because they realized when they went all these other venues, the sound was not good enough for them. So they developed this wall of sound. I mean, they innovated every step of the way because they were interested in the fans.

1:30:25Jesse Cole: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. 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 me the NBA.

1:30:58Jesse Cole: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 so we can really grow? We're going to have two Globetrotters teams. 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.

1:31:21Jesse Cole: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. You know, it's people that 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 got to go the opposite. We got to go big. And so we bring everybody.

1:31:49Jesse Cole:We bring the band. We bring the banana nannas. We bring the manannas. 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. But it's delivering a better show for our fans, and we've had to do that and figure it out as we go. How did Fenway come about?

1:32:18Jesse Cole:it? So Fenway was, sometimes there's just magical experiences that happen. And I've had that dream of playing at Fenway. I've written it down over and over and over again. First as a kid, you know, I'm going to get drafted. And then since I'm going to play it, we're going to play at Fenway. We're going to sell out Fenway. And so out of nowhere, this was back in 2022, just out of nowhere, I got a phone call from the CFO of the Red Sox. He said, hey, I've been following what you guys doing? You guys are doing pretty cool stuff. I saw you just did a little tour. And he said, would you ever be interested in playing at Fenway?

1:32:53And I was like, yeah, I mean, I think we could

1:32:57Jesse Cole:probably work something out. Yeah. I mean, I'd be open to it. Yeah. What do you have to share? And I'm like, it's freaking out in my head. And he was like, yeah, we've seen what you're doing. I think it's great. And we'd love to have you. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. So we started that process. We visited. They actually had me, I speak to their team. I spoke to a lot of their front office, and we made a deal. And it was mind-blowing to me. Were you concerned about what the terms could be at first, or it was clear based on that initial call that they were going to figure this out? I think we were very clear on what our non-negotiables were.

1:33:37Jesse Cole:And for us, it's the fan experience. And what I mean by that is we're going to sell the tickets because we don't want any ticket fees, convenient fees, service fees, taxes. We don't want that experience. And that is a big challenge for a lot of groups. But I said, hey, we'd love to do this. We just need to do the fan experience. We can work this out from the ticket standpoint. I'm sure we can work everything else out. And with every team, it's been a challenge kind of sharing because it's dramatically different than anyone else doing it. But the - Have you had to say this isn't going to work? Oh, yeah.

1:34:10Jesse Cole:We had other major league teams. We had a handful that were on the docket for this year that we just said, hey, if we can't work together, we're going to go somewhere else and we're going to prove it. How did you find out it was sold out? It was a crazy thing that happened. We did our world tour draft where we announced where we're playing and I got to go on the mic with my parents there and announce that we were going to Fenway Park. And it was an emotional experience. You could see my dad that was actually captured in the broadcast and you could see him, the emotions coming over him. And we already talked.

1:34:41Jesse Cole:He knew we were going to Fenway, but just that announcement, this is real. And what about that makes you emotional now? Well, seeing the response. So for me that night, you know, we were this small team playing in a small little stadium that only sold a handful of tickets when we started. People didn't believe we could sell out Savannah. But now to say we're going to major league stadiums, Houston was our first major league stadium. And me and Emily were standing backstage as we announced Houston, and I watched, we were there, 5 ,000 people at our World Tour draft, and I watched as we announced Houston, and all these people, not from Houston, from all over the country, a lot from Savannah, as we announced that, they stood up and cheered.

1:35:24And for me, to see that unbelievable response of,

1:35:28Jesse Cole:we're rooting for these guys, it doesn't directly affect me. They're not gonna be able to go to the game, a lot of these people, but they were cheering. I remember me and Emily were just hugging, I was like, wow. So then five minutes later, I'm there announcing my dream as a kid to go Fenway Park. And so when I think about that moment and how powerful that was, and to see my dad, a guy who got me to be honorary Batboy for the Red Sox when I was five years old, a guy who took me to Fenway over 100 times, say, Dad, we're doing this. And I believe we're going to sell it out. And then within 24 hours, we had 100 ,000 people that signed up for potential tickets at Fenway.

1:36:03Jesse Cole:So I knew this was selling out. yeah what did your dad say he just kept saying this is amazing he goes jesse i'm gonna need a lot of tickets he's like i gotta take care of so many people up here and i go dad what do you want to do there's a hundred thousand people that want tickets and uh for him it was just you know he grew up there his whole life and he had all these all these people that he's known for so long that got to see us at fenway and so special fenway was their ballpark growing up and of course jesse wanted to be a player there, but he was able to get to Fenway in a different way. And of course, way more special now than if he had just been a guy on the roster who got to throw a few innings.

1:36:45And it was a really special place for him to be able to take the company that he built to the place that he idolized when he was younger. You have a fondest memory from that day? That night at Fenway?

1:36:57Jesse Cole:Yeah, it was yellow. It was yellow. Because that night, there was so much on my mind. I'm running from thing to thing. I'm thinking about every single thing. You have one night to try to do it right. And there was so much. And we didn't play as well as I hoped we did. And we didn't put on the show that I hoped we would. And a lot of things didn't go right. But then in the eighth inning, I walked out and I announced, hey, fans, thank you for being a part of this. And let's light up the sky here at Fenway. We turned the flashlights on. The lights went off. And I looked out and I was like, wow, we did this.

1:37:31Jesse Cole:And I saw 37 ,000 people singing yellow. And I was like, yep, I'll never forget this. And here's a clip from Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith. It's like this, this right here, this is called happiness. And now I ended up finding that clip and put it to that moment. Someone on our team captured me in that moment. And you could see I was biting my lip because I was trying to hold the emotions in. That was it right there. I'll never, ever forget that moment. How has the success in Major League Baseball stadiums impacted now future plans? Well, it shows that we can do it and we can do it at a high level.

1:38:08Jesse Cole:You know, it was interesting. Each one we got better. Houston, there were a lot of challenges with tickets. We had to adjust that. It didn't work well the operations standpoint. Fenway, we showed, wow, that can be magical moments. You know, they've never shut down that street that we shut down for Fenway, which is crazy to think about. 20 ,000 people in the streets hours before the game. I was like, whoa, all right, we got this. And then D.C., the national stadium with flyovers and unbelievable helicopter entrances. And it was just like, all right, now we figured out how to put this all together.

1:38:38Jesse Cole:And then each step, Cleveland, a magical show, 23 trick plays, Cy Young Award winners pitching for us. It was just, it's like, okay. And every step of the way, we've got a little bit better. And now it's basically like, okay, we got this. Now what's next? And I think when you look at the amount of major league stadiums and even bigger stadiums. Well, that's where I was going. Where's your head at with that? Well, again, our goal is to try to take care of as many fans as possible. I know right now there's almost 3 million people on a wait list that can't come to our games that want to. So how do you do that?

1:39:12Jesse Cole:So then you have to think at what are bigger stadiums. So do I dream now of football stadiums and NFL stadiums and some of the biggest college football stadiums? When you look at an environment in the United States, like one of the craziest, loudest, most energetic electric environments, sometimes think of a college football stadium where everyone's standing and cheering, it's electric. Well, why can't banana ball play there? And so those are things I think about for next. If that were to happen, when would you see it happening? Sooner. Sooner than what people imagine. Okay, and that means what?

1:39:45Jesse Cole:Yeah. Could be in the next 12 months. What would have to happen to pull that off? The same steps we've taken from the beginning. You know, this all started with a one-city world tour. We called it a one-city world tour. It's ridiculous. It's a one-city world tour in Mobile, Alabama. And we said, we're going to do this and prove if we can do this right, which so many things failed. And then we went to seven cities and Major League Spring Training Homes for the first time. Then we did 33 cities. Then we did Major League Stadiums for the first time. Every year, we do something that we've never done before or maybe hasn't been done before.

1:40:17Jesse Cole:And so we'll just test it and then go from there. For me, it's not necessarily how many people can fit. It's how many people will experience the experience how we want them to. That is what it comes down to for us. If they are super far away and they are not going to see anything and they're not going to feel anything and they're not going to be able to high five a cast member, then it's a no for us. But if we can guarantee that we will have cast members and princesses and magicians, if we can have all those people going through even the upper decks taking care of people, then it will work for us.

1:40:54But we're going to have to level up those numbers in order to keep up with the growing number of fans. Could you see 75 or 100 ,000 people in the game? Yeah. No question. Because we've been slowly growing in that, I think we would just go on the same trajectory of just adding more people. We know what we need to add. And also, these places have amazing technology. And so being able to entertain through jumbotrons and screens for the people who might not be right behind home plate, that, of course, really helps. So do you already have a site picked out for it? Oh, you do.

1:41:33Jesse Cole:I think we've been very fortunate on the opportunities that have been presented to us. And I think we have some great opportunities that are going to be coming in the future. So if that was going to happen, when do you announce it? October 3rd. Okay, there you go. We are at a point where we're going to larger venues. And that is something that we can do until we run out of large venues. And so then it's probably going to be creating our own venues. or making a venue that was not thought of as a baseball field into now being a baseball field. I mean, there are just so many creative ways that we can entertain people.

1:42:06There are so many groups reaching out to us. And before we say yes, I will say that we do a lot of due diligence and we try to make sure, is this going to be great for our fans? Is the fan experience going to be what we would provide at a smaller, normal baseball park? And so we have to go through a huge checklist. We do tons of site visits. We always go to all these venues that call us to make sure that we put our eyes on it ourself and say, is this going to be the best for the fans? Only then will we say yes. And it takes a lot for us to say yes. We have to meet with a lot of people, make sure that they're committed from their front, make sure that dates work.

1:42:42I mean, there's so many things that go into can we say yes to this really exciting place that called us. So whatever the biggest venue is for this coming season, were you or was Jesse more of an advocate? It's always going to be Jesse. The answer is always going to be Jesse for who is more excited about the thing, the growth, the number, the place. I am more I want to interrupt so whatever this biggest venue is for this coming season give me the bringing him down to earth conversation that you had with him about that without revealing you know whatever you can well both of us are very committed to we're not going to go unless it's right for the fans but he is the first one to be willing to say oh I think we can make it work whereas I might not be convinced yet.

1:43:35I might not have seen what he was able to picture when we go on these site visits. His mind is working on, oh, we could get this, we could build this, we could make it work. And I'm seeing maybe the obstacles. So what didn't you see? Or what obstacles? I mean, again, I am a logistical person. So I am parking, bathrooms, timing, hotels. I'm trying to figure out if all of those things will work. And he's the one that's saying, oh, we'll bring in that stuff. We'll make it happen. But that's just the simple how our minds work is he's saying, we can make this be a venue for us. And I'm saying, but it hasn't been a venue for this before.

1:44:14That can't work. And so we balance each other out. So you eventually want teams across the country. What has to happen in your mind to have that take place?

1:44:28Jesse Cole:When most people or most groups come together and they want to start a league, they say, hey, I want to build a league. All right, let's get a TV rights deal. Let's get a bunch of sponsors. And now we got money. Now let's go build it. And we'll put eight teams, 12 teams, 16 teams, whatever that number is. I have a much different approach to that. I believe in creating fans first and then developing from there. So what I mean by that is we've been very, very strategic. The bananas launched in 2016. The party animals launched in 2020. The firefighters launched in 2024. We have built fans of each one of those brands before we even expand and say, hey, we're just going to start playing a bunch of other teams.

1:45:09Jesse Cole:People don't realize the party animals have more followers than every major league baseball team on TikTok. That's our second team. They started years after the bananas, but they have three plus million total followers and they sold out their own headlighting tour this year without the bananas. They went to Vegas. They sold 20 ,000 tickets in 16 minutes. There's no bananas there. So we build fans. So okay now the party animals have a fan base. Okay good. What about the firefighters? Should we headlining tour with the firefighters first? Okay, if we launch a fourth team? Let's see can they create fans pretty quickly?

1:45:40Jesse Cole:Do people want to see that? Is the game of banana ball so popular now that people want to just see what we would do because it's run? We don't know that yet. And so the idea is build fans first, build teams, build brands, build point of views for how do you want to embrace with that team and and then potentially see what could turn into. But the thing is, everyone talks about a league because they're starting to see that being formed. Yeah, it's definitely a part of something we think about in the future, but we don't want to run it like a conventional league. You think about a conventional league, what are all the friction points?

1:46:13Jesse Cole:People don't really care in the beginning of the season, in the middle of the season they don't care, and then the playoffs they do kind of care. How do you make every game matter? How do you make every game count? All those things we've got to think about and start testing, and little tests before we can say, all right, let's run with this. And what about Banana Land and Banana World Complex? Yeah. Yeah, that's another big dream. So you go one dream at a time. You know, Walt had his first little studio, and then he had a bigger studio, and then he said, I'm going to start doing some shorts. I'm going to develop Mickey Mouse.

1:46:40Jesse Cole:I'm going to do the first ever sound cartoon. Then I'm going to do the first ever color cartoon. Then I'm going to do the first ever full-length animated film in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And then, huh, what about this idea of Disneyland, in the first ever theme park. And then, what about Disney World? And then, what about developing a city, which he never got to do because he died before what Epcot was supposed to be? One dream to the next to the next. And so, yeah, we're in the middle of this. And I would even go further to say we're still in the first inning. You know, you think about this, we're 10 years old.

1:47:12Jesse Cole:Where was Walt Disney in 1933? He hadn't even had done Snow White yet. He was still doing shorts. He just barely developed Mickey. So we're in the first inning, and we're developing the bananas. We're developing some other teams. We're developing the game of banana ball. Then potentially you look at a bigger league. Then you look at the youth. You know, 600 ,000 kids, less kids, are playing Little League baseball over the last few years. 600 ,000 less. How can we get more kids playing banana ball and doing trick plays and having all the fun that game was supposed to be? So then there's that dream of building that.

1:47:47Jesse Cole:And then once you've built that and you have millions of kids playing the game of banana ball You have some of the greatest most talented people of all the world playing in the banana ball league Then you need a home for that. So that's down the road, but it'll be Crazier wilder and something that no one's ever imagined because I still think about that every single day I know it you could be 40 years from now and still have a long list of stuff you want to do, and understandably so. But in your mind, the time frame it takes to achieve some of these big long-term milestone goals would be what? This episode is brought to you by Ferrero.

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1:49:24Jesse Cole:I don't think anyone would imagine we'd be selling our major league stadiums in a few years. I don't think anyone would think we'd be selling our football stadiums. So I think when you look at time frame, I think it's happening a lot faster than anyone would imagine. But if you're asking, you know, when some of these big big goals will happen, I would be shocked if within the next five years We don't see a lot of these coming true How do you do that without taking outside money? We've never taken a dollar, right?

1:49:57Jesse Cole:Fans will tell you there's different things so many people say hey, we can't do this unless we have a sponsor, okay? For us, if we put something out there and our fans don't want it, it's not ready yet. And if our fans want it, our fans will help fund anything that we do in the future. Now, you look at something like Banana Land, which could be$5 billion. That's probably light because of what I'm imagining. Now, do we have cash flow or do our fans have the cash flow right now to cover that? No. But I know Walt Disney got creative and how he did it. he offered a TV show to ABC, the wonderful world of Disney.

1:50:34Jesse Cole:And so I'm sure there's ways that we could get creative to offer some opportunities to be a part of it. But that's many years down the road. We can build everything else with our fan support and with me and Emily and our company putting everything back in and reinvesting. Explain if you don't mind the different verticals of your business currently. Again, whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. So most teams, It is 50 % or more. You've got sponsorship, and then you've got TV rights. We're probably 45 % tickets, 45 % merchandise. And then 10%, you've got little other verticals of Food & Bev, working with tourism companies, and our media.

1:51:19Jesse Cole:Very, very different. It's almost all there's a difference. It's almost solely funded by our fans, not by outside corporations. And how does that compare to what you'd like it to be? I love it. I love it where it's at. I think that, you know, if anybody looked on the outside, they'd say, you were leaving millions of dollars on the table. You could have millions of dollars in sponsorship. You could have millions of dollars in TV rights. Will you just charge shipping on your merchandise? There's millions of dollars there. Will you please just have people pay their own taxes and stop paying everyone's taxes?

1:51:47Jesse Cole:There's millions of dollars there. That doesn't matter to me. I think there will be opportunities that we look at teaming up with broadcast partners where we still keep it non-exclusive on YouTube, but we team up with them. I think there's an opportunity there and I think there's probably some opportunities with strategic partners that really their number one goal is to give things to our fans to create an experience for fans and not to extract something from our fans. All right, here's one for you because I know this is Your driving force. I'm kidding what do you think the team's worth? I think it's a question that a lot of people are putting numbers on now.

1:52:22Jesse Cole:It's not something that - And that's why I'm asking too. Yeah, but I guess, and I want to say this without trying to give a political answer, it doesn't matter to me. Because if someone says it's worth a billion dollars, what does that mean? I was built, I love this, our team loves what we do, and what would I do with the money? So I know it's a good question. hey, the bananas are worth, or banana ball's worth, or all the teams are worth X. But that's almost zero interest to me. Well, but if for no other reason than it's, I'm sure it's enjoyable as you hear numbers from people, it's another metric that can be used to show your growth and success, even if you're never going to give up a piece of it.

1:53:07Correct.

1:53:07Jesse Cole:It's a metric that can, on the outside, can drive a lot of people to look at it. Yeah. But the metric that matters to me is the amount of fans we're serving. And I want to say this very clearly. We played in front of a million fans this past year. That's more than any NFL team, more than any NBA team. Next year, we're going to play in front of over 2 million. I love that metric. Look at how many fans that we're serving every year. That's what we talk about. We even look at our merchandise numbers. We said, how many fans do we serve every night? That's the one that matters to us. Because if we're serving more fans every year and serving them better, the money all takes care of itself.

1:53:40Jesse Cole:So if you do that, maybe you'll look back and say, wow, this team, this company, this banana ball is worth more than you could ever imagine. And that's all well and good, but what am I going to do with it? So explain these creative meetings and what they entail. We learned that from Saturday Night Live. So I said, all right, guys, we've got to now create something brand new every single night, every single weekend, just like who else does this in the business right now? Who else does it? I'm like, Saturday Night Live. They have a new show every Saturday, new host, new skits, new everything. I was like, well, let's learn from them.

1:54:13Jesse Cole:They've been doing it for 40 years. And so we watched a documentary on it. And we realized, all right, they come in on Mondays. And they have the new host. And they have Lorne Michaels. And everybody pitches ideas. All right. Then Tuesday, they start writing. Wednesday, they do a table read. Thursday, they start creating, doing the sets, Friday. And then on Saturday, they actually do rehearsals. And they do a show at 8 p.m. in front of the live audience. And they actually cut things that don't work and do work. And then 1130, it's showtime. It's like, all right, now we got to do that two or three times a week.

1:54:42Jesse Cole:So we said, all right, Tuesday. So because now, because we play games on Sundays and Monday we're traveling. So Tuesday we get together, we have our OTT meeting. We get our whole creative marketing team together. And we talk about what are the crazy wild things we can do this weekend we've never done in front of a live crowd. We start writing them all down, hitting entrances, pitching celebrations, running scoring celebrations. We put all these down. Then we have one with the players. So the players have their own one, both teams. Then I get one with our entertainment team. And then I have one with our broadcast team.

1:55:10Jesse Cole:My Tuesday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. is filled with creative. By the end of the day, we might have a hundred different ideas. And then we start putting them into our table, our table reads, which we actually go through, put the scripts in. Then we start preparing them. What props do we need? What things do we need for the set? How are we going to do it? And then we start doing rehearsals that whole weekend. And we actually do even more rehearsals during VIB, our very important bananas, in front of our fans where we can actually watch how they react to them. So then just like SNL, we can make decisions.

1:55:38Jesse Cole:Are we going to adjust this? Do we do this a little better and go from there? So we follow that model. And that has helped us create, you know, we're talking about 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 brand new things every single season that have never happened before in a baseball field. So Jesse has this dream of having our players skydive to their positions. And it's just something that he just brings up in a meeting and he just wants to do. too. And for those of us who are, you know, HR or logistics or any other position, we're saying, hold on, red flags. He sees the opportunity. He sees the story. He sees the excitement.

1:56:12And so he'll come to the meeting saying, let's go. And then we're refining that. And so now we're, you know, we're negative Nancy in the room. And that can be hard because he has these exciting thoughts. And it would be fun if everybody lived, but it would not if, you know, something horrible happened. So when you're negative Nancy giving the feedback to that, how's he reacting? It's been hard. He will feel like I'm raining on his parade. And I can understand how he feels that way because I am. I am raining on his parade. He thinks that this is the best idea ever. And I'm saying safety first. We can't do that.

1:56:47And so it's been hard in that I have had to learn to communicate in a way where I don't just automatically say no. And I don't know if this is still the case, but why do you keep a personal energy list?

1:56:59Jesse Cole:Yeah, energy list. It's a good way to keep me in check. And I talk to our team about it all the time. How's your energy right now? Are you doing what gives you energy? It was for me when I ever realized that I'm truly tired, truly burned out, truly worn out. I realized during that day I was doing things that can give me energy. And so my energy list is very clear. It's creating, sharing and growing. So creating, am I coming up with ideas? Am I coming up with new things that we can do at our games? Am I writing something, creating a new post or nothing to share? Am I sharing? Am I getting on a stage to share this?

1:57:28Jesse Cole:Am I doing an interview? Am I talking to our team? Am I getting in front of people, sharing our vision, what we're trying to do, and then growing? Am I learning? Am I learning from the biggest mentors that I have in business? Am I listening to podcasts? If I'm doing all that in a given day, I'm on cloud nine. And I can go be my best dad to my kids. I can be the best husband to my wife. And even if I work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. without a break, at 6 p.m., I'm on top of the world. And so I have to check that. And then when I realize there's things I'm doing that don't give me energy, can I either delegate it?

1:57:56Jesse Cole:Do I need to be doing it? Could someone else have it? And that helps me tremendously be full of energy, which I think is what our team needs and what our family needs and what our fans need. And explain this morning idea creation that you have. Yeah, it's the biggest thing that we have in our company. And I think the number one reason why we have been successful on continuing to innovate, it's our ideas. Ideas are everything in our company. And so I started doing an idea book back in 2018. And I would write down 10 ideas a day. And it was hard. Well, it started as an idea box, didn't it? Yes, you go back on that.

1:58:32Jesse Cole:So, yes, that wasn't a daily ritual. So the idea box, I had this box. I learned that from Mike Veck, who Bill Veck is the crazy, amazing, brilliant owner of the Chicago White Sox, the Browns. And he was so innovative. He had Eddie Guidel come up to bat. He gave away live lobsters during games. He let the actually grandstand manage a game. So all the fans managed a game. He put his coach in the stands, and he had all the fans determine whether they were bunt, steal, or hit and run. Most innovative owner of the time. His son was in minor league baseball. I went to his conference. I was 23 years old.

1:59:03Jesse Cole:He said, this is the most valuable thing we've got here. And it was a little box. He goes, take that, put ideas in it. And I was like, okay. So I started putting ideas back in that, you know, here and there when I come up with, like, ooh, the hairiest man contest or dig to China or whatever it is, pregnant night, which that was a ridiculous one. And all these ideas I put in there. But what was it? Pregnant? Yeah, we had a pregnant night. women in your third trimester throughout the first pitch. We had a craving station. We did, now we actually have the pregnant dance-off. So we did this tour where women in their third trimester danced to Salt and Pepper, Push It, which is just absolutely, I'll never unsee that again.

1:59:38Jesse Cole:But so those ideas just started back then, you know, here and there. And then I was like, all right, I got to commit to this. If you want to be really good at ideas, you have to work your idea muscle. If you want to be really good, if you want to be in great shape, you work out every day. And if you want to have great ideas, you have to work your idea muscle every day. So I can't just throw ideas from time to time. I got to write them down, even when it's hard. And I got to commit to this. So in 2018, I said, I'm going to write 10 ideas every single day. And I started. And now, six, seven years later, I'm still going.

2:00:06Jesse Cole:And so my morning starts with 10 ideas. And the biggest adjustment I had to make is the first year is I would just say, whatever ideas I had, now we have to have a theme, a bucket. So I have to have a very specific bucket, you know, senior city promotions, mom and dad promotions, back to school promotion ideas, merchandise ideas, places that we could play that no one ever imagined. It has to be a very specific and then that gets my mind thinking that way. So I write down every morning. And then so I can be my best for our team with ideas. And our director of entertainment, when he started with us, I spent the first 100 days, every day with him, we would do ideas together.

2:00:40Jesse Cole:So he understood the value, ideas is what driving our creative. And that's our whole team is a part of it now. Explain what Jesse Ops is. Oh, geez. That's a joke internally the team has made. I am terrible at operations. I mean, I have two left hands. I just can't get things done in the right, appropriate way. I mean, it takes me to put up a sign and I take an hour. It took someone 10 minutes. I'm just very bad at ops. So when they see me helping with TARP or doing things, Jesse Ops is here, Jesse Ops. So they call me Jesse Ops when I am doing operation stuff that I'm terrible at. It's pretty much a joke internally.

2:01:19And I know that they learned your wife was pregnant earlier than you would have liked people to know.

2:01:29Jesse Cole:Yes, they saw me. I was bending over backwards to do everything so Emily wasn't doing anything at the stadium because she was pregnant. I was making sure she wasn't bending over, lifting things, carrying things. because Emily, she gravitates toward that. Wherever she can get her hands dirty and help out, she goes full steam. She is all operations. So when they saw me hovering around her, doing everything for her, they knew something was up. I wanted to wrap talking about family and your kids. First Maverick, who I met when I knocked on the door here.

2:02:04Scary moment in delivery, right? What was the kind of time and all of that where you were most spooked?

2:02:14Jesse Cole:Yeah, so Emily I decided we didn't want to know if we were having a boy or girl. It wanted to be a surprise. So we were going into, you know, she was in labor and we were at the hospital. And all of a sudden, you know, we were going through the process and a nurse came in and was like just checking. And then I'm sitting on the side and I'm watching as this beeping starts happening a little faster. And then all of a sudden, the nurse said, all right, we need more. And then I hear you go, priority one, priority one calls in, and I see about 16 people running. And so we went from a very normal delivery to a priority one emergency in seconds.

2:02:53This is our first child. We're overwhelmed as it is. We don't know what to expect. And it just got very scary very quick. I knew it was not normal what was about to happen. They flipped me over. So I was actually on my stomach. I was on all fours, which I was like, I've never seen this in the movies. This cannot be good. They're rocking me back and forth, trying to keep my body in constant motion, which again, was not what I expected. I thought I needed to be still and just push. So everything was not right. And Jesse's standing there next to me and they wheel me out and they say, we're taking her out into emergency surgery.

2:03:29Jesse Cole:And I'm sitting there panicking. What's going on? No one's telling me anything. So they immediately start wheeling her out and I'm starting to like I don't say hyperventilate But I'm breathing like what's wrong? What's wrong? And I heard that the baby's heart rate is like 30 or 40 the baby's heart rate was just basically dropping and Emily said to Emily said to one of the nurses so take care of him make sure he's okay Like how did she have the wherewithal to say that? She's going through this right now and my first thought was seeing him you know you're with this person they're your person we haven't met the baby yet of course I love the baby but I don't know the baby I know Jesse and they're about to take me away into I don't know what's about to happen to either of us and so I just remember looking back into the room and seeing him almost crumble I mean he was devastated because he didn't know what was happening to either of us and I just remember saying take care of him because I knew he was going to need some support.

2:04:35Makes me emotional now, six years later. Why? I can't imagine. What would have happened to him if he had lost us? And I think that anybody, when you love somebody that much, of course, I didn't want anything to happen to us, but the person who's left, they go through all the pain. And I was worried for him because we were his everything. You know, we were his growing family. And so I was worried about him and I wanted to make sure that he was okay. I knew that the doctors were going to have me, and so they would do whatever they could. But I didn't know what was going to happen to him. And so I was worried about him.

2:05:17Jesse Cole:So they wheel her out. One nurse stays with me, says, you've got to put these on, put these scrubs on, put these on. And I didn't realize I put them on completely backwards. That became a joke later. I had no idea what I was doing. And she goes, we need to run. I'm like, we need to run? So now we're running through the hospital and going full speed. and all of a sudden we get into this operation room. And again, I counted, I don't know why my head is, I counted there were 16 people hovering around Emily and they're starting to give her anesthesia and she's looking at me and the doctor comes in, it's like, we need to get this baby out.

2:05:53Jesse Cole:It's like, we don't have time. So they immediately start doing surgery and they take the baby out and they say, would you like to meet your boy? and I didn't.

2:06:33Optic White.

2:06:34Jesse Cole:Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habanero? More like habanero, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon.

2:07:07Jesse Cole:I didn't know at that point. So the funny thing too was really funny. They were like, would you like to cut the umbilical cord? And I'm looking, they pulled Maverick and they had him over there, like about 10 feet. And I'm like, cut the umbilical cord. I was like, how, how long is this thing? They're like, oh no, we did just that. It was a little, and I was, I was still so confused on the whole process. So I went over there and I met my son and Emily was still under and going through it. So they gave, so I held Maverick and they put me in this room where it was very calm now. And she was going through surgery and trying to fix everything and get everything set.

2:07:43Jesse Cole:And I held him for over an hour. But that, do you want to meet your boy? I was like, he was this close to not making it. And Emily didn't even know. Emily was out of it. So I, Emily then came over two hours later and I gave her Maverick. It was pretty special. What did you later find out about the severity of the situation? They couldn't explain it. They basically said his heart rate was plummeting. And a priority one is the highest priority. Basically, what we're told is you had less than five minutes. They had to get the baby out or the baby wasn't going to survive. And so they couldn't figure it out.

2:08:17Jesse Cole:But I remember as we left that I said, that was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. and I think about things in a lot of business terms. Imagine 16 people working together that well, that fast, to save a life and do it in such an amazing way. I had so much respect and admiration for nurses, doctors, and I walked out of it. I gave everyone the biggest hug they've ever got. But it was so impressive to me how they were able to work in such a dire situation to make it happen. And Emily, again, she stayed positive, wanted to make sure I was okay when she was going through that. How do you think going through that together impacted the relationship?

2:08:58We really try to be very positive people. We're full of gratitude. Every night before we go to bed, we talk about our roses and our buds. Our roses are the best things that happen throughout the day. And our bud is something that we're looking forward to happening the next day. And so that's just our mentality is what are the good? We are constantly looking for the good. And so we've always been that way. But I think after this traumatic birth experience, it was something that we really focused on was how do we always find the gratitude? How do we always focus on the positive? Because something could go wrong at any moment in time.

2:09:36And so gratefully, you know, getting through that hospital stay, of course, the baby and I both made it and we were fine. But it just puts things in perspective, you know, to just always look for the positive and the good. And we've been living like that since having Maverick. Why did you guys make the decision recently to homeschool the kids?

2:09:57Jesse Cole:Because our life is, you know, our life is wild. We travel a lot. That had to be a hard decision. Yeah, I mean, it was a hard decision. I mean, again, noticing our two girls, you know, when we became foster parents, you know, we knew we were going to have to educate and teach in a different way because of what our two girls had gone through in their life. and how so on the like so so so so so so so kind of joined us at two and a half and she was nonverbal when she joined us as a two and a half year old she had gashes on her body she was scared of the dark she was screaming and couldn't even take a bath she was screaming it was the first she couldn't sleep in a bed she slept on me the first night as a two and a half year old she had a lot of trauma which we didn't even know really what was and what went through so she obviously had a challenging first two and a half years of her life.

2:10:49Jesse Cole:Have you since got an insight? You can't really. It's one of those things that's really hard to gain because there's so much that you didn't see or know and wasn't told of what went through. But I do know when we picked her up the first time from her first foster house, she was smiling and she's never met a stranger. And you saw she running over to me. She just runs over to anybody. And it was something about I admire her so much because what she went through, It was just she's not afraid of anything. And Addison, who joined us, was six days old. She was in the NICU for six straight days. She had every drug imaginable in her body when she was born.

2:11:27Jesse Cole:So she had a tough, obviously. So so basically we knew that in the way they were going to be developed, that we want to be able to give as much special home personal care as well. And so so we decided, you know, this past year with the amount of travel that we're doing and going around that let's be around the kids. Let's be around them. Let's do everything we can to teach them. And again, from my college education, I look differently on what education is. How do you create your own? How do you do things? How do you learn in a different way? And so that's what we decided to do. By the way, I understand as most parents do, I guess, you guys have started feeling guilty because when you're at work, you feel like you should be home.

2:12:13and when you're at home you feel like you should be at work, give a little insight into it.

2:12:20Jesse Cole:I think that's a challenge a lot of working parents have every single day. They always feel like they're maybe not doing something to the best of their ability because our focus is all spread. We want to be the best parents, we want to be the best spouse, we want to be the best friends, and we want to be the best at work. And how do you do that and how do you balance that in a world where we're always on these days? You're constantly on your phone, you have it always on you. It's a different world. And so for us, you know, I've been better at being able to compartmentalize at, you know, I try at six o 'clock when I'm home to shut off.

2:12:52Jesse Cole:But I do know that there's things happening. We're entertaining 24-7, 365. So, you know, I think that's the biggest challenge that me and Emily have is how do we figure out this, that we can be truly present. And for us, it's things by taking our phones and keeping them upstairs and just saying, hey, we're going to play with our kids and not be around it. Our team's good. They can handle things. But I think when the kids travel with us, that's our world. Hey, we're going to be in it. You're going to have breakfast with some of the most well-known, popular bananas. And we're going to be talking about things going on that night.

2:13:24Jesse Cole:And that's just going to be our world. I remember Walt's daughter never knew. She was six years old and she was at school. And it was like, you're Walt Disney? And she didn't even, it was just daddy. And Stephanie McMahon was asked that question about, you know, how was it, like, as a kid, your dad was Vince McMahon? He goes, he was just my dad. And I think that's the key. Like, they're going to be very aware. I mean, it's crazy what we're seeing now, like, in an airport. And Ken asked me there, why do people keep wanting to take a picture with you? And I'm like, well, I just, I think they know what we're doing.

2:14:01Jesse Cole:And they're fans and they're nice. And he's like, okay. And then Maverick the other day was watching all these kids at a game come up to me for autographs. and daddy, can I get your autograph? I go, yeah, Maverick, here you go, buddy. And it's just, they don't understand it. And as they grow, hopefully they understand like, hey, we're gonna try to keep you a part of this and keep you shielded from the bad things, but also keep you a part of the good things as well. What made you guys decide to foster and then adopt? Yeah, it's Emily's heart. So, I mean, Emily started learning about it. Adoption had always been on my heart.

2:14:33I don't know one specific reason why. It just always felt like if I had room in the house or love to give, why not welcome somebody in who needed that? And so we decided, you know, if we are going to grow our family, we'll go the adoption route.

2:14:48Jesse Cole:I mean, she was very aware that of what's going on in this country where most people aren't in the foster world. And for me, she's smart. She's very smart. She knew this would be tough for me. I was an only child. My dad was an only child. My dad's dad, dad was an only child. And then we had a boy. All right. That's a pretty good progression. We're on the right path. I think we're doing something and more kids. I was like, well how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna be great parents? And she goes, she took me, we went to a class to learn more about it. And then she goes, Jesse, do you realize this?

2:15:18Jesse Cole:I go, what? She goes, there's 400 ,000 kids in the US who don't have a permanent home. I goes, we can take care of that. We can give everybody a permanent home. I go, really? And she goes, yeah, what if we did something? And what if we start, what if we do it? And so she got me with a big number of the problems. Like, what? Let's just start. And she probably said, like, Jess, you remember One City World Tour? We just, you know, did one thing and then we keep going. And I was like, okay. And so we went in COVID and said, we're just going to do it. And she read the book, Everything is Figureoutable.

2:15:51Jesse Cole:I was like, if we can figure this out in COVID with our lifestyle, with everything, let's just do it. And so we did it and we learned. And that's when we really learned about all the problems and challenges, not only the 400 ,000 kids that don't have a home, but all the challenge in the foster care world. Foster care is something that as a society, I don't think we talk a lot about, but there are so many rules and so many pieces of paper you have to get signed and so many court hearings that you have to attend. And of course, all of it is to help keep kids safe. But when you marry that lifestyle with the lifestyle that we have of traveling all the time and staying up really late for games, it was a hard mix for us.

2:16:28Because there were times when it was like, I can't live this lifestyle, not while trying to grow our business. We also have a two-year-old toddler at home who we have to think about. There were a lot of times when it would have been easier to just walk away. But reading that book, Everything is Figureoutable, and knowing the need in foster care kept us invested. And then, of course, once we got our girls and they became a part of our family, helping them was just the next goal.

2:16:53Jesse Cole:We said, all right, you know, we got to launch a nonprofit. We got to do something. That's when we launched Bananas Foster. And it's been probably one of the most fulfilling things for me is every night to honor a family in that community that's been in the foster care world. and they have fostered 200 kids, some people, I mean, 10 kids, 20 kids they've adopted. I mean, it's wild. And to then literally honor them with a standing ovation, it's really special. I think when companies get to a position where they have a platform as large as we've been fortunate to get with the bananas, it comes along with the responsibility to do good in the world.

2:17:30And so, of course, Jesse comes up with the best name in the middle of the night, Bananas Foster. He literally wakes me up and says, I've got the name because we've been talking about wanting to marry these things. How do we take our teams and we take foster care and how do we use them together to just help? How do we tell the world about the need? How do we help more kids? And so when he came up with Bananas Foster, it was perfect. And that's really what spurred us to get to that next point of launching. And so after months of thinking about how we wanted to impact the foster care world, Bananas Foster was born.

2:18:04What about the work you've done through that are you most proud of?

2:18:08Jesse Cole:I think to know that every night these people that have been foster parents for two years, three years, five years, and the work that goes into it, to get them a moment where they get recognized and you see tears come down their face, the first moment they see, I mean, standing ovations wherever we go just shows you how much people respect and admire what you do to help a kid that didn't have a place to live. and when they walk off the field and I give a hug to the mom and dad and they sincerely thank us, I'm like, we're thanking you. You earned this. And then to hear Emily said, hey, we had 16 people sign up tonight to be foster families on our website.

2:18:46Jesse Cole:Wow. And so just like I believe that we started at two tickets sold to now a wait list approaching 3 million to say, all right, there's 400 ,000 kids in the U.S. that are in a permanent home. What if in 10, 20, 30 years there's a wait list in this country of people that want to be foster families? and I believe we can do it. Maybe we end with this, the call Emily got from Addison's biological mom. Yeah. Yeah. We're sitting in the airplane after our final game of the tour in 2022 and it was emotional final game of the tour. It was really special and so it was already high on emotions and I'm sitting with the, she's sitting I think with Kenna, I'm sitting with Maverick and Addie, and I see her, and she turns between the crack, and I see her face just flooded with tears.

2:19:39Jesse Cole:And I'm like, what's up? Are you okay? What's going on? And she hands me her phone, and I see it, and it's a text from her mother, Addison's mother. It was Mother's Day, and I received a text from her basically saying, this would be the best Mother's Day gift for both of us if you would accept the responsibility and privilege of raising this little girl forever as her mom. You know, I am not in a space where I can do that. And we want you to be that mom figure. And just the magnitude of that message was something I will never forget. You know, we were just in the middle of the foster journey with her.

2:20:23Jesse Cole:We weren't even, you know, Because the goal in foster care is to reunite the kids with their biological family. That's always the goal. And that's why we got into this, to try to get kids back to the family, get their family in good shape. So you don't think about that immediately. But to get that from a mother and the wherewithal and the maturity for a mother who was battling, to send that on Mother's Day to Emily was pretty emotional. That was a turning point for me because I saw how beautiful adoption could be. You know, it doesn't have to be messy and horrible and all sad. It comes from a place of trauma, of course, but it can be healing when the families come together with the same goal of putting this child first.

2:21:06Jesse Cole:And we already knew Kenna was on that process to potentially adoption. We were like looking around like, this might be our family. We're on a plane right now on Mother's Day finding out this is going to be our family moving forward. It's pretty special. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. It was good stuff. All right. anything I did not ask about that no it was it was a dramatically different interview than I've ever done so that's why it was it was very interesting no no no it was good it was it was good it wasn't um it wasn't uh business related it wasn't his business it was more into the family stuff so that was interesting I haven't gone that route as much so it was it was deep that's why it was it was it was good like I said I've never done one like that that does it for my conversation with Jesse Cole.

2:21:50And I know I always say at the end of podcasts to check out the video clips on YouTube, but you're really going to want to do it for this one because we got tons of access with Jesse and the team in both Savannah and Fenway Park in Boston. And speaking of Savannah, I got to experience the craziness firsthand. I would say what was most remarkable to me about the Savannah of Bananas was just the quality of show and fan experience. It is truly never-ending entertainment. There's not a moment where there isn't the opportunity to be fully engaged, starting with When you're very first walking up to the ballpark, Jesse and the team's attention to detail is nothing short of extraordinary.

2:22:52The sky's the limit for the Savannah Bananas. And it is well worth the investment going to a game. and chances are they will be showing up at a ballpark or stadium or arena near you. If you want to see any of our time with Jesse and the team, youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger. As always, if you get a chance, give us a rating and review. Thanks again for listening.

2:23:29Jesse Cole:Our yoga instructor challenged us to find inner peace. I found it faster than anyone. After four seconds, I stood up and screamed, I found Nirvana! I win! They asked me to leave. I guess they don't respect winning. Bet365 does, though. New customers get$150 in bonus bets just for betting$10. Namaste, losers. Bet365. Winning is everything. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 201 plus only. Must be physically located in Illinois. TNC's apply. In-app only. Did you know if your windows are bare, indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees? Get ahead of summer with custom window treatments like solar roller shades from Blinds.com and save up to 45 % off during the Memorial Day Early Access Sale.

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