676: Jesse Cole (Owner, Savannah Bananas) - The Beauty of Obsession, Building a Fans First World, Walt Disney, Mr. Beast, Radical Transparency (Opening the Books), Do the Opposite of Normal, Turning a $6M Mistake Into a Moment, and Creating Banana World

16:47Jesse Cole:There's DJs in each bus. And then all of a sudden, two police cars show up in front of them, turn the sirens on, do a police escort to the stadium, which it's a quarter of a mile. You're literally going like 300 yards. And so police escort, as they make their police escort, our entire staff is lining the streets Hundreds of people line the streets, encourage them. They show up. Then all of a sudden, we put on a show for them. So we have a big opening. We have walking around. Our manianas are walking around literally with munchkins on silver platters. Our dad bought chili, his God's serving them.

17:15Jesse Cole:We put on a full show. They're dancing. They're singing. We welcome them in. Then we have the whole staff, again, lining them up in a tunnel. They walk to the field. Then we have a brand new custom hype video created with moments from there, when they got drafted, when they joined us. And then as soon as that finishes, all of a sudden, video camera goes in on our young professor, who's our host. Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls, he's on the roof. He does an entire hype intro from on top of the roof. So they turn around, he's on the roof. Then each coach gets introduced and we have music going off, then fireworks going off on top of the field.

17:45Jesse Cole:And then we get in, we do one big, hey baby, streamers go over. That's how they're welcomed. And so the intentionality, and then we had five star, we had carving stations, we had food for each team. We had a whole carnival set up for lunch. It's all intentional. And so do leaders put the time into creating a custom-designed, intentional, meaningful experience for their own team members? Is it always just about their customer? And so that sets the tone. So that first day, I think the players know what's important. They know what a first-class experience looks like. They know what being a fan feels like.

18:16Jesse Cole:And so if you deliver that to them, okay, I've got to deliver that to the fans.

18:20Ryan Hawk:That's what I was reading and watching some videos about leading up to this is that intentionality with taking care of your people. you leading with enthusiasm and all this juice and obsession and excitement, it radiates to me and I don't even work here. And I'm like, I'm going to go do this and do that. It honestly makes me think a lot bigger. And we've just been hanging out for an hour. I can't even imagine what that feels like for your players. How do you have the juice and the energy to bring it? You're not really ever in a bad mood. You know what I'm saying? Like this is wild to me. I'm not a robot.

18:53Jesse Cole:All right, I do have moments where obviously, but again, it's what you surround yourself with.

18:57Ryan Hawk:Yeah.

18:58Jesse Cole:You know, I mean, at the end of every day, me and Emily do our Rose, Rose, and Bud. Rose, great thing to happen today, and a Bud you're looking forward to. We do it with our kids. And so what's the lens you see things every day? And so like that is very, very intentional in how we see things and how we view things. So yeah, when it comes to the players, for us, it's just, you got to set the tone. You got to bring the energy. You got to bring the fun. But I put myself in their shoes. Yeah. You know, you're an athlete. Yeah. I was barely an athlete, but I played baseball back in the day. Yeah. And, you know, I had the big dreams of playing Major League Baseball.

19:26Jesse Cole:And I had that dream of playing at Fenway Park. And, you know, I was fortunate that some scouts were talking to me and I was getting letters. And then all of a sudden, I tore my shoulder and that ended it. I was told I wasn't good enough because of an injury and I just never performed up to my ability. And the reason why I didn't perform to my ability is I put so much pressure on myself. I was a big scholarship guy at Wofford, as big as anyone the program had ever had up to that point. And I had to perform. And it wasn't about having fun. We played the game as kids to have fun. So every night I'm putting so much pressure on myself not having fun.

19:54Jesse Cole:Career ends and I'm done. Not good enough. Can't play anymore. Every one of our players, they've been drafted or they've been a top college player. And at some point they've all been told they're not good enough. They've been rejected. They've been cut. This didn't exist. They were about to hang them up. And then we built this. And now I can put myself in their shoes and say, you've got this second chance. You've got this chance now to play the game the way you used to do as a kid and go out and just have fun and play it for the right reasons. You're not competing against the other outfielder to try to get called up to the next level.

20:30Jesse Cole:You are competing to create fans and we're all doing that together. And so this is what I wish I could have built for myself and I'd still be playing and having the time of my life. And so when you build something for yourself, something that you would truly love, you can feel it with them and you can every day try to make it better for them. And so now they play with heart They play with fun. They play with passion. And they play the way when they were five years old and they went out just to go have fun and nothing more. That I want to build all over because that's what it's all about.

20:58Ryan Hawk:One of the things I've been studying a lot lately, Jesse, is obsession. Yeah. And that's why I love you. I love what you do is because when you feel a leader who is obsessed with the thing that they do and it's about other people and serving other people, it is as contagious as anything gets in the world. And it seems like you're doing a really good job also of surrounding yourself with other people who are obsessed. Jimmy Donald's Mr. Beast, some of the guys you're with this week with what you're doing. I'd love to hear your mindset and your thoughts on not only being obsessed with what you do, but also surrounding yourself with others who are.

21:35Jesse Cole:Yeah. Obsession's got such a bad word. Like everyone's like, oh, you're obsessed. It's bad. It's tremendous. It's awesome. Yeah. If you can find something you're obsessed with, so few people in the world get to have that. Yeah. You are lucky to find that. And so I feel I was truly lucky to get the opportunity to have something I'm truly obsessed with. And so, yeah, I think it's, you know, it starts, everyone's like, you know, you average of the five people you surround yourself with. Well, it's a cop-out sometimes. It's like, well, I don't have those people around me right now. We've got more access than we've ever had in the history to be able to have every book at our fingertips, to have every podcast at our fingertips for free.

22:10Jesse Cole:Yep. We can listen and hear from the greatest leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, you name it, for free every single day. And if you're not taking advantage of that, you're missing out. So I've had the opportunity to surround myself with Walt Disney probably as much as anyone in the world. With Jeff Bezos probably more than anyone in the world. Steve Jobs, Grateful Dead, WWE, Cirque du Soleil. And I get to get in that world by reading. I mean, I've read some of these books over and over and over again. I literally can know, would that page go to this? I literally can feel it. So that's who I've surrounded myself with.

22:46Jesse Cole:And now, because we've been able to have a little bit more success, we have more people reaching out. Being around the best of the best. Derek Hough is an example. So he reached out, one of the greatest dancers, and he reached out and danced with us. And I watched his obsession on every part of the dance moves. And he wasn't just focusing on the dance. He was focusing on how it was captured. you know, with our camera crew, which we have a very young, but unbelievably passionate and talented video crew. He's like, all right, no, you come around here, hit me at this moment, then I'm going to hit here, I'll wink right here, then you go around, spin here, and then I'll do it.

23:18Jesse Cole:He's producing while thinking about dancing. When you're around the best of the best, one of the best dancers in the world, and he's obviously around some of the best dancers in the world, you see everything and you see the attention to detail. That's what Walt Disney had. And so now I'm so fortunate some of these people are reaching out to us. You know, John Cena was another one. John Cena, when he came out with us, I watched his attention to detail on how he came out, what he did, his moments, what he said. He was thinking about all those. He understood production. He understood where the lighting hits.

23:45Jesse Cole:He understood when to look here. That attention to detail, not many people think about. They think about, oh, here's what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna do it. What I'm so grateful that I get to see now is when I'm on the field during the show, I'm thinking about the live crowd, number one. I'm thinking about digital, broadcast, social media. I'm thinking about every upper deck. I'm thinking about all of that and saying, And so now our team, we can look at each other. My director of entertainment, Zach, we just look and he goes, oh, yep, got it. We don't have to say a word because we've worked together five years.

24:12Jesse Cole:It's energy here, music, get a song here, and just start to realize those things. And so once you're around it, it just starts growing.

24:18Ryan Hawk:The obsession and attention to details and intentionality, a commonality among leaders I've found over the past 11 years. That 11 year is interesting. I've been doing this 11 years. It's a good number. 11 is a big number. The hold music. Yes. Your invoices. Yes. There's nothing that's just going to be normal. nothing that's going to be, oh, yeah, you just get an invoice, or the whole music is normal. Everything, everything. You talked to me about that, like how crazy stupid, not stupid, how crazy awesome. We've heard stupid. You know, but how crazy cool your invoicing process is and what it sounds like.

24:50Ryan Hawk:Oh, my God, it's payday. You get to pay out, you know, all that stuff.

24:52Jesse Cole:Well, again, all of us, to an extent, we're chasing moments.

24:55Ryan Hawk:Yeah.

24:55Jesse Cole:You know, we want to have these special moments in our life. I think more now than ever because of, you know, the phones and the screens, I think people want to feel alive. Yeah. We're both music guys. Dave Matthews band. When I go to a show and I get there, our coaches, we've gone the last few years, I'm nowhere else. I'm in the show. As soon as Jeff Coffin starts ripping a saxophone solo, I'm there. I'm in it. I think people need those now more than ever. And so I think about those moments and how to create those moments with everything. And so it's just, to go back to

25:27Ryan Hawk:the point you were making. I'm talking about hold music. Yes. Invoices.

25:32Jesse Cole:See, I just got lost in a moment. I was just literally picturing myself at the moment. Yeah. So the intention. Well,

25:36Ryan Hawk:I'm thinking of a Dave concert. I was thinking about going to Deer Creek or somewhere to listen. Okay.

25:39Jesse Cole:A hundred percent. So, so I don't think anyone goes home and says, ah, I just had a really normal experience tonight. It was, you know, I went to a show and it was normal. That restaurant, you know, that restaurant I was talking about, it was really normal. But I got to tell you about how normal it was. The waiter served it the same way. The food was pretty normal. And then when I left, I, you know, no one really said goodbye. It was really normal. The parking in a while was a normal experience. No one gets excited for normal.

26:04Ryan Hawk:It seems so obvious, but it's so true. It's so exciting.

26:07Jesse Cole:So if you want to create a life that has special moments where you feel a part of something, you feel excited about something, then you try to eliminate everything that is normal. And so normal gets normal results. If you do things that are normal, good luck. There's a lot of normal out there in the world, but there's not a lot of extraordinary. And to do extraordinary, you've got to think of every single little thing that is normal and do the exact opposite. One of our fans' first principles is whatever is normal, do the exact opposite. it. So yes, for years we had just regular payment confirmations when you bought tickets.

26:34Jesse Cole:We had regular invoices. We had all of that. And we've got to keep pushing. But the reality is right now people will still find lots of things that we still do that's normal. Our broadcast is still normal right now. We're not even close to what we can touch.

26:44Ryan Hawk:You've mentioned that multiple times. So what is that? It seems like this would be something you'd be on the cutting edge of.

26:49Jesse Cole:Yes. So it's very hard in a lot of things and it takes time. And also, where's your focus go and energy go, I have put almost all of my focus on the live show because that is where our fans are there in person. The broadcast is very hard for me. And to be honest, I love live shows. I can go to a theater show. I can go anywhere. I have concerts. I can go to a live show. I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm not the prime audience right now. So I can't picture myself. I don't even watch much sports on TV. It's all, you know, it is what it is. A team wins, a team loses, whatever. You know, there's some cool moments that are done, but I am not the right audience.

27:24Jesse Cole:So I haven't really been able to put the right energy or time into trying to create something that I love. What I want people to do, I want to disrupt our business and say, it's better on TV than a live show, which is almost impossible because our live show is so immersive. So I challenge our broadcast team, what could we do there? So yeah, I think it's still normal at broadcast. And we had to figure it out ourselves. We do it all ourselves.

27:43Ryan Hawk:One of the things that's not normal though, is that you've negotiated and probably given up money, I'm assuming, when ESPN or other networks want to broadcast your games, you say, yes, that's great. And it's still going to be free on YouTube. So I don't know anyone else who's been able to do that. Uh, it's very hard, right? You probably had to make some financial concessions I'm guessing and pay for everything. Yeah, everything. But you know, again, I assume that's a fans first and that's why you would do this. Right. Instead of saying, wait a second, this is an opportunity really. Yeah.

28:13Jesse Cole:It's, it's, I say it all the time. It sounds simple, but it's the starting point of all innovation is just put yourself in the customer's shoes and eliminate the friction points. What are the things that you don't like as a customer and eliminate it? Where's the football game tonight? Is it on Amazon? Is it on Peacock? Is it at CBS? Is it NBC? They're making billions. I think it was like 18 billion, 20, whatever it is. They're maximized. They're the most valuable sports league in the world. I don't want to be the most valuable sports league in the world. I want to be the most fans first company in the world.

28:41Jesse Cole:And so that makes your decision-making very easy. So that's a friction point. Where's the game? Or, oh, I don't have Amazon. I don't have Netflix. I don't have Peacock. Oh, I got to do a subscription to get this. So we were willing to throw away millions. Literally, I have some of the biggest networks that we're not working with because they said, no, we can't do this. No one does this. But here's millions of dollars. That's not what gets me excited. What gets me excited is our fans being excited to be able to see our show for free at all times. And so yes, ESPN at first, they never did it. They were like, we're not going to pay you for this.

29:14Jesse Cole:I was like, well, no. And so it's like, all right, now they do. And then again, they came back this year. We're gonna do more games. No, we're not gonna do this. All the other ones, we're not gonna do it. And I said, well, we want to work with you. Look at what your ratings are. You know, ESPN averaged over a half million viewers this past year while having our games on YouTube.

29:31Ryan Hawk:Yeah.

29:31Jesse Cole:You know, CW, Roku, monster numbers. So like, your advertisers are getting exactly what they want. They're getting lots of eyeballs. So who cares if it's on YouTube? So, you know, you got to be firm in what you believe in. You know, yeah, We would have a lot more money if we did it the exclusive way, but it'd be not fans first. And we'll never do that.

29:47Ryan Hawk:In order to have a business though, you do have to make money. So is your mentality of, we focus on the fans. We focus on our people internally. The money will come.

29:55Jesse Cole:Yeah. Our fans reward us more than, it's unbelievable. I mean, yeah, I shared. I mean, we sold over$1.9 million merch items last year. So when you think of 1.9 -

30:03Ryan Hawk:The merch is everywhere. Everywhere.

30:05Jesse Cole:Well, you build something that people are proud of, that people want to wear.

30:08Ryan Hawk:Yeah.

30:08Jesse Cole:You know, I make a joke often. I get a chance just like you. I get a chance to speak to a lot of companies. And I get in front of the stage, and I said, what does a fan look like? And I said, we have one fan that every year we have a new team, he gets a new tattoo. And so he's got six tattoos of our team's logos on his leg. And he goes, dude, you got to stop adding teams. I go, that's a you problem. Like, that's you, my man. I'm like, you don't have to get the tattoos. But you think about this, no matter what company you have, if you are loved, people want to wear their merch. Like, just like you have an unbelievable podcast.

30:40Jesse Cole:I want to wear a learning leader. Because it is awesome. You know what I'm saying? If people don't want to wear your merch or rep you, you haven't made them feel something yet. You haven't been so obsessed with them and create an experience that they want to show it off to everyone. So the more things we do, like keep all our games free on YouTube, have no ads at our stadium, do these things to go to places that don't make sense on paper, we create more fans and people are proud to wear us. We spend zero dollars on traditional marketing, but we invest everything in the experience. We make the experience so good, our fans will share with everyone that this is something they haven't experienced anywhere else.

31:11Ryan Hawk:When you go to one of the games, there's so many kids. Yes. I brought mine. I want to bring more of them to the future games. Certainly want to come down here. This place is magical. It truly is. Do you think a lot of that stems from your social media growth and how focused you guys have been on TikTok and others, and you just absolutely crushed it there? Was that intentional? Did you stumble into it? How did that go?

31:32Jesse Cole:I mean, a lot of things we have like some vision and we do it and then we stumble into the learning that happens.

31:37Ryan Hawk:But you're willing to try a bunch of stuff.

31:40Jesse Cole:So I'll never forget. It's our first year. And again, we had interns. We didn't think to hire. We were college summer baseball. This is in 2016. So we had interns. You help out with tickets. You help out with merch. But we didn't have any idea to help out with video because teams didn't have videographers back in 2016. It didn't make sense. And so we had one guy and he was with us and he's like, you know, I can create some videos. I was like, oh, really cool. And then all of a sudden the can't stop the feeling. We call it can't stop the feeling. but by Justin Timberlake. That song came out that summer and it was a banger and everyone was playing it.

32:07Jesse Cole:And I was like, let's just do a music video. So we had our staff, like we would lip sync and it was so low level produced. We never done a video. So we're just having lip sync. The players I remember sitting in this corner were like doing lip syncing, but like they weren't even into it. It was just like, it was like so like half, but we put it out. And I remember I was driving in from our house and I'm looking at Facebook and it's like 10 ,000 views every few minutes. And Facebook was where we put everything. It was like 100 ,000 views, 200 ,000 views. And our fans were just like, yes. Like they were so excited.

32:37Jesse Cole:And from that, I was like, guys. So we hired him as a videographer. And we said like, let's just show us having fun. And so that's how we stumbled on that. And then when TikTok came along in 2020, we were like, let's just start posting. And the big question for our team was, what are we gonna post?

32:51Ryan Hawk:I go, I don't know.

32:52Jesse Cole:Just something that makes baseball fun. And our first video was our group's director dressed up like Cupid, you know, the Cupid of like the heart. And he was doing the Cupid shuffle. It made no sense, Ryan. and it got 12 views. And so like, all right, let's not do that again. And then so the next day, another video. And then we realized, oh, what can we show the players doing that they don't normally do? Singing, dancing, things on the field. Again, get away from normal. Walk up with a bat on fire or whatever. Exactly. What are things you've never seen before in a baseball field? And so we said, that's the lens.

33:20Jesse Cole:Make baseball fun. Anything that makes baseball fun and shows our players, our cast, our staff doing things that you normally want to do. And then we said, we're going to post every day. And we committed to posting every day. It's like, hey, a podcast. I'm going to post every, I'm going to get it out there every week. Because you learn by doing. This is one of the biggest things. You don't learn by talking about it. You got to do it. And so now you've gone since TikTok in 2020, we've posted every single day. So you're talking about thousands of posts. And so now you look at the party animals, our second team.

33:45Jesse Cole:They have more followers than every major league baseball team on TikTok. And they're selling out major league teams because we committed to just putting something out every single day. And I think that's, it's not always just creativity. It's putting out so you can learn and being willing to try things that might not work.

33:58Ryan Hawk:Yeah. So you're brought in to speak now whenever you can in between all the other stuff you're doing. And so there's people in corporate America who say, well, what can we learn from Jesse Cole? What can we learn from the Savannah Bananas to bring into our business? Like, what are some of the ways? Like, what are some of the potentially portable lessons for a random Fortune 500 company that is boring, that is normal, right? What are some of the things they could say, well, we could do that. We don't have a baseball team. Yeah. And we don't put on shows, but we have a company and we want to make it better for our people.

34:29Ryan Hawk:We want to make it better for our customers slash fans. What are some of the things that you say to them?

34:33Jesse Cole:I'm fortunate now. You know, before no one, I had to like beg a Kiwanis group or a rotary group to let me speak. And it was hard, but now a lot more fortunate. But a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to the National Asphalt and Pavement Convention, their annual meeting. And so exactly where you think I would be. Like, this is it. And I told them, I opened. I go, when I was a kid, I dreamed I'd get the opportunity to be here. and now that I'm with you guys, you've made my dreams come true. Fortunately, they laughed at that. But it was very hard because they work with governments. They work, it's B2B, it's not B2C.

35:01Jesse Cole:But what I said is we're all H2H, human to human. And we're all, how do we connect with humans? And they're like, well, we can't do things with the government because it's a bid process. I go, okay, but what can you do to create fans? How can you work on the experience every step of the way? Most of the way, most companies, this is the process that they do it. Hey, for them, it's you do a bid process, you hope they say yes, and then you deliver the road, the street, the parking lot, whatever it is. But how intentionally can you look at every step of the experience? From when you first interact with them, for what happens with when that day you show up.

35:30Jesse Cole:Can you show videos? Hey, this is what we're doing today. And show the process. Because everyone's asking, are things getting done? They're working with the community. And so, for instance, people in the community are like, how long is this row going to take? You're making it inconvenient to me. And what if you actually show what you're doing and the progress and how you're making it? You actually do things for the community and put social media sharing that. There's all opportunities. Change the lens on how do you grow customers. Not how you chase customers, but how do you create fans? And so if you look at everything and say, if you meet with a business and it's like, all right, what are ideas that we can bring in an extra million dollars,$2 million?

36:01Jesse Cole:You'll get a bunch of ideas. If you ask the same question, say, how can we create a million fans? They're different ideas almost always. Most people chase how do you create an extra million dollars, not how can you create a million fans? And so if you do that, that's how we start with everything. It's like, okay, what does this experience look like? Like, how can the upper deck experience at every stadium be the best sporting event experience ever? I don't care if you're sitting behind home plate. How can we make it even better than sitting behind home plate? And when you ask those questions, then all of a sudden the business will take off because people will invest in it because they believe in you.

36:32Jesse Cole:So whatever the business is, the question is, how do you create fans? And what are the steps? And, you know, I've shared in my first book, Fans First, eliminate friction, entertain always, which means it's not entertain. The definition of entertain is to enjoy. So, like, to entertain, enjoy. joy. So can you make every step of the process filled with enjoyment? And then next, experiment constantly. You got to try new things you never tried before. How do you engage deeply? How do you do for one what you wish you could do for many? You can't do everything for everyone, but can you create a moment?

36:58Jesse Cole:Can you listen carefully and respond creatively to what your guests are wanting or what are your customers wanting? And then finally, how do you empower yourself to do things that scare you, that are hard, that are uncomfortable, that people would say you shouldn't be doing and do what others won't do? And if you do any level of those, you'll start creating more fans. We obsess over all five of those.

37:15Ryan Hawk:You're one of the most grateful people I know. I think I got my first yellow thank you note handwritten. It was like this long from you eight years ago now. You made such an impact. Which is wild to think. It's been eight years since I got that in the mail. I'm like, what is this yellow thank you card? You send those videos to me all the time after you work out about, hey, I listened to this episode and it was great. And so I imagine you do this to everybody. Not everybody, Ryan. Well, but I mean, it's lots of people, but the idea of being perpetually grateful and then telling other people by sending them those videos or writing them those notes, what's your, do you have a process for that?

37:52Ryan Hawk:Or it's just whenever you feel like it, you're just saying, Hey, I should send him a video because I liked that podcast, or I should write him a note or her a note because she impacted me in this way. I'd be curious to hear how you think about gratitude. put yourself in their shoes.

38:04Jesse Cole:It comes down to empathy. Again, it means so much that after a night that I've worked from all day and it's 11 o 'clock and signing autographs and a fan will come up or a kid will come up and the best are the kids. The kids, thank you for creating this. You know, this was the best day. This is the best day. I love your teams. Thank you for... The way I feel when someone tells me that on the first cruise, a woman came up to me and she was emotional. It just came up to me and said, I'm here on this cruise because of you. Can I give you a hug? And I said, yes. And I go, what do you mean you're here?

38:35She's like, I'll never forget.

38:37Jesse Cole:I went to a game in Sacramento and I was kind of wandering around aimlessly. And you came up and asked if you're okay. And you're like, I'm okay. Just kind of going through something. And you said, can I give you a hug? And I gave her a hug. She lost her sister the day before. And her sister was a big fan and wanted to go to the game. And instead she said, she lost her sister. She's like, I'm going to go and tribute my sister. And she was just walking around aimless. She didn't know what to do. And I guess I saw her in that moment. I don't really unbelievably vividly remember that. And she said, you gave me that hug and I came on this cruise so I could give you a hug back.

39:10Jesse Cole:And so when you think about those moments, you think about those that which happened to every one of our players, every one of our staff, there's moments like that. It feels so good. It feels like you have such purpose and meaning that if I can find a way, if I see something, And then whether it is just a podcast or something, and just send a quick video and say, man, thank you. Like, that was awesome. That inspired me. You've made my day. I'm pumped.

39:32Ryan Hawk:You try to give it back.

39:34Jesse Cole:And so, again, because of how powerful it feels for me, how much joy, how much energy it gives me, I want to just give it back. And I can do a lot more. To be honest with you, I can do a lot more. And I think about that. I'm doing a lot more videos than I used to do letters. Videos are the one I do because I don't want people to feel the tone and the energy, and they don't always get my letters. Like, I can send a letter and you never hear back. I like to try to hear that immediate like, hey, I hopefully made your day because you made my day.

39:56Ryan Hawk:Yeah, it's contagious too. It makes me want to do it for others.

39:59Jesse Cole:I love that.

40:00Ryan Hawk:One more question. Let's fast forward one year from now. You're again, a forward resume type guy. So it's 2027. You and Emily are hanging out maybe after a long day of work.

40:11Jesse Cole:What month are we in?

40:13Ryan Hawk:We're in February 2027. Okay. And I don't know if you drink champagne, but for the purpose of the question, I'm going to use it. Okay. The Jason Gaynard champagne question. Yeah. Okay. What are you and Emily celebrating? What are you celebrating a year from now?

40:29Jesse Cole:I know exactly where we're going to be. And I can't. You can't say? Do you know Taylor? She has an idea.

40:38Ryan Hawk:I would love for you to share. Why not?

40:41Jesse Cole:Because everything we do is very intentional. And so, and how we announce things and how we share things is very intentional and to be right for the fans. I know you don't want a political answer but we will have just done something that we've never done in history And it will be one of the biggest things we've ever done and the most challenging and the hardest And it's been years in the making and fans have been asking us this for years and in february of next year We will look around after doing it and we will say look at what we just did and we will celebrate and it'll be Something that shows that we can do anything

41:13Ryan Hawk:Wow, thank you, man thank you for having us man thank you for being so accommodating and the tour the whole deal I love you man you're super super inspirational for me and make me think bigger and there's not a ton of people in the world who do that so I really really appreciate the way that you make others like it's contagious your enthusiasm so I appreciate it man

41:31Jesse Cole:and this was the third time so the third show third time's a charm here in Savannah so

41:34Ryan Hawk:won't be the last

41:35Jesse Cole:won't be the last I appreciate it brother thanks so much

41:42Ryan Hawk:it is the end of the podcast club thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club if you are send me a note ryan at learning leader.com let me know what you learned from this great conversation with jesse cole a few takeaways from my notes actually go to youtube youtube.com slash ryan hawk to see this one in person we filmed it in the new savannah bananas locker room It was so cool. We'll also be releasing a vlog soon of the tour that Jesse gave me. We went all over Savannah, and it was so cool to see him talk through it. A few takeaways from my notes. I loved watching them practice.

42:22Ryan Hawk:Every single repetition, they practice some sort of trick, a backflip, bouncing the ball through their legs, a behind-the-back catch. Why do they do this? So that on game day, it is just their default setting. They don't even think they automatically do trick plays. It's all about entertaining the fans. And I love also they make their values visible. They are all over the place in the locker room. The sign fans first is on every single player's locker. It's leading out to the field. It also says tonight is someone's first time seeing our show. Not game, not a game. It's a show. Jesse was adamant that it says that.

43:03Ryan Hawk:Your team cannot execute on principles they cannot see. I think it's worth it to put the reminders where the work actually happens. And I thought it was really cool about being so transparent with their profit and loss statements. Revenue, expenses, player salaries. When I asked why, he said quickly, fans first. They deserve to know everything. Transparency builds trust faster than any marketing campaign. And then we talked a lot both on air and off about his time spent with Mr. Beast, Jimmy Donaldson, trying to learn everything he can about YouTube. Jesse regularly puts himself in the rooms with people who are the best in the world at what they do.

43:46Ryan Hawk:Also, Bob Iger at Disney, he spent quite a bit of time with him to learn how he's built that business. So I think that that's inspiring for all of us to learn. how can we put ourselves in the rooms with people who are the best in the world at what they do or at least who are excellent at what they do. I think that will make us all better. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jesse Cole. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rate it, hopefully five stars, write a thoughtful review by doing all of that.

44:25Ryan Hawk:You are giving me the opportunity to take these amazing trips to Savannah, learn from the best in the world, and do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.