676: Jesse Cole (Owner, Savannah Bananas) - The Beauty of Obsession, Building a Fans First World, Walt Disney, Mr. Beast, Radical Transparency (Opening the Books), Do the Opposite of Normal, Turning a $6M Mistake Into a Moment, and Creating Banana World

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Jesse Cole is the owner of the Savanna Bananas. He went from $1,800,000 in debt sleeping on an air mattress and has now built a business that is worth more than $1,000,000,000. I flew down to Savannah, spent half a day with Jesse watching practice, and he gave me a personal tour of their entire operation. It was an incredible day. I was exhausted by the end of it because Jesse has so much energy. It's obvious that he loves it. During our conversation, we discussed why Jesse sacrificed $6,000,000 in revenue after a system error and what that decision compounded into. Then how the bananas, I noticed this when I was watching them, they practice trick plays on every single rep. The back flips, the behind the back catches. Why? Because they want this to become the default setting on game day. It happens every rep and every practice. Then Jesse talked about why he just released his full p and l as a private company. That's revenue, expenses, player salaries, everything. Most private businesses guard this information with their lives, and Jesse just gives it out so that all the fans could see. And he talks deeply about why he does this. Then I loved hearing about him spending time with mister Beast to talk about YouTube. Jesse regularly puts himself in rooms with people who are the best in the world at what they do, and I think there's a lot we all can learn from that. We talk about that and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Jesse Cole. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader today to learn more. That's insightglobal.com/learningleader. Dude, so we first recorded And when was that? 2019. K? So it's been seven years. Yes. You have all of your people write these five year and advanced resumes. Right? This is a part of the heart. Future resume. Yeah. Future resume is part we talked about it in 2019. It's one of the things you you said we have them write. Your future resume, not your past or your current. Dude, could you have ever imagined that that we would be sitting here seven years later and you are you and Emily are the 100% owner of a business worth a billion …