How One Baseball Team Disrupted a Market and Found Their Brand

Zahra  

Welcome back, guys, I am so excited to have you. Jesse, we're so excited to have you. I actually heard you speak about a month ago about Finding Your Yellow Tux and about the Savannah Bananas. And I was absolutely blown away by what you had to say about your process of creating that customer experience and I just knew I had to have you there. We didn't even have the podcast ready to go yet and I already was hounding you to come be on the show so I'm really excited that you're here. 

Jesse  

I was blown away by you coming up to me right after the talk so excited about the podcast that I was fired up and excited to be with you today. 

Zahra  

Thank you so much so for those of us who don't know you, although I know most of the people here already do. But can you tell us a little bit about your your history, I know you were a player, and then you moved into management and then you got into the ownership game. And so can you tell us a little bit about that transition and what those first few moments felt like being responsible for an entire business and entrepreneurship jump? 

Jesse  

Yeah, long story short, I played baseball my whole life, tore my shoulder, ended my career and got an opportunity to work for the lowest level baseball team in the country, a little small team in Gastonia North Carolina, with normally Twitter fans coming to the games. And, you know, I realized then that I loved playing baseball, but I had to realize how to sell baseball, and most people weren't excited about it. So when you talk about building a brand, and everything that you do, we had to build a brand that wasn't based on what everyone else is basing it on. You know, we were in the baseball industry but we weren't really in the baseball industry, we were more in the entertainment industry. So at 23 years old, as a GM of the worst team in the country, unable to pay myself for months, because there was no revenue coming in, we had to really build something based on what makes us different. And we started focusing on you know, dancing players, grandma, beauty pageants and donut burgers, donut dogs, and just made it all about an entertainment experience. And from there, we started learning and I ended up buying that team and recently sold that team a few years ago and moved to Savannah, Georgia, where the bananas had become bigger than we've ever imagined and so now it's all about building a brand that really is about creating fans. And that's something that we focus on is not just creating customers creating fans. So that spark knows a SparkNotes version there. Yes, there's sleeping on air beds, having to sell a house empty, empty out my savings account, my wife and I struggling, all of that happened on the road to building a brand and that's why I believe there's no such thing as an overnight success. It's taken many years but now we're fortunate every game sold out. And we have a waitlist for tickets in the 1000s. And with the lowest level of baseball, but it's not about baseball for us so this is already taking an unexpected turn. 

Zahra  

So talk to me a little bit about that. 

Jesse  

So a lot of times, our sweet spot is we deal with a lot of creatives who are now going into the monetizing. So they've got a talent, a skill set, they're their makers of some sort and now they're going into the realm of entrepreneurship. And I find that interesting, because you were what I was reading the book, that's something that struck me that you were a baseball player, you absolutely love the game, you're an artist, so to speak in that feel like you really you really geeked out on baseball, that was your thing. And then to make the decision to look at the data and look at the market and the industry and say baseball just doesn't sell and to own a baseball team and make the decision to move away from focusing on the baseball as somebody who loved and played baseball their whole lives. And the dream was to be that star. It's a kind of shift. What did that take from you? And what did you have to see, to be able to make that decision as an artist as somebody who loved baseball and thought everybody should love baseball and watch people play baseball all day long. Understand that the market with think something different and make that shift, when I first started at 23. And my goal was to meet everyone in the community. So I literally said there was an article I found a few months ago and said, I'm gonna meet every single business owner, nonprofit and school in the community, which is impossible. But that was my goal. And by going on those meetings, I heard the same thing over and over again. And it was, you know, what are people don't really like baseball, it's a little too long. It's a little too slow. And I realized I'm going in every one of these meetings, and I'm already losing, I'm already going undefeated because I'm selling a product that doesn't get the normal person excited. Now again, people think oh, baseball is fun. Baseball is well, maybe at the highest level. And even that attendance is declining. We were college summer baseball. So like when you're building a brand, like what can you be the only at what can you be different? What can make you stand out and if we're already one of the lowest levels of baseball, why would we compete on selling baseball. So I just kept having these meetings and I was like, that doesn't make sense. So I said, well, what can we be the only app and I said, can we be the only team that has dancing players? Can we be the only team that has a breakdancing coach who will be the only team that has, you know, all these different, unique promotions from what we've done before. So it's fun nights and slow to underwear nights, all these crazy things. But we started building it on an entertainment brand and so it was basically trial and error. We started just testing things and people started reacting. They started saying, you know what I want to go to the show tonight. They didn't say I want to go to the game tonight, they said, I want to go to the show tonight, we started changing the language. And so for your listeners yourself, it's like, one simple question I asked myself constantly, it was what makes us different. And so many people say, Oh, we're a better price, or it's this well, what makes you different kin, your customers. Can your clients clearly articulated? Can they say what makes you different and what we realized is people started saying, it's a circus, and a baseball game breaks out. And so that's what everyone started match I'm going to the circus and a baseball game is gonna break out. And they started talking about our brand was built on this circus like atmosphere and it makes it very easy for us to craft that. That's how we do everything these days.

Zahra  

Wow, I love that for those of you guys who don't already have a pen and paper, just press pause real quick on this, go run and get a paper and pen. Take note, this is this is really huge, because it is about becoming that disrupter and I love that you said that, you know, the book that we just covered was the method method by Eric and Adam. And they talk a lot about that and one of the things that they mentioned that I wanted you to talk about, because you were talking about being the lowest level of baseball. And they talk a lot about that going into an industry that was generation of Procter and Gamble, Unilever, and going trying to create a space in that market that seemed to be completely dominated. And they didn't do it by trying to be Procter and Gamble at being Procter and Gamble or Unilever, they had to find a different way to do that. And that's what you did with your brand and really saying, Okay, well, I can't be a national professional, baseball or basketball, and there's no way I'm going to, I'm going to compete with NBA or you know, the National Baseball League and that's not what you were there to do and finding what you could do.

Jesse  

Well focus on what you can control see, I think so many people try to focus on things that they can't necessarily control, we can't control whether we're the best baseball team, we can't do that. But what we can do is we play a different game, and we're focusing on alright, we can really control the entertainment, we can control, you know, how the pet bands playing, and how we're having our team mucha door wrestling, and how we're having all these ridiculous things that we do, we can control. And when people leave a ballpark, and they said, Wow, that was the most fun I've ever had a baseball game, we don't want them saying I'm so glad the team won, because we can control whether the team wins or loses. So when you're building a brand, you know, when you have too many dependencies on the experience that your customers have, you're in trouble. So we tried to eliminate a lot of the dependencies and just say, Hey, we're just gonna put on a great show that people leave it to they had a great time, no matter what happened. And now, you know, people have said on our reviews, they said it was the most fun I've ever had a baseball game, and they didn't even throw a pitch. And what I mean by that is, we have rainouts, we have a whole script that we have for a rainout. So when 3000 4000 people show up in the rain, we put on a show in the concourse in the grandstand with all these different promotions. So people will still have a great time, even though we didn't play baseball and because that's again, another dependency that people have in sports, it's like, if it rains, we're in trouble. That's not true, what can you do to create a great experience and so when you're building your brand, some that we've built over the last 15 years, think about its focus on the things you can control that you can be the best at that you can be different at and go all in on those.

Zahra  

That really struck a chord with me at the end of the book when you were talking about the right amounts and the thing that was unique to me is a lot of times, that's kind of like the customer retention part, right? You've got an irate customer, a terrible situations happen, everything that you plan to help not happen it's happening and now you've got to deal with it. And a lot of times as this is onerous, or as brands, the script goes, how can we make them unmad but it never really says how can we make them a raving fan of this. How can we be even happier and it just pushes you to think outside of the box. Like how do we not just do damage control but how do we flip the script on that and make them a raving fan out of this terrible scenario.

Jesse  

That will put yourself in the customers shoes you know, if you were going to experience your product at the end, would you be telling other people about it or would it just be Oh, it's pretty fun. The reality is remarkable experience. The definition of remarkable is are people willing to remark about it so if you want to create a remarkable experience, put yourself in the customer's shoes. Are you willing to remark about your experience, scratch your own itch, make it if I'm going through the process do I love the process of experiencing my brand. And how we do this is we go undercover every single night in our ballpark. Everyone on our staff at least once goes as a fan. We Park with the fans, we line up with the fans, we get food with the fans, we sit with the fans, and we say alright, you know what did we love this experience. What did we not love about it? How would we love it more? And again, I think we always just talk about what's best for the customers put yourself in their shoes. I mean, we actually have shoes now that we're we've got these big yellow shoes so we'll get there our fan shoes were though there are bad shoes and we'll have them in meetings, hey, put those on, based on how the fan would make it and I think that's so important. I think so few people when they're building a business and building a brand, it's more about this can bring in more revenue, this can bring in more sales. No, what can create more fans, what can create more remarkable experiences. That's a different game and that's what we've been focused on. So we've had to, because we couldn't succeed on baseball, we couldn't succeed on typical ways of bringing revenue, we had to go completely different.

Zahra  

Yeah and I think that's key, you know, you talk about going walking in your customers shoes. And you know, when we go through that branding process, doing what we call experience mapping, and it is every bit of when I go to the website, what do I see, when you open the doors? What do you see, what do you smell, what do you feel, how are you greeted? Are there wires and cords all over the place, I always remember there was a file that I worked with, and you walk in and there was a bunch of wires and cords bundled all over the floor, there was a over blowout sale of essential oil, there was a small little desk with tons of paperwork and fax machine. And so you know, you open the door, and you do this and the whole point of going to the spa is so that you can just, I guess that you can't see me but you know, release attention and, and just in that first second that you swing that door open, there's a real difference. And so you wouldn't know that unless you walked in as a business owner. We don't even pick our heads up till we get to our office sometimes and so just taking that second to put yourself in your customers shoes, and walk in as a customer from the very first impression all the way to the end. And you talk about first impressions in the book, what a difference that can make and all of the friction points you can eliminate and all the experience opportunities you have. There's a lot more than we think there are and I love that you talk about that.

Jesse  

Well, I think the thing is everything tells a story. Everything tells a story in your brand and so I remember reading in Customers for Life, Carl Sewell who had a car dealership who literally would clean the roads halfway a mile about a half mile leading to his dealerships. It wasn't even his responsibility, it was the cities but he said that's a depression. So where our stadiums are a big part, but we walked the entire stadium in the park to pick up trash before games, because one piece of trash reflects poorly on our brand and again, we have it in our fans. First playbook everyone's a janitor. So I've done those trash walks or president's done those trash walks we all have. And I think it's so important, those little details, because sometimes their subconscious, sometimes you don't realize it but hey, you just walked over some trash. What does that telling you in your mind? Do these people really care about me? Do they care about this experience and I'll tell you something we're doing now is an experiment. No, I asked every company what do you stand for and it's a question that it's hard to answer. What are you fighting? What's the crusade and for us, it's we stand for fans. You know, literally fans are passionate, they're devoted, their enthusiastic, they're loyal. They're people that are just so fired up for things we stand for them so it also has to be represented in how we act. So for instance, recently said, Hey, we're gonna have an experiment. Every time a fan walks into our ballpark our office, we stand, and just that physical standing, if we stand for fans will show them the respect that they deserve. They are they're the one that writes our paycheck. And so those are the things that we constantly look at every story, everything tells a story, every detail matters, the little things make a big difference and we try to build that throughout our entire brand.

Zahra  

We have a different question but I'm going to pass that question because you just made, I'm gonna hold tight on that one. Because I wanted to ask you something, one of the things that I was incredibly impressed with, not just with the talk, but the book, is how you've been able to build an internal culture. So a lot of times we go into a brand and it's not necessarily that they're launching, it's an internal struggle. So whether it's that we've had, you know, stakeholders trade out, and you know, people have retired and there's new ownership coming in. And now, you know, there's a big identity crisis happening on the floor, even to just that was never really clearly defined to begin with and so, businesses, you know, I talk a lot about this is businesses using SOPs as a crutch, or as a replacement at fill in her culture and vision. And how that sometimes translates to having those palm to forehead moments with your employees, like why would they do that? Do they not have any common sense and I always say, well, is it common sense if they're lacking or common understanding and the ease and a brilliant job of creating a culture that stands solid, it's consistent culture, but you do it through individual like you identify people. And you see people who are timid to buy in, there was one girl that you talked about that was very timid to buy in, and you had her selling beer and then by the end of it, she was able to find her own way to express herself and buy into the fun. That was organic for her but still followed suit with the brand. So can you talk a little bit about how you do that and what your method is for that.

Jesse  

Yeah, we're still learning. I mean, the reality is we started here in Savannah, it was a 24 year old President three 22 year olds and myself and my wife who were in our early 30s. And and, you know, what we've realized is just how do you want to be treated, let's treat people the way they want to be treated. Let's think about again, map yourself, what would be your perfect experience to work for a company and people don't want to be micromanaged. They want to be led, you know, people want to be treated well, from the first time they shocked when they leave. And, you know, something that we talked about a little bit is the three months you know, love your customers more than your product, love your employees and your team more than your customers, but love yourself first. And I think that's really, really, really important and I never understood about give yourself oxygen first when I was, you know, you're in the plane. And now I have a two year old kid Maverick and I'm like, there's no way I'm giving him. But if you're not in a good spot, you can't be your best for others and so what we've realized is how do we help people be in their best spot, and my wife, Emily is amazing. She takes walks with people throughout the stadium and just connects with them and the empathy and understanding and really try to beat people where they are. And so yeah, I mean, it starts we first meet them, you know, our whole hiring process, we want to get to know them who they are cultural fit is 90% More than any skill set. That's why we look for future resumes, we don't care for your past resumes, we want to see video cover letters, we want to see your enthusiasm, your energy, like how you fit to our core beliefs. And we want to get to know what fires them up. What do they want to do when they're done with our team that's crazy question. But we want to eliminate two weeks notice, we want to get to a place where we feel so safe that hey, you know, this is what I want to do moving forward, can we help get there. And that just happened with our Director of Operations, he literally he said, Hey, my wife has an opportunity to move here and he gave over six months notice. And we're just working together on how to create a good transition for him and a good transition for the team and I think it's because we never want to be seen as bosses, or it's us versus them. It's we're in this together and you have to show that you have to give that safety. So I don't think there's a template that we have on how we do it but you just look at people it's like, hey, how do they want to be treated on their first day when they show up. How can you make them feel special if they're going through challenges. How do you give them the opportunity to go through those in the way that's best for them? You know, we don't have PTO days, take time, wherever you are. We just took our whole team to Disney last week, and we got with their spouses, significant others we got back on, you know, a few days ago and it was it was amazing, because it was a great opportunity just to have fun. And so that's what we think about and it doesn't make sense as far as you know, I can't say hey, spending this money will equal this. But I'll tell you, it builds purpose, it builds belonging, and it's the right thing to do. 

Zahra  

So that's incredible. You don't have PTO and when you when you say that, I think about it and my favorite job in the world that I ever had before I became an entrepreneur when I was, you know, working for the man. I did my husband, he got an opportunity. He's a chef, so he got an opportunity in London and I think I gave them like two and a half months notice. And even after my last day, I still came in for three hours in the morning to help close out my cases before I left to make sure that they were set up. I just loved them so much and it was funny because...

Jesse  

I bet you they loved you. They probably loved you. 

Zahra  

Yeah, I you know, we I still we saw I saw coffee with my old boss and my boss's boss's and I love that so much. And even given notice before I was scheduled to get my bonus and even knowing that I was leaving, they still max out my bonus. They did I mean, they didn't have to do that I was on my way out there was no retention thing there. They understood it wasn't negotiable but you're right when it's a brand that you really believe in when when it's a culture that you really thrive in as employees you do make those. It made no sense. My husband didn't understand why I gave them so much notice why you would pay something before bonuses like you're not gonna wait till after you have the bonuses. 

Jesse  

But think about the long game, the long game from a company standpoint, see, a lot of times it says we can save $10,000 we can save $5,000 here in the short term. But now you have someone that like literally you're thinking about that company, you're talking about that company right now. Now, if they need someone that you meet, you'll help and guide them to that company like you win in the long game. And I think that's so hard for people to realize, like the payouts that we've done, and we pay our people to read so everyone on our staff gets paid to read books, and we've done to cruises, we've sent people to Ireland, we've done all that. 1000s of dollars. Yeah, it might have affected the bottom line a little bit that year but fast forward three, four or five years later, it's nothing. It's just a great memory for them and it's a great memory that we feel we're able to pride. That's I think that's what's right and so people have said, well, how do you how do you get the ROI on that? How do you stop right, do the right thing for people and create memories and moments that matter because nothing matters more than making people feel like they matter and how you do that. And that's that's kind of that builds our brand that's who we are. We're gonna do that to our fans we better do that to our people. I mean, we want to make our people our biggest fans so it's just it fits our brand so it's very easy for us to justify it every year.

Zahra  

And in case you missed it, I'm just gonna re-quote him there, "Make your people, your biggest fans". I think that just speaks volumes because if they're your biggest fans, they're gonna go out and find you more fans. It's just, it really is. I think that's awesome okay, so I'm going to try and go back to the script, although everything you say, just makes me want to ask you more and more questions, but I know you've got an actual day of work to do so we'll try and keep it brief. So one of the things that we've you know, we work with clients, and we're trying something new, or we're doing, you know, we're disrupting markets. The big fear is the what if it doesn't work, there's this idea that you have to have a perfect brand, before you put it out there. And, you know, my response is always, there's no such thing because you can't measure perfection until you actually done it. And so you've got to create the baseline from which to work you know, it's a guess it's an educated guess, hopefully, you know, if you if you're measuring and thinking about the right things, you know, and in the book, you talked about that all you can eat buffet, and where I mean, it was a great idea. And how you use that as a baseline and can you tell us a little bit about that experience and how you were able to, to decide, okay, well, I have a scrapper idea, it's just the how can we optimize it and fix it so that it becomes something that at work?

Jesse  

Sure, no, I think anybody asks you, well, what if it doesn't work you should go back. Well, what if it does work?

Zahra  

Yeah. I do that to myself all the time.

Jesse  

I mean, I think that the conversations change, we're so focused on risk, risk, risk risk, well, what if it does work? What's the benefit and what if it doesn't work like, what's the worst thing that can happen? You know, I mean, the reality, we're not going to bet the whole company on all these things. So anyways, the all you can eat was a small bet and that's kind of the mindset we've always take away, take small bets, just try a bunch of things, you know, quantity leads to quality. So when you try and in your experiment, and you'll find some network, so the all you can eat again, put ourselves in our customers shoes, what is a frustration going into a sporting event, you had nickel and dime, nickel and dime, nickel and dime, and all of a sudden, you're broke at the end of the night. And again, put ourselves in their shoes, I don't want that I want to be able to pay one price and get what I want and feel like I own the place all right. Could we set that up for our fans and and it hadn't been done at this scale there have been like all you can eat group but not the whole stadium. We said what it would look like and we started with not knowing the cost. We had no idea what it would cost you no idea what people even said, what would be a fair price point and what would it include? That would be good, we said $15 with a ticket with all your burgers, hotdogs, chicken sandwich, soda, water popcorn, that sounds like a steal. And again, how can you create deals that make your customers feel like they're taking advantage of you, that's if you can do that game over. So we were like, alright, let's do it and the first night yeah, we had no idea how to cook for 4000 people, and it was a disaster. So when people showed up, I mean, the lines, were taking two hours you know, I didn't realize this point. But that first night, we sold so much pizza, and it wasn't a part of the all inclusive. And I realized because people couldn't eat any food because the lines were so long, I didn't understand why we spent so much pizza that was the reason. And yeah, the next night we bought like 30 pizzas, like we didn't sell as many because we got better on the lines. But anyways, the first night the line was so bad and then the next day, we moved some things around we cooked a little earlier. Then we move some things around and we put drinks first and then grab a drink fill up their hand and then they would get a little less food. They want to get three burgers and three dogs and we started strategically doing these things. And now fast forward takes less than five minutes to get all your food at any point in the stadium. 4000 fans, we go through 10,000 pieces of meat on big nights it's crazy. But we learned and what was great is our fans, thankfully gave us the benefit of the doubt. They said, Hey, opening night, they'll get better and we forced ourselves to get better. But we wouldn't have get better we wouldn't have done it got better if we didn't try it. And now everyone says it's the best deal you can imagine you get all the show the entertainment, the dancing, the singing, the fun, and all your food and the ticket and now everyone's talking about how remarkable it is. But most companies and no other teams are doing it because the fear of what what happened when it didn't work. Well, it didn't work for us the first time, but it did the next time and I think that's the key do and then learn. 

Zahra  

That's crazy, so matter of fact, my husband just took my son to his birthday. He's four they spent $80 on snacks, like just water and burger and it was insane. It was like that's worth more than his ticket that's crazy. 

Jesse  

Yeah and that's remarkable in a really negative way all right, we're talking about that in a negative way. And you walk on, you're like, you should never feel like the company literally took advantage of you, you should feel like you take advantage of the company. And that's how it was and so you you leave the game it's like we go pat but we got it. That's a lot of money and you've already feel negative going into it and so thanks for sharing that. But that's the mindset, we look at everything and that's literally why we eliminated all shipping fees, all convenience fees, and convenience fees. There's no fees, a ticket is the price of the ticket. If you buy a $24 shirt, it's a $24 shirt, because again, that's just another frustration. And so when you keep eliminating those all of a sudden you have fans, it's just like, you know what, they're always going to do what's right for me, and no and I'm gonna do what's right for them when they need me and I think that's it's pretty, pretty cool.

Zahra  

I liked that you, you mentioned that I think it's really important when we talk about like, you kind of build yourself a grace, I think when because you always put them first, you build that grace so that when you did have a nightfall, you didn't have 4000 customers asking for a refund, and also a free ticket to the next game and demanding all their freebies, because of a bad night. Because they know that you always go above and beyond and your brand promises to over deliver. And so they give you more grace to be human and to make a mistake, and you know it because they also understand that it was an attempt to provide a better experience.

Jesse  

Yeah and I'll challenge you with that a little bit on the brand promise. So so many companies say the brand promises to exceed expectations. Well, as soon as you say that you're not and so when you say even over deliver, you know, yes, maybe internally, we say how can we do that. But we never want to say brand promise that gets shared externally. If ever a brand promises for us to over deliver exceed expectations, we're behind the game, and we're losing. So simply put the fans first put on a show provide an amazing atmosphere like that's who we're trying to be and you're right there give us grace now because of that.

Zahra  

Okay, so this one is, one of the things that you talked about a little bit later in the book is a commitment to fun is a commitment to ideas. And so you talk about pursuing all the ideas so how do you do that in a way that still allows you to be productive and consistent as a brand? 

Jesse  

Good question, ideas are a big part of what we do but yes, it's the implementation that really is how we measure our ideas actually working. So we're just trying to build an idea culture, we have 1000s of ideas, we don't execute on all of them. We don't implement all of them but the idea, and our mindset is one of our core beliefs is being different. And to be different, you got to continue to come up with ideas. So we have Ideapalooza is every single month and those have evolved, the first was like, alright, let's think of crazy ideas. And then we started targeting them more and now we're actually asking questions like, well ask question from a customer pain point, like, hey, you know, what would make fans want to stay to the end of the game? Because fans are leaving still before the game and we'll answer questions on those ideas. So to answer your question, if you stay stagnant, if you stay doing the same thing over and over again, and don't commit to new ideas, it becomes an environment that doesn't feel like you're growing doesn't feel like you're doing new things and that is not fun. You know, I think when I look at our group, and we're coming up with crazy ideas and things we're going to do at the ballpark that people have never seen before. And there's hundreds of them, you see this energy, it's like, wow, we can actually do that and some aren't even so crazy. But like, literally a couple of weeks ago, we eliminated all advertising from our stadium, we created the first ever ad free stadium and it went nuts. I mean, big national publications covering it was like, wow, this was an idea we just shared and people were blown away by it. I mean, you want people on your company, wherever you are to feel proud of who they work with, and what they're doing. And if you're not coming up with ideas and doing new things, you don't have as much pride, you don't have that same proud feeling that we're doing something to move forward to make progress. And so it's inspiring and it's fun and I think that's what every company aspires to do is to have fun and make a difference. And that's where this commitment to ideas every day. I mean, literally, you can't see because it's a podcast but this is my 2020 Idea Book. And every morning, I come up with 10 ideas and you know, we have an idea blocks in our office. And I think a lot of companies, people, they just get stuck doing the same thing over again, take time to think take time to separate and think of what ideas are really fun to add to a better customer experience or better employee experience. So I could talk ideas for years and I think it's a great question. But I think you need to give yourself time and separation, and make sure we take everyone out of the office and we commit to ideas. We took everyone to Disney for four days, it was just obviously to have a lot of fun. But also, let's come up with some ideas, get people out of the office to take time to think ideas and every company needs more ideas and then how do you own those ideas and that's what we're still working on every day.

Zahra  

And I think that's really strategic, I mean, you took them to the most fun place in the world to get ideas on how to create more fun experiences for you wnd that was it was an immersive experience. I think that was really, I really liked that idea of doing something like that. So we have, you know, where we get together and we have ideas, we call them brain dump. There's no bad idea just call it the brain dump and we just throwing ideas around and then we just kind of measure them against our brands and like which one makes sense for us which ones don't you know which ones would work which you know, and then we start figuring out the nitty gritties to find our final ones that we're going to test out. But we haven't tried doing it in a more immersive experience so I would like to try that, that's a really good idea.

Jesse  

Yeah, get out of the office. I mean, you think when people say oh, you know, I came with the best idea, it's very rarely it's in the office. It's in the shower, you know, it's at a restaurant and a bar, it's with your friends while you're driving. It's proven so like, let's, let's get out of the office and because you get to a point where you don't feel like you have to do work. You get to a point where you let your mind free and kind of think out loud and think differently and that's where I get out of the office, come up with ideas.

Zahra  

Okay, so before we leave any final thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to leave, no pressure.

Jesse  

I'm glad to be with you. I think, you know, for me, it's always been just start, just start doing things. I was so scared. I wrote 159 blogs before I posted my first one when I started sharing kind of the lessons that we've learned and no one died, it was okay, everything worked out okay. We're so afraid to put ourselves out there, we're so afraid because of what other people think holds us back. We're afraid we don't know the answer is because we're doing something we've ever done before and once you start doing things, once you start experimenting, trying things, the joy that I've seen in myself, our staff, our people, has been really wonderful. And I by you coming up and so excited to have me on your show, it impressed me and I was so glad but so glad to be with you today. And so I would say someone's holding you back, just start on the back of our fans first playbook and says, "Be patient have what you want for yourself, but be impatient, and how about you give to others". And so we're always constantly thinking, what we can do now, what can we learn and how can we give back to others?

Zahra  

Well, thank you so much for being a part of this show.