Jesse Cole (00:00):

Some people are motivated by money, revenue, sales, profits. That's never been our motivation. I don't want to be a billion dollar company. We're on a quest to create a billion fans. And for us, if you make another million dollars, 2 million, whatever, it doesn't get us excited creating another million fans, creating a fan that comes up to you at the end of night crying and say, you have no idea what your game means to my family every single night. We watch you guys and it brings our family together. That means something.

Mike Michalowicz (00:24):

The biggest names in business didn't start out that way. These are the unfiltered stories of entrepreneurs who turned small business into big success and transformed themselves along the way. Because success isn't just about what you build, it's who you become. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and this is Becoming Self-Made a podcast from Relay. And today's guests are Jesse and Emily Cole, co-founders of the Savannah Bananas. This episode better blow your mind away because it blew my mind away. I am in the locker room of the Savannah Bananas, and in this episode, you're going to meet Jesse Cole and Emily Cole, the founders of the Savannah Bananas. And if there's one lesson I learned, its rejection is your biggest ally. If you leverage it, you're going to discover in their story how they face some of the biggest challenges that we all face, but they saw the opportunity to go through it and move through it, and the result speaks for itself. I want to have a discussion We don't typically have that's Are we

Jesse Cole (01:19):

Keeping our pants on?

Mike Michalowicz (01:21):

No.

Jesse Cole (01:21):

Okay. We're just not. So first let me introduce us and then I thought we're done with it. Did we not know? Sorry that pants

Emily Cole (01:28):

Are still on. So good job.

Jesse Cole (01:29):

We originally met, it was in 2017. Do you remember what you did? I sent you a thank you letter because of how you helped us get

Mike Michalowicz (01:35):

Through the books, changed our life.

Jesse Cole (01:37):

Get us through 2016 when we were at our lowest point.

Mike Michalowicz (01:39):

Yeah, you did profit first.

Jesse Cole (01:41):

You

Mike Michalowicz (01:41):

Employed it in your personal finance. You

Jesse Cole (01:43):

Enjoyed saving more than

Mike Michalowicz (01:44):

Spending. Yeah. Yeah. You sent me a baseball card

Jesse Cole (01:48):

Is my business card.

Mike Michalowicz (01:49):

I'm like, who is this dude?

Jesse Cole (01:50):

Going back to memory here I sent you, I sent you a thank you card because of the impact you made. And so that was where all that started is The word for the year was care for me. We to pick one word for the year. And I was like, all right, I want to write a thank you letter every day to someone that's made an impact.

(02:02):

Send a thank you letter. You got in touch with me, invited me to go on your podcast. We did your podcast, and you're like, you got to come speak a prophet con. I'm like, someone wants me to speak. And so then you got an opportunity to speak. And then I think you came after

Mike Michalowicz (02:14):

That. So my wife and I hop in the plane and we fly down and you're like, oh, stay at our place. I stayed in your apartment in Tybee Island on the air mattress. I know the air mattress. We gave you a real bed.

Jesse Cole (02:24):

Let's not spread that narrative.

Emily Cole (02:25):

Yeah, we didn't invite strangers into our house.

Jesse Cole (02:28):

That's

Emily Cole (02:28):

Right. Okay.

Jesse Cole (02:29):

That context is right. And then people, you'll realize this, after I gave that speech, which was the most nervous I've ever been in my life, really. So I've been fortunate now to speak from Fortune 50 companies, thousands of people. I was more nervous speaking to a room of accountants or finance people talking about the bananas to them. I was like, how are they going to receive this? And I came off stage and you came over to me and said, that's a book. You got to write a book on that. And that led me to go write my first book. Yeah, yellow Talk, pioneer your Yellow Talks that geared my whole first speak, my topic for my speeches, and I started giving speeches because of that. So it was like you helped us save our business. Then you helped give me the opportunity to actually help inspire people, write books, and become a speaker. All that happened from you in a period of year. So yes, for you to get the opportunity to throw out toilet paper a hundred percent, you deserved it. Thank you for letting me throw out the opening pitch

Mike Michalowicz (03:15):

As a Van Bananas baseball game. It was the best day of my life, and it shouldn't have been the best day of your life.

Jesse Cole (03:19):

We got to reevaluate.

Mike Michalowicz (03:20):

It was the best day of my life. Let's do an exercise.

(03:22):

Okay. It's called the Lifeline. Stretch out. Loosen up. Hey, it's Mike here. So in case you aren't familiar with the Lifeline exercise yet, it's simple. Jesse and Emily will plot on a large poster board the highs and lows of their life together in five-year increments. Then we'll reflect on each five-year period where they share what was happening in their lives. Sometimes it's a high, sometimes it's a low, but it's always a revealing look at how our past shapes our identity. So here's what I'm going to do. I'll start the graphic and then I'll let you take it from here. So this represents your lives together over time and keep going to your current age. What would you say of the low points has become the most important defining moments? Maybe in the moment it's the worst, but it's the most important aspect for your life, for your business,

Emily Cole (04:15):

Carrying your shoulder.

Jesse Cole (04:16):

Well, no, that's just it. It's life

Emily Cole (04:19):

Defining.

Jesse Cole (04:19):

Because I didn't play baseball anymore. I started working. So started when I tore a shoulder, I started working for a team in Gastro, North Carolina. So I took my first job. There was $268 in the bank account, 200 fans coming to the games. And

Mike Michalowicz (04:30):

Where's that? Right around here?

Jesse Cole (04:31):

That's right at, I was 23 years old. So right there.

Mike Michalowicz (04:34):

So there's 268 in the

Jesse Cole (04:35):

Bank. Yes. I couldn't pay myself for months. I do it.

Mike Michalowicz (04:39):

How do you do it? So

Jesse Cole (04:40):

I was able to have a full scholarship, so I didn't have expenses in college. I also worked the sporting events, so I was able to a great deal. So I got to work every football game, basketball game, girls' volleyball, women's soccer, and here's what you get paid, but you'd also get free food. So they'd always have leftover Papa John's or Chick-fil-A sandwiches. So I would take those home, so I'd be able to eat those for a couple days. Then I'd also get paid. I was able to save most of my money because once I was 23, my rent was $300. I had a car that was already paid off.

(05:10):

So I had a car, I had $300 rent, and I had very little expenses. And so my dad taught me that, Jesse, no matter what, you got to try to save half your paychecks. So I wasn't able to pay myself till really about November, December. But I had money that I made at Wofford that I was able to live through. And then once I got my first paycheck in December, once I was able to cash it, I was able to save every other one. I was learning how to live with very little. You enjoy saving more than spending. So for me, that's like all these situations here, running out of money later, all that. It's never been too scary because we've learned how to live with very little. You live below your means.

Mike Michalowicz (05:40):

It sounds like it's for 35 bucks, Emily.

Jesse Cole (05:42):

Every minor league stadium. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (05:43):

It makes no financial sense to the outside person, but to this guy makes tons of sense because there's people out there that are living like this and they can still come to a game. Correct.

Jesse Cole (05:51):

And the families, and that's why everyone tells us every single, if you ask any consultant, anyone else charge tickets at $300, what they're getting on the second day market, and we are not raising our prices again and again. We've done it multiple. The bigger we get, the more we keep our prices the same. And why is that? You look at your motivation. Some people are motivated by money, revenue, sales, profits. That's never been our motivation. Even in the beginning. We wanted to create something great. We want to create something special. We want to create something memorable and remarkable, something that we would love. And for us, if you make another million dollars, 2 million, whatever, it doesn't get us excited creating another million fans, creating a fan that comes up to you at the end of night crying and say, you have no idea what your game means to my family. Every single night. We watch you guys and it brings our family together. That means something. So as soon as you price yourself out of that, you lose every day. You'll lose just one fan, another one, you won't realize it because at first you're dominating. You're making so much more revenue.

(06:42):

But slowly the brand will deteriorate and slowly you'll start to lose. We're on a quest to create a billion fans. I don't want to be a billion dollar company. We've been valued at that. It has no interest to me.

(06:52):

It's creating a billion fans. And so that's why we'll always keep our prices affordable. We will never do that. That's why we'll always keep our games free on YouTube. Even though every person in the industry says, you could make millions broadcasting on these special notes. We're going to keep it free on YouTube, but they don't get it. That's not

Mike Michalowicz (07:08):

What it's about.

Jesse Cole (07:08):

Well, again, everyone understands numbers. Not everyone,

Emily Cole (07:11):

Emily, you're not a numbers girl.

Jesse Cole (07:14):

He's a numbers girl. But most people understand it's very easy and numbers tells a story. You look at headlines, any headline or any social media that leads with a number, it performs better than anyone else. I know if I ever did that, I could get tons more followers, tons more views. They don't understand purpose, they don't understand feeling. They don't understand the emotion sometimes. And so that's what we're trying to go for.

Mike Michalowicz (07:32):

There was also during this period, I think a lot of rejection. I remember meeting with you both and how the league was receiving you. So tell me if I had this right. You're in the All-Star League, so there's majors, there's minors, there's all stars, college, summer ball,

Emily Cole (07:46):

College, summer ball, even

Mike Michalowicz (07:47):

Lower and even lower. Oh yeah. Weren't all stars. And the turnout, the attendees for most of these teams, it's the parents of the kids. Most of the teams. Yeah.

Jesse Cole (07:56):

No, you'll get some aunts and grandparents. They have an extended family,

Mike Michalowicz (08:01):

And that means a ticket. No matter if you sell tickets for 30 bucks there and you have 50 people show you make 1500 bucks

Jesse Cole (08:10):

And they're not selling tickets at 30 bucks.

Mike Michalowicz (08:12):

Okay, Don even

Jesse Cole (08:12):

Selling. Yeah, it was five to 10 bucks. When we started in Gastonia, we had an $8 ticket, included hot dog chips and a drink and

Mike Michalowicz (08:18):

Dinner.

Jesse Cole (08:19):

It was dinner in a show, ticket dinner and a show

Emily Cole (08:20):

Ticket for

Jesse Cole (08:20):

$8, eight

Mike Michalowicz (08:21):

Dogs. So everyone's losing money in college, summer baseball, in college baseball. And you decide we're going to redefine

Jesse Cole (08:27):

Baseball. No, we decided we want to create something that was truly fan

Mike Michalowicz (08:30):

Didn't get rejected, and they say, what the hell's?

Jesse Cole (08:32):

We get rejected. We get rejected every step of the way. We still get rejected. Didn't that hurt? Oh yeah. It hurt. Hurt the most in the beginning because we cared so so much. Emily walked into different restaurants and stores just saying, Hey, we have a free event. We're in this community. We're going to offer free food. We'd love for you to come. And they would say, get out of my store. She got thrown out. I got hung up on every day. It was every day because I don't blame them. We hadn't proved anything. We hadn't done anything. We were all talk about what we were going to do. And in 90 years here, baseball had failed. They never delivered. So why would we the lowest level of baseball do any better? So I took it to heart. We both did. I mean, we had many nights where we didn't sleep only we were on the air bed. But the reality was it was because every day people were telling us we're not good enough. And that's hard. And then when you finally named the team that you're all excited about it, and then you're walking down the street and you're getting booed, literally booed. And you can never prepare for that feeling. Now we've got so much of it. We're more used to it, but we couldn't bait back then.

Mike Michalowicz (09:33):

Is there a little bit of I'm going to prove you wrong type of spirit. I have that going on in me, me a hundred percent.

Emily Cole (09:39):

No. We just wanted a chance to show them the positivity that I could bring. We just wanted that

Jesse Cole (09:43):

Chance. I've saved every single comment that people have said it's a fad.

Mike Michalowicz (09:49):

Oh, I got the same thing about profit first.

Jesse Cole (09:51):

So everybody says this is their 15 minutes. They're in minute, 14 minutes, 59

Mike Michalowicz (09:55):

Seconds.

Jesse Cole (09:56):

Their 15 minutes is up. They jump the shark. I save every one of those as motivation for the only reason we'll become a fad is if we continue to do the same thing. We don't put the fans first. They both said the bananas we're going to fail. I never put that back in their face. But for me, I utilize it a little bit.

Mike Michalowicz (10:10):

One last thing I want to do before we move on here is, Emily, you were saying down here is the family struggle. That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. When it comes to building a business as particularly as successful as yours, there's a demand on the family. So what's that like?

Emily Cole (10:22):

Well, every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. And so we have more and more games. He has more and more requests. There are more and more interviews and appearances and decisions and meetings and people that we have to pour into. Here it was six of us in the beginning. Now there are, he's almost 600, probably 600

Mike Michalowicz (10:41):

Employees.

Emily Cole (10:41):

So you look at all the part-time, full-time interns, players, and so he's pouring into all them. And so yes, anytime he says yes to any of those other things, it's a no for being home for dinner or it's a no for being there when the kids wake up or whatever.

Mike Michalowicz (10:55):

It's, and the outside world doesn't get that. They're like, use your showman for me. They don't understand. You have a family, you have three children.

Jesse Cole (11:01):

Everyone has their own interests. And I understand that. I get it. And it's so tough because I love all of it. I get energy from all of it. I get energy from being around a hundred thousand fans. I get energy from being with the kids. I get energy from going date night with Emily. And so how do you choose Sue?

Mike Michalowicz (11:17):

You? I was watching a game on tv, and I'll take this down now, this kind of brings an end to this. And I'm like, where's Jesse? I watched the whole game. I dunno if I texted you or who I talked to. And I said, oh, he's home with the kids. My wife just starts this one hand clap, clap for your mom. Amazing family. That's a difficult choice. As the entrepreneur. It's a remarkable choice. As the father and the mother,

Jesse Cole (11:41):

It was the right choice. But also on the other side, there were so many fans that said, oh, I was disappointed. I came and I didn't get to see. Yeah, right. I didn't get to meet Jesse. I didn't get to see

Emily Cole (11:49):

Jesse. Hundreds of those comments.

Jesse Cole (11:50):

And so then she jumps on and has to then defend. And then we said, what do you say? I was with family. I was with the

Emily Cole (11:56):

Kids.

Jesse Cole (11:56):

Was with the kids. I shared pictures of all the, I did daddy daughter dates. I did time with Maverick. We watched, there was one game I think that you went to, and I wasn't there,

Emily Cole (12:05):

But that is hard that it's like, oh, the one weekend a year, he missed completely. We had to explain that he was with his children. It did feel backwards that we had to explain that.

Mike Michalowicz (12:15):

But you know what? And I'll take this down now. I want to go into other stuff. But what I love about that is there's someone that saw it somewhere. I saw it that said, that's a great father. That's a great mother. That you made a sacrifice where your heart is screaming to serve fans, but your heart is also called to serve your kids. And I want to emulate that. So I wonder if that moment was actually of great service. It was for me.

Jesse Cole (12:37):

Great. Well, I appreciate it. I think the reality is what we've learned is that everyone's always going to want more of anything, anybody. And how do you balance that? You got to find what your true north is. And we're still working on that. We don't have it figured out. It was tough this year. I mean, I missed more weekends than I've ever missed before, but I was still gone more than I've ever been before.

Mike Michalowicz (12:57):

So let's dig into the early days. You buy the baseball team. That place in Tybee that I stayed at, was that your first place down here? Yeah, I think so. And that's where you were staying? It was an old garage. It was a garage. Oh, that's why there was a weird step down going into where the bedroom was. That was

Jesse Cole (13:13):

The garage. That's where we

Mike Michalowicz (13:14):

Slept. Oh, I'm like these Savannah folks. They build homes Weird here. Yeah,

Jesse Cole (13:20):

All we could afford is garage. It's a garage we're going to turn into. Okay. And then the toilet that went right up against the wall.

Emily Cole (13:25):

So

Jesse Cole (13:25):

You could only get into, you had to go sideways to get into the toilet. You had to

Mike Michalowicz (13:29):

Step over. That

Jesse Cole (13:29):

Was the only way. That was an interesting time. Were you dreaming of that place, that exact place? We had this dream.

Mike Michalowicz (13:36):

No, no, no. This, were you dreaming? Were you on that air blowup mattress dreaming that we can pull this off? What was that like?

Emily Cole (13:43):

Yes. We were so blindly optimistic. It was the two of us. We did not have kids yet. And so this was everything.

Jesse Cole (13:50):

But that wasn't the plan. I mean, we never knew. That was three months. We came in, we had a little bit of money to start the team, and then that was gone within three months.

Mike Michalowicz (14:00):

How'd you get the money?

Jesse Cole (14:00):

Well, debt for most of, but we also had another team for a few years that we were able to sell that for pennies. We used those pennies, put those pennies into this team. But yeah, debt. I mean, we went into, yeah, seven figure debt. But it was seven figure debt. Oh

Mike Michalowicz (14:16):

Yeah. How old were you?

Jesse Cole (14:19):

Twenties. I was 31. You were a mature, mature

Mike Michalowicz (14:22):

Adult. You were a mature adult. How do you get seven figures of debt? Who will fund you?

Jesse Cole (14:25):

Well, you did funding through the league. So we bought through the league. We also had another owner that was a part of gto. We funded through the funding through there. We had it was

Emily Cole (14:34):

You things in the works.

Jesse Cole (14:35):

So the plates were spinnings, were spinning. There were a lot of plates going. But yeah. So then within three months, we only sold a handful of tickets. And we got the phone call that we overdrafted our account. We were out of money. And so we literally had to put $2,000 to cover the payroll, the little pay, the leftover payroll. And then we were out, we emptied our savings account and it had 25,000. So that covered us for the next two or three, four weeks. And then we sold our house, and then we found that dump that no one wanted. It was on the market for three to four years. So we got it for nothing and got an airbed. And that's when we started reading religiously your book. And you need to enjoy saving more than spending. So we had profit first. Yeah, it was that chapter. And we set up the whole profit first with our company. But it was that chapter.

Emily Cole (15:17):

Yeah, the phone charger,

Jesse Cole (15:19):

I mean, yeah, phone charger. We had a phone charger. What was the phone charger?

Emily Cole (15:21):

Oh, it was my favorite thing. We had one phone charger between the two of us, and it was sprayed. The fibers are coming apart. And we held onto that thing and we did not buy another one.

Jesse Cole (15:33):

The

Emily Cole (15:34):

Two of us just shared

Jesse Cole (15:35):

Had a position at the right, halfway you

Emily Cole (15:37):

To the fibers together to

Jesse Cole (15:38):

It.

Emily Cole (15:38):

But we were so invested in enjoying saving more than spending. We would not get another charger.

Mike Michalowicz (15:44):

So in the book, I have that concept, I call one more day. One more day, yes. And that's what we said it every day.

Jesse Cole (15:48):

We

Emily Cole (15:48):

Said it to each other day. It's working day.

Jesse Cole (15:50):

We did one more day, day one more day, because we also were grocery shopping. So we go to Walmart with a $20 bill and a $10 bill for the whole week. So it was $30 for 42 meals. And I remember she introduced me to food. That's not real food. And she was like, it's boxed potatoes. I'm like, no. And I was like, I will do ramen. I will maybe do a hot pocket box. Potatoes Mike. And then we would splurge once a week on Taco Bell. And I'll tell you that cravings menu, it hit. That was our gourmet meal for

Mike Michalowicz (16:13):

The week. Yeah, but that was the big one.

Jesse Cole (16:14):

Oh, we went big. I think we spent four or $5 that meal for, and we went big. But that was it for weeks and months and just kept going until we finally started selling tickets. And so that was a very trying time to say the least. But it also seems like you were saying with such smiles. Oh

Emily Cole (16:29):

Yeah.

Jesse Cole (16:30):

Joyful.

Emily Cole (16:30):

We were all in.

Jesse Cole (16:31):

Yeah, we didn't sleep much, but it was like there were no other options. You talk about burning the boats. We already went into this debt. We already had a 24-year-old president, three 22-year-old, straight out of college. We had committed to having a team here. Everyone was saying, we're going to fail. We can't give up. We just have to get to that next day.

Emily Cole (16:45):

And we were excited. I mean, it sounds very bleak, but we were excited to

Jesse Cole (16:49):

Bring this because new we knew once people experience, see

Emily Cole (16:53):

Experience, we

Jesse Cole (16:54):

Need it to the season. It's like get to that next at bat. We always say it's like get to the next at bat. We might strike out once, but get us to the next at bat in whoever gets the most at bats is going to get the most hits. And so we just had to get up to the plate. And so for nine months we're talking and we're just talking like everyone else, social media, like everyone else. They hadn't seen it. They hadn't felt it. They hadn't got a rose delivered from a player in the middle of the game. They hadn't watched the bananas, Nana dance. They hadn't wash this lift a banana baby up in the air before game. All of these things they hadn't seen and felt we knew about it. And so we just had to get to that next day. So yeah, it was tough. It wasn't the best way of living, but we appreciated it. And we learned that if we can live that way, we don't need a lot. And so when people value this company or whatever and say, you guys are killing, it's like, we don't need that. I still drive a lot. He

Emily Cole (17:34):

Was driving the same car he was back then. Same

Jesse Cole (17:37):

Stick shift thing.

Mike Michalowicz (17:38):

Stick shift. Good luck. It was sedan. It

Jesse Cole (17:41):

Was a sedan. I remember it was a Honda. Honda Accords, an old Honda. Accord. Accord. I thought it was a stick shift. No, and I still have that. And that's what I drive. I haven't got a new car because we don't need anything. It's not any of that stuff. Not

Emily Cole (17:50):

For us.

Jesse Cole (17:50):

And that's how we learned it, and that's how that's been a part of our entire company. And so that's what we feel grateful.

Mike Michalowicz (17:55):

But at the same time, your players get paid very well. Yes, they do two or three times what they would in equivalence. Your stack gets paid very well. But do you have to make that sacrifice to yourself financially or is it just We just don't care about the finances? Honestly, we just want to live comfortably. But we both don't even have access to the

Jesse Cole (18:12):

Bank account. We don't Your personal bank account. No. I mean, I always say our personal, we don't go in

Emily Cole (18:17):

The company.

Jesse Cole (18:17):

The companies, we don't even, we know the company's healthy. We talk to our team. They tell us we're healthy. It's not,

Emily Cole (18:23):

There are other checks and balances and audits that we know keeps

Jesse Cole (18:26):

Everything should.

Emily Cole (18:29):

We don't need to meddle in it because we know what we're doing. It doesn't fire us up.

Jesse Cole (18:33):

It doesn't fire us up. And so we'll make sure, I mean, we have this business sense that we can say, all right, here's what we're doing. Here's where we should be. But I don't want to be in it every day. And so for us, we can make sure our team's taken care of, reinvest in the team. It's a win. We're fortunate that we've been able to build a life. We're fortunate. Some books that sell and I get to speak and she gets to speak now we get to do that to help fund our life. We don't need to take it from the team.

Mike Michalowicz (18:54):

I want to tell stories that no one knows about you guys. I came to a game. There's this guy sitting in the stands and you introduced me to him. He's been to every single game here prior to the bananas. You remember the other guy I'm talking about? And I think you give him access special seats. I don't know what you do for him. He loves the bananas. He loves you guys. And no one knows you take care of people in a special way.

Jesse Cole (19:18):

Mr. William.

Emily Cole (19:19):

Yeah, I think,

Jesse Cole (19:20):

Is he still around? He passed. So Mr. Willie, this. That's right. That was his

Mike Michalowicz (19:25):

Name. Yeah.

Jesse Cole (19:26):

So you go back into the stadium, 1926, there were segregated bleachers.

Mike Michalowicz (19:30):

He was telling me about this

Jesse Cole (19:31):

And he wasn't even able to. He had to sneak in. He couldn't even get in. He had to be out, way out in the outfield, be out there. So see right behind on plate. And so he used to always try to come in and he see played and he would just always yell and ch, and I'll never forget, it was opening night five, six years ago, and his health was really fading and we have to help him get to a seat, two or three people. And we got to his seat and before the game started, we helped lift him up and honored him the whole stadium still to gave him a standing ovation. And it's those moments we believe in, do for one what you wish you could do for many. He got honored and he deserved to get honored because he had always shown up. And no matter what, even if they told him, you can't get in, I'm going to find a way to support this team that won't even let me come in. It's unbelievable. And he kept showing up and then all these teams had left minor league teams and then a college summer team shows up the lowest level and he's like, I'm going to show up and support. When all the other former fans said, I'm not going to support this. He showed up. And that's a person that deserves to be honored.

Mike Michalowicz (20:31):

The theme I wanted to talk about was rejection and getting through that, and I think he epitomizes it. Talk about rejection. You're not allowed here of your color. You're not allowed in the stadium. You're rejected and you're still a fan. But I'll tell you, I sat with him for 20, 30 minutes just chitchatting. He was sharing his stories, his love for, and you was so extraordinary to honor him that way. You face rejection too. Did you get the same resistance from baseball itself saying You're making a mockery of baseball. This is not what we're

Jesse Cole (20:57):

About. I think anybody that does anything, you need to be willing to be misunderstood. And anybody that does something truly special that's outside of the norm, you're going to be misunderstood. So every step of the way, baseball, even now, I mean, I hear some of the quotes from some of the establishment on us, and that's fine. That's fine. I don't need them to understand us. We will always be misunderstood because what people see is us dancing and doing things crazy and their owner is not in a suite with everyone else. He's throwing Dolce and banana underwear in the crowd. Emily's on the field for the bananas, foster reads, and we're all hands on in a different way than anyone else. We will be misunderstood. It still just hurts. I mean, you just have to get better at getting criticism.

Mike Michalowicz (21:37):

So you ever get rejection from fans? You ever get fans that you're too successful now? We loved you in the beginning. We hate

Emily Cole (21:44):

The stadiums. Switched the stadiums. And when we switched to banana ball, that was misunderstood.

Jesse Cole (21:47):

Yeah, because we played traditional baseball. We had our biggest fans that came to every game. I mean, they wouldn't even look at us. They were flabbergasted.

Emily Cole (21:55):

When we went full-time into traveling in banana ball,

Jesse Cole (21:58):

We actually got convinced that we should hire a big time consultant, like a six-figure consultant, which was huge money for us. One of the worst things you can do ever. Oh yeah. Well, no. They gave really sound advice. They said, whatever you do, don't leave traditional baseball. You need to stay in traditional.

Emily Cole (22:11):

Do not start Banana Animal. Don't

Jesse Cole (22:13):

Start banana. No, they said, don't start Banana Animal. He goes, everything that we've talked to, everyone we've talked to don't do

Emily Cole (22:18):

It. They don't want it.

Jesse Cole (22:19):

They don't want it. We looked at it and started laughing and said, no, we're going the exact opposite direction of your guidance.

Emily Cole (22:24):

Thank you for your time. That's what most

Jesse Cole (22:26):

Consultants do. Well, it's safer. It's safer. They will choose. We've learned this in Hollywood. We've had a lot of opportunities for shows. We've had one, but they say, don't get fired for saying no. You get fired for saying yes because you say yes and it flops. That's how you get fired. You can get fired for saying no. Oh, you passed on this. No. Oh, we could have never known.

Speaker 4 (22:46):

And

Jesse Cole (22:46):

So we've learned that with everything that we do that you're going to go against the path of everyone else and we just have to continue to prove it over and over again.

Mike Michalowicz (22:56):

And you're not going to be liked because you did it. You challenge the norm and people see change and they reject it.

Jesse Cole (23:02):

You willingly go where you think the best possible experience is for fans. Steve Jobs said it best. No one knows what they want until you show it to them. Yeah,

(23:10):

Same. They go through, look at Bezos. It's like no one, one said they want something shaped like a Pringle can that listens to you in your kitchen all the time. No one would've ever said that. But then you show it to 'em and you're like, wow, this is pretty cool. And so for us, of course they understand traditional baseball. They understood what we did when we started saying we're going to come up with different rules, fans catching foul balls for outs, nonstop dancing, nonstop entertainment, crazy rules playing a game that doesn't exist. Of course you're going to get criticized, but then you show it to them. And the thing that people don't realize is once you start showing it to 'em, you get better every day. You only get better by doing. And you learn by doing. So the more that we do, the more that we experiment, the more that we test, we're going to get better. We don't know how to do a football stadium when we go do it. We don't know how to do a cruise ship. We sold that a cruise ship back to back years with no banana ball. There's literally no banana ball game.

Mike Michalowicz (23:57):

And you saw a cruise ship?

Jesse Cole (23:58):

Yes.

Emily Cole (23:58):

Who does that?

Jesse Cole (23:59):

Who

Mike Michalowicz (23:59):

Goes to that? Emily? She's leading it. Emily's the one that took,

Emily Cole (24:02):

Who's our biggest fans.

Mike Michalowicz (24:04):

Is our biggest fans. And they just want to to be hanging out with the players. Yes. And you figure it out.

Emily Cole (24:07):

Well, we're still entertaining. So

Jesse Cole (24:10):

Pretty much shows, oh, we did theatrical Broadway type shows,

Emily Cole (24:13):

Karaoke. I mean we're doing everything with

Jesse Cole (24:14):

That. There's yoga with the players. There's meet and greets. I mean we do nonstop entertainment

Emily Cole (24:18):

Dinner.

Mike Michalowicz (24:19):

One thing you guys have done, which I can't think of many businesses that do this. You are specifically elevating all these players and giving them all exposure. There's not like one superstar. I can't think of a single

Jesse Cole (24:28):

Player. Yeah, it's changing. But yes.

Mike Michalowicz (24:30):

Is it

Jesse Cole (24:32):

There's players that have millions of followers now,

Mike Michalowicz (24:33):

But it seem like you're giving

Jesse Cole (24:34):

Exposure to everybody. It's constantly rotating around. You're always giving

Emily Cole (24:37):

Exposure people, Hey,

Jesse Cole (24:38):

I have chances. We have man nanos that are getting huge fallings manana. What's a manana? The dad bought sha squad. You're in too much good shape. You could never just don't have to gain about 40, 50 pounds. Okay, I'm working on, but our princess, our bands, our players that are in bands, I mean, we want to create something that every single fan can resonate with. So for instance, it's hard for you to resonate with Aho Ani. Okay. It's like you can't play like right

Emily Cole (25:02):

At his level.

Jesse Cole (25:03):

Yes. But can our senior citizens that are coming to R games, could they want to be a banana nana? Could a dad want to be on the dad bod cheerleader squad? Could a young girl want to be a princess?

Mike Michalowicz (25:12):

So every fan has a chance to become, they can identify

Jesse Cole (25:15):

With somebody. They can all become a star in the future. In our organization,

Mike Michalowicz (25:18):

What's ironic is they're blaming you. The haters are saying your 15 minutes of fame is almost up. You're giving all of us fans 15 minutes of fame and it feels so good.

Jesse Cole (25:28):

That's interesting. We learned that. Who do we learn that from? Someone said, make your fans the stars. And so it's been something that it wasn't Mike Mcal might you

Emily Cole (25:35):

Get the credit,

Jesse Cole (25:36):

But we think about that constantly. How do we bring a kid down in the field for the fan warmup and then 40,000 fans, they're getting the whole crowd going and they become a star. Or a kid does the home run hitter and hits a home run in front of all the fans and we lift him up and he's the star.

(25:50):

And you see these videos going viral of the kids getting a chance to be at a major league stadium. I mean, I got to be a bat boy. That was my moment when I was five years old and here was my moment. I sat by myself for 20 minutes miserable. Finally one player came up and sat next to me. He gave me my fans' first moment, but it was just the two of us. And then I come out for a second and I wave and they show me on the video board by hat down like this waving. And that was my moment as honorary bat Boy, how do you take that to one level? How do you get to actually play with the team? How do you actually get to play catch? How do you get to get on the field? How do you get the crowd going? What we can create is what the perfect experience would be and work backwards from it. If you're a fan sitting in the upper deck, what's the perfect experience from this seat right here? What's the perfect experience for a little girl? What's the perfect experience for an 80-year-old? And you recognize them and you create those moments and then everyone gets to live a little bit in a different way.

Emily Cole (26:37):

We try to, in every decision, pretend that there's a fan in the room.

Jesse Cole (26:41):

We ask and say, are with a fan

Emily Cole (26:42):

Office? What do it best for them? What would they

Jesse Cole (26:44):

Love? Everyone says you have to have your avatar. What's your perfect fan? And I struggle with that. I believe everyone is hungry for fun, is hungry for joy, is hungry to feel a part of something. So whether it's a 2-year-old or an 82-year-old. And so we just want create something. I think this is one of the best things I've learned from creators. And whether that's Ed Kamo at Pixar or George Lucas with Star Wars or Walt Disney, you want to create something that they would love. The greatest creators. They create something. They're trying to make it even better for themselves every single day. And so when I'm out there watching a game, if I get bored a little bit, I know there might be one or two fans that are bored too. And so how do you make it a little better? Most people, if you're trying to create something to make money or if you're trying to create something just to make a great product, but not something that you truly love. Steve Jobs, it talks about this. All the phones were so clunky before the keyboards, he didn't like how it worked. He's like, he wanted to create a phone that he would love. And the same thing with the iPod. He was like, these MP three players, they don't work that well. They're not seamless. That's what it comes down to. And so I think that's one of the cool things that we get to do. And because there's no red tape, there's no other owners, there's no other shareholders, there's no board of advisors. If we think that's something to be awesome for us, awesome for our kids, awesome for our grandparent, awesome for our fans. We just go and try it.

Mike Michalowicz (27:56):

I watch Sports SportsCenter in the morning and maybe tani's up hitting. And you see behind the people have the premier seats. They spent thousands or tens of thousand dollars and they're like this on their phone. I watch your games, I see phoned and it's like this. It's a different I've, I literally never seen someone hop on their phone to scroll through.

Jesse Cole (28:17):

But you got to create that. So you got to also understand not just creating the game, you got to make sure your players understand who they're playing for. So here's the difference.

Mike Michalowicz (28:25):

Yeah, totally.

Jesse Cole (28:25):

Whether you're major league, whether you're NFL, whatever, and a lot of players are great at this, but most of times you do all your warmups, you go into your locker room and you sit in the locker room until it's time to play. Our players and our cast, we march to meet all the fans three hours before the game starts. You talk about phones up then it's crazy. It's like you're walking through. And I mean this in not an arrogant way. It feels like what the Beatles, I think felt like to an extent, because we're going through 15,000 people

Speaker 5 (28:51):

High

Jesse Cole (28:51):

Fiving in a major league stadium, get on a stage, do a big opening, throw confetti, and then that starts the game. But every one of our players going to say, guys, this is three hours before we even start. This is who you're playing for. So when you get out there and you have the opportunity to see these fans, to greet these fans, to play catch with one of the fans or the kids before the game understands the bigger purpose. So what we think about that, yes, the fans behind home plate, they're in because they've already been touched by our players, they've already had an impact by our players. We've already been entertaining them for hours. Two o'clock on a seven o'clock game is when we do a rope drop with a big musical performance. That's five hours before the start of a game. If you do your full experience, you're getting an eight to 10 hour experience with Manez for 35 or $40.

Mike Michalowicz (29:32):

That's unbelievable. Let's do some rapid fire questions. A nightmare vendor or nightmare fan, which one's better or worse? A vendor impacts

Jesse Cole (29:38):

More fans.

Emily Cole (29:39):

So I would say Nightmare

Jesse Cole (29:41):

Fan. Oh, what you'd rather have. Yeah. I don't want a nightmare vendor.

Mike Michalowicz (29:44):

Why is that?

Jesse Cole (29:45):

Because it impacts more people.

Emily Cole (29:46):

And I would say nightmare fan because I feel like we could win them over If it's one person,

Jesse Cole (29:51):

That's how you create it

Emily Cole (29:51):

Could chat with them and it could become a better situation because of it.

Mike Michalowicz (29:55):

Oh, I like that. If you could change one thing, Emily, about the business, about me, me,

Speaker 5 (30:00):

I was like, here we go. That's not Rocket. What would you change? Yeah, that would take a couple

Emily Cole (30:03):

Hours. I would say our balance. I would love to figure out how we can continue to serve as many fans as possible while continuing our personal health and family health.

Mike Michalowicz (30:15):

That's the exact same answer my wife would give. And that's been a quest. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. And so important. What's

Jesse Cole (30:22):

Yours? I miss the interaction with our people every day. I have new people that join our team and I'm have to meet them. It's every single day. That's hard to believe. So I mean it's every day. And because thinking about this Mike, when we travel, they 200 plus people come. So next year we have three different cities at once. So there'll be about five to 600 people traveling. And so for me it's getting to know, I think a lot of people don't get to know our hearts, our purpose, who we are, what we stand for. And here directly for me and Emily, I would love to be able to have that and give everyone a high five or a hug and say, Hey, we're so glad to have you a part of this team because look at what we get to do.

Mike Michalowicz (30:59):

What? How's he most excited right now?

Jesse Cole (31:01):

Selection show. We're announcing our two new teams, our two new teams and where we're going in 2026. Rapid fire. Good. Same. You have the sum up your entire

Mike Michalowicz (31:08):

Journey in one word. What's the word, Jess? Dream

Emily Cole (31:13):

Adventure.

Mike Michalowicz (31:15):

Dream adventure. That's a good myth. Biggest lessons you've learned about yourselves?

Emily Cole (31:20):

We're stronger than we think we are.

Mike Michalowicz (31:22):

Oh,

Jesse Cole (31:22):

That's really good. I don't like to go after that. Can we leave it at that

Mike Michalowicz (31:26):

Same, same. Sometimes when the perfect words are placed, you don't say anything else. I dunno if it's that. What are you most proud

Jesse Cole (31:32):

Of? It's hard to not say. Our people. I've watched as a 24-year-old president, 22 year olds, 23 year olds have joined our team and to see them grow into leaders, to see them grow into their potential, to make a true impact, to do things they never thought imaginable. That fires me up.

Emily Cole (31:54):

And I will spin off of that. It is our people, but it is who they have become personally.

Speaker 5 (32:00):

Yeah.

Emily Cole (32:00):

It's a joke around here that you'll either come to work here and your significant other will end up joining you because they see how much fun it is. Or you will come to work here single and you will find your significant other here. And who are we to say that you can't?

Jesse Cole (32:13):

We don't have any policy proof mean literally. Could you imagine? A huge percentage of our organization have found love in our organization.

Emily Cole (32:20):

We have a huge amount of couples. Last year in our off season, in two months we had six weddings.

Jesse Cole (32:25):

What our wedding season is November, December. Because it's not when we're playing.

Emily Cole (32:28):

Only

Jesse Cole (32:29):

Time, we don't have, oh my gosh, are you all invited to every wedding we wedding?

Emily Cole (32:35):

But to me, to see these people grow from a 21-year-old intern, to see them find love

Jesse Cole (32:43):

Now having kids

Emily Cole (32:43):

Get married and now they have kids, we're growing up with these people and that is really special.

Mike Michalowicz (32:48):

Best way to handle burnout.

Emily Cole (32:50):

We are both physical activity people. We have to work out every day and we will be the best versions of ourselves. You're both, yeah. Any kind. I mean we love going for walks together too. But yes, we're both runners and I think that helps bring us back down to earth and put in perspective. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful to be able to move my body. I'm grateful to be able to breathe. That brings us back too. If we don't work out, our headspace is usually not clear. Yeah,

Jesse Cole (33:16):

It's important. And I think the way to not be burnout is to do things that give you energy. And so we are obsessed with doing things that give us energy. So I have an energy list and if every day I do things that give me energy, even if I'm working a lot hours not sleeping as much as I want, I generally I will not get burnt out.

Mike Michalowicz (33:32):

Fame it don't

Jesse Cole (33:34):

It? That's a tough question because what is fame is fame being more well known, being seen. People want pictures and that I love the opportunity to make someone's day. So if I'm in the airport, which I don't wear this in the airports anymore, and we're fortunate that a lot of people come over and want a picture, want an autograph, want to say hello, if that can make their day, that makes my day.

Emily Cole (33:54):

There are of course challenging sides of fame, but we try to focus on the positive. The platform that we have now is giving us the ability to share about things. We're passionate about foster care and that is reaching hundreds of thousands of people that we would not have been able to reach without this platform. And so for that, I'm grateful and for that I know we would not have that opportunity if there wasn't fame connected to it. So we tried to find the gratitude in that.

Mike Michalowicz (34:19):

I think some people don't know your foster parents and adoptive parents. So you're growing your family as you were growing the team. Well planned.

Emily Cole (34:26):

Maybe that's why we're tired.

Mike Michalowicz (34:29):

I guarantee. Biggest morale boost.

Emily Cole (34:31):

Oh, definitely. Being around our fans. First chats when we come together at the beginning of a weekend and the end of the weekend and it's mostly shout outs and funny stories and fans first moments. And you could go into those after having been defeated all day long, just getting your butt kicked. But you walk in and you hear about successes in the entertainment department or the trucking team had a win and there's a funny story attached to it and you're just back on Cloud nine.

Jesse Cole (34:56):

Our fan moment. Yeah, 48 hours. We bust our butts and then we get to relive it and talk about the great moments. Wow, that's awesome.

Emily Cole (35:01):

And they're so big now. The stadiums are so big that we have no idea what's happening at 80% of it. So we get to come together and hear about what happened in everybody else's weekend. It's awesome.

Mike Michalowicz (35:10):

What's one thing that no one knows is happening behind the scenes here? There's plenty of things that people don't. This

Jesse Cole (35:17):

Is a big one. A big one. You would never guessed that. Let's think of it from macro standpoint. So we do the entire broadcast ourselves. We do all of our logistics, trucking ourselves. We do all of our merchandise ourself. We have a huge warehouse. We do ourself. We built our own ticketing system. We do our ticketing ourself, we do all the entertainment ourself. We do all of our banana ball operations ourself. We don't outsource anything that's directly impacts our fans.

Mike Michalowicz (35:38):

Yeah, that's remarkable.

Jesse Cole (35:39):

And so none of that we knew how to do at all. I mean even like any of us, a cruise ship, we come up with it, we work with and we figured it out. So I think that's one thing people don't realize is that most things that you'll see, it's touched by everyone in our direct company.

Mike Michalowicz (35:54):

And I think no one realizes you do or I dunno if you still do it, midnight kickball after a baseball game the lights go off and they come back on and there's a kickball game with the entire crew playing at Midnight.

Emily Cole (36:03):

Yes, that still happens. Still happens.

Mike Michalowicz (36:06):

Do couple times a year.

Emily Cole (36:07):

Cool.

Mike Michalowicz (36:08):

What's on the horizon that you can reveal now that most people don't know?

Emily Cole (36:12):

Well, two new teams going to an official league, banana Ball championship league. We are going to try to reach as much of the country as possible.

Jesse Cole (36:21):

I think the things that we think about are where are the most unique places you can play that people have never played before? You think about those opportunities. You think about the opportunity to play games on beaches or play at Central Park or to play in an aircraft carrier or play. Just imagine anything.

Mike Michalowicz (36:37):

Last question, and this is my favorite personal success metrics, what are yours? I want to know yours and I want to know how often you're measuring that.

Emily Cole (36:45):

I guess what I would say is how invested the kids are in our daily life. Is

Jesse Cole (36:51):

It personal success? How so?

Emily Cole (36:53):

They want to be a part of it. They know all the players, they know all the people on staff. They want to be here with us. To me that is a personal success because we are blending our work baby and our personal baby. And that is the perfect marriage. And so if they are still invested and they still love it and there's not resentment and mommy and daddy are home or they're with us at the ballpark, that's the ultimate success for me.

Jesse Cole (37:16):

I know the business is going to do because we believe in it so much. We have people that are really good people that believe in it. But then how can we have not just our family, but every family? There's never resentment. I love, I want our kids to love that they travel around the country. They love that we owe what we get to do. And if you can have that or it's like, oh, we get to do this, as opposed to, oh, we have to go on this trip. We get to do it. If you get everybody's spouse, significant others, families, kids, to say that we have really figured something out because there's only a few companies in the world that travel like we do in an entertainment standpoint, only a few. And it's hard to keep people around and want to be a part of it. We want to have zero turnover from people that we want to be a part of this organization in the sense that we have to create that. So to give you an example, in the middle of the summer, the busiest time in baseball world schools out. We are literally giving two full weeks off, no games at all for 20 days in the middle of the season, which is unprecedented.

(38:14):

It's never been done. But we believe that can give everyone opportunity to refresh, spend some more time with the family, appreciate what we get to do, want to get back out on the road because they love it so much, then we're on the right path.

Mike Michalowicz (38:24):

Lemme wrap on this so I know we're out of time. There is one person I guarantee who's watching right now, who has this crazy dream and their friends, their family is like, you're insane. That'll happen. How do you inspire that person? What do you have to say to them?

Emily Cole (38:39):

If it's something that they believe in, I think it should be done. It didn't matter for us that we ended up on a stage this big. We loved what we were doing. If we had just stayed at 30 games a year here in Savannah, if we were making memories for people and having an impact on people and creating joy, that would've been enough. And so as long as people are doing it for the right reasons, we're taught in this society that if you get the more likes and you get all these big things, if you get that sort of fame, then it's successful. But if you are doing the thing that you want to do on any level at any size, then it's worth it.

Jesse Cole (39:14):

Yeah. How much does it fire you up? How much does it get you excited and that if no one's watching, do you still want to do it?

(39:23):

It's the players that go out there and they practice all the trick plays and no one's watching and they're working on their social media and creating things when no one's watching. Don't even care if it gets tons of likes. It's that type of passion you're going to have when you're sleeping on an airbed, when you have nothing left, but you believe in it so much that you want to keep going and keep going. And as hard as it is for us, and we get home late nights and we're exhausted and the kids are right up in five in the morning ready to go with us again, but we're still fired up to do it again. Do you have that type of passion? Do you have that type of excitement? Do you have that type of energy every day and you can look at it and say, even on the worst days, do I still want to do it? The answer is yes. Go full speed into it.

Mike Michalowicz (40:01):

I love it. Jesse Cole. Emily Cole. This has been remarkable and I just want you to know the sacrifice you're making. I can't fathom how extraordinary it is personally. You are serving fans like me so deeply, so many people in so many ways, you are bringing families back together. So thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Becoming Self-Made a Relay podcast. Follow the show to make sure you don't miss a single episode. And if you like what you hear, rate and review while you're at it. Becoming Self-Made is produced by Relay In partnership with me, Mike Mcow and Pod people