How He Turned Over $1M in Debt Into a Sold-Out Show | Jesse Cole

0:00Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Eden's Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Eden's Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:41Jesse Cole:We thought it was a very good decision for my wife and I to get married and then go into over a million dollars in debt. We thought that was a very good decision. Not on the wedding itself, on a team. The wedding was the wedding was the wedding. But yeah, no, we had bought the team from the league, and we had to make payments over many years to buy that. Then we had to put money in to start up and all that. And it was a lot. And it was myself, my wife, our 24-year-old team president, Jared, who's still our president today and leading us, and three 22-year-olds straight out of college. And, yeah, we showed up.

1:09Jesse Cole:The phone lines were cut. The internet lines were cut. The former team took everything out of the stadium. There was nothing left. So three years later, I first started writing down the ideas. Because we went from we sold two tickets in our first few months, January 15, 2016. We got the call. We ran out of money. And Emily turned to me and said, Jess, we have to sell our house. so we sold our house empty our savings account put that money in going more debt and we had to get people excited to coming to a college summer baseball game did you think about this what you're doing now back then in 2015 were you like I'm going to do this no banana ball wasn't even a it wasn't even a thought what I thought was what if we could start from scratch and create a whole entertainment product that's not just the Gastonia Grizzlies that we had seven years and all this built in thoughts what if we could build a new team a new identity a new story, a new circus, a new show, all of that.

2:02Jesse Cole:But a new sport also? No. But within baseball? Yes. And that's why. That's what you did for five years, essentially. Oh, yeah. Wow. Because we did that, and then by watching our fans. So we sold a couple tickets, and then we said, all right, we've got to get our fans excited. So we said we made every ticket all inclusive. So we said, you come to Savannah, our games, all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, everything,$15 total. What? No ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. Wow, that'll start selling out. Well, we had to get them in to experience it.

2:33Jesse Cole:We didn't know how to do it. Yeah. The first night, we went through 10 ,000 pieces of meat in an hour. Oh, my God. Fans waited almost three hours. So we made mistakes, but we just kept going. And so, you know, when they first came out, they were like, wow, you know, we had a banana baby. We put a baby in a banana costume and lifted the baby up and sang, nah, Sylvania, you know, to start the game, which makes no sense. Ah, Sylvania. Yeah. but we had the banana nannas we had senior citizen dance team you know we had the man and as a male cheerleading team we had a banana band i i thought of you know putting all these things into a brand to make it non-stop entertainment but it was but it was also you had limitations back then because you could only do it in the beginning of the game the end of the game in the arena a stadium there you go before the state you know before the game we used to get fined i mean for playing music during the games wow but you didn't care no we We just wrote bigger, we just wrote more checks.

3:24Jesse Cole:Wow. I mean, it's... So when did Savannah Bananas, the brand it is now, like when did you realize I have to try this one night inter-scrimmage with each other and see what we can recreate because you weren't even thinking about that when you took over this team. Yeah, well, you're always thinking about plussing. You know, I think I learned from Walt Disney and he was obsessed. He said, you know, Disneyland's a living, breathing thing. It'll never be complete. We will always plus the show. They called it a show, you know, performance. and you know disney's the kind of guy that you know literally they were at capacity at disneyland three four years and i mean they were dominating and uh and he wanted to put a christmas parade and he said it's going to cost 350 000 and all the accountants everyone in his business was like no waltz you can't do this we're already at capacity why would we spend another 350 000 it makes no sense he goes nah we got to give him a reason to want to come back and that obsession he goes to continue to invest to continue to put things in he was always plussing the show.

4:18Jesse Cole:So yeah, we were selling out every single game. You know, we went from sleeping on an airbed and$30 a week grocery shopping to having a very healthy business, um, successful, but like you'd maxed out, you got into the top of the league of what you can make. Three to 4 million a year. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you can make a little more every year, but it's kind of, then you get, then you got to take from your fans and you got to, you can't, you got to, it's, it's incremental. So then we, as we were watching, we kept thinking, how do we make it better for fans? How do you plus the show? How do you plus the show?

4:46Jesse Cole:So I wasn't thinking about how do we make this global or make this you know all over the country i was thinking how do we make it better and i just kept watching our fans watching watching and this is what walt disney did better than anything he literally put an apartment above the fire station at disneyland just so he could walk the park and walt said whenever i go on a ride i'm always asking what's wrong with this thing and how it can be improved and so i was like all right how do we improve this how to make it better how to make better fans and i realized that even with our big show players dancing the celebrations all the promotions fans were still leaving games early So we started taking pictures and videotaping.

5:18Jesse Cole:Every 30 minutes. First 5.30 when they get in, 6 o 'clock, 6.30, 7 o 'clock, 7.30. And I realized something. At 9 o 'clock, you'd have your first influx of fans. No matter what, even if we had a firework show or something at the end of the night, 9 o 'clock, two hours in, fans would start leaving. At 9.15, 9.30, you'd have a lot more. By 10 o 'clock, you'd have 50 % of your crowd. No matter what. That told me right there, there's a fundamental problem with the game of baseball. It needs to be two hours.

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7:31Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette.