AI Summary
5 min readJesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas and author of Fans First, was 23 years old when he took over a failing college summer baseball team in Gastonia, North Carolina that had been dead last in attendance for seven years. He noticed the team was doing what every other team did—fireworks, bobbleheads, the usual promotions. And they were getting the usual results. So he started doing the opposite.
That decision became the operating principle of his entire career: normal gets normal results. If you want different outcomes, you have to do what others won't do, even if it means failing publicly.
The Fans First Framework: Eliminate Friction, Create "You Wouldn't Believe" Moments
Cole's framework for building a memorable experience starts with identifying every friction point a customer encounters. He learned this from Walt Disney, who asked "what's wrong?" every time he rode a ride in his own park. Cole applies the same logic to baseball—and to any business interaction.
He advises leaders to list every conventional way their industry does things: the normal way of sending an invoice, the normal way of running a voicemail, the normal way of selling tickets. Then ask: what would make someone say "you wouldn't believe what they did today?" That's the target.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:18) **Jesse Cole’s “Because”: Creating a World Filled with Joy** - Jesse traces his drive back to his upbringing as an only child of divorced parents, explaining that his core motivation is to bring people together and create a world filled with joy and fun.
- 2 (04:49) **The Core Philosophy: “Normal Gets Normal Results”** - Jesse explains the foundational business principle that doing what everyone else does will only yield the same mediocre results.
- 3 (08:02) **The “Fans First” Framework: Removing Friction & Creating “You Wouldn’t Believe” Moments** - Jesse provides a practical framework for any business to create remarkable experiences by identifying and eliminating customer friction points.
- 4 (10:14) **Living Your Values Under Pressure: The $6 Million Mistake** - Jesse demonstrates what it truly means to put fans first by sharing the story of a massive email error and the company’s costly response.
- 5 (13:38) **Storytelling as an Internal Operating System** - Jesse reveals that his primary storytelling isn’t for marketing, but for aligning and inspiring his own team.
- 6 (15:50) **Micro-Reinvention: The Power of Doing One Thing Better Than Anyone** - Jesse explains his strategy of not changing everything, but relentlessly micro-reinventing the core show to eliminate boring moments.
- 7 (19:34) **Overcoming Early Challenges: The Messy Path to Success** - Jesse recounts the initial struggles of building the Bananas, from selling only two tickets to running out of money.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Normal gets normal results. What would happen if you stopped copying your industry and started creating an experience people could not stop talking about?
In this Mick Unplugged re-release, Mick Hunt sits down with Jesse Cole for a practical conversation about building a fans-first business. Jesse shares how joy, memorable moments, and a willingness to try what others will not can change the way customers and employees experience your brand.
The conversation goes beyond the show on the field. Jesse explains how his team looks for customer friction, why values matter most when they cost you something, and how storytelling keeps a growing organization aligned. He recounts a ticket-email mistake and the decision to make it right, even at what he describes as a $6 million cost to the company.
You will also hear why failure can be treated as discovery, how gratitude helps create fans, and why great leaders keep teaching, repeating, and getting their reps in.
If you lead a team, serve customers, or are building something of your own, this conversation will challenge you to stop settling for ordinary.
This is a re-release of an archival conversation. References to team counts, tours, ticket demand, and projects reflect the time of recording.
The big idea
Being different is not the goal by itself. Creating an experience people remember, talk about, and want to share is the goal. Jesse Cole explains how he uses that distinction to lead, generate ideas, and build a fans-first culture.
In this episode
- Jesse's deeper purpose: bringing people together through joy.
- Why copying the normal practices of an industry tends to produce normal results.
- How to identify friction in everyday customer interactions, from invoices to the live experience.
- The "you wouldn't believe" test for a memorable moment.
- Why a company's values need to show up in decisions, not just on the wall.
- Jesse's account of an email mistake and a costly ticket commitment.
- How repeated stories and team recognition reinforce culture.
- Why watching customer behavior can reveal more than asking for opinions.
- The setbacks behind ambitious ideas and the discipline of continuing to improve.
- Gratitude as a daily practice for leaders, employees, and customers.
- Why great leaders teach, repeat, and practice communicating.
Put it into practice
Choose one ordinary interaction in your business. Find the friction. Write down three ways to make the experience more useful, surprising, or memorable. Then thank one person who has helped you build what you have.
Chapters
00:00 Why this conversation is a business masterclass
00:40 Welcome to Mick Unplugged
01:39 Jesse's because: bringing people together with joy
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