How to Turn Customers Into Raving Fans with Savannah Bananas Owner Jesse Cole

Customers come and go. Fans will drive 40 hours just to be in the room with you. I've wanted Jesse Cole on this show for a long time, and this conversation went further than I hoped. More than 4 million people are on a waitlist for a ticket to one of his games. He's drawn crowds bigger than the Super Bowl. And he's done it by obsessing over the thing I believe matters most as AI moves into every business: how people feel when they deal with you. This was not an overnight success. Jesse's pro baseball dream ended with a torn shoulder. He spent ten years running a team almost nobody came to see. Then he and his wife, Emily, bet everything on a college summer team in Savannah, and in the first three months, they sold two tickets. What happened next became the Banana Ball Championship League and one of the great American business stories. I asked him the question every entrepreneur in a hard season needs answered: why didn't you quit? I share what it felt like when my own baseball dream ended. I push back on founders who build companies just to sell them, and I explain why most big exits aren't what they look like. And I challenge Jesse on what separates great entrepreneurs: they keep improving even when everything is already working. We finish with what Jesse and Emily are building off the field, and it may be the most powerful part of the whole conversation. Here's what you'll gain from this episode: Fans vs. Customers: Why one is transactional and the other will defend you when you make a mistake. The Friction Question: The one question that sparked Banana Ball, and how it applies to a realtor, a dry cleaner, or any business. Attention Beats Marketing: Why Jesse hasn't spent a dollar on marketing since opening night, and what he does instead. The Energy List: How Jesse found what fuels him, and why it changed the way he shows up as a leader and a dad. Lessons from Walt Disney: Two principles Jesse built his company on, including the one that explains why he won't sell. Learn, Change, Plus: The nightly habit that keeps a sold-out business from ever getting comfortable. Two tickets in three months. That's where this started. Whatever season you're in right now, get to the next day, then the next one. You are much closer to your dreams than you realize. Apply for up to $500,000 in same day business funding in under 3 minutes at Cardiff.co/ED Peace of mind shouldn’t be optional, visit https://webroot.com/MYLETT to save 60% today. Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/mylett Shopify: The best businesses aren’t built in boardrooms. They’re built by people who just started. Free trial at https://shopify.com/mylett 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈 → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ INSTAGRAM ➡️ FACEBOOK ➡️ LINKEDIN ➡️ X ➡️ WEBSITE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:42Ed Mylett?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  This is the Ed Miliband Show.

• 1:44Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. Man, I've wanted to have this dude on for a long time. I think he's one of the great, if, you know, top five entrepreneurs that I'm excited about in the world today. Literally. One, because it's sort of connected to baseball, but more because this dude gets culture, he gets client experience, better than anybody, I think, on planet Earth. Okay? And let me just give you some stats. First of all, you know the Savannah Bananas, that's probably how many of you would know, that's one of the teams. But he actually has fans first entertainment. He's the owner of the Banana Baseball Champion League. Let me tell you how popular these guys are, okay? As I understand it, as of April of 2026,

• 2:23Ed Mylett?

  4 million plus people on the waitlist to get a ticket to one of the games. They fill up stadiums with 100,000 fans. Last night, he was at something with 80, 90,000 fans. Just to give you context, guys, Super Bowl had 71,000 fans. Okay? They've got over 21 million followers on social media. They got a new deal with ESPN and Disney. This dude is one of the great American business stories because he gets the most important things in an AI area, which is experience and culture for the fans. I'm fired up, dude, for you to teach people all these lessons today. So this is Jesse Cole. Jesse, welcome to the show.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Ed, love it, man. Let's rock and roll.

• 3:03Ed Mylett?

  He's a, he's a Boston boy, too, which I was just discovering, which means he's a good people on top of everything else. Okay, I want to know this all for my personal edification. So you're filling up all these stadiums, which is insane to get 80,000, to get 8,000 people to come to something, is, no pun intended, bananas. Take me back to the beginning of this, just for a second, because there's a lot of entry level entrepreneurs listening to the show today. They got their startup, they're in their third year, their fourth year, their 10th year. Where'd the idea in the first place come from? And what did the early years look like for you and the company?

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, what people don't realize, they think it's an overnight success, but it's going on almost 20 years now. And so, yeah, I mean, the Bananas are going on 11 years now. But go back before that, I spent 10 years in a little tiny town in Gastonia, North Carolina, running a college summer baseball team with no one wanting to come to the games. $268 in the bank account of the team, my first day, and 200 fans coming to the game. That's what we started as a 23-year-old general manager.

• 4:05Ed Mylett?

  Wow, are you serious?

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so people don't realize that. So I had played baseball my whole life, big baseball guy, was fortunate to get Division One scholarship, went down to South Carolina, played at Watford, the dream of playing pro ball, scouts at the games, getting letters from the teams, this is gonna happen. And then I tore my shoulder, senior year, just like that, right, like that, three tears, done, never played again. And everyone's like, you're gonna go into coaching, you've been around the game the whole, your whole life, you're gonna go into coaching. And so, yeah, that's what I thought I would do. And I coached for one summer in the Cape Cod League, which I know you're familiar with.

• 4:34Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  I realized one day, I'm sitting in the dugout, the best seat in the house with the best players, all these guys go play pro, they're the best of the best. I'm bored out of my mind, Ed. I'm just sitting there, I'm like, I played my whole life. But I'm sitting there, I'm like, I know what's gonna happen, we're gonna do this, we're gonna try to bun them over, we're gonna run, like, I'm not in the game, I'm watching the game. And I realized, on board, man, what about the fans?

• 4:56Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  More parts of the games. And I learned this, I started studying Walt Disney religiously. And, you know, when he took his daughters on Saturdays to Daddy Daughter Day, they'd go out to the park and, you know, went out to the carousel and, you know, went to Griffith Park. And he said, I wish there was a place adults and kids could have fun together. And that's where the, the thoughts, the ideation of Disneyland came about. And I'm sitting there in the dugout, I'm thinking the same thing. I'm like, man, you know, why can't this game be fun for everyone? Even people that don't love baseball, kids and adults, and yeah, yes, there's 70 million people that come out to Major League Baseball games, and I get it. But like, everyone, not even if you don't get the game, you can still have fun and enjoy it. And so, yeah, we went to Gastonia, 23 years old, with a kind of a big vision, and we failed, we were struggling, man. I was coming up with grandma beauty pageant ideas, salute to underwear nights, flatulent fun nights, I was just trying

• 5:41Speaker 03

  everything, throwing it up against the wall. But slowly but surely, there for 10 years, you know, we went from 200 fans a game to 1,000 fans a game to 1,500 fans a game to 2,000 fans a game, started selling out and from a team losing $100,000 a year, we started to make some money. But that wasn't the goal, the goal was to try to learn how to get people to come to games. And then that's where Savannah started. So Savannah came after about 10 years in Gastonia.

• 6:03Ed Mylett?

  Okay, guys, by the way, I feel like a brother here, born, we're born in the same hospital, South Shore Hospital in Massachusetts, well, obviously, a couple of years apart, unfortunately for me. But I also played Division One baseball, so I know what that's like. And I know what it's like when the dream ends too, right? He's also, if you're listening to the audio, because a lot of your audio, he's also the best dressed guest we have ever had on the show. So, yep, he's in his trademark yellow tux and yellow hat. And if you are listening to audio, at some point today, give yourself the gift of going over to the YouTube, just to get a look at what a great American entrepreneur looks like. But, so what happened, Jesse? Like, don't be humble. Like, that's a great beginning, but to go to really one of the most scaled viral businesses, really

• 6:46Ed Mylett?

  existing in the world today. I mean, millions of people waiting to get to one of your games from that time. How and why? Like, I know it's a broad statement, but wow.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  We had to fail first. You know, I think the greatest entrepreneurs, they go through serious failure, and that actually guides them in what they do next. So our failure, we went to Savannah, this big dream, minor league baseball in Savannah, Georgia for 90 years, professional baseball. We came in as a college summer team. People don't even realize that.

• 7:15Ed Mylett?

  I did not know that.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  We started as college summer, one of the lowest levels of baseball. That's what we were. But we had this big dream, we show up the stadium, unfortunately, the, the previous team cut the phone lines, cut the internet lines, took everything out of the ballpark. So myself, my wife, I'm 31 years old, my wife's 28, we've got our 24-year-old team president and a couple 22-year-olds straight out of college. That's our team. But we, we're gonna make baseball fun. It's a brand new slate, Savannah, Georgia, we're all excited. So we start going, knocking door to door. This is back in 2015, 2016. We don't even have a team named that. But like, we're here, we're gonna make baseball fun. There's gonna be dancing players, there's gonna be non-stop entertainment. We were getting doors shut in our face, hung up on. We literally had an event, a free event at the conference center with like steak and crab cakes and drinks and only 72

• 8:02Speaker 03

  people showed up. No one even wanted to come. The, the conference center felt so bad that they didn't even charge us for it. They were embarrassed. Like, they, they felt so bad about it.

• 8:10Ed Mylett?

  Oh my God.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  It was, we only sold two tickets in our first three months.

• 8:14Ed Mylett?

  Oh my gosh.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Two. And so we'd already gone into massive debt because we had to buy the team. Now, we did it through the league, so it was like, we had to pay, you know, a certain amount, six figures, uh, you know, every year for multiple years. But we were already in tons of debt. And then we sold two tickets our first few months. And then on January 15th, 2016, I'll never forget this moment, it's 4:45 PM, we get the call that we overdrafted our account, we were gonna miss payroll, we were out of money. So my wife and I had just been married three months, we had just launched this brand new team, we were already massively in debt, almost a million dollars in debt. And she turns to me and Emily goes, Jesse, we have no options, we have to sell our house. So we sold

• 8:56Speaker 03

  our house, we emptied our savings account, we found an old garage that was turned into a studio, kind of. We got an airbed and every day we'd say, we just gotta hit get to the next day, get to the next day. And so we were grocery shopping, which is $30 a week. We'd go to Walmart, a $20 bill and a $10 bill, because we didn't want to go more credit card debt, we already so much in debt. And so 42 meals, we'd eat that, and we just, with whatever that food was, which wasn't real food, to be honest with you, Ed. And we just said, we gotta get to, we gotta get some attention, we gotta get people to know who we are and know that we're not like every other baseball team. Because most people, what they do, they're just talking. And we were just talking, no one had experienced it. We're like, we gotta get to that point so people can actually experience it. But first, we gotta get attention. And so we did the name the team contest, which a lot of

• 9:38Speaker 03

  teams do. And we got all the generic, the spirits, the ports, the anchors, the Braves. I'm like, there's already a team in our state called the Braves, we're not gonna be the Braves. And, and we had one suggesting the Bananas. And I know we looked at each other and said, go Bananas. Said, what if we had a senior citizen dance team called the Banana Nanas? What about a male cheerleading team called the Mananans? What about banana in the pants promotions and do music videos to Can't Stop the Peeling? And we just, our ideas started saying, that's a fun brand. And our goal, when the beginning, day one, is to make baseball fun. And we said, we're gonna go with it. But we knew we were gonna get hit hard by embarrassment, we actually prepared our short, little, small little staff before, and was like, guys, when we start getting criticism, this is how we handle

• 10:20Speaker 03

  it. And then we announced the team, and it was more criticism than you could ever imagine. We were getting booed in the streets when we'd wear gear. People would boo us. The, the town was so embarrassed that we would name the team the Bananas. But nationally, Ed, it was like on Sports Center, it was on Sports Center, it got national attention. People were like, oh, this is a fun name, is this the logo of the year? And people are like, all right, you gotta get attention first. And now we gotta deliver on the experience. So we just got to opening day. We made every single ticket all-inclusive. So think about this, Ed. Again, everything starts for us, the name of our company is Fans First Entertainment. So every decision we make, we ask as a fans first. And so when we went into this, we said, all right, we gotta get people that want to come to the shows, but maybe they're, you know, college summer baseball, they don't know what it is,

• 11:02Speaker 03

  they're not interested. Well, why don't we just make it the best value in the world? And then we wow them with the experience. So all your hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda, water, popcorn, dessert, all night long, and your ticket, no ticket fees, no convenience fees, no service fees, we pay your taxes, $15 total.

• 11:20Ed Mylett?

  Dude.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  So that's, so that's what we announced in the beginning. We did that. So, so, and again, we had no idea how to do it. And that's what people realized. Like, oh, you guys are doing some, you know, crazy little things. We don't know what we're doing until we do it. You're gonna have this goal and this vision and just go do it and learn from it. And so we said, we're gonna do it. And boy, did we learn that first night. We didn't know our fans were gonna go through 10,000 pieces of meat in an hour. All right. The lines, the lines were almost two to three hours. It was a really bad experience. But you need to be willing to get through the messy to get to the great. And so what we learned with that day was like, all right, the vision of what it could be. You never pull money out of your pocket. Your kid would say, hey, mom, can I have a soda? Go, yeah, just go. Or can I go get a burger? Yeah, just go. That is a frictionless experience. That is a fan's first experience. So we had what the vision was. We just didn't know how to execute it.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  So the next day, we put, we moved stanchions around. We put drinks first. So people weren't just grabbing all their burgers and dogs. And we made it. So now, even to this day, still in Savannah, all inclusive, everyone can get fed within five minutes at any point at our stadium. And so that was the starting point. But that was, you know, we didn't wow them there. They were like, this is terrible. But at least they said they were getting it free. But they watched as the banana nanas danced. They watched as we lifted a baby in a banana costume up in the air and sang, nah, Savannah, nah, here to start the game. They, they watched our players went into the crowd to deliver roses to little girls in the middle of the game. They watched an experience that they'd never seen before. From that moment, everything changed. We didn't have to market again.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  And this is an honest, true story. Since that day, we have spent zero on marketing.

• 12:51Ed Mylett?

  You're, you're, you're literally blowing my mind. I want you all to, listen, if you're driving in your car right now, you lean in. You are now in one of the great business podcasts you will ever hear in your life. Just what he, no, guys. As a real entrepreneur who scaled and built a bunch of businesses, okay, we're having a real one right now. You're gonna take a ton of lessons. I wanna go back. I wanna unpack a couple of things so far. Why didn't you quit? Think about the last time you called a business and nobody picked up. What did you do? You know what you did? You called the next one. And your customers are doing the same thing. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO. It's spelled Q U O.

• 13:30Ed Mylett?

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• 14:15Ed Mylett?

  That's Q U O dot com slash my let. So if you were to start a business right now, what would you create? What would that idea be like that you had, but you've been working towards since you were a kid, but you haven't done anything with? Something that came to mind when you were in college, or perhaps a passion project you've always wanted to put out into the world, but never quite gotten around to it. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that's responsible for millions of sales worldwide, including my show. It's an online website, store creator, inventory management system, point of sale system, and so much more. One platform is all you need. The best part of Shopify's tools are conveniently located. It's right there in one easy platform. Even I can do it. So just sign in and start managing all aspects of your business right away.

• 15:00Ed Mylett?

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• 15:21Speaker 03

  I'm gonna ask that question. And it's, it's funny, because then I gotta ask questions about regrets and all that. I never think like that. I always, I always think.

• 15:28Ed Mylett?

  You, you got $30 of groceries a day. Hang on. $30. You're three months married. Two people bought tickets. You did not think about quitting, you're telling me?

• 15:37Speaker 03

  What are the options? We had bought, we owed all this money. We were in it. We had, we had kids that just came out of college and their parents were trusting us to make sure that their kids took this job that would be take care of them. We had a 24-year-old president that left a minor league job to lead this team. We had a responsibility. And so my mindset was like, we gotta get to the next day. Well, how can we convince a few people to buy tickets? What can we do the next day? How can we get a few more people? How can we get to opening night so we can at least show them? We had an obligation. We owed so much money to the league and to debt and everything else that we had. We had to get to that opening night. There was no option of quitting.

• 16:13Ed Mylett?

  Hmm. By the way, everyone, this is just 10 years ago. This isn't like 30 years ago. So this also goes to show you. You do some of the lessons that we're gonna go through here that this man and his team have employed in their business. Stuff could get going. First things first, when I think of you, is it Unreasonable Hospitality? Is that the book?

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Love, love Will. Will does a tremendous job.

• 16:37Ed Mylett?

  Well, I brought him in to speak to my ARATE group with Andy Frisella and I. And it was one of my first introductions. And I'm like, I'm actually sort of convinced that customer experience has always been the most important thing. But now with AI marching its way towards us. Can you just talk about, you call it fans first, but some of you don't have fans. You should, but you have customers who you would, if you were really smart in your business, you'd make raving fans. Based on the experience, but preach and, and teach us lessons here as entrepreneurs. We're at Harvard Business School with you right now in your yellow tux, right? What does customer experience mean? How important is it? And how does an entrepreneur who's good at it think?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  It's, it's everything. It's, it's the difference. And, and everything starts with us. Our name or our company is Fans First Entertainment. Every decision we ask, does it make fans? Does it create fans? And so, yeah, I believe especially now with AI. And the need, I think there's gonna be huge pushback. I think AI is here and it's gonna be here and it's everything. But like, human connection, we need that. We crave that. There's a difference there. And so we invest heavily in that. So you think about it, customers are transactional. They come and go.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  Fans, fans are different.

• 17:46Ed Mylett?

  Guys, so good, so good.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  The future of business is not how many customers you have. It's how many fans you have.

• 17:51Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  So, so think about this. What, what does a fan look like? Here, I'll give you an example. You know, right now, every game that we have, wherever we have, we have fans come in from either 30, from 38 on the low end up to 46 states. Six to seven countries. They wait four or five years and they come in. And when they come in and you see them and they show tattoos of our logos. I have one, one fan, this is hilarious. He's got, we add new teams. We have six teams now, which is crazy. All of them have sold out everywhere they go, including major league stadiums. And after like the third team we had, this guy comes, he comes up and he goes, Jesse, you gotta, you gotta stop adding teams. I, I keep having to add all these tattoos. I go, dude, that's a you problem. That's a you problem. That's how he feels about what we're doing. I had a, a family come up to me after a game and, and husband, wife, two kids.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  And they said, man, this is so, you know, we drove into town from this. Like, oh, where'd you come from? They go, we drove from Utah. We drove 40 hours from Utah. And we're driving 40 hours back tomorrow. In my mind, I'm like, what is wrong with you? But they wanted to have the whole experience. They wanna go all in. My, my point is, like, there's a difference in a fan. They will go past everywhere else to go to you. How they will skip every other option that's similar to you to go to you. And when things go wrong, they will defend you. Great example. Last year, we made the biggest, most costly mistake as a company. We sent an email that was supposed to go out to 4,000 people. We had an opportunity for some tickets in Savannah to our waitlist. We sent it out to 44,000 instead.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  I'm flying, Ed, I'll never forget this. I'm flying, I, I land and there's message after message. I'm getting blown out. People ripping me apart, the company apart. Me, they call my president, what happened? They said, you know, we made a mistake. We sent the email out to too many people. They all expected to get tickets or have an opportunity to take us. They couldn't. So what do we do? Immediate apology. But then it's immediately say, hey, we are going to take care of you on us. Any game in the country on us. That costs $6 million because of over 100,000 plus tickets. And then we said, and then they weren't showing up some, Ed, because it was free, free tickets. So then we actually offered to buy them back from them and they never even paid for them, just so we could get them to people that would come. So that's. And then now, every day, every game, I have someone that was a part of that. And they give me a hug and say, we're a fan for life because of them.

• 19:59Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  What will you do? What do you stand for as a company? Do you stand for making money? Do you stand for creating fans? If you create fans, you will drive more money than you ever imagined about. But that's not what it's about. So every decision we make, no matter what. It's about the fans. It's why every game is free on YouTube, no matter what. It's why there's no ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. That's why there's no shipping fees. It's why every decision, like everything is guided by that. And it's helped drive us more than to a different level than we ever imagined.

• 20:26Ed Mylett?

  Less than one, you guys got to stop having customers and develop fans. Number two, you got to stand for something. That's a $6 million check direct. That's easy to say on a podcast. That's totally different to actually do in real life, you guys. How do, now I'm, let's, let's step out. I don't have a baseball.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  That's more money than the team brought in the first seven years, to give you an idea. When we were just a coastal playing college summer team, that's more money than we brought in each year, our first seven years. Now, obviously, different, we're playing in front of millions of fans, but that gives you a context of what that looked like for us.

• 20:55Ed Mylett?

  Massive. My gosh. Okay, so, help us all. I don't have a baseball team. Let's say I'm listening. I'm a Realtor. I sell life insurance. I got a dry cleaners, you know, I have a supplement company. How do I create the experience? Meaning, how do you think, do you sort of like literally walk in the stadium in the shoes of the fan and then create from there? How should the person listening to this begin to develop an experience? Because a lot of them will go, well, baseball game, that's an experience. Closing a mortgage, that's not an experience. And you're wrong. Yes, it is an experience because that's where the referrals will come from, etc. So how does, how does this entrepreneur think about creating that experience from where out?

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Well, two things. I truly believe the starting point of all innovation starts from putting yourself in the customer's shoes and asking, what are the friction points in the experience? So let's, let's look at some of the most innovative companies last 20, 30 years. You think of Uber, all right? Were there friction, friction points in the cab experience? You think about Netflix, were there friction points in the Blockbuster experience? You know, you think about all of these. And so for us, we are, whatever company you're in, a Realtor, what are the things that people hate about the experience as buying a house, selling a house? What are the process? A dry cleaner? What do people don't like about it? And when you start there, it's crazy because I'm a very positive guy. I realized baseball to many was too low, too, too long, too slow, and too boring. So

• 22:23Speaker 03

  we look at every single part of the game. And that's why we developed Banana Ball. So what's crazy right now, Ed, is I started writing out ideas in 2018. I've learned this, you know, Hal Elrod helped me a lot with this miracle morning, and it's just writing every day. And I started writing 10 ideas a day. And I looked at baseball and I said, what are the boring parts of baseball? I said, mound visits. No one in the world gets excited for a mound. Oh, can't, hope they have a lot of mound visits today. I'm hoping for at least three or four mound visits, and I'm going to get my money's worth. Right. No one wants that. Or like, I remember watching a major league game back in the day, the Dodgers, Yasiel Puig, if you remember Yasiel Puig. And I was, I was watching, and he'd step out of the box and work on his batting gloves. And I started timing it, and it was taking 25 to 30 seconds in between every pitch. It was a three minute bat, and it wasn't even

• 23:06Speaker 03

  in the box. Gosh, boring. And then I was, I was like, huh, what else? I was like, walks. This is an athletic sport, and there's a play called a walk, and you just slowly jog where nothing really happens. Boring. All right. And I was like, what else? The games are over three hours. This is when I started writing this. It's like, we just need a two hour time game. And I actually was filming our fans. So people don't realize, we're videotaping pictures of our crowd every 30 minutes from when they got in for an entire season. Because you can ask surveys of people, you know, you can ask surveys, and this is why, one of the reasons Steve Jobs was so against surveys. They'll say one thing, act, watch what they do. There's a difference. We watched at nine o'clock, a good influx of people started leaving, two hours in, 9:30, good luck. It was a lot more. No matter what, we could have fireworks, we could have a show. It was just around that two hour

• 23:51Speaker 03

  point. So I said, we're gonna make a two hour game. And everyone said, Jesse, you can't. The average game's three hours. I go, we're gonna make a two hour game because our fans are showing it, and you want them to want more, not less. There's no one that goes to a movie and said, how was the movie? Oh, it was a great movie. I left in the middle.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  When you create a customer experience, a fan experience, how do you always create something that they'll want more? You got to build your whole experience from when they first walk in to when they leave. So the friction points, too long, too slow, too boring, nonstop entertainment. You get nickel and dimed. All right? No ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. People don't realize this. All our tickets right now are 40, 50, and $60. On the secondary market, they're going for $300 to $1,000. We can sell so much more, but you don't, because you want to keep having it to create fans, not to create more revenue. Long-term fans over short-term profit. It's a big difference there. And that's how we guide everything.

• 24:47Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my gosh. I don't get excited that much. Well, you know, when I'm hearing business conversations, this is as good as it gets. I'm just going to tell you. Go back one more thing. You said early on, you had to get attention. Yeah. You got it because the experience was so good, it exploded. Would you say that to like a local Realtor or someone who's got a supplement company? You also need to somehow work on getting attention, like people knowing you exist.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  100%. Everybody has a marketing plan. Okay. Who has, who has an attention plan? There's a big difference. Attention beats marketing 1,000% of the time. When you look at, you know, we're fortunate, I think between our teams, we're over 40 million now, social media followers. Every week, we try to create something on a baseball field that people have never seen before. And then we capture it, and we share it. We're not out there saying, come to our baseball games. We're saying, we're going to create a remarkable moment and capture that, and that might create attention. You know, like, for instance, like, we had a guy show up to our tryouts many years ago, and he was an average ball player. And at the end of the tryout, he said, hey, I brought my stilts. Do you want me to wear them? I go, not really. And he goes, really? I go, unless you can hidden

• 25:57Speaker 03

  them. He goes, I can hidden them. No way. I didn't know this. He had never hidden stilts in his life. But this kid, I love the guy, so bold and courageous. He's like, I'm gonna do it. He puts on his stilts, which he had, they were like old stilts when he was a kid. He had like dog collars tying around. It was the most unsafe stilts you could ever have on. He goes into the batter's box, and I watched the first pitch, he hits a line drive. And everyone stopped what they were doing, and they watched. And I remember right after, we're having a meeting with the coaches. And the coaches were like, all right, we got our rosters. And I go, where's the kid on stilts? They go, he's not, he's not good enough. I go, he hits on stilts. And they go, he can't make the team, Jesse. I go, you guys find a way to figure out this. I'll be back. I come back and they say, all right,

• 26:38Speaker 03

  we can make an entertainment roster spot. I go, we better. And so now, you think about this, he's getting millions upon millions of views, hundreds of thousands of followers, because he's doing something people haven't seen before. What is the normal experience? Do the exact opposite.

• 26:57Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. So, okay, I'm processing what you just said. I'm actually thinking of one of my businesses where the, these points are of inflection are that are just so, they're constraints to actually scale it. You're just making me really think for a second. By the way, he has two books. One's called Fans First, the other is called Find Your Yellow Tux. I think that's all I need to say, based on listening to him so far. I think you guys are going to want to get the books. How about this? I'm watching you. I was talking about this with John Gordon, who you know as well, today. There's a little invisible thing that I think great entrepreneurs do in their businesses. And I know you'll take none of the credit, but I want you to take a little credit on this or explain it. Okay. You bring monster energy to the table. No pun intended. Like, there's an energy,

• 27:41Ed Mylett?

  you bring in appropriate energy relative to the type of business you're in. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs go, okay, I got my scaling plan. I got my get attention plan. I got my marketing plan. We're working on the experience. And then they don't pay attention to their own personal energy they bring to meetings, to strategy, to the client, to everything. You have that. Are you conscious of it? And how important is it?

• 28:05Speaker 03

  I used to not have it. I know people think, no way. There was a big aha that happened for me. And I think a lot of people, we talk about it with our team all the time now. Everyone says, Jesse, you have so much energy. And they go, why? I go, because I do what gives me energy. And they go, what do you mean? I go, I do every day what gives me energy, and that brings more energy out of me. And they go, what are you talking about? I go, when I was running that Gastonia team, there was three of us, running an entire team. Gosh. Every day, I would go out and I'd sell sponsorship, which I don't do anymore. I don't even, I, that's a whole nother mindset. I don't believe people wake up and say, I want to be advertised to, or I want to be marketed to today. So that's a whole nother mindset of friction that we're working on. It's why we eliminated all the ads from our stadium in Savannah, which is absolutely crazy. So, but I, yes, oh, yeah, which is,

• 28:48Speaker 03

  I mean, we do things unconventional because every decision comes from, is it fans first? And I don't think any fan comes to a stadium and says, I want to see a lot of billboards at their stadium. Or I want to get announcements telling me to go here, or do this, or do that. They want to be entertained. So we'll throw away hundreds of millions of dollars now to do what's best for our fans. But my point was, back then, I was doing that, Ed. I was selling sponsorship. I was like, man, selling another sponsorship, like, why am I doing this? I'm now in the concession stand. I'm working on food, I'm operations, I'm putting up signs and doing all this. Every day I came home and I was exhausted. And then I realized, I looked back and said, what are my best days been? Oh, all right, here's my best days. I'm coming up with ideas, come with the new promotions, I'm creating new things, I'm sharing, I'm either, you know, out speaking to a local Rotary, telling

• 29:32Speaker 03

  them these crazy things that we're doing, or I'm growing, I'm learning from like someone like you. And believe me, I listen to more podcasts, right behind me, I have thousands of books. Every day, I learned.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  What my energy list was, it's creating, sharing and growing. And if I do things on my energy list, I'll show up the best I ever been. Every day I'll show up and at the end of the day, when I go with my kids, I am coming to be the best dad because I did what gave me energy all day. And as an entrepreneur, that can be really hard because you're doing a lot of different things. But once you become so good at what you do with your energy, you can start hiring people that that gives them energy. There are some people that love finances. Have one financial meeting a year and it's less than two hours for the business that we are. You can see what we're valued at and all that stuff. That is crazy, but it doesn't give me energy. It's like Walt Disney said, money doesn't excite me, ideas excite me. That's what fires me up.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  So I think how you show up is also about what you do, what you do on a daily basis. Are you doing the things that give you energy? If you're not doing energy audit, find out how do you get someone else doing those things and do what fires you up every day? And you'll be the best version of yourself for everyone else that you interact.

• 30:38Ed Mylett?

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• 31:23Ed Mylett?

  I think you'd be glad you did for modern antivirus protection. And for a limited time, you can save 60% on Webroot when you go to webroot.com/milet. That's 60% off, but only when you go to webroot.com/milet. So you know, I've been trying to take my health and my morning routine to the next level. And I used to do a whole bunch of different stuff, tons of different supplements. And then I found all in one in a drink with IM8. IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine. Finally, once and for all, 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2.61 a day. I've changed my mornings, the whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings.

• 32:06Ed Mylett?

  I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to im8health.com/ed10 right now, or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at im8health.com/ed10. Code ED10 at im8health.com/ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. So good. You, gosh, you brought up Disney a couple of times. Like there an overall lesson you took from Walt? Obviously I know his story well enough to know that the guy's failure rate was just massive forever until he was successful.

• 32:50Ed Mylett?

  But what, what do you model from him? What did you take? Like there's, this is the big lesson. This is the big thing I got from Walt Disney.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  Well, there's two, there's, there's, I mean, I've read somebody, but there's two that I can take. One can be more on vision and the other one is more on the business side. And so, so when you look vision and you know, he said, it's kind of fun to do the impossible. He always imagined what the perfect experience was and worked backwards from that. And so what most people do, they think like, all right, hey, this is a good, uh, hey, this is a good industry banner. This is a good opportunity. This is something that can win right now. Well, what is the ultimate best, perfect version and work backwards? You know, when he said, he's the first one to come up with sound on animation, first one to add color. He had the multi-plane camera. He said, you know what? What if I create a full-length animation film in Snow White? No one ever done that. He said, but we can do it in a different level. And he said, oh, what are normal amusement parks? You know, there's the carnies, they're dirty, they all have the same rides. There's no, there's no type of theme behind all of it.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  And he said, well, what's the perfect one? And then he said, you know, huh? All right, what about even when I'm eating a hot dog? You know, all right, what's, when I finish this, where should the, the, uh, trash can be? Based on the rabbit's like, this is the perfect experience. When I go on a ride, how long should it be? What's the length? He just always imagined what the perfect experience and worked backwards from there. And it was never, ever about money. He was always obsessed with plus-ing the experience. That's our 11 fans first principle. We will always plus the experience. We will never settle with, that's good. You know, fine is the F-bomb in our organization. If you say that's fine, you're, you're not going to be with us. Like, that's not what we do. And so that was, it's the vision of the guest experience. What he called the guest, obviously we look at fans. And then the next one from really strategic business, control, control.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  You want to see how, you want to see how a company is going to lose their way? They lose control. You want to see how that's going to happen? Watch a company go IPO.

• 34:36Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Over the next three, five years, watch when they bring in private investors, you know, watch with private equity. Watch what happens.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  So here's, here's what happened to Walt. He learned this, like, that's why I'm so grateful when things go wrong. I am so grateful. I get fired up because Walt, he had some of the worst things that could happen to him. He literally created this unbelievable character, you know, the, the rabbit Oswald. He created this character that was unbelievable. It was stolen from him by Mince. He lost it. And then he lost his rights to MGM. He lost those. And he's like, oh, all right. And then he built Disneyland, his crown jewel. And then he lost everything around it, all the land. He called it the neon jungle. So what did he do? I'm going to buy 27,443 acres in Florida. I'm going to create my own government district, the Reidy Creek district. So I have complete control and no one can tell me what I can't do because I know what's best for my guests. And I'm going to go all in on creating it.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  I'm not going to have anyone else coming in to try to take away and make it about money.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  So give you an example, what do we do? We run our ticketing system. We do all of our ticketing. We go to Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, we sell the tickets. We built our own secondary ticket marketplace at our face value now as well with all tickets at face value. No ticket fees, no convenience fees. We do our own broadcast. We run our own merchandise. We do everything in-house that we can control because we want to control the guest experience, the fan experience from when they first interact till the end. And that's how you create fans. As soon as you lose a little bit of control, as soon as you have someone from the outside that wants to make a little bit more money, you lose experience and you start losing fans. And so that I learned from Walt and I'm obsessed with it. And it's control, not just for control sake, it's because that's how you create the best experience for fans. When you get everything from the first impression to the last impression.

• 36:19Ed Mylett?

  You, uh, I just keep going through my head like stuff I want to ask you. So I want you to go back. You're a little throwback. Maybe it's the Disney influence. I don't know. You and I both know, and I, I talked about this with Herschel Beck from Shark Tank a few weeks ago. He was on the show and I'm like, I liked what the show's done. But I said, I think one of the huge problems that Shark Tank's created is entrepreneurs now start businesses to sell them. And as quickly as they can, they want to get investors and capital in there and take chips off the table. And that just causes you to do all kinds of stupid decisions. But what you just said that I had not thought about is the lack of control over the business. And so you know, this Instagram, Lamborghini exits your business, take on investors, dilute the shares, blah, blah, blah.

• 37:04Ed Mylett?

  And the other thing too, I was telling my sons and my nephews this, this weekend. Do you know how many entrepreneurs you guys, you've heard? They exited for 400 million. Everyone thinks they got 400 million. I'm like, you don't know their debt. You don't know how much they diluted. You don't know how much private equity came in. We had a guy come in that sold his company for $900 million and he walked with 30 is actually what he got at one of our events. So now talk to these people who maybe they are moving forward a little bit and they're tempted to bring in some capital, not because they have to have it to scale, but because they want to take some chips off the table or that's just like the thing to do.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not going to take away. I mean, everyone has their own goals and their own interests. And if you're trying to make a lot of money, you're trying to do, you know, you have your own goals. I'm not focused on next quarter. I'm focused on the next quarter century and beyond. So it's just a different mindset. You know, I, I think if you look at history, you can just watch, look what happened. I mean, in all these companies, I mean, the story of Whole Foods and John Mackey, it's just, you know, it's amazing. He, so much heart into building Whole Foods. And then all of a sudden you get private equity involved and you got it, things change. And in many ways, he said he was forced to, he was forced to sell to Amazon. It's not, it's not the same company. That's, that's, that's, to me, that's a, it's a tragedy. Because I think founders often, often start things with the right intention. There's a, there's a need, you know, I believe the world is hungry for more fun and more joy and to be brought together.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  And that's why we bring these people together all over the world and all over the country with Banana Ball. And so, um, yeah, I, I think again, why are you starting something? You know, you go to the, the root of everything and I was a, uh, I was an only child. Parents got divorced and I was just always trying to look for, you know, uh, joy in, in people and being around people and just fun. And, and I always wanted to feel that. And I always had a little chip on my shoulder, you know, I always wanted to, uh, you know, still a guy that wants to make his dad proud. But you know, I, I feel something, you know, when you, at the end of a day, it's your great day because you sold something. Or is it because of how you made people feel or the impact of your product? And so again, I think it's intention on everything. But yeah, I, I just, if you look at the history of all, just go back through the history.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  There's very few companies, Costco is one, but think about Costco, what they did. He said, I'm going to keep that dollar 50 hot dog value meal no matter what. We've heard this story. They stay true to who they are. And there's only a very small handful of those companies that stay true to who they are. And so, uh, yeah, in the scheme of things, that's awesome. My wife and I, we own a hundred percent of this team. You know, we are, we're not, we get, you know, and we've been valued at well over a billion dollars now. And it's like, I, I don't care. I want to create a billion fans. I could care less about the dollar valuation. I want to make sure all our people are taken care of. And if you look at our players, our cast and staff and everyone, it's at a high level. Take care of them, but make sure we do what drives us, what fires us up. And that's making people feel something. You wait three, four years on a list to come to our game. We want you to have the best night of your life and we want to spread to your friends, to your neighbors, to your family, that joy,

• 39:52Speaker 03

  that fires us up. If you do that, everything else takes care of itself.

• 39:56Ed Mylett?

  Are you a psycho? Like, are you, uh, like, I mean, like competitively too? Like I see the, the kind guy who's all about other people, but you and I both know, we, we know what it takes to win. And typically one of those little things in there for the great ones is there's a level of dog in them that you can't measure by looking at them. They got this heart of a champion thing, whether they're competitive with other people or they're competitive with their capacity or potential is. Like take us in your personality a little bit.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Extremely competitive, extremely competitive, but not against anyone else. I don't even think about our competitors. I'm extremely competitive against ourselves on how do we get better every single day? So here's an example.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  We were playing at Neyland Stadium, University of Tennessee, 101,000. And we put on a great show. It was a great game and a show. I mean, there was trick plays. I mean, 30 trick plays. It went down to the wire, home runs, walk offs, all big dance elements. It was, it was a great show and I'm on top of the world. I'm having time. I was in the upper deck for two innings because we always want to make sure we win the upper deck. So our cast and our character, our players, we're all around. But I started hearing rumblings during the game, like the sound wasn't working in the upper deck. And we were like, and they're like, yeah, it's an old saying, it doesn't work. And it wasn't. I got home and so, you know, we finished the show. We have, we, I said, we stayed till the last fan, signed autographs. We did have a whole show. I mean, it goes late. We have our fans first talk, 1 a.m. I get home in the hotel,

• 41:17Speaker 03

  1:32, and I start seeing the comments and the messages and the emails. Hundreds of people disappointed because they couldn't hear. I, I was devastated. I didn't sleep that night. The next day, I sent a personal video to every single fan that messaged me, every comment. I gave them a refund and a credit. I was devastated. And I went to our team and we said, what are we going to do? How can this not happen? We lost control and we didn't control the sound at the stadium. And so when you look at that, I look at that as a, a great moment in the scheme of things, because we're not, we're not going to let that happen again.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  And you have to go through those moments. You got to get through the messy to get to the great. People don't realize, our first major league stadium in 2024, we played at Houston. Our ticket system completely shut down. There's a lot of reasons, but let's just say it's shut down. And it was brutal. You better believe, then the next, next game, we had Fort Knox behind it and we were ready to go at Fenway Park. It didn't go down. Our first game on ESPN, primetime television, the transmission went out. We literally lost transmission, our first time on primetime television, went out. Every single time we do something big for the first time, we will have challenges, we'll have adversity. But

• 42:40Speaker 03

  what gets you up the next day? What fires you up to get to the next at bat? And so when we have those challenges, when we do things that haven't been done before, I mean, we, we now sell out cruise ships. We don't know how to do a cruise ship, entertain for five straight days. And there's things that go wrong. But if you have the mindset, we're going to compete ourselves, we got to do and then learn. It's the people that are afraid to actually go out and do something. There's the one, there was people that don't accomplish things. And so that competitiveness drives me every day. What are we going to do next? That's never been done before. And how are we going to get through that adversity and challenge to get to that next at bat? Because you get to the next at bat, watch out, because here we come.

• 43:14Ed Mylett?

  I love you, bro. Why has traditional sports not taken elements of what you're doing and juiced their own experience? Like, I mean, I know MLB, they've shortened the at bats and all that, but like, I'm just curious as to your thoughts about it. It's just outside the picture, but like, usually imitation is the highest form of flattery. Like, you're packing places out. And like, for example, why are like these USFLs or these secondary football, like, why, what are they thinking? Like, there's a model. Why do you think traditional MLB or NFL is not doing more of it? And especially these other startup sports that are trying

• 43:56Ed Mylett?

  to be in the lane of their other sport, but not be like them? Why aren't they copying you or adding elements of it?

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Hard. It's really hard. You know what the easy way to grow a business? You increase prices. You start selling more sponsorship. You get bigger TV rights. You increase your cost, you keep the prices on parking and concessions. You know what the hard way is? To keep prices the same like we do every year, keep prices the same and try to drive a business. It's hard. It's hard at a seven o'clock show to open the plaza with a rope drop at two o'clock and have all your players greeting the fans as they walk in from two to three o'clock. It's hard to put an hour and a half show from three to four 30 with all of our cast, all of our performances, our DJs, our live bands. It's hard to have the entire team march out and meet every fan at four 30 before you open the plaza. It's

• 44:47Speaker 03

  hard to have a two and a half hour pregame show with over 100 different skits and promotions before the game starts. It's harder than to have a two hour show where you're doing 10 to 15 things you've never done in front of a live crowd every single night. It's hard than to have a postgame plaza party for over an hour with all new entertainment as fans are leaving. And then it's hard to stay till the last fan leaves and sign autographs. It's extremely hard. That's why it's.

• 45:10Ed Mylett?

  Bro, masterclass. By the way, some of you are, 90% were through with this interview and you still don't even know what we're talking about. And so what I mean by as a league, go just check out the Banana Baseball Championship League. Get on the ticket list. You will have, guys, you can already tell, by the way, for no other reason than to support a great American entrepreneur and his family and his team. But for your own family to have the experience of your life, it's just, you've all seen some clip on Instagram, right, of the guys dancing on the mound or doing a backflip when they throw a guy out at first? That's these guys. And that's like a millimeter of 1% of what they do. You said earlier, fine's not okay. I got a couple more questions for you. And I've loved this, bro, by the way. Anything I can ever do for you. I mean it. I would love to support you. Not that you

• 45:53Ed Mylett?

  need it, but I'm here to support you. You're a treasure. But, you know, okay, I know people, there's some people listening go, I already kind of checked those boxes. Like, we're really good on the customer experience, man. We got it. Fans first. Yeah, we got it. Check the box. Yeah, bring your energy. Got it. You know, be competitive. Got it. And I don't think they get that there's levels to this game. So you have come up with a recipe and a formula that is working from that two hour before the game to shaking the last hand at 1:30, right? Having said that, here's my hallucination. I think you're constantly still looking at the process to innovate and make it better. And I think the average entrepreneur is like, we got it. Whereas you are constantly reevaluating. Listen, everyone, most people

• 46:38Ed Mylett?

  reevaluate when it's not working. Great entrepreneurs, which is my suspicion of what Jesse's going to say, they're evaluating and tweaking when it is working. Would you agree with me that that's the difference? And do you do that?

• 46:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. We have an LCP. So every single night, learn, change, plus.

• 46:56Ed Mylett?

  Every night? Wow.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Every single night. We meet with our departments. So, so, you know, like, we have, and I share this, you know, I learned this from Bezos. I, you know, his shareholder letters, I think are a masterclass on how he thought about Amazon, which is just very fascinating about long-term thinking, customer service. So I said, I'm just going to, we're not a public company. We have no obligation to share all our numbers, what we're doing, who we are. But I did it in 2026. I'm going to continue it every year. I have a video out and I wrote all the things. And, you know, I share, hey, you know, it's, there's a world where all of our fans have to be served merchandise within 10 to 15 minutes. It is almost impossible right now because at one of our games, you know, we could have, say a major league stadium, we're having 15,000 to 20,000 people, people buying merchandise, all within a couple hours. It's impossible. But that is our, what are we going to do? How are we going to add this stand? What do we do here? How do we add this? What do

• 47:42Speaker 03

  we get this over here? We just keep looking at every option. Our show, which is our biggest differentiator, you know, sports are always focused on the competitive. We are competitive. You never know who's going to win. Like, it's, it's a league. But our show is our differentiator. We look at every single music block. What comes in? What's the promotion? What's the sound? What's the blocking? What's the timing? How do we come off from the inning? How do we go right into it? How is there no dead air any moment? And so learn, change, plus. So we'll have, at the end of the night, we have a report sent from our show. We also merchandise, they'll send one. The broadcast is unbelievable because that's an area which we haven't spent much time on, but we're investing $13 million this year in our own broadcast so we can control it. They sent a whole detail, learn, change, plus, and how to get better. And it's that mindset of you're constantly improving, continuous improvement,

• 48:26Speaker 03

  that we know we're never going to have a perfect show. But each day we get a little bit closer. And I think that's that obsessiveness that drives us. And we get fired up and we just hit one more thing. One more thing. We got a little bit better tonight and it's a little bit of better show. And that's our goal. I want a fan who came to a show two years ago and say, oh my goodness, it's not even close. This is 100 times better. Because if you look at history, Ed, we learned a lot of the Globetrotters. I have a lot of respect that they're going 100 years, but they've also kept the show pretty similar. And it's that, you know what? It's, hey, we're going to do the, here comes the confetti, here comes the slow motion. That scares the crap out of me. And, you know, people don't realize, the Globetrotters, the 1940s and 50s, they were the most popular sports team in the world. And it wasn't even close. They sold 75,000 tickets in Berlin. They were

• 49:11Speaker 03

  selling out Madison Square Garden multiple times. Wilt Chamberlain chose to play for them before going for the Lakers. They even beat the Lakers in a game with George Mikan. And then something happened. They said, you know what? Oh, this is good. Let's just replicate that. Let's just make another Globetrotters team and another Globetrotters team. And we know what a good show is and do the same show over and over and over again. That lesson sits on me every single day, especially when someone says you're like the Globetrotters. I go, I a hundred years is great. I have so much respect. That's amazing. Not many companies make a hundred years. I don't want to be the Globetrotters. I want to be doing things in 10, 20, 30, 100 years. You never imagined in sports. You never imagined from an event. And that's the innovation that drives me and drives our organization.

• 49:49Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, you're gonna do it. By the way, my book's called The Power of One More. So I love that it's one more, one more, one more. I love that. By the way, now he's fired up. He's like going side to side. You know, the other thing a great entrepreneur does, and I, people think, oh, you're helping him promote what he does charitably. It's not. I believe that great entrepreneurs, great people are wired to give back immediately. And it's something I evaluate in my friends, that if you've had God's blessings and great grace in your life, you know, what are you doing outside of the business but connected to it that shows that you're giving back? Because I think that indicates humility, which means you're gonna have some longevity. Never mind the fact that just doing something good

• 50:31Ed Mylett?

  is important. And so you and your wife and the company have Bananas Foster, which is just the best name for a charity. Just tell us what you and Emily are doing with it, because I'm actually really interested in helping too. So what do you guys do?

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Thank you. So my wife, she's the heart of this company. You know, as I'm constantly focusing on innovating, she's constantly thinking about our people. And every day she thinks about our people. And she grew up in a very close family. And in 2020, she shared with me, she goes, Jesse, do you know there's 400,000 kids in the US who don't have a permanent home? And I go, what are you talking about? She goes, foster care. Foster care. I go, she goes, Jesse, we got to do something. And we had our two-year-old, you know, son at that point. She said, Jesse, we got to do something. And so she shared with me and said, let's get licensed. So in the middle of COVID, we got licensed. We had a two and a half-year-old girl join us and going through some challenges and adversity. And, you know, the goal in foster care is always reunification. Get the kids back to their family. And with with her case, Ken, that that wasn't an option. And then about

• 51:31Speaker 03

  a little less than a year later, a girl, a six-day-old baby who was in NICU battling everything. We got the call and she joined us. And again, reunification wasn't the the perfect scenario there. And so those two girls joined in our family and amazing girls. And watching their journey has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever experienced. But as we did that, and Emily said, Jesse, we experienced it for two or three years, foster care, the challenges with DSS, the challenges with everything. They're they're low-staffed and just not many families are, I mean, we have families in our community that have bringing in 10 kids at once because no one else wants to do it. She said, Jesse, we got to do something. And I was like, well, what is our, you know, big goal and what we do with Banana Ball? It's bring people together. Well, what's more powerful than bringing a family together? And so we thought about this. And we were, I remember we were

• 52:14Speaker 03

  walking, having a long walk. And I, I share with her, I go, what if it's called Bananas Foster? And she goes, well, that's a good name. I go, what are we gonna do? And I said, well, what, again, start with whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. How do most nonprofits start? They talk about all the bad. All right. And then they share that. What about honoring the good? And so going the opposite way. So we said, what if, how many people out there do actually know these hero foster families that are doing everything they can for years with no accolades, no recognition, and it's extremely hard? How do we honor them? So, so we said, well, what if, at every game, we find a foster family in that community that's really made a huge difference? And we tell their story. We bring

• 52:56Speaker 03

  them out on the field. We have all the players go out to them, give them flowers and have a moment. And can you imagine the whole stadium standing to give a standing ovation to this family for what they did and recognizing them? And by doing that every single night, do you think that will get some more families that are interested in being a part of that? And so three years ago, we started doing it. And it is every single game, we have six teams, multiple all around the country. Every game, in the middle of the game, we honor a family. Maybe they've had 150 kids through their home. They've helped 10 families reunite. They've adopted 12 kids. They're part of the foster care system, all this. And I watch people not being told to stand, just stand and give huge standing ovations. And I told Emily, I said, Emily, this is gonna be a long journey, 400,000 kids without

• 53:41Speaker 03

  a permanent home. But think about this. We only sold two tickets when we started the Savannah Bananas. And now we have a waitlist approaching 5 million for tickets. What if in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, there's a waitlist in this country of families that want to become foster families?

• 53:56Ed Mylett?

  Thank you.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Goal, and that's the vision.

• 53:59Ed Mylett?

  Oh, you're special. You're special. I guess I gotta tell you, it's like, I don't know if I've ever done a better podcast. By the way, how many of you raised your hand and think Jesse and I should buy the Red Sox together? Come on. At some point, what could we do together? Bro, thank you for teaching us today. And it makes me feel good that you exist. And I want to support your business. I want to support your mission. I want to support your cause. And I really admire you. Really admire you, bro. And I introduced you as a, one of the great American entrepreneurs. And I mean it. And you actually made me even feel stronger about that after having a great conversation with you. Here's

• 54:42Ed Mylett?

  the only thing I ask of you. About every 18 months, 24 months, I'd like you just come back on.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  Love to, love to. And I mean this, I look up to you and what you've done and showing up constantly over and over again for so many years. And that's, that's the difference. So I appreciate you. And this was, this is truly one of the most enjoyable conversations I've ever had. So thank you.

• 55:00Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, bro. So awesome. Everybody, you need, if you have anybody in your life who is inclined to start a business or is currently involved in one in any way, they need to listen to this last hour. And I also think you should go get both of his books. And this is the real stuff today. I'm actually, I never get to the end of the show where I'm actually a bit emotional, just because I'm really grateful that you exist, bro. I've said this twice now. Because I want entrepreneurs to do it the right way and to do it ethically and to give back and to bring an energy and an innovation. How about that, guys? What is everybody else doing? Do the exact opposite. Like, just so good, bro. So anything else you want to send them to, direct them to, where they can get more info on you or the company or anything?

• 55:43Speaker 03

  No, I mean, we're out there. Like I said, we try to keep every, we keep every game free on YouTube. We keep all our stuff out there. We just believe in sharing and bringing joy to the world. So however, very easy to connect with. Let's put it that way.

• 55:53Ed Mylett?

  All right. God bless you, everybody. Share this episode. Max out.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  This is the Ed Marlin Show.