Applying Fans First to other businesses

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The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

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My Guest: Jesse Cole is the owner of the Savannah Bananas. He went $1.8 million in debt, slept on an air mattress, and built a business that is now valued at over a billion dollars. I spent half a day with Jesse in Savannah watching practice, and Jesse gave me a personal tour of their entire operation. It was incredible.

Notes:

Fans First - The sign is on every locker. And leading out to the field, "Tonight is someone's first time seeing our show."

Obsessed/Focused - Banana Ball/Serving people is his life. We didn't talk about hobbies, TV shows, or anything other than what they're doing now and in the future. He's obsessed with what he does and super focused.

Transparent - Jesse just released their full P&L as a private company: revenue, expenses, player salaries, everything. Most businesses guard this religiously. He's completely transparent. I asked why, and he said, "Fans first. They deserve to know everything."

Reps - We went to the field to watch practice. It looked just like a game. Players were dancing all the time. And every single rep they practiced as a trick play (behind the back, through the legs, etc.). They never play normal baseball. You wonder how they are so good on gameday at doing a backflip while catching a fly ball. Because they practice it thousands of times without fans so that when they're there, they put on a great show.

Hiring – "Love your people more than you love your customer." 12,000 people on the waitlist to work for the Bananas. When you hire, have them do a "fans first" essay. Then they write a future essay.

Always Be Caring, Different, Enthusiastic, Fun, Growing, & Hungry

Fans First: The Counter-Intuitive Decision - Jesse sacrificed $6 million in ticket revenue after a system messed things up for fans.

Merch – 787,000 fans purchased merchandise in 2025, totaling 1.96 million total items. That means the average person is purchasing ~2.5 items at checkout, with 80% of total sales taking place in person. 621,000 at live shows versus 166,000 online. It's a $50m business!

TV: The Distribution Strategy - Giving Away Value - Jesse insisted on free YouTube streaming even when ESPN wanted exclusivity. Jesse is building a zero-profit secondary ticket market. He's literally giving away things other sports properties would monetize. So, even with all of the team's games still airing for free on YouTube, the Bananas averaged 500,000 viewers on ESPN, The CW, and Roku. The team's most-watched broadcast was a July 4th game at Fenway Park, which averaged 837,000 viewers on ESPN, making it the holiday weekend's most-watched primetime sports broadcast. TV networks want exclusivity, but you demand that the games still be broadcast for free on YouTube (in addition to whatever channel they are on)

Social Media - The Bananas added 12.7 million new social media followers in 2025 alone. That pushes their total social media following across all channels north of 35 million... Roughly 2x more followers than MLB's most popular team, the Yankees, at 18 million.

You have to believe something before you achieve something. Six years ago, Jesse said, "We're gonna sell out Fenway Park," and his team looked at him like he was crazy (they were a college summer baseball team, not even doing tours yet).

You have to get through the messy to get to the great. Their first world tour was brutal: the sound was terrible, the show wasn't great, the game finished in the seventh inning because they didn't have a rule to make it go nine innings.

See what's best for the guest, not what's best for the business. Walt Disney was the first to go into full-length animation, color, sound, and with Disneyland, he focused on one entrance to control the experience, custom rides, and invested in a castle and landscaping, which made no money.

Go where others won't go. Sam Walton went to small towns, and no one paid attention to him for the first five to ten years.

It's somebody's first time every night. Fans wait three years on a waitlist to come to a game, so Jesse doesn't care if you're having a bad day. That's their first time.

Control the entire experience. Walt learned he couldn't control the experience when people watched his movies at a theater (it could be dirty, and people might not be nice), so he built Disneyland.

Who do we work for? Fans. Jesse opened the books completely (numbers, player salary, merch sales, everything) because they have a responsibility and accountability to their fans.

We have to feel our mistakes. When they sent a wrong email to 44,000 fans instead of 4,000, it cost them $6 million to take care of those fans with tickets (more than the company brought in their first five years).

We need to have bigger failures. If we're not trying things big enough, we won't have bigger failures and mistakes that cost us a lot more in the future.

Turn mistakes into moments. After the $6 million email mistake, Jesse set up a Zoom call with all 44,000 people, had everyone turn their cameras on, and apologized while looking at every single person.

Build something you wish existed for yourself. Jesse played baseball until he couldn't anymore. He put so much pressure on himself that it wasn't fun anymore, and he was told he wasn't good enough.

Design every second of the first-day experience. When players showed up, they went to a parking lot with a DJ at 8:30 AM. Three buses arrived with balloons, hundreds of people lined the streets cheering, Man-nanas served munchkins on silver platters, a custom hype video played, the host introduced from the roof, and fireworks went off.

Every player has been told they're not good enough. All Bananas players have been drafted or been top college players, and at some point, they've all been rejected, cut, told to hang it up.

Obsession is awesome. If you can find something you're obsessed with, so few people in the world get to have that.

Watch the best of the best obsess over details. Derek Hough (one of the greatest dancers) wasn't just focusing on the dance; he was producing while dancing, telling the camera crew exactly where to come, when to hit him, and where he would wink.

No one goes home excited about normal. No one says, "That restaurant was really normal, the waiter served it the same way, the food was pretty normal, the parking lot was normal."

Whatever's normal, do the exact opposite. Normal gets normal results. There's a lot of normal in the world, but not a lot of extraordinary.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes and eliminate friction. Where's the game tonight? On Amazon, Peacock, CBS, NBC? Jesse threw away millions to keep all games free on YouTube because that's a friction point.

Your fans will reward you. The Bananas sold over 1.9 million merch items last year because they built something people are proud of and want to wear.

If people don't want to wear your merch, you haven't made them feel something yet. One fan gets a new Bananas tattoo every year (he's got six logos on his leg now).

Invest everything in the experience, spend zero on traditional marketing. Make the experience so good that fans will share with everyone that this is something they haven't experienced before.

Social media growth came from trying and stumbling into learning. In 2016, an intern said he could create videos; they did a lip sync to "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake. It wasn't even well-produced, but they tried.

Give energy back because of how good it feels. A woman came up to Jesse on a cruise and said she was there because he gave her a hug at a Sacramento game the day after her sister died. She came on the cruise to give him a hug back.

Do what gives you energy. Jesse's entire day is filled with things that give him energy: being with people, rehearsing shows, banana ball youth meetings, broadcast team, and talented writers.

Have people who love to execute. You do what gives you energy and have them execute at a high level. Be very involved at the beginning (get the idea and vision right) and at the end (make adjustments).