He turned a broke team into a billion dollars

22:50modern growth playbook for the AI era. Built by HubSpot, designed for today's marketer. Get the Loop Marketing Playbook at hubspot.com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind. All right, back to the pod. Well, I had two takeaways from reading about this guy, but that's the first one, which is, so I mean, I run a business, you run businesses. And the hard part is whether to be a dictator or like an elected official. Like, do you just tell people, this is what we are doing, get on board? Or do you delegate and say, let's surface some of the best ideas and we'll figure out what to do.

23:26And this guy does not seem like he takes the first route. He seems like he has a vision and he says, this is what we're doing. How wonderful is this? Let's do it. And oftentimes, when you have a company, I will say ideas and people shit on it. And they'll say, here's all of the reasons why we can't do it. And you know the phrase like, look, do you just want a yes, man? Or what? And I'm like, yeah, I do. I want a yes, man. I just that's all I want. I want a yes, man uh and that's what this guy kind of did like dude have you heard some of his other stories like there's there's this guy jesse he's got so many like layers and layers of little stories like for example i think at the game i've actually never been to a game but i think at the game they have like the 11 rules and he's like we did he's like what he said we picked 11 because k which stands for strikeout and potassium uh which is what is in a banana uh that's the 11th letter in the alphabet like there's like all these like weird symbolism where if i told an employee that they'd be like dude can you just like leave my office and let me like design this logo yeah dude i feel you when you're like you have an idea that's like a little either it's just i can't prove that this is right like nobody can prove it's an unprovable thing or it seems like a little much right and you know maybe it's maybe it's even something that's unserious like maybe we should be focusing on the serious things.

24:40And this is like, this is extra in some way, but you're convinced that, you know, you feel like this will be cool if we do it. This will be special if we do it. This will be unique if we do it. And the amount of energy that it takes to kind of like bring people on board is so hard. That's hard. You know what I did? I basically changed my criteria of who I hire. I realized I could not change myself to turn that switch off. And I can't change like the process where I'm like, no, I will just like magically change people's minds. So I basically changed my criteria for hiring where I, you know, I used to have the Buffett thing, which is like energy, intelligence, integrity.

25:19Like those are the three things you want. And I just added the fourth one, which is like, are you down? And I'm basically like, are you just down where if we just have an idea, you're down to do it? That doesn't mean you say yes to every idea. That's not what that means. It just means like, look, sometimes there's no evidence. Sometimes this is extra. Sometimes this is unproven. And sometimes this sounds bad, but like, we got to try and have some faith that like, we're going to figure it out as we go. Like, sometimes this sounds way out of our league and we're punching way above our weight. But like, why not?

25:47Why not try this? And so like, and which is you've met Ben. Ben is like the most down guy in the world. I don't know if you've met Diego, but Diego is the same way where it's like, there's probably more skilled people than them about like certain tasks. Sure. but I know they're down, which means I can bring a fragile new idea, like a newborn around them and they know how to raise that baby. They're not going to be like, oh, what is this, right? Like, because those ideas are so fragile that if you know the other people on your team are not down, what happens is it's not that they even shoot your ideas down.

26:19It's that you censor yourself. You're like, I'm not even going to bring it up, right? Like there's a part of you subconsciously that just doesn't even bring the ideas to the table, doesn't have the conviction to say it because you kind of know where they're at, right? It's like a friend who's easily offended. You're like, I'm just not even going to bring this up because I kind of know where this goes. It's hard to convince people to do stuff just because. So at a company, like particularly, I mean, obviously in tech, where you're like, show me the data. And I'm like, there is no data, brother.

26:44It's just soul. Like, it just feels like the right thing to do. And it's hard to convince people to do that. And in fact, we should have this guy, Cole, come on the pod and really just talk about management. That would be actually quite interesting. Well, I was going to ask you, you did a pod with the guy from, the unreasonable hospitality. What is it called? Yeah. So his name is Will Gudera. It's going to be such a good podcast. So this guy, Will, he started, he was a chef, but he was most famous for owning 11 Madison Avenue, which is 11 Madison Avenue. Yeah, that's what it's called. So it was awarded the best restaurant in the world.

27:16But then he was famous because of two things. One, he wrote the book on reasonable hospitality. And two, that book inspired one of the best episodes from the TV show, The Bear, where the kind of dummy cousin goes to this restaurant to learn how to be a good restauranteur. And he starts by polishing the forks. And the next step is doing the second lowest job. And then one up, one up. And they just sweat the details on everything. And Will was amazing. And we had this whole podcast. It's going to be out, I think, in two weeks or so. And this whole podcast was about how can tech companies do that?

27:46And so his story was he started by overhearing a tourist at his restaurant say, you know, this trip was amazing. I got all this famous food, but I didn't get to do one thing. I just wanted to get a New York street hot dog. And Will, the owner, overheard that. And he ran outside and he bought a$3 hot dog and he chopped it up in a really pretty way and put a pretty garnish. And he served it to the tourists and they were like, mind blown. And he was like, oh, that emotion, that is what we are doing from now on. And so he gave, he had a budget at his company, at his restaurant to do crazy stuff. And so instead of coming in and giving children's crayons, he would give them an Etch-A-Sketch.

28:23And he would have like the Etch-A-Sketch waiting at the table for them. just all these little small details that people normally forget to do. And he would just sweat the details on them. And that's the idea of unreasonable hospitality, which is to go above and beyond for your customers, which is exactly what Savannah Bananas is all about. Our friend George Mack has this great phrase, which is, they only remember you're weird. And I love that because basically what he means by that is, look, if you just do the expected norms, like table stakes things, you get literally zero credit for that. If you don't do them, you get docked.

28:57But if you do them, you didn't get any points on the board yet. It's still love, love, right? Like you have not actually done anything until you've done something weird. Now, weird can be really good. It could be just, it has to be out of the ordinary. And that's all people will remember about you. So whether you're building a personal brand or a product, or you're the Savannah Bananas and you say, we pay your sales tax, that's weird. That's rememberable. That's something I'm talking about. and it was a decision he made 10 years ago to do that. And it's a decision that cost him money, but how much did it build in Goodwill and Brandon?

29:29How much did it show, not tell, that, hey, we actually give a shit about our fans? Because every single sports team will say, fans are the most important thing. We really care about our fans as they gouge the shit out of them, right? Like the actions of the words go in two different directions. And just by doing something weird, like a statement that was made by, let's say, like paying the sales tax for the fan or, you know, being like, hey, you pay this one ticket price, and then it's all you can eat concessions when you come in. Doing things that were remarkable, worthy of remark, is what gets you the credit.

30:02You only remembered for doing what's weird. Did you pick anything else up from that guy, Will? Did it give you an idea of something to do in your business? Well, he did a couple. Let me tell you two things. He said one thing that was amazing. He said, I forget the exact quote, but it was something like, every mistake is an amazing opportunity to blow someone away. because he was like, people will remember the mistake that you make and then they will remember you going above and beyond to fix it. But then when he talked about the customer experience, I had this idea and we're implementing this at Hampton.

30:31So at Hampton, the way it works is you apply to join and three days later, we'll review your application and invite you on paper, if you are in one of our cities and you have the revenue threshold, we will send you an email and say you can sign up to interview with one of our folks to see if you're any good or a good fit. And so we had this idea, what if everyone who applied on Hampton, which is dozens and hundreds of people a day sometimes, what if within 10 minutes we phone call them and say, I just saw your application come through. Here's the process. I just want to let you know we see you.

31:04And this isn't just some form that no one pays attention to. I see you. I'm going to take great care to handle you. You may not get in, but I'm here and I pay attention. And so that's an example of what it inspired me to do. But the idea that Will had that really inspired me was how you train your staff. He was like, I just have to train my staff like crazy to care about this stuff. And he's like, basically, I'm like a propagandist. I have to repeat the same phrases over and over and over and over again to get them to bind to these ideas. And so this is where the idea, it's so funny, you said insanely great.

31:34That's the exact same thing with unreasonable hospitality. He was like, everyone likes hospitality. But the unreasonable part is the hard part. And so that was actually really cool. That was actually really wise of you to catch that insane part. That's actually the brilliance. With him, it was unreasonable. And so this is like the part that we're actually describing here with Cole, which is like, it's easy to say these crazy ideas. It's actually hard to be wacky enough to like follow through on all of them. Yeah, Dan Porter, who's probably our closest friend who does this, who's like actually done this and he did it with Overtime, when he was on the pod last time, I don't think you were there, but he said a very similar thing.

32:08He goes, if your strategy is something that everybody agrees with, it's not a strategy. So he's like, you know, anybody's like, Like, you know, we're going to have great customer service. He's like, cool. You and a hundred other companies in your space would all agree that's a good strategy. So he's like, it's therefore not a strategy at all. He's like, you have to have something that people would disagree with. So he's like, for example, for overtime in the first year, we replied, I think to a million comments on social. He's like, that's a strategy that people would disagree with. Some people would say that's a waste of time, right?

32:40Like people would say like, that's not worth it. And he's like, I was doing it myself, the founder, the CEO. Like that is a strategy you could disagree with. You could say that's stupid, that's foolish. And he's like, it doesn't have to be that it is stupid or foolish. It just has to be not something that everybody already agrees is the thing to do. And so, you know, same thing unreasonable, which is like, yeah, we all agree that we should have great hospitality. How many people would agree that we should be listening for when the guy says, oh man, my flight's out tonight and I haven't tried the New York hot dogs.

33:10because I really wanted one, to then be like, leave the kitchen, go get a hot dog from a street vendor, come in, break the food code, cut it up, serve it on a dish. That's the part that others wouldn't even think of, let alone, and definitely wouldn't institutionalize as part of their core strategy to do things like that. And Will gave a really tactical bit that I would be curious to hear Cole's opinion, the founder of Savannah Bananas. I was like, okay, so walk me through the profitability of this. Why are you talking about Cole? Is that his name? Is his name Jesse? Jesse Cole. Jesse Cole, sorry.

33:41Oh, you're doing the last name thing. Got it. Not on purpose. I wasn't trying to be that cool. Jesse. His name's Jesse. Jesse Cole. He had two last names, or two first names. Will said something. I was like, Will, how much of your money do you spend on this? He was like, well, I basically allocate 5%. So if I'm a 20 margin business, I'm willing to go down to a 15 % margin business. I'm going to use that 5 % to do wacky stuff. and I anticipate that it will take most companies six to 12 months to make that money back and for it to prove to be profitable. And so I'd be curious what this guy says.

34:14Did it take 12 months to become like some of these weird norms that he was trying to create within his organization? Did it take 12 months for the customers to catch on and for that story to get out to people and then to start coming back via more tickets? I mean, how do you measure showmanship? Because this guy, this guy's pure showmanship. And if anyone listens to this podcast, you know me and Sam. we appreciate good showmanship. And that's what literally this guy is. He's like a modern day PT Barnum. So where are they now? So they're at like what? A hundred million in revenue. And they're like, I live in Manhattan and one of their buses drove by yesterday.

34:48Give you a sense of what's going on. So yeah, the revenues, let's call it like our estimate somewhere between 70 and a hundred million. I believe that the company is probably worth 500 million to a billion. They own 100 % of it. If you just take their low, So last year, 2 million people came to their games, 2 million fans. So it basically doubled. It went 500K, 1 million, 2 million. This year should be over 3 million. If you just take the lowest possible ticket price they could have,$25, which their normal tickets are 35 to 40. But if you just take the lowest ticket price, 25 bucks, 2 million, that's 50 million in just ticket sales.

35:25Then you have tens of millions in merch. They have a 3 million person waiting list. They are now doing a world tour. So it's been up till now, just like kind of a North America thing. But they've been, you know, they went from like these minor league stadiums to doing the biggest ballparks in the country. I mean, in a two day span, they did 150 ,000 people watching their games. Like, it's insane what's going on. Like, we talked about Savannah Bananas two years ago, three years ago. It wasn't this. And, you know, he started this thing, I think, I think he started with the Gastonia Grizzlies or whatever, like in 2008 or something like that.

35:59It's been a long time that this guy's been doing this, which is why I had in all caps, this guy deserves a billion dollars. You do what he did, you deserve a billion dollars. It's very inspirational because he definitely has that everyday guy type of vibe. I kind of get emotional reading about his story. I'm like, I'm on your team. I don't care what you do. I'm bought into you. And then the husband and wife bit is really great. I'm all in on this guy. Yeah, he's amazing. My last company, The Hustle, the year we sold, I was 31 years old, and we were going to do about$18 million in revenue. I frankly didn't have a lot of peers.

36:37I didn't know a lot of people who were ambitious like me. And this meant that I was making decisions that could cost me maybe 5, 10, even more millions of dollars worth of money. I was making them all by myself. This all changed, however, when I got a group of peers. And that's, by the way, how this podcast sort of started. Sean was in my group. And we met every month. It sort of became a personal board of directors. And it frankly changed my life. And that's why I started my company, Hampton. Joinhampton.com. The entire idea is that we make core groups just like this, just like the one that I had of other entrepreneurs who have been there, done that.

37:15And we give you guys a time and a place to sit down and have these very honest, confidential conversations where you can share business ideas. You could talk about hiring. You could talk about all these decisions that you typically have to make all by yourself. The biggest risk, in my opinion, is not failing. You're gonna be fine. Your business is probably gonna work. It's that in 10 years, you look back and you think, damn, I blew it. I blew this opportunity because I was making decisions by myself. I was making decisions out of fear and I did not grow. I did not maximize the opportunity. I'm telling you, it can save you 10 years of headache and of heartache and you can make better decisions so much faster.

37:51And the best part is that with Hampton, These core groups that we make, we make them in real life, in your city. We're in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, London, LA, Miami, New York, SF, Toronto, and Vancouver. And so if you're running an internet company that does at least$3 million a year in revenue, or you've raised at least$3 million in funding, or you've sold the company for at least$10 million, go to joinhampton.com. This is my company, Sam from MFM. I review every single person who applies. So again, joinhampton.com. I have a question, though. Do you think that this is going to be like WWE, WWF, where it becomes like a sustained thing, where it lasts forever?

38:32Or is this going to be like a Harlem Globetrotters where the shtick gets tired? I think both. I think it is Harlem Globetrotters, not WWE, but I don't think it needs to end. So, you know, because I take my kids to all kinds of entertainment. We took my kids to Monster Jam last weekend. Can you explain Monster Jam to all of our foreign listeners, please? This is, by the way, this is amazing because this is normally the type of thing you're explaining to me. Oh, yeah. Please do it. All right. So what is Monster Jam? Monster Jam is basically the best day ever for any little boy that loves like Hot Wheels and trucks, which is, from my count in my son's school, like 50 % of all young boys love cars and trucks.

39:17and so what you know you're normally at home playing with these like little like two inch hot wheels cars right or maybe a remote control car and then suddenly your parents take you to the oakland coliseum and you walk in and it's literally a circle of like it's a dirt like it's like a pitcher's mound it's just a dirt mound in the middle of the arena there's nothing else there there's not like there's just one dirt mound and then they have like these characters like the they have these like eight or ten trucks that will kind of like come out and there's megalodon he's the shark one and all the kids are doing the shark shark yeah i was great digger for halloween once yeah mike so that's like a grave digger thing and i mean grave diggers like their undertaker so he's like they're like star you know star star thing and they basically the trucks come out and they're you know like um like two times the size of a hummer i would say like maybe three times i It's not that big.

40:16It's like, you know, big, but not that big. And they basically do tricks. And trucks like that can only do so many tricks. It's like, they went on their back wheels. They went on their front wheels. They got some air. Dude, they do backflips now. Yeah, like they try to do like a flip and then half the time they crashed out. And then they're like, a crew comes out like with fire extinguishers and like toes the truck away. And now, you know, you're not gonna see Gravedigger for the rest of the show. But they have like, then they have like guys come out on like dirt bikes and do tricks, which are way coolers as well.

40:42So it's this two-hour family event. You get your kids, you know, like a, what's it called? Like a snow cone, popcorn, and they get to see crazy trucks. And they're sitting there with the earmuffs on because it's too loud. And then they leave and you buy the merch or you buy them a car and they're like super happy. And you're out$400. Okay, so that's what Monster Jam is today. Dude, a grave digger, when he goes, it rattles your soul. That's how loud it is. Like, it's not just a loudness. It's a feeling. Dude, I had headphones on too. it's so loud you feel it you it's like a train when it goes by you like you feel the rattle it's amazing and i'm just googling it so i'm just you know it's grain of salt but i think it says it sells four million tickets a year there's no way is that true yeah i believe that i believe that i mean there was probably 10 000 people at the event i was at and you know they're doing that they were there for three days and then they go to the next city and it's just a traveling circus of monster truck.

41:39So I don't see any reason why the traveling circus of Banana Ball can't be a sustained thing. So I do think what it is, the category is more like Harlem Globetrotters. It's a family show. You're going to come. You're going to have a great two or three hours. You're going to be entertained. You're going to laugh. You're going to have the dances. There's going to be some catchy things in your head. You're going to remember a few of the characters. And then you're going to go home. And like, you're not going to, you're not, it's not something you're going to tune into, you know, three nights a week like the NBA.

42:08that's fine. It doesn't need to be that. It's an amazing live touring show. Man. So the guy who owns Monster Jam, he also owns the Barnabas and Bailey Circus. And he's on Forbes as being worth three or four billion dollars. Who is he? His name, it's called Feld Entertainment. So Feld owns Ringling Brothers, Barnabas and Bailey Circus. They own the Monster Jam. They own Monster Energy Supercross. And they own Sesame Street Live. And the owner's name, Kenneth Feld. And it's just a huge 3 ,000-person company, according to Wikipedia. Yeah, unbelievable. And this is also stuff that's super AI-proof, right?

42:52Like live, out-of-home entertainment. It's only going to go up, you know what I mean? Because people always crave something that's different than what they have in abundance, which is like digital, online entertainment. And so, and then these things are scarce. Like, there's not that many. And especially if you could do what WWE has done or what Monster Jam has done, where you start to become fans of certain, whether it's players, teams, characters in the show, that's always going to be an entertaining thing. By the way, his father started Ringling Brothers Circus and his son, Kenneth, eventually took it over.

43:29And that's now, they're the ones who own Monster Jam. Just imagine, it's like the family business. The family business is like, we run Monster Jam. We started the Ringling Brothers Circus. The dinner table, what's going on? It's so much better than what we do. Or the baseball. So I wonder, the Cole family, the owners of Savannah Banana, I imagine they have children now. I wonder how awesome that is to see your parents do a job like that. Yeah, it's also tough. I mean, you're on the road all the time. It's live events. It's messy, right? You don't get to just push a button and like, oh, we sent the newsletter to 3 million people.

44:07Like, oh, I pushed the button and the ads are running all night. Dude, when I ran the hustle, we called the send button on sale through or whatever. We said, we're going to click the money button. You guys ready? We're going to click the money button. Click the money button. And we would just call it the money button because I know every time I hit send, there was that one point we were making like 30 or 40 grand a day. I was like, all right, click the money button. Boom. Right. And this guy does not have a money button. He has a money bus where he has to get on the bus for two weeks. Yeah, exactly.

44:35It's a little different. A lot more money, probably, than what I made. But yeah, it's a money bus. All right. We ended up spending the whole episode on this van about us, but that's cool. I think we should just call it that. All right. Is that it? Is that the pod then? Yeah, I think we should all go and just brainstorm ideas for the craziest marketing things we could do in our business now. I think we should all go write down 20 totally out-of-the-box ideas and do that every day for the next 60 days until you have three ideas that are going to be attention-getting and unreasonable in some way.

45:15And here's... All right, so we did this thing called the Gentleman's Agreement, by the way, where people would click like on our YouTube page if they've ever watched more than one video of ours. and that was the way of paying it forward. I have a request, Sean, for our listeners. You and I have... We'll do a two-part one. The first is if you have a connection to Jesse Cole, I want him on the pod. We want him on the pod. I don't have any connections to him. Do you? No. Yeah, so I would love to get him on the pod. If you can help us get him on the pod, that's you fulfilling the gentleman's agreement and we will thank you.

45:52But I think we got to do a second one now with Spotify, right? Yeah, so people don't know this because, you know, you're busy, you have lives, and you eat food, and you sleep. But we doubled on Spotify last month. Spotify is growing like crazy as a podcasting platform. And it used to be like 5 % of our streams. Then it became 10 % of our streams, 15%. It's like 25%, 30 % of our streams now. It is growing. It is exploding. We added our video to Spotify. So if you have Spotify, you can watch the podcast there. There's comments there. We're replying to comments and we're really investing in Spotify.

46:25We think Spotify is kind of amazing for this and we would love to grow more on Spotify. And so if you like to listen to Spotify, if you listen to music on Spotify, if you got a Spotify account, get on there and just type my first million and click follow. It's just a follow button. It's totally free. Nothing else. But you will have reserved your space in the Gentleman's Hall of Fame, which we are creating. And here's what we'll do. The Gentleman's Hall of Fame. I didn't know where that sentence was going. and I just let it run. A Gentleman's Hall of Fame, it's gonna, in my head, when I think of a Gentleman's Hall of Fame, it's a little bit different than a bunch of nerds clicking a button on their Spotify.

47:00We're creating a Gentleman's Club, you might say. A Gentleman's Club.

47:07I thought it was gonna look a little different than just a bunch of neckbeards clicking like on Spotify. But also, leave a comment on Spotify for this episode and we'll actually reply to all of them so long as it's not like 5 ,000. So as long as it's less than 5 ,000, we'll reply to every single comment even if it's just like what's up just say hold on would jesse cole say as long as it's less than 5 000 were you listening to the podcast sir what kind of what kind of not not savannah worthy comment was it's not called reasonable hospitality sam yeah yeah we're gonna tiptoe our way in this is me getting in the pool at the pool party this weekend and half an hour in I'm still under the nipple line.

47:52And I'm just like, hey, I just take my time, okay? I just need my time to get in. I will get in. Okay, every comment. Seriously, make a comment on Spotify because that actually signals, we're testing something. Now we need to blow past 5 ,000 just so Sam gets to taste this. That signals that you're listening on Spotify. And I think it's going to make us go up in the rankings. I think last week or two weeks ago, I think we were the 35th or something most popular podcast in the world on Spotify. All categories. all categories, not just business. And so we're going to game the system in front of everyone.

48:23So just comment on Spotify and we'll reply. All right, that's it. That's the pod.

48:38All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot Podcast Network, but we're not the only ones. There's other podcasts on this network too, and maybe you liked it. Maybe you should check them out. One of them that I want to draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. and whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make, the new habits you could do, the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference, that's what that podcast is all about. Check it out. It's called Nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.