🍌⚾ "Burn the Boring" — Savannah Bananas Co-Founders Jesse & Emily Cole

0:01Yetis slide into home base and then slip into a yellow tuxedo. Because today's interview is on the most fun franchise on earth, the Savannah Bananas. But this ain't a typical business interview, besties. This is also couples counseling. Because we are here with Jesse Cole and Emily Cole, the husband and wife co-founders of the Savannah Bananas. Together, they have disrupted baseball from a four-hour slog into a two-hour viral hit. While the Red Sox yawn in the dugout, the bananas introduce dancing umpires. It's the Harlem Globetrotters meets basketball meets basketball meets Broadway. And it's Jesse and Emily's creation, the Cirque du Soleil of live sports.

0:40These two didn't just sell out a stadium. They sold out every stadium, including, yeah, Yankee Stadium. And they did it by changing the rules of baseball to eliminate every element of boring. The boring. From a struggling startup with so much debt they had to sell their house. to a$100 million new sport with a 1 million person wait list to get tickets. The Bananas have got 15 million followers on social media. Jack, can you sprinkle on some context, please? That's more than the New York Yankees, the LA Dodgers, and the Boston Red Sox combined. And they did it with one dancing pitcher at a time and by replacing walks with a walk-off fan who caught foul balls.

1:17And the business is inspired by Walt Disney, P.T. Barnum, and Saturday Night Live. Oh, and the Grateful Dead. Besties, please welcome the shortstop of short skits, the princess of dancing pictures, and the king and queen of cartwheeling umpires. Jesse and Emily Cole are the co-founders of the Savannah Bananas. And today's interview with this crazy couple is the best one yet. If you don't break out into the Macarena midway through this podcast, pause the pod. Guys, Jesse, Emily, fantastic to have you with us. Thanks so much for coming on. Well done, guys. Well done. Yes. We never had that. That was very intense.

1:52Poetic demon. We've actually never had a couple on the podcast, a couple and co-founders at the same time. So like the first thing we were wanting to know was, we got to hear the meet cute story on this, right, Jack? You started a company together 10 years ago, right as you were getting married. Yeah. Tell us how you met each other. M.O.U. Well, I was actually in the industry before we met. So a lot of people think that because Jesse is - The banana industry. guy. Yeah, that he brought me into it. But we both worked in the industry and I was working for Ripken Baseball at the time. Jesse was probably the youngest general manager ever.

2:28He was 23 and was just a sponge and trying to learn. So he hosted his own conference, which is unheard of for anybody, but for a 23-year-old, really lofty, right? And he invited a lot of the executives in the industry from around the country to his conference. And my boss from Ripken Baseball went and heard him speak and walked outside and called me and said, I just met the guy that you're going to marry. Wow.

2:57I was 24 and not interested in getting married, you know, on the path to running teams and really building myself in my career. But I said, okay, I'll at least reach out to him. And he was doing things like hosting grandma beauty pageants and having flatulence fun night and things that were very odd in the industry, but I was intrigued. And so I emailed him as one does in 2009. And we stayed in touch. We emailed and disconnected professionally for a little while. And then in 2011, we actually had our meet queue, as you say. We both walked into the minor league baseball promo seminar in Myrtle Beach.

3:36And that's where we kind of locked eyes from across the hotel lobby at that opening cocktail hour and really have been talking and dreaming together ever since. That is incredible. The fact that we could cover the start of a relationship, the start of a company, and farting-themed baseball games all in one kickoff answer. That says everything about what we're about to talk about in today's show. But Nick and I actually have origins in the finance industry. Yes. And we jumped in T-boy style to what we think are your financial statements. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Monarch. All right, yetis.

4:16One lobster roll, no joke, 50 bucks on Nantucket. And why is that a problem, Jack? Because we're going to Nantucket this summer on a joint family T-Boy trip. It's a write-off. It is expensive, but we will travel with peace of mind because our finances are organized in Monarch, despite the lobster rolls. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything, accounts, investments, savings goals, and spending. Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off, just$50 with promo code T-Boy. Monarch shows visually how much you're spending this month compared to the average month, which is really useful.

4:48So like, honestly, this month, been a doozy jack. Booked a lot of travel, but I know the future months won't be as bad after lobster roll season. You know because Monarch showed you. Last year, you had a spike in May for travel bookings, but a dip in the summer because the travel was already paid for. You can even ask Monarch's AI assistant anything about your finances. Like, what are the key changes in my spending so far this year compared to last year? And how much was spent on lobster rolls last summer? Use code TBOY at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core at half off, just$50.

5:18That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code T-Boy. Zip recruiter. Yeti's one thing we've never been accused of, lack of enthusiasm. As you know, we set the cruise control of this show at 10 miles per hour over the podcast speed. Well, according to CNBC, nearly half of hiring managers say enthusiasm is the most important factor when considering someone for the role. Well, if you need to hire for your business, how can you separate the candidates who are really excited about the opportunity from those that are just met? Mid-ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interesting qualified candidates first so you meet the right people faster.

5:53And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash tboy. They got the smart match and technology that finds you qualified candidates ASAP. And those candidates tell you in their own words why they're pumped about your job post. And we are enthused about that. So use ZipRecruiter and find enthusiastic talent fast. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash tboy. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash tboy. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. You've said that you sold 2.2 million tickets last year.

6:29At around$35 a ticket and$25 of merch per fan, And we calculated$130 million in revenue for the bananas last year. Can you share with us how much money you've made and whether the business is profitable? That's not something that we focus on. And to be very transparent, Emily and I, we don't even look at the bank accounts. We know we're very healthy. We know that number is inaccurate that you just shared. There's a lot of other parts to our business. But we also know that we invest very heavily. I mean, people don't realize how much we invest in every one of our people. We travel around the country, and the logistics are crazy.

7:07We have our own warehouse for merchandise. We do our own broadcast. We do our own ticketing. We built our own ticket system. We do our own entertainment. We do everything in-house. And so, obviously, we invest a lot, and we're very fortunate that our fans support us tremendously. Well, that's totally fair, guys. You know, Jack and I, similarly, with the show every day, we focus on just making the best show yet every day. We don't focus on what the numbers are. and we find that one follows the other. But there is another financial question that you have shared publicly that we found fascinating, which is that 100 % of the equity in your business is owned by the two people we're speaking to right now, you two as a couple, which is incredible.

7:41And Jack, just to share with the besties and yetis listening right now, why is that shocking? I mean, all of the startup world is glorifying venture capital and billion dollar fundraisers. How did you two resist taking outside money and keep everything, remain the masters of your own destiny. That takes a lot of discipline. Or we just didn't know any better. I mean, we started as kids running baseball teams. And we didn't know, there was no blueprint for us. We just knew we didn't want to do it the same way as everyone else was doing. And so you mentioned earlier in the introduction, yeah, Walt Disney, he studied, and Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

8:17Yes, they all had funding. But we were such a small little startup that we didn't even think about it. We just needed our fans to buy tickets. And so we learned how to do it with nothing. When our first year, we only sold a handful of tickets. When we started, we had to sell our house, empty out our savings account. We were sleeping on air bed and struggling, but we learned how to make ends meet with very little. So we didn't need all this extra support. And so if we can figure out how to do it with very little, even as we grow, we're trying to do the same thing. And that's what we've been able to do.

8:48Yeah. Jesse, if I can interpret what you're saying here, you're basically saying like, yes, we resisted taking that outside venture capital money, but it meant we took all the risk on ourselves as a couple and as a household and literally had to sell our house. Yeah, well, 100%. Well, think about this and what we've learned. When Walt Disney, when he lost control, he lost control of his first character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. He lost control of the distribution rights. He lost control. And so he's like, I need to gain control back. He only gave out control again when he was building Disneyland.

9:19I'm sorry, that's a huge We will build the name of it. We'll get to that. But he gave away control to ABC and his publishing company, but then he bought it all back within five years. And what we've learned is whenever you have different shareholders, different investors, other people, we've had numerous people reach out. They want to return. They want to have control. They want to affect the experience. They would do so many things that aren't fans first for us, which is keeping no ticket fees, no convenience fees, no service fees, paying our fans taxes, no shipping fees, keeping all our games free on YouTube, not having sponsorship everywhere.

9:46All the things that we do that's unconventional, a shareholder investor would want to do that. And so we have no interest in playing that game. We want to keep doing what's best for fans. So Jesse, we love that you and Emily plow every dollar you get back into the business in some sort of investments, as you were mentioning earlier. But it also seems like you're limiting the number of dollars coming into your business. The way Jack and I put it was your business model, as we studied the Savannah Bananas baseball phenomenon, is an anti-business model. Now, to slow down the rundown you just gave us.

10:17Yeah, Jack, why don't you sprinkle in the context? You have forbidden in-park advertising at your stadium. Food and beverages with the$14 hot dogs and$11 beers, you include that kind of thing in the tickets. It's all-inclusive pricing. TV deals, you insist on being free to watch on YouTube. You even cut out Ticketmaster, eliminated the ticket fees, and pay the sales tax for your customers. I've never heard of anything like that. Add it all up, it appears you mainly make money in two ways, ticket sales and merch. So we're curious, like, how is it? Why leave so much cash on the table? I mean, it's very simple.

10:53Our North Star is fans first. What takes care of fans? We focus on them, the long-term fan, over short-term profits. And so when you look at it with that lens, it's very easy to leave that money on the table because that's not who we're serving. We're not serving the corporate sponsorships who want a big return on having a huge billboard. That's not who we're taking care of. We're taking care of the everyday fan, the family who's coming out to the ballpark. And so when you think about it like that with that lens, it's actually a very simple decision, a very easy decision for us on what to say no to and what to focus all in on.

11:24Guys, think about this. Five years ago, we served 100 ,000 fans. We were playing traditional baseball. Okay. Then we left the animal, disrupted ourself. And that model was college. You couldn't pay the players. It was a very good, healthy business model. Let's go to professional now. Where we pay a lot. Spend millions of dollars investing in players and travel and everything else. It's free labor. Yeah. But it was best for fans. So then we went from$100 ,000 to$500 ,000 to$1 million to$2.2 million to over$3.2 million this year. If we did all those other things and had all the extra fees and all the things that aren't fans first, we couldn't serve that many fans because they wouldn't be interested.

11:56And so when you're playing the game on how to create fans, everything else takes care of itself. Yeah. Do we leave$20,$30,$40,$50 million on the table? 100%. But that's not. The business is still very healthy. We can take care of our people at a high level. and the business is growing. By focusing on the customers, essentially, what you're saying is the return you get isn't necessarily in that dollar back that they spend. It's on the customer returning and referring and returning and referring and growing and growing and adding more customers and fans. Let me give you an example. There's 4.2 million people on our ordering list.

12:26So you mentioned a million earlier. There's actually, it's over 4 million on our ordering list. We got an update in them. And during the holiday season right now, we don't look at the dollars. We look at how we serve fans. We are doing thousands of orders every single day online, all over the country. For merchandise. For merchandise. Just merchandise. And so we have a 100 ,000 square foot warehouse with numerous people serving fans all hours throughout the day. And so like that, because of that trust we built and that loyalty we built, that our fans continue to come and support us. I think about like consumer surplus.

12:57In other words, like how much money did I spend and how do I compare that to how much fun I had? There's a business school chart right now, Jack, that's crying as you're describing this. I feel like people who leave a Savannah Bananas game have so much consumer surplus because they spent way less than they would have expected having gone to a crazy game and just received way more as a customer than they could have imagined. And that customer love, it'd be calculated as like NPS in the boardroom. But it really does pay dividends in terms of, Nick, like you said, when people leave a game, they say, oh my God, you have no idea how much fun it was.

13:33You need to get on that wait list. Jack, if I could put everything you said into like a math cultural equation here, I'd almost put it as like happiness equals reality minus expectations. Right. And that's what Jesse and Emily are able to deliver with the product. Well, the expectations keep rising. Everyone's expectations of experience and service keep rising. That's true. And if you ever do this really well, think about Taylor Swift. You know, on her errors tour, she goes, I'm going to do a set that's almost four hours long. That's crazy. I'm going to give people signs from every single error.

14:04But her thing is like, these people are coming from all over the world to see me. I'm going to give them the best concert event I could ever give them. And back in the day, Michael Jackson used to think the exact same way and go over the top of his performances. And so what people don't realize is a show that starts at 7 o 'clock for us, we actually start entertaining at 2 o 'clock. We actually do a rope drop, and we have our players greeting fans as they walk into the stadium signing autographs. And then we do a pre-show from 3 to 4.30. Then we have a march. And then we have pre-entertainment from 4.30 up until 7.

14:32Like 72 different shows, promotions, music. Then we have our two-hour game. Then we have an hour post-game plaza party. Then we have a autograph until the last fan leaves, which goes to 11.30. And we're not asking for extra money. We just want to give more to our fans, and then hopefully they continue to get to us. Okay, Jack, I feel like we're at a point where, you know, we're talking about this sport, and we're talking about it in high-level terms here. But maybe we should define what banana ball is and what we're speaking about here. because we want to get to how you burn the boring, your strategy with a formula for fun, and all of these things that our audience can take with them in their jobs, in their companies, in their lives.

15:06But to start, let's talk about burning the boring, your strategy for developing and inventing this new sport called banana ball. You literally walked through the rules of baseball and the experience of baseball, inning by inning, pitch by pitch, play by play, and found every element that a fan might find boring and said, let's eliminate that from the game. Cut the board. Ultimately, you created a new sport. You burned the board. We compared you to basketball earlier. What are the highlights of banana ball? Literally, what's crazy back six, seven years ago, so I do an idea book every single day, or I do an idea, and the original ideas, which we call the game Showball, is in the Hall of Fame right now.

15:46And a lot of the original - National Baseball. National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, which is really, really cool. But yeah, we looked at everything. So what are the parts of baseball stepping out of the box? I remember watching a game and Yasiel Pui was stepping out. It was taking 20 to 30 seconds in between pitch. I'm like, this is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. The mound visits. Like, again, you watch and it's the way the pitching coach or coach slow walk out today. And everyone's just sitting there like, really? And we know it's a strategy for to get another pitcher warmed up and delay the game.

16:14But like, there's not one fan in the world. I hope there's mound visits tonight. I want to see at least two to three mound visits. It's going to be the best game of my life. Brutal. That doesn't matter. you know you keep looking at walks like i think the walk is a hilarious concept this is an athletic sport called the walk okay all you do is you kind of scroll and just nice easy job nothing really first base okay eliminate that the average baseball game a few years ago when we're looking was three hours and 12 minutes now they added a pitch clock and they've got a lot better but it's like three hours and 12 minutes what people don't know is a few years ago we actually took pictures and videotaped our crowd every 30 minutes from 5 30 all the way until the end of the game and we We want that nine o 'clock, an influx of fans start to leave two hours into the game and then a two, nine 15 more.

16:57And then at nine 30, it was a big influx. And so like when we said a two hour time limit, most people were like, just go two and a half. Baseball's already three, two and a half. I'm like, no, you want fans to want more. The George Costanza rule. Yeah. Leave them wanting more. You know, think about this. You don't go to a great movie and you walk out in the middle and say, ah, that movie was great. I left in the middle. We're like, oh, I love that concert. That comedian was so good. I left in the middle, but he was awesome. But yet in baseball games, people lead games early all the time. And so what do you got to do that?

17:24You got to make the game faster. You got to eliminate the boring things. And so, yeah, all that. You could steal first. Fans can catch foul balls for outs. No bunting because bunting sucks. Literally, if you bunt, you're thrown out of the game. No, Jack and I think about this a lot with our show. We're all competing in the attention economy, and there are just distractions everywhere too. And so we often talk about burning the boring, whether it's in an interview episode or an episode we weep up on a daily basis. It's just not worth that waste. Yetis, I'm the son of a New York Yankees fan who's very much a traditionalist.

17:52Like he loves that the Yankees had their no facial hair policy, for example. I figure he would hate the bananas, you know? And so at first, I had a little reluctance to what you were doing because I thought it was disrupting tradition. But now that I've actually learned about the rules of banana ball, I'm like, this sounds like a frigging blast. Like you said there's no walks. Yet he's, instead of a ball four and a walk, a ball four means the runner may start running, not just to first base, but to second, third, and fourth base. And he can go as far as he wants until the defense throws the ball to all nine players on the field.

18:29Joe Torrey would spank you if you tried doing that. Joe Torrey's a fan of the animal. He said, I realize you guys are making fun of the game. You're making the game fun, is what he said when he went to the game. That's a great way to put it. I'll rephrase that. Don Mattingly would spank you if you did that, Jack. Yeah, Don Maddow. Another huge inning with baseball is blowouts, but banana ball is more like match play in golf, where each inning is a point that can be won, and so the game remains close. And then the final inning is like bonus ball, so even if you're down a few points in the final inning, you can still win the game if you score a few runs.

19:00It's just really impressive. I got to tell you about how the score rule came about. So part of it was August 4th, 2014, and we were running our team in Gastonia, North Carolina, the Grizzlies, and it's my night. I'm going to propose to Emily. Like I am ready to go. Oh, I'm like, it is, it is the moment. Like we, I had a surprise firework show plan, which again, I had to get a permit and she usually get the permits. I had to do all these things that like were usually going through her because we were the ones running the team. And so we got all of our friends there, which like no, our friends would come to a game because we're still college summer baseball.

19:29So we had all of our friends there, our family there, everyone's ready to go. I'm set to propose in the sixth inning and I'm ready to make this like, this is my moment. Then all of a sudden our team lets up nine runs in the first inning. Oh, my God. Literally, like, it was 30, 40-minute half inning. We're doing t-shirt tosses and promotions, while the inning's going on. We're like, our fans are bored. Just, let's be said, wait, and I'm realizing, like, fans are already like, we're leaving. And I'm like, no, this is a special note. And so, one of my best friends, they're like, no, what's happening?

19:58They're like, we're not going to wait for this. Like, this is ridiculous. And I'm like, well, that inning could have been over quickly. It could have been, if you win the inning, you get a point, and so it's only worth one point, and it keeps moving. And, like, you're going to have walk-offs And so the concept of that, plus my dad who played golf came up with that. I was like, how do you make each inning matter? Make it out. There's never a blowout. So always it comes down to the last inning. And now the last inning, everyone counts as a point. So even if a team's not free to one, you can still come back and win in the ninth inning.

20:24So that was put later in flight. So everything is trying to do to make the game more exciting as it goes on. And I was able to propose. And she still said yes. So it happened. But that night was very, very tough. Congratulations. As Jack pointed out, I mean, these are fantastic iterations. They are fantastic disruptions, burning the boring from the sport you're disrupting, essentially. But funny thing, Jesse, you know, Jack and I have listened to every interview you've ever done, I think. You've written three books. And there's one quote we loved in particular. You said, there is no innovation without iteration.

20:55So in addition to all these incredibly successful disruptions and ideas you've had, what are some that you did that didn't work? What are some failures that you tried where you realized it was a problem and you had to end it? We have failures all the time. I mean, I think that's one thing that people see, you know, they look at it and they're like, oh, overnight success. Or they look at it and they see the big shiny headlines now. But it's only because we've had hundreds and hundreds of failures that have led us to the things that do work. Some of my favorite ones, well, Slash the Lenspun Night I mentioned earlier, but that was a failure, I will say, because it was a very inappropriate night.

21:26But we have Whoopi Cushion Duaway and we had a Fian Berrini contest just in the water. Yeah, so he spins it and makes it positive. But we had the human pinata where we dressed somebody up in a pinata costume. We had little kids hit them with plastic bats and they had to throw candy. That was HR disaster. Human pinata. We had the horse head race where we put kids in horse head costumes and they were supposed to like trot around the bases. But the horse heads were so big that they couldn't see. So they ended up at the outfield. We were like hurting these children horses off the field. The crowd must have loved that.

21:58Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, you know, to the crowd, they're laughing at us. But to us, you know, we're looking at clocks and we're looking at HR disasters and we have these things that are going wrong. I would say one of the things that I have continued to say no to that Jesse is adamant is going to happen is he wants all of our players to skydive to their positions. And I'm, you know, I'm worried about, frankly, a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of things. There are failures that I try to anticipate that we feel back and don't do. But for the most part, Jesse gets to push those things forward. And we try.

22:32I mean, again, like trying to get players to ride a bull in from the bullpen. So if you're in the bullpen, you've got to have a live bull in the bullpen. But I want to jump on one big event that we did. Tap in the morning beer festival. Because you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. And so we said, all right, whatever is normal, do the exact opposite. And so a beer festival, you know, normally it was at night. And we're like, we're going to have one starting at 9 a.m. And I think 27 people showed up. They had the time of their life. I mean, it was the best day they'd ever had.

23:01But it did connect with people as much as I thought it would. But again, you learn by doing. We do 10 to 15 new promotions every single night with each one of our teams. We have six teams. So when you think about it, in a given weekend, we're doing 150 brand new things this year with six teams. That is crazy. But I guarantee we are going to learn faster than any other sports organization. Most sports teams say, hey, we're going to do fireworks every Friday night. Here's a bobble and I give it away. Here's our 90s night. Here's our 80s night. And I want to take it away. I learned a lot from that industry when I started.

23:31But it's so easy to do the same things over and over again. It's so hard to do something that might fail. And we are willing to fail every single night by putting ourselves out there because we know we're going to learn faster to get better for our fans after that. Well, Jesse and Emily, when you add all this up, the failures and the successes, Jack and I like to think about business like chefs sometimes. like if there are recipes for success, would you say there is a formula for fun? There's a formula for fandom you can follow? There's a formula for fandom. And I mean, she had it in the book.

24:00I think fun is a little bit more complex, but for fandom, what we realize, and again, what did Steve Jobs say? You don't, you don't, you connect the dots looking backwards. It's hard to connect the dots moving forwards. And so like, we didn't know this when we started, but when we started looking back on how we were able to create fans, we realized the starting point of all innovation and creating fans is to eliminate the friction. And if you look at any company, you know, you look at what Netflix did to Blockbuster, what Uber did to the Cavs, any company that really creates fans in the beginning, they look at all the friction from a customer point of view, put themselves in their shoes and eliminate it.

24:32And so for us, the friction was baseball too long, too slow, too boring. You get nickel and dimed, you know, there's ads everywhere and we eliminate all that. So that's where it started. So first step, eliminate friction. The second one, entertain always. You know, we look at mapping the perfect experience. So reverse engineer, what is a five-star experience? Or Airbnb, Brian Chesky said, what would an 11-star experience be? Then you experiment constantly. The only way you can get better for your fans is if you're constantly trying new things and learning from doing. Engage deeply. Do, for one, what you wish you could do for many.

25:03And then finally, empower action. You empower your team to try things, to get out of their comfort zone, to let loose, to have fun and experiment. So if you put all those together and it's constant, you're doing it every single day, I believe that's how you can create fans. Even if you do one of them, if one company just eliminates the friction of the process, like if the DMV said, all right, we're going to make the waiting room not the worst waiting experience ever, they would probably get some fans. Yeah, so that's a starting point. I don't know if for fun, I don't know if you've ever thought about that, but we think of things that are fun for us.

25:34I think the greatest creators create things that they would love. And if you're trying to do something or get people to buy into something and you're not having fun, do a block. Fun is contagious. And it starts with our players and ourselves trying to make the game the most fun, I think. Yeah. I would just say that a lot of that comes up in our rehearsals. So people don't know this, but we have an entire rehearsal day before each show. And that's exactly what happens is our cast and our staff and our players, we jump in and we do these promotions or we act out the choreography or we practice the trend that's going on.

26:04And if we have fun, if we're filming each other and having a good time doing it. We're like, okay, this is going to resonate with people tomorrow night. So let's write that into the script. So it's just a lot of testing things out and trying things ourselves and not taking it ourselves too seriously. There's a lot of actionable lessons from what both of you just said. Yeah, Jack, I saw Jack scribbling furiously over there to whip up the takeaways, as we'd say. Jack, what do you got? One I just want to explore a little bit more is what's normal, do the opposite. Have you seen great examples of companies doing that outside of the Savannah Bananas?

26:35or is that just like a starting point for your brainstorm for new skits? Tell me a little bit more about what's normal and do the opposite. Yeah, well, I'm going to say like some, even something as simple as Chick-fil-A, you know, being closed on Sunday, like that's true to who they are. And that's the exact opposite of what you would think you would want is more sales. So let's be open for another day, but they're so true to who they are and taking care of their people. That's kind of the opposite of what you should be doing, quote unquote, as a business, as a fast food joint, but they're thriving.

27:02And so that's one example we look up to. Yeah, we don't have games on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, and we actually take time off in July in the middle of the busiest time in the baseball season. Like, that's completely unconventional. But when our people come first and make sure that they love what they do, you want to make sure that they always have energy for our fans. But let me give the origin of whatever is normal to do the exact opposite. I was 23 years old at that conference. So Bill Veck, one of the pioneer baseball owners, brilliant for what he did. Grandstand manager's game. He gave 12 fly lobsters to a fan in the middle of a game.

27:29He had, you know, fireworks going off before him else, put names in the back of jerseys. That was brilliant. He was hated by all the other owners because he was doing things that were great about baseball. His son was just as brilliant. His son was, again, a pioneer. Mike Vect owns St. Paul Saints, Charleston Riverdogs, numerous teams. And when I was 23, I heard he was having a conference in Charleston. And we were in Gastonia, North Carolina. So I was like, heck yeah, I'm going. And so I first got there. And the first thing he had was an idea box on everyone's table. And that was where I first came into the power of ideas because he said, his dad said, if there's ever a fire in the house, the number one thing you need to get is the idea box.

28:02because nothing's more valuable than the ideal. That's awesome. I think Emily as her mother would question that, but they had a speaker come out, guys. And I think, you know, you think about, you're so impressionable. They hear like, you know, music that you love. It's like in your teenage years, on your youth. And like, impressionable in the business industry, like from a professional standpoint, it's like 23 to 28. The people you learn from, the people you see. And like, that was so impressionable for me. So I was this new kid trying to learn everything. They had this speaker come in and he starts running around throwing$2 bills.

28:30Like literally just hundreds of$2 bills. I'm like, this guy's a lunatic. He offers$2 bill. And it's like, oh, I need$8, like whatever. But they're all excited. And so then he goes, what's so unique about a$2 bill? And he starts talking about it. I always keep these in it. He always keeps them in his pocket. And he talks about it. And he goes, well, I want to tell you about the book that I wrote. It's called Innovation on Demand. And the concept is whatever's normal to the exact opposite. He goes, how do you think I sold my book? And they said, well, everyone's like Amazon at a bookstore. And he's like, no, that's the normal way of selling a book.

29:00What did I do? I bought an entire retail store in Minneapolis, a couple thousand square feet, and I made my own bookstore just for one book, my own. And so he had his book, Innovation on Demand, on all different sections like business and self-help and industry. He had a sign for shoplifting's encouraged. He just wanted people to have his book. People Magazine, NBC, Fox, CBS, everyone did a story on the one book bookstore. And so what that concept is, if everyone's going this way, I'm going to go this way. And so he has inspired us tremendously. He's still a good friend today. But even my first book, Find Your Yellow Tux, we did a world bulgeur at Epcot.

29:43And so we literally went to Epcot and did the world book. No one gets excited about normal. No one comes home and says, honey, I met the most normal person today. He was so normal. Like we get excited about memorable, remarkable. And so whatever the normal things in your industry are, right, what would be the exact opposite? And start creating that way. That's what creates attention. That's what gets people excited. And attention beats marketing 1 ,000 % of the time. Most companies, they have a marketing plan. Do you have an attention plan? And that's kind of what we're always thinking about. How are we creating attention?

30:14What new things are we doing that people have never seen before in a baseball field? And that gets fans excited. No, it's incredible how much we've seen this, Jesse. And like, it isn't embraced in a wide way. Like, Jack, I'm thinking, we did a story in the summer about a luxury brand. I can't remember if it was like Gucci, Prada, or someone who did not have a social media account. Like, every luxury band is all about posting on social media and showing photos. And they just said, yeah, we're not going to do this for three years. But that's different. That's different. What if they just had a MySpace page?

30:43Or what if they just, like, they just run ARS Messenger? Or they're doing just newspaper ads? Or whatever. Like, that's actually, today, it could be interesting. No, you're absolutely right. And it's amazing how powerful that is, but how little you actually see it. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Bureau Premium Non-Alcoholic Beer. All right, Yeti, it's a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do.

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33:01If your revenues are at least in seven figures, get your free business guide, Demystifying AI, at netsuite.com slash tboy. The guy is free for you to use at netsuite.com slash tboy. netsuite.com slash tboy. You know, you just mentioned attention. We're all competing in the attention economy to two masters of keeping and attracting attention. What's your secret to social media success? And Jack and I are saying that as two guys who have a podcast with a big daily audience, but we're still trying to figure that out on social media. Like how do we convert our podcast content to work on social? That is a really hard thing to jump between different types of content platforms.

33:39How often are you guys testing? Not enough. Not enough. How often do you guys like post or is it always the similar type of content? Probably one to two videos a day of a story we did and maybe a test video. Well, you guys are dynamic and you're charismatic and you obviously have good guests. Just kidding. So my point is that can always work. But then one of the things that you're trying, and again, being okay with failure. So if you get more reps in, I always look at the example who had the most hits in Major League Baseball. It was Pete Rose. He had over 4 ,000 hits. He also had over 14 ,000 at bats.

34:13he had 2 000 more bats than anyone else that ever played the game what i'd say that is maybe there's not enough of bats you're not if you're or you're probably up at the same time and doing the same exact thing every single time yeah and so you know we're we're obsessed with testing new things every day we're putting out new social media and we're testing you know we say all right what are we gonna do from the dugout today what are we gonna do from the bullpen what are we gonna do from the crowd are we gonna do something on the video board and film that today and test that today you know all those things we're constantly testing and a lot don't work but if you find one good one, then you have a whole new arsenal of things you can do that you haven't done before.

34:44We have a low tolerance for failure. We probably don't do enough that's experimental in a broader basis for worries about reputational risks that you're saying are probably not a big deal. Guys, again, the same example, the player that failed more than any in major league history, more than anyone else, he struck out more than anyone else and no one knows his name because of the strikeouts. They know his name because of his three home runs in game six, the 1977 World Series as Mr. October. He's a Hall of Famer. It's Reggie Jackson. He's not remembered for his strikeouts. He's remembered for his hits, especially in social media.

35:16It disappears. We won't remember him. So my thought process is like, yeah, we're going to have videos that get no views, but then what's the next step the next step? No, you're absolutely right, Jesse. You know, when it comes to like actually making the decisions on building this product, you know, you guys have invented a sport and you're testing all these things all the time. You know, how much of it is metrics versus magic, graphs versus guts? How much of it is making decisions on information versus your intuition? I would say a lot of it is intuition. Honestly, we are not a company powered by numbers and charts.

35:49Of course, to have some sort of responsibility, we do use it a little bit. But like Jesse said earlier, we personally don't log into bank accounts. Like we don't look at certain reports every night. What we're looking at is how many fans did we serve. that the things that do matter to us. And so a lot of it is the heart and the intention. That is how we make a lot of decisions. When something goes wrong, we are very quick to jump in and create a solution, even if it ends up spending millions of dollars. Like we don't look at what that number is going to be. We go in and make the decision first of, hey, let's make this right or let's adjust this.

36:27And then later we get the report. But I would say a lot of it It's just from heart. And I think that also that is one of our superpowers in that we don't have outside investors and we don't have a board and we don't have people that we have to show fancy reports to. It's us and it's our leadership team and we're the ones making decisions. And because we're leading with heart, that's how we get to make the decisions. We don't have a responsibility of certain metrics that we have to hit. So to give you an example, guys, would it be cool to do something? So we think about this. Would it be cool to do a cruise ship?

37:00and banana land at sea and just invite all our fans on a cruise ship and try to entertain them for four to five days without playing our game or banana ball yeah wouldn't that be cool it'd be fun and so we did it and it sold out and we're doing it again it's sold out and it's like wouldn't it be cool to play a game at a football stadium with a hundred thousand fans yeah yeah let's try let's go do it wouldn't it be cool to play a game on a beach wouldn't it be cool to do all these things like an aircraft carrier wouldn't it be cool and so this what if philosophy what if we this. And if we think that would be cool and that'd be fun, we just try it.

37:30We don't know how to do it. You don't know how to do a cruise ship. No one teaches you that. You don't know how to be in a football stadium. No one teaches you that. You learn by doing. And so I think a good mindset is, would that be fun? Do you get excited about it? If you get excited about something and you're passionate about it, same thing with our team. If they have an idea for social media, and we may know it's probably not going to work, but if they're so tired up about it and they're energized by it they're going to choreograph and block every step of it, we let them do it because they're going to learn more about it.

37:58You want people showing up with passion and energy and fire, and that's how creativity comes. And so that's kind of what we preach, and it starts from the top. Well, Jesse, let's get into this creative process because, you know, Jack and I have a creative process every day. Like we go through, we've been inspired in the past by, we actually, Jack and I were former freshman year roommates. That's how we met. You know, that's our meet cute. We walked into the same dorm room with, he had season two of Seinfeld DVDs and I had season three and it just kind of was a match made in heaven. But, you know, our creative inspirations, Grant, were Seinfeld, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, South Park, and it's all kind of informed the elements that we bring entertainment into business news.

38:36But with you two, Jack and I were keeping a whiteboard list of all your inspirations. And Jack, what did we have up there? We had like Disney, P.T. Barnum, who else? I mean, just in this interview, you guys have mentioned Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky. You've mentioned the Harlem Goldtrotters, The Grateful Dead, Cirque du Soleil, Dave Matthews. So we're kind of just curious about your creative process. Like, do you set up time to read every week to absorb all this information? Do you get into a writer's room? Do you do a focus group? There's books everywhere. But is reading the key to your business success?

39:06Your input affects your output. You know, constantly every morning, I start with reading and writing and ideas. That's part of my system and for creativity. And it's really important to not, to create before you consume. So often the night before, I'll write down what is my idea bucket? What's my theme that I want to work on? And then so I have it in my mind when I wake up. I can already start thinking creatively as opposed to just scrolling through social, going through previous emails. And then you become other people's priorities is what you're focused on, not your own priorities of creating.

39:34The best days Emily knows when I come down to my office early before the kids are up and I'm like, I had some great ideas. I'm going to win the day. And if I'm just trying to fix all these things, it's tough. So I think you've got to win the morning, win the day, as Hal Elrod says from the Miracle Morning. But, yeah, creativity, it's tough to teach. You need to find what works for you. But, yeah, I mean, Saturday Night Live, Grateful Dead, WWE, they're constantly thinking what are the new things they're doing every single day of a week. I think that's big for us. Well, and you can go into the cadence of the actual week and the idea sessions and everything.

40:06But I do think that one thing that's worth mentioning is that people think that it's all his ideas or it's all the creative department ideas. But one thing that we've really focused on is enabling everybody in the company to come to the table with ideas. And so it's not just the creative department that's coming up with the ideas every day. There are hundreds and hundreds of people on staff, and they're all doing this. All the players, they're coming up with ideas for their own walk-ups and their own celebrations. And so when you have 150 people who are playing on the field every night, but they're also coming up with the ideas, that helps this train keep going with new ideas every night.

40:40And when he says we're testing 10 to 15 things at every game, it's only possible because you have hundreds of people offering up ideas. Yeah. Our final dance first principle is we will always plus the experience. You mentioned that a couple of years ago. Plusing from Walt Disney had a huge impact on you. It's basically a tactic as part of a formula for fun. Can you guys share more? Walt Disney said Disneyland is a living, breathing thing. We will always plus the show and it'll never be complete. And so that mindset, which is interesting, why do people think like the movies are complete and they think a regular theme park is complete?

41:11You already built it. No, he saw it was constantly living, it was growing. What can we enhance? He said a movie, he got tired of the movie business because he's like, I can't do anything anymore. It's done. The movie's done. Like I can do a sequel, which are boring. He said you can't talk pigs with pigs. He learned that from Three Little Pigs because every other movie after that wasn't that good. Sorry, I've done a lot of research on Walt Disney, but you always plus the experience. And so one great, great story, great example was this during Christmas time that he really wanted to have a big Christmas parade.

41:38And it was going to cost$350 ,000. And everyone was like, no, we got our highest capacity right now. That makes no sense. They're already here. And he goes, no, we need to always give them a reason to come back. That's why we should invest the money and invest the dollars. And he was obsessed with that, plussing the show. Yeah, that's a plussing. Okay. Yeah. To borrow your what if framework, wouldn't it be cool if there were 32 teams? Team number two, the Party Animals, has more followers than any Major League Baseball team. Sure. Playing hundreds of games. You got the Texas Tailgaters. Is your goal to be bigger than Major League Baseball?

42:14No. Zero interest. No. Zero interest. For us, I mean, as a respect, that's just the wrong question. We don't think about that. And we constantly think, how can we create fans? And we're competing against ourselves every single night, every day. How can we get better for our fans? How can we create a better experience and a better show? And we got a long way to go. We're still in the first inning because we're doing things that are extremely hard. We have no idea. We're playing in 45 states this year. We're playing from Billings, Montana, to North Dakota, to the Superdome, to 100 ,000-seat stadiums in Tennessee and Texas.

42:44I mean, it is extremely hard. We haven't even gone international yet, and we're getting all these opportunities. We got to focus on one fan at a time in creating fans. And we're not competing against MLB. I hope that we're both working together to create fans of the game, even though our game's a lot different. I applaud them because they have made a lot of adjustments over the years to make the game better. And I think we're both hopefully winning together to create fans. Well, guys, speaking about this league that you've launched and how you're expanding the Savannah Bananas into its own league, Jack and I have noticed this trend the last few years we've covered on our show of disruptive new sports.

43:20You've got professional pickleball. You've got professional bull riding. You've got major league lacrosse, and then you've got professional lacrosse, which has a touring model. You've got the XFL trying to make a comeback. You have the X Games now considering like a touring model instead of just once a year in Aspen. As you can tell, we found a lot of examples of this disruption of professional sports you wouldn't have dreamed of when we were kids. So one thing Jack and I get curious about is like how you determine a fad from a trend. Like how do we know this is part of a long-term trend? What are the signals you guys look for to ensure that what you're doing is a long-term trend.

43:51Well, I would just say that we continue to get our answers from our fans. They're continuing to show interest. Our interest list is growing every year. Again, that's who we're answering to. And so we are trying to keep the game fun and exciting and give them different things. But that's the lead indicator for us is if there are more people interested in coming or at least watching the event. I will say it's not only live. Live is a totally different experience, but there are so many people who are tuning in and watching through the broadcast now. But all of those numbers are proving to us that this is something people want to watch.

44:22And when they watch from the East Coast game and then they switch over and they start watching the West Coast game, I mean, those are things that are proving to us that this is something that people are invested in. And they are becoming fans of multiple teams in the league, which is interesting because in normal sports, you are a diehard Eagles fan or you are a diehard Cowboys fan because your grandfather was. And for us, we're seeing that people are fans of the party animals and the Texas tailgaters because they grew up in Texas, but now they have a party animal vibe, right? And so it's fun for us to see that people are investing in it in multiple ways.

44:55They're buying merchandise from multiple teams. They're going to see us in multiple cities. They're watching the broadcast in different time zones. Those are the indicators to us that show that we're at least on the right path. Not that we haven't figured out, but that we have a product that people are willing to watch. The people that think we're a fan, they don't know the DNA of our organization. Right. And they don't know how obsessed we are with the show and obsessed with our fans. And so every day we're thinking about how do we make our show better. We know that's the differentiator for us.

45:21It's the greatest show in sports, what we're trying to create. And that is that experience that there's always something happening. If you blink, you may miss something. And that whether you're in the upper deck, you're going to get greeted by our cast or our players. Or if you're right behind home plate, we're going to try to create that one-on-one experience. And it's horror. 50 ,000 fans, 100 ,000 fans. It is extremely hard. We're not there yet. But it's that obsessive focus. And that's the greatest creators. I mean, I've got a chance to connect a good amount now with Jimmy or Mr. Beast. And he's upset with YouTube more than anyone else in the world.

45:51And there's a reason why he has the most followers than anyone in the world. Because he looks at every single second, every single detail on how to make it better for his viewers. That's how we look at our shows. And I think that anybody thinks we're going to be a fad. And there's thousands out there. I save a lot of the comments. They're 15 minutes are up. It's a fad. They are inspiring me because everyone thinks we're going to be gone. And in 20, 30, 40 years, I can't wait till they see what this has become. Well, Jesse and Emily, you know, we asked you that question because we were curious about your response.

46:17But the reason, one of the reasons, Jack, I wanted to bring on the show is because we think you're a long-term trend, not a fad. And it's funny. We've been speaking actually a lot about fun and the brighter, like positive elements of what you've created and the sport you've invented and brought to the world that also is commercially successful. But a signal that we've seen that you guys are here to stay long-term isn't on the fun side. It's actually on kind of the opposite end of the spectrum on like the meaningful side. You know, you guys do things that don't scale. And there's this great example you gave a couple years ago, Jesse, that early on when you guys were also just still very new, you know, you found out a fan was coming and one of their parents had passed away.

46:55And I think they had like six siblings or seven siblings. And you asked an intern, I think at the time, you gave them this huge responsibility. and said, how do you make this the best day of their lives? And I don't know anyone else in a major sport or in one of these other fatty sports that would have made that type of bet, that risk, that investment to do so. And you guys delivered on that. Can you share a little bit more of that story? Because to us, that's a signal that you guys have done something that's deeper than just fun or a fad. That first year was special for many reasons. And I think that's really where we found out who we are.

47:30You know, yes, we had fun. Yes, we had the banana nana's dancing. We had the banana baby. We had all the fun. But it was those moments that really stood out. And it's the stories that make a brand and make a company. And so, yeah, that was a we found out that a father, they had seven kids and their mother had just tragically passed away. And the mother bought the tickets for the family to come to the game. And thank you calls. Yeah. So we make thank you calls every we actually were doing them today. hey, we call our fans to thank them for buying tickets and merchandise. So Barry, one of our interns at the time, was calling and thanking them.

48:07And he called them. And the dad answered the phone. He said, I'm sorry. This is what happened. We're not going to be able to come. And so Barry was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And came to me right afterwards and said, this happened. And I go, well, what if we were able to get them to come? What could we do? Could we make it special? And he called him back and said, we'd love to take care of you guys, make it a special night for us. And he said, you know what? Probably good to get the kids out of the house. And so he immediately got a cell phone, greeted them there, got them seats right behind home plate, had jerseys set up for them, had players greeting them, meeting them.

48:37And the whole night was focused on that family. And at the end, dad left and said that was the last gift. That was the last gift that she bought the kids. And I couldn't imagine a better gift for our kids. And so when you think about that, that moment, that power, and Barry, he has risen up with us. He's been here 10 years from vice president, now leading all of our recruiting for all of Banana Ball. He is responsible for bringing in these people, these players that create those moments every single night at our ballpark. And to see him and what he's done and just another story. And we have so many examples of that.

49:16So that inspires us. But, yeah, it's do for one what you wish you could do for many. and Barry obviously lived up to it. That's meaningful to hear the details of, guys. It also speaks to this bigger thing of investing and doing the things that don't scale. And that's the kind of thing you do when you've built a real connection with people and those are the real connections that make this a long-term thing. So that's really cool to hear. Thanks for sharing that. You know, it's great. So many of the stories involve those sad moments, but there's so many. I think people need that. I mean, my heart is a little bit bigger.

49:51Jack, it reminds me, we did a whole deep dive, guys, on the business of Sesame Street and the origin stories of Sesame Street. And similarly, I think that actually became one of our most listened to shows ever. And I think it's because it had that tension. I mean, Jack and I always say great brands have tension, right? They're able to balance things that are opposing and opposites inside. Like we like to be pop culture, but also business news. And for you guys, it's creating these incredible funds and laughs, even in someone's darkest moment. I mean, that is the ultimate tension. That's what a brand is.

50:19And the world needs it. You know, I think there's a lot of conversations now on the anti-AI bet and the anti-social bet that people are going to want to be together and bringing people together to have moments and experiences like we're all in on that. And that's what we're investing in because people need it. There's a feeling that you get when you're together. And, you know, during our games where everyone, the lights go off and everyone's holding their light up and their flashlight and singing yellow. together. It sounds like Kumaya, but 50 ,000 people lights up singing yellow together is a moment there.

50:49There's nowhere else in the world that's happening. And it's a core moment. And so we look to try to create those. Well, other investors must be seeing this and thinking, okay, there are opportunities here elsewhere. I mean, Jack and I get questions all the time about jumping verticals. Could you do a sports version, a fashion version? I mean, do you guys get vertical pressure like Savannah bananas for hockey, Savannah bananas on the football field? Like, are those questions you guys get and it's something you'd ever consider? You consider it daily or they come to you daily? Daily zero consideration.

51:22No, I think that is, again, one of our superpowers is that we've been able to just stay very simple in our focus. It is the fans in our area, in our domain. Like, that is who we're going after. We are not trying to disrupt other sports or, you know, do these other wild things right now. We're not trying to go to the moon quite yet. That's a joke in our company. We're going to go to the moon. But we're just, we're very focused on what we have in front of us. Jesse always says that we are just in the first inning. And I do believe that, but we are very focused on where we are. Have you guys studied Todd Graves at all for Raising Canes?

51:59We've covered his story on the pod a few times. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, again, chicken bears. We're going to do the best chicken finger in the world. And everyone's like, no, you can't do more than chicken fingers. You're going to do it. He's like, no, do one thing, do it better than anyone else. And they are dominating, them and Chick-fil-A. And so I think that there's such a great lesson there. Where people try to spread out and do too many things, the way to fail at something is to do it half-assed. And that's what a lot of people end up doing when they spread it out. Be a steak knife, not a Swiss Army knife.

52:24Oh, well, I guess on that note, Jack, do you want to pitch Jesse and Emily right now? Well, we love your fan-first mentality. And we got to ask, is there an IPO in the future where you can give fans partial ownership of the organization? So there's an interesting mindset because you let us with the fans. Yes. Yeah, you kind of have to say yes, it feels like. It was a trap. I was going to say, we studied the Green Bay model a little bit. Oh, there you go. Cool. Stating a little bit, you know, that fans come in. But I don't think we have that all figured out yet. So it's not something that we're focusing on.

52:59No, from day one, we let fans help come up with suggestions for the name. We let them come suggestions for our mascot. We let them literally draft our first three players and fan franchise our players for upcoming drafts. Our fans are heavily, heavily involved. But I think, you know, there's the tough things, the decisions you have to make that fans don't know. They don't know things in the future. For instance, when we left Coastal Plain League, traditional baseball went to banana ball. We had so many fans saying this is a terrible decision. We're no longer in a sport. We saw where the game of baseball was going and we saw where banana ball could be.

53:29We just did a draft, which was very unique with all six of our teams. We had a lot of fans that didn't love it, but we see where this is going. And so if you involve fans at a high level from ownership too much, you might have lost the opportunity of seeing a vision that you have relentlessly been studying and your team has for years where they at this point have it. So we'll continue to evolve them, but I don't think an IPL or getting involved in that point is something that we're thinking about right now. Well, so it sounds like we'll wait a few years before the next interview on the New York Stock Exchange.

53:59All right, Jack, should we whip up some takeaways? Well, normally Nick and I whip up the takeaway of the story, but we're going to give you the honor. So Emily and Jesse, what is the takeaway on the Savannah Bananas? I would say for me, it's just caring about people. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what we try to teach all of our people. And people come to us and they say, you know, what's the secret sauce? And how are you pulling this off? But it really is that simple. We just take away the friction for our fans and we walk in our fans' shoes. And that's how we make the decision. That's our North Star.

54:29or we put the fans first and we try to entertain them. And so that's my takeaway is just continuing to care for them in any capacity with any departments or countries or whatever we grow to, that will still be our North Star. And I think that hopefully that will be our shining Earth Star for a long time. You know what I just thought about? I thought about our first Fans First playbook. And so we've developed Fans First playbooks and kind of who we are, what we stand for. And in the back of the first cover, it said, be patient in what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others.

55:01And I think that's just a mindset. We are extremely impatient and going above and beyond for our fans and doing things that other people won't do. And when you do what others won't do, you'll be able to do things you never imagined. And we're getting to do that. Walt Disney said, it's kind of fun to do the impossible. And we get to do the impossible every day because of our relentless focus on our fans. I don't know how you guys were able to whip up this skill set, but we've interviewed a lot of people on the show. No one, I think, speaks like you two where everything you say could be bottled down.

55:30It's like a takeaway or a quote, or it should be in Bartlett's book of quotations. It's incredible how you're able to distill these complicated concepts, emotional and business-wise, in a way that's just super repeatable. It's really cool. You should see how bad we were when we started. We listened to your podcast during the pandemic, Jesse, like your old podcast. It's about getting our reps in. I'm telling you, You listen to every one of my interviews. I laugh because I did over a thousand podcasts. You've done a lot. If you go back into 2017, 2018, 2019, go. But my point is like, that's the reason you get your reps and get your reps and get your reps and get your reps.

56:05Do things that don't scale. A hundred percent. Jack, should we kick off some rapid fire questions to wrap things up? Rapid fire question for Jesse and Emily from Savannah Bananas. What is the best brand out there that's not the Savannah Bananas? Okay, I'll just say Disney. What is your dream collab or partnership? Can't be Disney. We've already done that. They did Savannah Bananas Day at Disney. That was fun. Okay, this is not going to be what you expect, but I'm going to say something within the foster care space. So it's not a company, and I don't even know if it would be nationally, like the Department of Social Services, but we are foster parents ourselves, and we have a nonprofit called Bananas Foster.

56:43And so the ultimate collab for me and what I think would get the most impact would be a collaboration with a large organization like that. What's the best stadium you've ever performed in? For me, I'm going to go with Fenway because that's where I grew up. Because you're from just outside Boston. The real answer is probably one of the next ones. We haven't performed there. It's going to doing something at a stadium or not even you would imagine as a stadium and putting on a show there. That's going to be pretty special. What's the best business book you've ever read? I am really all in on our hiring right now.

57:16So I'm just going to say The Ideal Team Player by Pat Lencioni. It's not really a business book, but it's a business book for me in that I'm trying to bring in the best people. And that has helped guide me on who we're bringing in. I'm going to go on a classic, built to last, Jim Collins. And finally, Jesse and Emily, if each of you were stocks, what would be your three or four letter stock ticker symbol? Thanks. Emily, he beat you to it. You're in trouble. You could go Nana. Oh, and one more. What's the best restaurant in Savannah, Georgia? Corleone's. No, yeah. We love that. We love Italian.

57:51Oh, that's so tough. All right. Sorry, guys. That's a really hard question. That's where it started. Toge's Corner. John, where it started. It was a - Best sports bar out there. Sports bar. That was where it all started, where all the ideas were. Yes, that's where it started. Well, given your proposal day when the team lost by like nine runs, maybe that's the place for where you guys renew your vows in a couple of years. Yeah. That sounds good. Jesse and Emily, we're huge fans. I'm going to send this episode to my dad, and I think I can win him over to become a banana fan. You've both been truly inspirational to us as entrepreneurs.

58:25We are literally going to listen to this episode and write down on the whiteboard some of your best takeaways. Thanks for sharing all of your best secrets and for creating an amazing game and for evolving the game of baseball, a 100-year-old game that Ken Burns did a documentary on. I think you're making it a really, really fun and interesting new thing that I'm excited about. And in the spirit of doing things differently, you know, like you said, Jesse, you've done a thousand of these interviews. Emily, you've done thousands of these interviews. We'd like to do something you haven't done in an interview yet, which is smash our cha-ching button virtually.

58:59So if you could just wind up like you're taking a big bat at the plate and then swing. You ready? At the same time. Here we go. Here we go. Ready? All right, here comes the pitch. Three, two, one. All right, there we go. You had to do a money sign, too. Fans and happiness are joining. We're smashing money because we don't care about it. I actually just lost a bet. I told Nick one of you was going to be a lefty, but it's okay. No, no, no. You have a daughter who's a lefty, not us. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on. We can't wait to see you at the next one. All right, appreciate you guys.

59:34Thank you, guys. Take care.

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