[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. I am so, so, so excited for today’s conversation that you are about to listen to. In fact, you’ll be able to see, if you’re watching this, I’m smiling almost the entire time. I was like a kid. I was so enthralled in our guest’s story. Our guest today is Jesse Cole. He is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the owner of the world-famous Savannah Bananas, as well as The Party Animals and The Firefighters. With the mantra fans first entertain always, the Bananas are on a mission to make baseball fun by creating the greatest show in sports.

Now, if you’re not a baseball fan, which I’m technically not, keep listening. Okay? Because this is about Jesse, this is about who he is and how he thinks, and you’re going to learn so much from someone who went from struggling selling their house to make their dream come true to now selling out a stadium last week with 148,000 fans. He’s got 15 million followers on social media. In fact, the team has sold out every game since their inaugural season in Savannah and has since grown a ticket wait list to more than 3.5 million fans. Yeah, their wait list has 3.5 million fans.

He’s been on the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, HBO Real Sports, and Access Hollywood, in addition to Bananaland, which is a five-part documentary, original series on ESPN Plus. And Jesse and the Savannah Bananas are just getting started. He’s also the not so proud promoter of grandma beauty pageant, the human horse race, and the living pinata and flatulence fun night. You’ll hear him mention that today. But in addition to the wildly successful Banana Ball, Jesse continues to create raving fans all over the world as a bestselling author of his book, Fans First, Find Your Yellow Tux, and his third book, Banana Ball, and is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker for some of the world’s largest and most respected organizations, which is where I met him. We were both speaking at an event and he approached me backstage with a camera rolling. I did not know the camera was rolling, and he showed me his journal from 10 years ago when he read The Miracle Morning, and he said it helped him achieve his goals and his dreams.

And most of all, Jesse’s a raving fan of his wife, Emily, their three kids, and his favorite peerless promoters like Walt Disney and P.T. Barnum. Again, today, prepare to be entertained and inspired by someone who has created the life of his dreams in a way that most people can only imagine and dream of. One of my favorite people, the one and only Mr. Jesse Cole.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: All right. So, Jesse, so you were just telling me your kids are 6 and 7.

Jesse Cole: I have a 7, 6, and a 3-year-old.

Hal Elrod: Seven, six, and three. And you homeschool them and you said that they have not– what did your wife say? You tell me.

Jesse Cole: Well, our life is crazy. So, yeah, we have biological son, two foster daughters that we adopted, and so, they are all homeschooling now. So, like, we are traveling every single week all over the country. And yeah, it’s not a typical homeschooling setup where it’s like you do three, four hours. It’s like, no, we’re on the road today. We’re traveling today. The game starts at seven. We’re going to get home at one today. You’re going to be with the players here early on the field. Then we’re going to try to go to a zoo. We’ll mix in a zoo briefly this morning and we’ll see what we can do. And it’s just adjusting with our life. And it’s crazy, but it works for us.

Hal Elrod: I mean, what a wild, like, it’ll be so interesting to see in 10, 20 years how they look back on, like, man, I had such an unconventional childhood, but it was wild, right? Like, they call that world schooling in a way, right, where you’re just like learning through osmosis and observation. And I mean, dude, the one thing they’re learning is how to watch their dad pursue his dreams at the highest level possible, which is pretty cool.

Jesse Cole: Oh, we’re very fortunate. But yes, I think, when my son’s just playing catch at Fenway Park, he has no idea it’s playing catch at what Fenway Park means and what that looks like, but I take in those moments. We’re so fortunate, we capture a lot of these moments because, I think, when I was younger, there was a few pictures. There was no videos really when I was much younger. And so, to capture these to see what they’re a part of and interacting with our players and former MVPs and all stars and celebrities and the people they get to interact with and it’s just key to teach them to be humble, but also to appreciate what they’re a part of. And so, it’s been a fun ride and we’re learning more every day.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No, I mean, it is wild. So, let’s start with where you’re at now, and then I want to kind of work backwards, right? So, you’re famous for being the founder of Banana Ball. You are selling out stadiums across the country. In fact, you just celebrated, right, your biggest audience ever. Am I right at the Panther Stadium?

Jesse Cole: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. We just sold out two NFL stadiums back to back, 148,000 fans, two games. That’s crazy.

Hal Elrod: It doesn’t make sense. I was trying to explain to my kids. I literally was telling them about our interview today and I go 148,000, I’m like, you guys, the city I grew up in had 13,000 people, y’all. That’d be like 10 of my– or more than 10 of my town that I grew up in. So, you’ve got millions of fans. Right before we met, your interview had just gone live on 60 minutes. You’re on ESPN as well, like right around that same time. What is life like right now? Like, take a minute, put your hands on your heart before you answer this, like pause, and just what is life like right now to be being you in this moment in time?

Jesse Cole: Well, for me, I’m still that only child, kid that was dreaming big and having fun. And it’s hard for me to think about where it is now because it’s all been just a journey. Nine years ago, my wife and I were sleeping on an airbed. We only sold a handful of tickets when we first came to Savannah. It was a brutal struggle, but we had a bigger belief that we can make baseball fun and create something truly special. And just each day, it’s been iteration, how do you get better? And obsession with learning from Walt Disney and P.T. Barnum and Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and the greatest innovators. And we just kept learning.

And so, now, we’re having opportunities we’ve never had before, and yes, to sell out major league stadiums, to sell out NFL stadiums to create a new sport and play it all over the world. And it’s unbelievable, but I’m still that person who’s obsessed with just creating a great fan experience, and more than anything, just creating something that I would love. I think the greatest creators create things that they love that get them excited. And I wanted to look at the sport as something that could be fun to bring people together. And so, every day is trying to get a little bit better.

So, yes, our life is we’re traveling constantly. We travel with over 200-plus people. We have multiple tours. Even our second team, The Party Animals, they have more followers than every major league baseball team on TikTok. I mean, they’ve sold out their entire tour. We’re starting the league next year. There’s a lot of opportunities with TV and all these other things that are happening, but for me, it’s not about that. It’s about one fan at a time. Every game is someone’s first game and every day, we have an opportunity to create a special moment for a fan. And that’s what fires me up and that’s what excites me. That’s when I go to the ballpark. I don’t care if it’s 40,000, 50,000, 140,000 fans. It’s those moments and that’s what we’re trying to create.

Hal Elrod: I love that. For those that aren’t familiar, what is Banana Ball and when and how did you come up with it?

Jesse Cole: Yeah, simple. I played baseball my whole life, very fortunate, got a full college scholarship, went down south, played Division 1, and that was my dream. I was going to play major league baseball. I grew up south of Boston, and so, I had a big dream to play for the Red Sox. I envisioned it over and over again, with the 37th round pick, the Boston Red Sox. I was never going to be early round pick. I was going to be later. All right? I pictured myself getting drafted. And high school, I had scouts coming to my games, major league scouts. When I was in college, there were scouts. I was getting letters. I remember getting Christmas cards from the New York Mets. It was like, this dream is going to happen.

And then I tore my shoulder. And just like that, three tears, and it was done. And I had no idea what I was going to do. Nowhere near what you went through, but it was a moment where it was like, this was my life. What do I do now? This was all I knew, I would play baseball. And so, I thought I was going to get into coaching and I had the biggest aha because I did go into coaching for a short period of time. I was coaching in Cape Cod League and sitting in the dugout. And this is Cape Cod League, some of the best college players in the country. Everyone goes and plays major league baseball. Like, they are the best and the best. So, I’m sitting with the best players in the country, the best seat in the house, and I’m bored out of my mind.

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Jesse Cole: Playing the game is one thing. When you’re playing, you’re on the mound. I could dictate what was going to go on. I could control the game. I could know what I was going to pitch, know what to do. But I was sitting there watching and I was bored, and I just had that aha, right? That was like, if I’m bored and I know the game, I understand it, and I got the best seat in the house with the best players right now, I’m bored, there’s got to be a lot of other people that are bored with the game of baseball as well.

Now, when this was happening, this was in the heyday. Major League Baseball had the most fans they ever had. They had 80 million fans. They were dominating, but I still just felt it. And so, I said, well, I got an opportunity to be a GM of a team at 23 years old in college summer baseball. And so, how do you get an opportunity? Well, it’s the worst team in the entire country. No one wanted the job, Hal. So, I got $268 in the bank account, 200 fans coming to the games, team had lost over $100,000. And I just said, “We got to fix it.” So, I was like, “I got to learn from outside the baseball business because no one– this is a low-level baseball.” It was college summer baseball I was running. And so, I started reading every book by Walt Disney, P.T. Barnum, Cirque Du Soleil, WWE, Grateful Dead, sort of learning at the greatest entertainers. And I said, “We can’t be a baseball team. We have to be about entertainment.”

So, what people don’t realize is that we spent 10 years with a small team in Gastonia. I think we got one kind of piece of news coverage, but I learned there and tried things like the grandma beauty pageants and flatulence fun nights and the salute to underwear nights and dig to China nights. I mean, we tried it all and there’s all hundreds of stories and hundreds of failures that happened there, but I learned how to get people excited about coming to a baseball game. And so, we started selling out some games back in Gastonia, over 2,000 fans, and then for a small state. That was a big deal. And I just always wondered, what if I could start from scratch, a brand-new team and do it right? And luckily, I met my amazing future wife, Emily. She became our director of fun in Gastonia. And she wears a hotdog costume every day. I mean, when you could find a woman that is confident and doesn’t care what she looks like, it’s just having fun, that’s the right girl for me.

Hal Elrod: Oh man. That’s awesome.

Jesse Cole: And I fell in love pretty quickly. And I proposed to her at one of our last games in Gastonia, sold out crowd, stopped the game, had a ring inside of baseball, and actually, had a firework show go off in the middle of the game, which completely delayed the game. But I was like, this is our moment when we’re making this special. And she surprised me with a trip to come to Savannah, Georgia, just out of nowhere. Never been to Savannah. I was like, “Oh, and there’s a minor league team there, the Mets affiliate. We got to go check it out.” She’s like, “I knew you would say that, so I got tickets.”

Hal Elrod: Nice.

Jesse Cole: I realized she probably didn’t have to get tickets because there was only 200 people, like 150 people in the stadium. It’s like a tumbleweed going through it. It was dead air and it was a beautiful majestic 1926 ballpark. Babe Ruth played there, Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig. You could feel all the history. And I said, “If this team ever leaves, we got to come here.” And lo and behold, they asked for a $38 million stadium from the city. The city said, “We’re not building you a $38 million stadium.”

So, they left and they took everything out of the stadium. We convinced the city for us to come in. We showed up. The phone lines were cut. They cut the internet lines. They took everything out of the ballpark. It was abandoned. And it was myself, my wife, our 24-year-old team president, three 22-year-old straight out of college. And here we go. Here’s the new dream, the new team. And that’s when we begin to fail. And we sold two tickets in our first three months. And we got the call on January 15, 2016, that we overdrafted our account, were out of money, and Emily turned to me and said, “We have to sell our house.” And so, we sold our house, emptied out our savings account, and we had to figure out how to make it work. And at that same time, there was a book that I read, and the book was The Miracle Morning and…

Hal Elrod: I like where this is going. Keep going.

Jesse Cole: Yes, yes. And that stood out. I started writing, right? When we started in 2015, which I showed you, I started writing every morning and documenting it. What was crazy that whole first year when we ran out of money, we were sleeping on an air bed. We were grocery shopping with just $30 a week. I have every day documented on what we went through. And it was a crazy journey. We had to figure out how to do something different because when we came in, we were expected to fail like everyone else. We were the same baseball team. We were doing the normal things, the normal marketing, the normal sales. We were scared to step out. I wasn’t wearing the yellow tuxedo. We were just like everyone else. And that’s how you fail. You do the same thing as everyone else. So, that’s how it started back in 2016.

Hal Elrod: Wild. So, it’s nine years since then. When did you start to gain traction? Like when did you get a defining moment, an aha, or met someone that changed things? What was that like? When did that happen?

Jesse Cole: February 25th, 2016. So, again, I remember dates because January 15th was when we ran out of money, and then February 25th was when we named the team The Bananas. And so, we did a big– we announced the team and…

Hal Elrod: And why The Bananas, by the way? I got to know. Like, where did that come from?

Jesse Cole: Well, we had a thousand-plus suggestions from the community and nobody wanted Bananas. They wanted Spirits, Ports, Anchors, Braves. I’m like, there’s already a team in our state called the Braves. We’re not going to be the Braves. Hundreds of suggestions. But there was one from a 62-year-old nurse, Lynn Moses, Bananas, and we looked at it and we said, go Bananas, said, we could have a senior citizen dance team called the Banana Nanas.

Hal Elrod: Nice.

Jesse Cole: We could have a Banana baby that we lift up every night. We could have a Banana band. We could have a male cheerleading team called the Man-Nanas. We could have a mascot named Split. We could do music videos, Can’t stop the Peeling. We could throw bananas from the top deck. People could catch them in their pants. It could be Banana in the Pants. And we just started thinking of all these ideas. We said it’s crazy and we need it crazy, we need attention because attention beats marketing 1000% of the time. So, we decided to go with it and we went with it. And that first gym T-shirts that came in, there were too many Ns in bananas. We literally misspelled our own name. We misspelled our own name. All right? Colossal failure.

Hal Elrod: Oh, my goodness.

Jesse Cole: The hats didn’t get there in time. And we announced that name. We actually invited some of our closest friends, family members to be at that meeting just so they could cheer. We brought in ringers because we knew we were going to get ripped apart. And boy did we ever.

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Jesse Cole: The owner should be thrown out of town. You’re embarrassment to the city. You’ll never sell a ticket. Leave our town now. Everywhere. Just ripped apart. But we got attention. They finally knew we were here. Okay? And on ESPN SportsCenter said, Logo of the Year, Savannah Bananas. So, national, we were loved. Locally, get us out of this town. Hal, a week later, I was walking through town. It was the St. Patrick’s Day parade or a couple weeks later. It was myself and our team, we’re wearing our green banana shirts, right? We’re getting booed, walking down the street, literally booed. Everyone. I’m like, “Whoa!” Just getting booed and like walking down the street is a whole new feeling to your psyche. And so, that was an adjustment, but we got attention.

And so, what we did was we actually announced, at that time when we announced the name, we announced the sellout and they were like, they’ve never sold at the stadium. So, how did you do that? We got the hospital to buy all the tickets. We didn’t tell anyone. It was just the hospital buying all the tickets. We’re like, hospital, we need your help here. Please support us. We’ll do this, we’ll do this, we’ll do this. And so, we’ve already– and people are like, wait, they sold out a game. The other teams never sold out a game in all the minor league history.

So, now, we created some demand, a little bit of excitement. For opening night, we sold out and we were wearing green uniforms because we weren’t quite right. So, literally, from the bananas, we were playing with it all. And what we did, Hal, is we made every single ticket all inclusive. Every ticket includes all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water.

Hal Elrod: So, that was that early on?

Jesse Cole: Oh, yeah. First game.

Hal Elrod: Oh, first game. Wow.

Jesse Cole: At $15 total, for all your food, your ticket, no ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fee. We knew because the name of our company’s Fans First Entertainment. We had to make it fans first. So, we sold out that opening night and we played terrible. We made six errors, but they watched the Banana Nanas dance on the field in the rain, which was interesting because they were in white jerseys. That was a whole ‘nother thing. But we watched that happen. They watched as the players went into the crowd and delivered roses to little girls.

Hal Elrod: Oh.

Jesse Cole: They watched as we lifted up the Banana baby. They watched as we went all in on the experience. We had the first banana instead of the first pitch, a kid threw a banana. We went all in on it, and they started telling everybody. So, you asked, when did it become a success? That first year, we started selling out every game, which was crazy. So, we failed the first six, nine months. I’m literally into seven-figure debt, sleeping on an airbed, grocerying with $30, but then as soon as they felt the experience, and that’s the difference, the experience is everything. We invest in the experience. We spend $0 on marketing, but we spend everything on the experience. That’s the difference.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I think about Tesla. Tesla spends $0 on marketing, right? But it’s all word of mouth because the experience of driving a Tesla is phenomenal. I’m an owner.

Jesse Cole: I think it’s tremendous, yeah.

Hal Elrod: Amazing. So, this is 2016, and now, who were you playing against, other minor league teams?

Jesse Cole: Yeah. At that point, we were a regular, traditional– there was no Banana Ball.

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Jesse Cole: We were a regular, traditional baseball team. And so, we were playing in the Coastal Plain League, a college summer league. So, we were basically, when guys played at college, wherever they play, at the summer, they play to get in front of scouts and to play more during the summer. So, we were that league. So, it was a low level. This isn’t minor league. These guys can’t be paid. It was college summer baseball. So, we had to figure out how to entertain at a 1926 ballpark, no video board, how to make it a great experience? And that was really, again, after the 10 years in Gastonia, another long time learning here in Savannah before we went and created Banana Ball.

Hal Elrod: Now, what were you doing when you thought of this? What were you doing before Banana Ball?

Jesse Cole: So, well, it was 10 years of playing regular baseball in Gastonia.

Hal Elrod: Oh, I see. Okay, got it.

Jesse Cole: Yep, 10 years of that. And then we joined Savannah, played in the same Coastal Plain League, had four, five, six years of that. And then what happened was we saw fans were leaving games early.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Jesse Cole: Even with the nonstop entertainment. I mean, we had a Banana band, we had the Banana Nanas, we had dancing players, we had a breakdancing coach. I mean, we were selling out games, but fans were still leaving early.

Hal Elrod: Interesting.

Jesse Cole: And I thought about it, I was like, no one in the world goes to like– it was like goes to a movie and it’s like, how was the movie? Ah, it was great. I left in the middle.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, yeah.

Jesse Cole: You don’t go to a great concert. You’re like, “Oh, that Coldplay, unbelievable. Yeah, I left three quarters of the way through.”

Hal Elrod: Sure.

Jesse Cole: Like, you don’t do it, but baseball games, you do it all the time. That’s a fundamental problem with the game. So, I realized there was a fundamental problem with the game that we had to change the rules to make the game more exciting. So, what I started looking at, we actually videotaped, we took pictures every 30 minutes and video of our grandstands for an entire season to watch when people got up when they left, and we realized at 9 o’clock, that was the first influx of people, two hours in. Then at 9:30, good luck, it’s all over. And so, at that point, I was like, all right, let’s create a two-hour game. No blowouts. So, if you win the inning, you get a point. So, if a team score six runs, they can only get one point in an inning.

Hal Elrod: Oh, really?

Jesse Cole: So, there’s never a blowout. Oh, yes.

Hal Elrod: Interesting.

Jesse Cole: Okay. Every inning’s exciting. No mound visits, boring. No walks, because in an athletic sporting event, there shouldn’t be a play called a walk, right? So, we eliminated walks. They’re boring. No stepping out of the box, waste of time. No bunting because bunting sucks, at least that’s what we say, and it creates attention. If you bunt, you’ll get thrown out of the game.

Hal Elrod: Got it.

Jesse Cole: If a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an out. Involve the fans. It’s fans first. And so, we developed a game that we believed what would be the perfect game under two hours, nonstop excitement, and let’s just test it. And we tested in 2018 behind closed doors, and we played the first game, nine innings in 99 minutes. And the players said it was the most fun they’ve ever had playing a game.

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Jesse Cole: Bingo. In front of no fans.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, okay.

Jesse Cole: And then COVID hits. COVID is just chaos. And so, we were allowed to have a few fans and I was like, “Let’s just test it for a few fans on COVID. I mean, no one’s really watching the world shutting that. Let’s just do it.”

Hal Elrod: True.

Jesse Cole: And we tested it, and there were a lot of things that didn’t go right. We were learning the rules, but our fans were like, “Whoa, what was that?” They were intrigued. It was creating talking points. They were like, “This is different.” They were staying till the end, 98% stayed till the end. So, then we said, “All right, let’s just do one more test again.” So, we did a one city world tour. Start small, dream big. That’s our whole mindset with everything. One city, world tour. We still announce it, a world tour. Hal, we haven’t played anywhere out of the United States. We’re going to. You better believe we’ll be international. But we believe we’re going to, so it’s called the world tour because that’s where we’re going to go. Yeah, so then we did one city world tour.

Hal Elrod: Where did you play? Where was the world tour spot?

Jesse Cole: The first spot we ever did was Mobile, Alabama of all places, because the mayor read my book, my first book, and he was like, “I’m a fan, I’ll give you a shot.” He goes, “What will it take?”

Hal Elrod: Nice.

Jesse Cole: I go, “What do you mean, what will it take?” He goes, “Well, can we help you, like, financially?” I go, “What do you have in mind? Yeah, yeah.” I had no idea that we even worked. And so, they set a great precedent. They started contributing because we started bringing fans in from all over. Did it. A lot of failures, sound didn’t work, challenges, but we sold up both nights, 7,000 fans. Went to seven cities the next year. Got a little better, Major League, spring training homes, then went to 33 cities all over the country, half million fans. Then went to a million fans last year, started selling on Major League stadiums, one major league stadium at a time. And then this year, 17 major league stadiums, double nights, three NFL stadiums, college football stadium, 2.2 million fans. And we brought on more teams. And now, we start the league. So, it’s just iteration.

And we failed every step of the way. People don’t realize. We have failed, I mean, literally, every step of the way. Our first ticket launch failed. Our first major league stadium, the tickets didn’t work. Our first merchandise launch failed. Our first game on ESPN, the transmission went out on ESPN, I mean, literally the transmission went out.

Hal Elrod: Oh, my gosh.

Jesse Cole: I mean, we failed every step of the way. But we’re not afraid to fail. We’re not afraid to try and test and get better. And that’s why we are where we are.

Hal Elrod: Well, you’re the epitome of one of my favorite books that I read, probably, I don’t even know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, Failing Forward by John Maxwell, right?

Jesse Cole: Love John.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And you are the epitome of like failing forward. Like, I’m going to try this crazy stuff and, oh, this worked, this didn’t, neither did this, neither did this, but this one did. We’ll do that again.

Jesse Cole: The key in life is how many at-bats can you get? Well, I think so many people, they might only be doing the same thing over and over again and they’re taking the same at-bat over and over again. It’s how many at-bats can you get? Pete Rose had more hits than anyone that ever played Major League Baseball, over 4,000 hits. He also had 14,000 at-bats. He had 2,000 more at-bats than anybody that else ever played the game. So, he broke the record for most hits because he kept coming up to bat. He was good enough to keep coming up to bat. So, I just look how many at-bats can we get every week? We do 10 to 15 things every night. We’ve never done in front of a live crowd. So, this weekend we have two tours going on. We’ve got five games. We’ll do 75-plus brand-new things, 30, 40, 50 of them might not work, but 10, 20 could be gold. That will get better for the next time.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, it’s like a standup comedian, right? You tell 20 jokes, you’re like, all right, these 10 sucked. These 10 we’re keeping and doing, you keep iterating, right, as you said. So, you’re obviously, I mean, I could say a lot of great things about you, Jesse, in terms of your drive, your resilience. But I want to touch on the creativity, right? Like, you obviously are a very creative, imaginative human being or spiritual being. I know you mentioned that you read, you studied P.T. Barnum, right, creator of the greatest show on earth, Walt Disney. And then now, you are an author that you’re synthesizing everything you learned from them and then everything you’ve put into your own life and your own business and what’s worked and what hasn’t. Where does that creative spark come from? And like, how much of it do you credit to just being inspired by modeling Disney and Barnum & Bailey?

Jesse Cole: Oh, it’s 100%. So many of the people that I’ve learned from, including you, and I’m not trying to just flatter you, like, I think the greatest deal of my creativity has happened in the mornings and because of I changed my ritual, I changed my tradition. I start my mornings on purpose now. Go back when I was in my 20s, it was get up and go on social media, check other stuff, do whatever. And once I started committing to writing, Write It Down, Make It Happen was a book that I read a long time ago and writing down goals and I started just writing, and then I also started writing down ideas. If you want to be creative, you have to work your idea muscle.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Jesse Cole: Everybody has creativity. When people say, “I’m not creative,” no, you just don’t work your idea muscle. Because I wasn’t unbelievably creative when I started. I think creativity comes from constraints as well. When you’re a low-level college summer baseball team that no one really cares about, you better find a way to get creative, right? Or when you’re seeing that fans are leaving games early, you got to find a way to get creative, and so, the question is your willingness to try things and test things and fail. So, in the mornings, I committed to not only writing, writing goals and writing vision, but I started writing down 10 ideas every single day.

Hal Elrod: Yes, yes.

Jesse Cole: And that was probably the biggest game changer in my life because now, it’s helped a lot of organizations. Every week, we are coming to the table with ideas. If someone’s in our office on a Tuesday, it is crazy. So, yesterday, there are idea sessions, OTT sessions, we call them now over the top ideas all over and we’re coming there, it’s all morning, And every group, you got the Party Animals, you got the Firefighters, you got the Tailgaters, you got the Bananas. We got our creative team, we got our players, and we come together and build this unbelievable, craziest amount of ideas to put into a script.

And so, I just started that and I started running on 10 ideas a day. I would’ve a bucket, what’s my bucket? What am I trying to figure out? Today, it was like the Firefighters’ calendar crew because we built a whole group of guys called the Calendar Crew that are model and do whatever. And it’s like, what are the things they can do every game to create fans that are really wild and fun? And then you start doing them. So, to answer your question, I think it just comes down to, for me, what gives me energy is creating, sharing, and growing. And that’s my energy list. And I had to figure out that because when I have to go through bad spots, when I’m really struggling, it’s because I’m doing things that don’t give me energy. And so, creating, right now, we’re creating, which I love, we’re going back sharing and growing. This hits all three.

So, when I’m talking to someone that I’ve learned from, that I’ve grown from, that I can go have a good conversation, that hits all. But creating every morning, writing down new ideas, create before you consume. Most people go and consume. I start creating and I start writing down and sharing. Can I work with our team and tell them ideas and share and talk about this? Get on stage, do all those things, growing. I’m rereading, probably this is the 10th time, that huge 700-page Neal Gabler biography of Walt Disney. And again, I’m still finding new things every single– I’m writing down notes. I’m growing and I’m learning.

And I listen to Jimmy Fallon on a podcast this morning about his struggles growing up. So, like, that’s growing. And so, it’s constantly, if you put that into your system, your input affects your output. And so, constantly, creating before consuming, bringing good things into me, my vitamins of reading and learning and listening to podcasts, and then hopefully, that helps me put out good in the world as well.

Hal Elrod: I love that. You said something in there which is that most people start the day consuming, not creating, right? And it’s so true. As soon as we start consuming, we go from being proactive to reactive. And our brain literally, it’s like, I’m not a neuroscientist, but I just know from experience, like it shifts into reactive mode and I lose my creative abilities. And it’s really, I have to like get them back. I got to shut the phone off, meditate, journal, read. And what’s ideal is that you don’t have to get them back. You actually start with that. You also mentioned your input determines your output and I know that, for me, when I stop reading or like I go on a reading drought, I’m like, my brain just goes, ah, I just don’t think of anything.

Jesse Cole: That’s creativity.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And then as soon as I start reading, I’m like, oh, I now connect. Ooh, that applies to me in my life. Based on what he did, I could do that here. And I mean, I just see that. So, it’s like, yeah, you working your idea muscle, it’s like, I love what I’m realizing is your answers to the question of like, where’s that spark of creativity come from, is that you generate it. It’d be like if you saw someone that had big muscles and you’re like, hey, dude, where did those big muscles come from? And they’re like, every day, I actively do things that produce muscle, right? Like, you actively are, like your life is centered around your miracle morning that’s centered around creating.

Jesse Cole: 100%. Well, what do you want to be prolific at? I learned this from Taylor Swift. It’s crazy, I study Taylor Swift like crazy because you study the best in the game.

Hal Elrod: Oh, totally.

Jesse Cole: So, like, MrBeast, I study him. I mean, I know him and Taylor Swift, a lot younger than me. But they’re the best in YouTube in the world, and probably the best when it comes to music and creating fans and anyone in the world right now. So, Taylor Swift, she realized that her superpower was songwriting. It wasn’t necessarily a thing. It wasn’t the tour, it was songwriting.

So, she wanted to become prolific at that. So, every day, writing, writing, writing, that was her craft.

So, how do you master your craft? What’s the craft that you’re going to work on? And for me, what I realized it is these ideas of creating this game, this entertainment, the show. And if every day I can create, again, we’re trying to create the greatest show in sports with every moment to entertain you. So, if I spend my time every day working on ideas like today, literally, probably four hours I spent, which I never get this much white space, which was amazing to me. Eye opening. Working on the Firefighter show, they have their first headliner. They sold out, so they’re our third team. They sold out their whole tour and they have their headliner tour. And so, it starts next week and we’ve already got a bunch of stuff. It’s like I got to bear down. What is every moment? What is every touch point? What is the fire line doing? What is the mascot doing? What is the Calendar Crew doing? What is our Dalmatian Batdog doing, which I haven’t announced yet, but I just did. So, we’re going to have literally a Dalmatian.

Hal Elrod: You heard it here first, folks.

Jesse Cole: So, like the first ever trained Dalmatian Batdog. So, like, how can you make him different than a regular Batdog? Like, literally, crafting that and creating that and going that, if that is what I believe I can be prolific at, that is my craft. Then you have to put and commit the time to it every day. This isn’t a thing like, again, you’re going to do it like a bodybuilder. Oh, I’m going to get a huge workout in tonight. It might be great. That won’t make an impact in the long run. It’s the every day that a lot of people know, it’s hard to practice. And that’s what I try to practice every day.

And that’s where you came in with the mornings because now, with three kids under seven, I have to get going at 4:30 or 5 o’clock if I want to win the morning, to win the day. And it is essential. And it’s harder now. It’s so much harder than it was without kids. It’s not even close. Because with the 3-year-old getting up and whenever she wants to get up and running into my office, it’s a challenge. But you have to find out, so I’m going to do an hour of this really good, do an hour. If it’s 30 minutes, do it 30 minutes really well. And I’d even have to work on that. But I think about you and that craft that you helped teach me many years ago. It’s made such an impact in my life.

Hal Elrod: It’s amazing. I have just a personal curiosity that I want to ask you about. So, if anybody hasn’t seen Banana Ball, just go to YouTube, type in Banana Ball. Dancing is a huge part of your entertainment and the games. And so, what I just was personally wondering, I was like, “How does this work? How does he find baseball players that are really good at baseball and that are really, not just good at dancing, but they’re entertainers, like they’re funny and they’re quirky and they’re weird and they’re dancing, and so, I’m curious, what’s the system behind it? Is it like, okay, you come in as baseball players and then you take dance lessons and how does it all work?

Jesse Cole: This is the same conversation we were just having, which I love. This is working on a craft. So, for instance, you have to be a great baseball player to play Banana Ball. People don’t realize, our guys throwing low to mid-90s. We have first round picks, second round picks, third round picks, but we have some of the top talents. They just never made it to the majors, but they’re here.

But you’re the average of the five people you surround yourself. And so, literally, we have these guys who are great baseball players, but every day we’re doing rehearsals. See, people don’t realize, like we do rehearsals, we do new dances, new entrances, new scoring celebrations every single day. So, every day, you’re around people and you’re doing it, you’re practicing it. So, like, our guys do trick plays. We got our center fielder and left fielder do backflip catches. They do aerial catches. They’re catching the balls between their legs. They never did that before.

Hal Elrod: Crazy, yeah.

Jesse Cole: And it’s unbelievably hard. But every day, their practices are dramatically different than what regular baseball players are. They come in. They work on dance. Our breakdancing coach is one of the best dance instructors. Actually, last night, he got four stars for America’s Got Talent. So, he actually moved on. It was great to see.

Hal Elrod: No way.

Jesse Cole: They all voted him forward. It was awesome to watch it.

Hal Elrod: Oh, that’s exciting.

Jesse Cole: So, he teaches our players to dance. Every day, he’s working with them and teaching them. He teaches our Man-Nanas, or literally, our dad bod cheerleading squad who can’t dance.

Hal Elrod: Dad bod cheerleading squad.

Jesse Cole: But now, they can dance. And their videos, they danced at Clemson in front of 81,000 to a Man! I Feel Like a Woman. And it got over 40 million views because it showed just dad bods having fun dancing. And they learned it. They did it in front of people. So, my point, it goes into these guys, it’s what are you doing every day to work on a craft that’s different than everyone else? If sometimes when we’re working on the same craft, it’s hard. It’s hard to break through. It is very hard to break through. We’re working on a differentiated craft every night, having players dance, having players do walkups. No one else in the world is working on that. And so, that makes it easier to stand out. And same thing with all the ideas. I think in the show, most people are not thinking that way or even looking at that way. And so, it’s an easier way to stand out when you work on a craft that’s differentiated.

Hal Elrod: So, actually, I want to ask you a weird question that just came up for me about AI, right? And it’s actually because yesterday, I was thinking about what my next solo podcast is going to be out and I was surveying my Miracle Morning Community. And a lot of people are worried about AI. They’re worried that AI is going to take their job, right, which I think is a valid concern. And Goldman Sachs says 300 million jobs are going to be replaced by AI, right? So, everybody’s afraid.

Your job cannot be replaced by AI, right? I mean, I don’t know, the yellow tux robot, I’m sure, in the next 20 years might be a thing, but here’s what I want to offer people. I want to invite you to share your perspective, like, if someone is like, my job could get replaced by AI and maybe even if you do use AI and you’re thinking like, I’m just thinking, again, wow, I’m looking at Jesse Cole. The way you think is so outside the box. It’s so creative and it’s experiential that, like I said, you’re not at risk of being replaced by AI and I’m wondering what mindset, or which mindset that you bring to your work can people apply to their work?

And before you answer, I want to say one more qualifying thing, which is one thing that came up for me yesterday. I was thinking about the podcast and what I’d want to say is to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset, right? Like, if somebody works in a– they’re like, I’m a data analysis and AI can now replace me, what do I do? It’s like, you actually have to get outside the box and you have to start thinking about like, how could I add value in the world outside of what I’ve ever done before? And you have to almost reinvent yourself. So, that’s one way that I was thinking about it. And again, you are highly qualified to talk about becoming irreplaceable.

Jesse Cole: Well, it’s a balance. It’s interesting. I look at Walt Disney, my biggest mentor, he embraced technology better than anyone else.

Hal Elrod: Oh, wow.

Jesse Cole: Going from technicolor, going from how he developed the animations. Obviously, he was animatronics with Disneyland. I mean, he did things. He was so far ahead of his time. And I haven’t. To give you an example for the first nine years in Savannah, we didn’t have a video board, and I didn’t want one. I said, “I want to figure out how to entertain without a video board. I want to figure out without people having to watch a screen.”

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Jesse Cole: So, this can kind of go into the way how I’m going to answer this question. Yes, AI, if you’re not using AI, you’re behind. And I use it every day to help with idea generation. So, I’ll say, hey, I’m thinking this, going to grind this. I use it with different ideas and it drives. There’s so many stories that I could share, but I’ll share one that I haven’t, I don’t know if I’ve publicly even shared this much. So, we did a Bananaland at sea cruise, and of course, why not do a cruise ship for our fans? This is a crazy idea, but again, constraints, foster creativity. I said, our biggest fans, can we take them on a cruise ship? We don’t play any Banana Ball, but we got to figure out how to entertain them for four to five days. Is that not going to make us better or not?

And if we can figure out how to do that, what could then that lead us to the opportunity to do? So, we sold out a cruise ship this past year. We’re doing another one next year. And we had to create, we did a Broadway theatrical show. We created that from scratch for our players. We had players involved in so many things. We had them all over the ship. We just made it an immersive experience.

The first night, a woman comes up to me, and I don’t recognize this woman at all, and you can see she’s kind of got tears in her eyes. And she comes over, she goes, “Can I give you a hug?” And I said, “Yeah, of course.” And I gave her a hug and she goes, “The reason I’m here on this cruise is because of you.” And I go, “Oh, well, thank you so much. That’s very, very kind.” She’s like, “No, you don’t understand.” She goes, “This past year, we had a game in Sacramento and my sister was the biggest Bananas fan ever. She watched every game. She was obsessed, she watched every game. She was all into it. And so, she got us tickets. I never watched the games much, I didn’t know much about it, but I was going to go with her.

And the day before the game, she tragically died and I was lost, but I knew I had to go to the game. And I came to the game, and you saw me in the concourse and you just came up to me out of nowhere and said, “Can I give you a hug?” And now, it was starting coming back to me because I remember she was kind of just looking around, kind of just lost. And you gave me that hug and you have no idea how much that meant to me because after that hug, I realized that I can have fun. I can enjoy this. And I had so much fun at that game that helped me get out and recover from my sister who was my closest person in my life. And she went on a cruise solely just to repay that hug to me.

And I think about that moment, and I share that because our players, our cast, our staff have those moments every single night with thousands of fans. And when you talk about AI and when you talk about what that’s going to do, those moments, good luck, AI, because there’s a feeling and there’s an emotion that comes to that, that delivers that. And so, when you think about how you can, if you’re worried about your job, if you’re worried about what’s next, if you focus on how you make people feel, nothing matters more than making people feel like they matter. AI will struggle with that because it’s a different emotional connection that you can have with someone.

And so, for every day, we try to bring people together. I bring joy and bring fun and make them feel like they matter. And so, as an entrepreneur mindset, whatever you’re doing, if you can find a way to connect with people, to create an experience, not just a product which AI can create, an experience, a feeling, I think you’ll be okay for the years to come.

Hal Elrod: All right. Oh, man, where can people get tickets to a Banana Ball game? I know it’s hard. It’s like sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out.

Jesse Cole: Yeah, I appreciate it. The wait list is at 3.5 million right now. So, it’s something I would never imagine. But we’re going to work on with the biggest thing we have to overcome is the secondary market. Right now, people go into the secondary market and tickets are $500, $700. They’re ridiculous.

Hal Elrod: Oh, wow.

Jesse Cole: So, we’re going to develop our own secondary market with no ticket fees, no convenient fees, and face value tickets. And so, if people have an extra ticket that they can’t go, that’ll be an opportunity. But right now, it’s join the wait list. We’re going to give them all the opportunity in the future to come to tickets and go. That’s the key right now. But again, we’re very, very grateful to be in the spot we’re at.

Hal Elrod: BananaBall.com is where people can go to, to join the wait list and check it out?

Jesse Cole: Yes. BananaBall.com, Savannah Bananas, any of our teams. We’re pretty easy to find these days.

Hal Elrod: And then you’ve written three books, Fans First, Banana Ball, and Find Your Yellow Tux.

Jesse Cole: Yes.

Hal Elrod: Which of those is your favorite? If somebody wanted to get a little bit of Jesse Cole’s mindset?

Jesse Cole: Fans First through and through. That’s the core of who we are. That’s the name of our company that drives everything. At the end of each night, we have all the fans and our players, we put our arms up in the air, 40,000. We all go fans first because that’s what we stand for. It’s so crazy to say our fans are cheering it, but they’re all about what we’re trying to do, and we’re in this together. That’s the story. That’s how it’s all formed. Fans first is everything.

Hal Elrod: Who is that book for?

Jesse Cole: Well, it’s built in the sense of business. It’s built in the sense to look at it from a business sense on how do you create fans and don’t just chase customers, but it really does share the journey in a fun way. There’s a halftime show in the middle of the book, I mean, literally, which we do halftime show to some of our games, which we break all the rules on what a conventional baseball game is, but it’s written to be entertaining, just like a banana show.

Hal Elrod: Have you ever thought about, Jesse, this came up for me just now, applying– so, basketball’s my favorite sport personally, right? Have you thought about applying this to the other sports?

Jesse Cole: We have got a lot of those emails and messages and questions from football to golf to tennis. We’ve heard, I think we’ve a few from basketball, but going back to working on the craft, I think it’s the singular focus. We got a long way to go. Our goal is not to become a billion-dollar company. It’s to create a billion fans, and we got a long way to go. So, that’s what we’re focusing on right now.

Hal Elrod: So, it’s not a no. It’s a, once we’ve mastered Banana Ball, we got a billion fans, then maybe we’ll think about Banana Baseball or Banana Basketball, I mean.

Jesse Cole: We’ll never master it. Every single day, we’re learning, my friend. I’ll tell you, we’ll never master it. So, I’m going to do it till the day I die.

Hal Elrod: Last question, man, is just where, if people want more Jesse Cole in their life, I know that I do, and I’m blessed that I get to text you when I need some Jesse Cole in my life. I know you’re not giving out your cell phone today, but what’s the best way for people to follow you? Social media, email, website, what’s the best thing?

Jesse Cole: My cell phone is in the book Fans First, by the way. So, I do get text messages and calls every day because I did put it out there. But yeah, I mean, my mindset, I mean, I’ll stay till the last fan at the end of each night. I’ll stay assigned till the last fan every night. I mean, I try to be as available because I think back to the Walt Disney’s, I was able to learn from him and able to share the journey. So, for me, I share the journey. So, on LinkedIn, I started nine years ago, every day, every other day, I’m posting. Instagram, I’m just sharing things. I’m learning things. I’m seeing because it’s something that hopefully, it’s a way to give back as you’re learning, which I was so grateful to have from so many coming up as well.

Hal Elrod: Amazing. Well, you are an inspiration to me, dude. Seriously, I’m so inspired by you, not just as an entrepreneur who really serves people, but as a husband, as a father with your foster kids, with your biological son. You’re a special human being, man. And I hope you receive that. I hope you feel that. And yeah, I’m grateful.

Jesse Cole: I appreciate you. You know the impact you’ve made on me, my friend. So, it’s been game changing, so this was a lot of fun.

Hal Elrod: All right, well, hey, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in to this episode. You just met one of my favorite people, Jesse Cole, founder of Banana Ball, husband, father. Go follow him. Grab his book, Fans First, off of Amazon or wherever you buy your books. And I love you so much. I will talk to you next week.

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