Stop Doing What People Hate!

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. Watch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:58Okay, so I'm standing in line at a hotel waiting to check in. And in front of me is a guy wearing a bright yellow tuxedo and like a yellow top hat or whatever. And I thought, as you might think in a case like this, what is this guy about? This guy can't be serious, right? Now, as it turns out, we were both checking into the hotel for the same event. I was emceeing and he was speaking. And I got to know him a little bit later. His name is Jesse Cole, the man in the yellow tuxedo. And he founded a baseball team called the Savannah Bananas. And the yellow tux is his trademark thing. It's part of this whole ethos that he has about business.

2:40And that night before the event, Jesse and I got dinner with a few other folks that were speaking. And I liked talking to him. But to be honest, I still didn't totally understand what he was all about. Like, what is this baseball team? And what is up with the tucks? Then the next day, I saw him speak. And then I got it.

2:59This is audio from another event that he did. I couldn't find the record of ours. And it's one I'm watching on YouTube now. So Jesse is storming to the stage, throwing candy out into the audience. At ours, he showed up with, I think, some people in dancing bear outfits? I don't know. It's all a haze. But the point is, Jesse is a showman. His entire business philosophy is about putting customers first, thinking 100 % about what they want and truly catering to their needs. This is how he built a baseball team that went from total obscurity to sellouts every night. And it's a kind of thinking that he came to many years ago when he took over a failing team.

3:40So I took over a failing baseball team back in Gaston, North Carolina, 15 years ago. That's Jesse from a conversation I just had with him for this podcast. And everyone that I talked to kept saying, we don't like baseball. It's too long. It's too slow. It's too boring. And then we took over another team and said, ah, the prices, you get nickel and dime. We just kept hearing over and over again about the things that people hate about going to a baseball game. And I said, we have to do the exact opposite. The only way we can survive. So Jesse came to this wonderful, almost stupidly simplistic realization.

4:08The secret to business is to stop doing what people hate. Stop doing what people hate. When I first heard Jesse say that, I was like, oh, that is so perfect. No business would say that they are out there intentionally doing what people hate, but come on, most businesses do in fact do things that people hate. Maybe it's the process or the customer service or something about the product or the extra fees or whatever it is. Businesses end up trying to strike a balance between serving the customer and doing things the customer will simply tolerate. But what if you stopped that? What if you literally stopped doing what people hate?

4:43What would happen? And how hard is it to do? Okay, everything that you just heard was originally recorded in the year 2020. And so much has happened for Jesse since our conversation, since we were on stage together, since the original recording of this podcast episode that you're going to hear today. Most notably, the Savannah Bananas have blown up. Back when I talked to Jesse, it was like a cute, funny regional thing. Now it is a national thing. Maybe you caught Banana Land on ESPN, the show about his team. Maybe you have seen them play. I mean, who knows? At a major league baseball stadium, at a NFL stadium near you, because the Savannah Bananas are a national thing on tour.

5:31And as I have watched this and I have stayed in touch with Jesse, I keep thinking about this conversation that I had with him and this idea of stop doing what people hate. It is so powerful. And so today I want to revisit it. I want you to hear that simple idea that led to such an explosive, joyful concept. On this episode of Problem Solvers, we are digging in. Have Jesse explain what it really takes to stop doing what people hate and how this idea can translate far, far beyond baseball into every kind of business. And so take a listen, go find the Savannah Bananas at your local gigantic baseball stadium.

6:19We're getting into it all right after the break. All right, we're back. So let's pick up with what Jesse was saying before. He was running these baseball teams, but customers were telling him that they just weren't into slow, boring baseball. So Jesse started making some changes. He made the food all you can eat for one price because people hate paying tons of money for food at ballparks. He brought in a crazy amount of entertainment. I mean, he basically made baseball just the stage for which a bunch of insane things would happen during a game. You got a breakdancing coach, games, stunts, oversized underwear thrown into the stands.

6:53So I asked him this. Was all this driven by thinking about correcting for what people's complaints are about the experience? Well, we just try to put ourselves in our customer's shoes. And we actually do this. Every game, we go undercover. One person on our staff goes undercover as a fan. And we come and park with the fans. We stand in line with the fans. We sit with the fans. And we get to experience, like, do we like this? And for myself, as a guy who played baseball my whole life, I realized that baseball is pretty boring to watch. And so I was like, I can't watch a whole game. So how do we make it fun?

7:23And that's why we introduced the breakdancing first base coach, our dancing players, our senior citizen dance team, our pep band. We just kept thinking about all these circus things that would be entertaining. And then we just kept going. I was like, all right, what are these other things? Not just long, slow and boring, but getting nickel and dimed and getting promotions and sponsor ads and all these things. We just kept going down. What are those things that we can eliminate? And I think most companies, if you put yourself in your customer's shoes, do you like how you're being treated? Do you like being on hold trying to talk to someone when you call your bank for 10 minutes?

7:51I mean, do you like having your bags charged when you fly? I mean, all these things and the companies that are thriving and the ones that are doing the opposite of that. Right. You know, that's the crazy thing about the idea of stop doing what people hate is that oftentimes you're sitting around, you're thinking, you know, every business is thinking, how do I separate myself from the noise? How am I better than the competition? And we try to innovate these things and come up with these new solutions. And sometimes the answer is actually just removing some of the friction that is built into your business.

8:24It's not adding, it's in a way subtracting. 100%. Well, I don't know who did this, but it might've been Howard Schultz or Jeff Bezos, but they always have a chair at a meeting and it's an empty chair and it represents their customer. And before any decision that we make, what does the customer want this? And what most meetings, they say, how can we make more money? And what we focus on is how do we create long-term fans over short-term profits? And by making those decisions, you're not doing things that your customers hate. And so our game is how do we create more fans, have people love us, as opposed to have some people that kind of like us.

8:54And you don't love a brand if they do things that are frustrating, that are friction points. I say stop the hate, but I also say eliminate the aggravate. If you get aggravated by something, eliminate it. And we've had to look at every piece of our business model to do that. And we throw away money. We throw away lots of money doing it, but we're playing the long game. And it's worked out for us, Jason. As you know, four years ago, I was sleeping on an airbed after selling just two tickets. And my wife and I were down to our last dollar. And now, fortunately, with every game sold out, it's starting to work.

9:21Yeah. what is it like to build a culture in your business that is okay doing all that? Because right, there's talking about it philosophically, you and me right now. And then there's actually executing it. And executing it is difficult. Now you have something of an advantage here because you have built the company. So you, you know, the span of bananas, you built it, you built that team. So everything was able to grow out of this vision that you had. There's buy-in, although I know, and maybe you can speak to this, there have been people who you've hired who weren't able to really grasp it and weren't a cultural fit.

9:56But let's talk about what it means to actually build a culture that's okay with leaving money on the table, that's okay with rethinking some of the foundational elements of a business. Well, it starts, yeah, it's a culture of experimentation. So when we hire, we actually go through what are the ideas that you have? And then when they get hired, we say, all right, let's implement them. And so right away, Like literally we had an intern start with us just a couple months ago. And he goes, I love that you call every single fan that buys a ticket and thank them, but we can make it more fun. And I go, what do you have in mind?

10:27He goes, well, I'd love to, what if we did a rap? What if we did like a rap to them? It was fun. Like rap. I go, perfect. I go, you'll do it by the end of the day. He goes, no, no, no. I'm kind of awkward. I'm kind of awkward. I can't do this. And I'm like, well, your name's Austin. You're now Austin, the awkward bananas rapper. And so literally by the end of the day, he did a rap. And so we empower our people to make those decisions and actually do things. Because the reality is, we do tons of things that don't work unbelievably well. Like the living pinata, where we put people in a pinata, that's a whole other promotion in itself.

10:57It's an experimentation. So when you join our team, you know you're going to have ideas. And every month, we have idea paloozas where we come in and we have an idea box and we pitch ideas. And then we just say, who's implementing? And we test. Because again, I think you know this, you've said this before, but quantity leads to quality. And so we are constantly testing new things. And we know out of some of them, some fans are going to love them. And that's just who we are. Because you talk about innovation, but it starts with just, hey, are we doing new things? Are we testing new things? Or are we just continuing doing the same thing that used to work and may not work anymore?

11:27Right, right. You've been working, I know, with other companies and consulting with them. So now at that point, you're trying to infuse this vision into what might be more calcified cultures. and I wonder what it's like for them. Because to walk in and say, you know, this thing that you're doing, I understand that there's some logic to it, but customers hate it. So you should stop doing it that way. We should start thinking about it. And I assume that what happens is that immediately anybody who's involved in that will start to justify their own existence. No, no, no, no, no. But the reason we do it is because this, you're not understanding that.

12:05How do you break through that? Yeah, the question, are you doing it just for yourself or are you actually doing it for a customer? Are you doing it to create fans or you don't just try to create a little short-term profits. To give example, I'm a person that like in school, the only way I was able to get past was I would look at the examples on the page before and say, all right, that's how I have to do it. Like I need examples. So we give tons of examples. So for instance, like we just eliminated a couple months ago, we made everything free shipping because I don't think anyone, when they see a$22 shirt and it's 28.50, that pisses people off, that upsets people.

12:31So we eliminate that. We don't have any convenience. Anybody who has convenience fees, that's the most inconvenient fee in the world. Why do we have this? Like an$18 ticket for us is an$18 ticket. A$24 shirt is a$24 shirt. And we threw away profits for that, but we want people, it's the transparency of, hey, that would frustrate us. So they look at their business, hey, when you called, you have an automated response. Is it like, oh, listen closely as our menu options have changed. Menu options are changing all over the world every day, I guess, because that's all that we hear. That's frustrating.

13:00And so again, I didn't think, I hate the word audit, but do an audit. What's your voicemail? When people call, what happens? When people come into your store, how are they greeted? Is it frustrating at all? Is there a friction point? And it's crazy. One of the companies that's the least maybe human connection company in the world does an amazing job of that. And Amazon, because they eliminated all the friction, the one-click buy, and now they're getting to you quicker. They look... They are so obsessed with your customers that it makes a difference. And for us, I mean, Jason, you've obviously seen this.

13:27I believe good companies are obsessed with their product. Great companies are obsessed with their customer. And we are fanatic about fans. We are fanatic about it. And you have to eliminate all that crap first to get there. Can you share a case study or something that's not baseball-related where you were working with a company in some completely random industry? I think that when we ran the story about you, there was an example about a construction company, right? Yeah. I mean, they're a great example. They went through like, all right, what happens when you go to pay the money to buy a home?

14:04you never know what's happening. The frustrating points, are they actually working on my house? So what they started doing is literally their people would be like, hey, we're pouring the concrete now and do a selfie video showing the pouring the concrete. Instead of the electrical tape lock, they made it a celebration. And they actually have champagne at the end, they have a ribbon cutting, they have a red carpet. So they looked at like, all right, these frustrating points, when you sign the contract, it's just like, well, let's hope that it works out well. And then it's usually just red tape, red tape, red tape.

14:31They take you along. And a lot of times it's just looking, what are the expectations of your customer? So the expectations for these people are like, they want the house done by them. But you should take them all on the line. Look at what your expectations are customer and say, all right, these are some friction point opportunities. And let's be proactive instead of reactive. And I think I've heard that before, like proactive, customer experience is proactive and customer service is reactive. And what they did is they're proactive the whole time on sharing people what's happening and looking like, does this part of the process suck?

14:57I'm going to make it better. And so they have some great stories and things they've done, but it It sounds like, hey, this just works for a baseball team. But really, it's anything. If you're reading a magazine, Jason, what are the parts of the magazine that you hate? What are the parts that are frustrating? Same thing on a website. I mean, there's always those things. And I think companies that do ads, they're now doing ads in a much more creative, fun way that are interesting, as opposed to just an ad that's like, here's another ad. And I think that's something that's very interesting, too, about someone that's selling ads.

15:23Were you surprised at all at how much of a revelation this was for people? How this was new information for people? because this is a funny thing that I find about talking about business in general, which is that some of the things, a lot of the things, I guess, that are so core to what is success in business are actually very simple. They're obvious things that we just forget about because business is complicated and you start to lose sight of what the foundation is of the thing that you're doing. I wonder what your experience has been like as you've literally, because I know you do a lot of speaking, literally taken this idea on the road.

15:59Yeah, it's funny because when I say that, I go, hey, you want to know the best business plan in the world? Stop doing what people hate. Stop doing what your customers hate. And they're like, oh, and they start writing it down. I'm like, guys, you don't should write that down. It's very simple. And as you know, the most simple things really make the most impact a lot of time. And I share some great advice that I've received about listen carefully, respond creatively, love your customers more than you love your product. There's certain things that really hit home. But the starting point of it all, and the next big thing I'm focusing on is how to create you wouldn't believe moments.

16:26How to get everyone to say, you wouldn't believe what happened when they came to the stadium. You wouldn't believe when I went to this restaurant. You wouldn't believe when I worked with this lawyer, what they did. You wouldn't believe you wouldn't believe. And you can't do that if you're doing things that frustrate your customers and friction points. And we have to live our brand. So what's happened, Jason, is it's unified our company even more because we're literally looking like, Ooh, now I think a customer might hate that. Let's not do it. Ooh, no, no. That's more for us. That's not for our customer.

16:51That's not for a fan. And if you'd like, I could share this big thing that we're doing that is really laid in the framework of this that no other sports team's ever done. But it's solely because of that. Stop doing what people hate. Tell me. So we are about to announce that we are creating the first ever ad-free stadium. So literally, we are taking down every single billboard, every single ad, every single sign. We've taken away no ads in our programs, no announcements, no sponsor ads. We've thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because I believe and we believe not one fan comes to the ballpark to be advertised to.

17:23There's not one person in the world. I don't believe anyone wakes up and says, you know what? I hope I'm sold today. I hope someone markets something to me today. And I hope I'm advertising today. And so if you look at every ballpark in the world, they go for the money. How do we get this money? Hey, this is great. It's an easy check, 20 ,000, 50 ,000, whatever that number is to put their ad and capitalize on their fans. We want to serve our fans better. We don't want to capitalize on them. And so we're throwing that all away to give the stadium back to the fans. And it's crazy. And we looked at the numbers and we're like, all right, this is a pretty good risk, but we're going to be okay.

17:54And so that's what we did. So that's amazing. Congratulations on a super, that's a super bold move. Super, super bold. And I'm really curious what that conversation was like because yeah, that is a lot of money left on the table. And you're right that nobody shows up at a ballpark and says, I'm here for the ads. But at the same time, you know, how much friction is it? Nobody shows up at the ballpark. Nobody doesn't go to the ballpark because there are ads. Correct. Well, it depends. It so depends. I don't think it doesn't deter people, but it depends. Some teams, it's everywhere. And so what happens is most teams, every inning, this promotion sponsored by so-and-so car dealership, this promotion sponsored by so-and-so personal injury lawyer, that you're doing these promotions for the sponsor.

18:37You're not doing the promotions for the fans. And I think that is a frustration point. Like, oh, look, it's another little dizzy bat race. Oh, look, it's another wear this and do this. And they're doing it just for the sponsor. So doing it for that small amount of people as far as to the greater good, which is 4 ,000, 10 ,000, whatever your stadium sits. So it's a friction point that's not a complete hate yet. But it could get there. And I think no one really gets excited about constantly hearing ads. I just think we tune them out. And so it takes away from your experience. So how are you going to make up that revenue?

19:05It's a great question. Do you have an answer? Well, yeah. So again, we are going all in. We believe that you should never sell something you don't believe in. So for instance, I'm not going to spend$25 ,000 on a billboard ad somewhere. Because I don't believe it's the best form of marketing. What I believe is investing in the experience. It's why, Jason, last year we paid a professional high-fiver to high-five fans at our games. Literally a six-year-old, we probably broke child labor law. I don't know what we did, but we paid his father, we figured it out. But the reality is we invest in that.

19:33We invest in the pep band. We invest in the experience. So what we're doing to recoup the money is we're going to teach people like we're doing with our workshops, Bananas for Business, our Fans First workshops. We are doing speaking keynotes and workshops at our stadium, which we share how to map the journey, create these you wouldn't believe moments, stop doing what your customers hate, and then they can take that to their company and actually start seeing a big return in the long game. So we would say, invest a couple thousand dollars, invest whatever, to do this, as opposed to invest$15 ,000,$20 ,000 and hoping that the ad works.

20:03Make it a better experience. So that's where we're going all in. We won't recoup all the funds year one. We might not recoup it all year two. But by year three, year four, it should be a domino effect. And we're doing something that we believe in every single day and not selling something we don't believe in that frustrates our customers. Now, to make a change like that, you don't do that overnight. You didn't wake up one day and say, yeah, because I actually have a vague, vague recollection. When we met, which was a year and a half ago at this point, you mentioned that that was something you were thinking about or talking about or something.

20:36So that's been in the works for a while. We finally pulled it trigger. Yeah. Take me through how an organization absorbs such a game-changing idea like that, and then actually gets to the moment where we say, okay, let's do it. The great example was when we decided three months ago to eliminate all shipping charges. So to make free shipping. So we looked, we looked at all of, we know we said we're fortunate. We sell merchandise all over the world. And we looked, we said, all right, wow, shipping was only 3%. So all the shipping fees, it was 3%. So if we eliminated 3%, would that really hurt us?

21:09And could we recoup that 3 % based on more people buying more frequently because of free shipping? So we said, that's actually a small bet. 3 % we eliminate. Then we looked at our sponsorship fees, which was about 10 % of our total revenue. We said, if we lose 10 % of our total revenue and don't recoup any of it, are we still profitable? Will we still be... We made all our debt finally last year. So we said, that is not actually a big bet. It won't kill the company. And so I think when we make these decisions, we looked at all the numbers. We said, all right, cut all that out. Worst case scenario, we don't sell one fans first workshop.