Jesse Cole - Owner of Savanah Bananas [Fan Experience]

Jesse Cole talks about how his baseball team went from losing $150,000 annually to now selling out every game. It all comes down to the fan experience and flipping the script to show his fans something they had never seen before (i.e. break dancing first base coach, grandma pageant, backwards day and more).

Nick Glimsdahl 0:05
My guest on the podcast today is Jesse Cole. And Jesse is the owner of Savannah bananas, author of find your yellow tux, keynote speaker and host of a podcast called business done differently.

Jesse Cole 0:17
Welcome to podcast. Jesse.

Excited to be with you, Nick. Yeah, me too. I’m fired up.

Nick Glimsdahl 0:22
before we get started on on the fine your yellow tux and starting off and doing all this crazy stuff was Savannah, bananas. You

actually played ball?

Jesse Cole 0:30
Yes, I, I grew up at a baseball family. My father actually bought a baseball facility in Massachusetts, so I could work out year round. It was my life. It was everything I did. And I can’t tell you how many times I envisioned the phone call and draft day getting a call from my beloved Boston Red Sox on draft day, and fortunately got pretty close. I got a full scholarship and started hearing for professional teams. But my senior year I tore my shoulder. And that ended that career, but was a huge blessing in disguise. It’s very cool. I didn’t I think I played till Middle School. And that was about it. I didn’t get the chance. I think I’ve probably called maybe maybe major league baseball teams, but I’ve never actually had the opportunity to have them call me back. Yeah, I hear you. What. So what’s the story behind the yellow text? Oh, geez. You know, when I joined the baseball industry, not necessarily as a player and I tried actually coaching for a little bit, but I realized I didn’t like it. As much as I liked playing the game. It wasn’t as fun I realized I was a little too boring for me. And so I got into the front office took over a very poor performing team in Gastonia North Carolina, actually probably the worst team in the country. And that’s the only way I got a job as a 23 year old GM is because no one wanted the job. So I took that over the team was failing 200 fans coming to the games on the tour and $68 in the bank account, my first day, it was brutal. And as I went and met with people in the community, I heard from over everyone. Now our staff wouldn’t want to go to a baseball game. It’s too boring. Now, you know, I don’t think our nonprofit wants to be a part of it’s just too slow and too long. We’ve heard it over and over again. And I said All right, we’re gonna get people excited. We can’t be like your baseball team. And I asked that question. What business are you a book business? Are you really and and we’re going to lowest levels of baseball. We’re college summer baseball, we’re not even minor league. So why would we compete in that? So I said, You know what, we’re in the entertainment business. And so my biggest influences PT Barnum and Walt Disney, I said, Alright, we’re going to put on a show. Our players are going to do choreographed dances during games grandma beauty pageants, flatulence, fun nights salute to underwear nights, we tried it all. And I said, I got to look the part. And I think a part of, you know, obviously, customer experience is huge for us. But also, it’s the employee experience and the team experience. And if you want to give your people permission to give a great experience, you got to give people permission to have fun and be themselves. And so as the owner of the company dressed in a yellow tuxedo, every single day putting on a show, this is my uniform. I hope I give our team the same permission to have fun as well. Yeah, I think it’s important to to not just wear the uniform, but actually believe what you believe. And live it out. Right? It’s not you’re wearing your heart on your sleeves, literally. You know, and people see it not just through your personality, but but through what you’re wearing and how you treat everybody. So I think that’s a that’s a great way to get attention. But it’s also a great way to keep attention. Yeah, well, who are you? What do you stand for? And you can ask that to yourself, you can ask that to your team. And a lot of teams, there are companies or businesses they have, you know, these corporate mission statement that no one can remember, you know, they have these values that are just generic words that don’t have any meaning. And so everything we want to say a visual representation of who we are what we stand for, and you know, everything for us is just fun. You know, we want people to have the most fun I’ve ever had a baseball game the most fun interacting with us. And that’s what we try to scream for the mountaintops. Yeah, that’s, that’s so cool. You know, you in from what you just said, with, with the Grizzlies, right? Where it wasn’t very good. You You were basically the last person the shortest straw that got the GM job. How did you take that from that to now having a three year waiting list the last three years have been sold out, kind of walk me through how do you flip the script and say, Hey, besides, besides the whole, the the grammar pageant, which I think is hilarious, and you can kind of go into that if you want. But what else did you do? Well, I think, you know, when I started obviously, I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing at all. The first thing that I was fortunate was I started learning from outside of our industry. You know, I think so many people they just look at people and they’re just the old Look what they did. Let’s do that like them. No. for us. If we’re in the entertainment business, we shouldn’t be learning from other sports teams we should be learning from like Carnival Cruise Lines, we should be learning from different resorts different entertainment acts like circus delay, PT Barnum, Walt Disney, and so that’s why I started learning from and just testing things. And, you know, for us, everything became experimentation and testing. We just tested non stop I mean did to China night where we actually buried a certificate for a trip to China in the infield, dirt and fans dug after the game tore up the whole field. And the woman found in it was a one way flight to China. No flight back and no one

She was like, What did she just give me and but we always started some of those didn’t work as well we end up giving her cruise but you start experimenting and you start experimenting, like the first time the players did a choreographed dance, I’ll never forget, they were dancing on the field. And I’m walking through the grandstand. And this woman is his wife is talking to her husband. And she goes Shut up, honey, they’re about to dance. And I was like, we got something right now. And so we just started testing. And I think so many, so often, so many companies, so many people are afraid of what people will think. If you mess up, I get it, I get it. If you only do a few experiments or tests a year, if you do one, it doesn’t go well everyone will notice. But when you do hundreds and 1000s in two to three or four a day, no one notices. It’s what’s your next at bat. And so a lot of the premise, Nick that we do is whatever’s normal, do the exact opposite. People don’t get excited about normal normal gets normal results. And yes, in Savannah, you mentioned every game sold out waitlist in the 1000s. But you know, I was sleeping on an air bed as you know, read my book and heard the story. I was sleeping on an air bed because we were trying to be like everyone else. We are marketing like everyone else. So we had to take that chance. And yeah, I mean, we do things you know, whatever is normally the exact opposite. We actually had a night called a backwards night and we asked fans to come in the stadium backwards. I think you heard this one guy come in backwards. And literally we started in the ninth inning went backwards there. The seventh inning was really the third inning, we had the seventh inning stretch in the third inning. Then after the game, we had the first pitch the national anthem, we had our announcer read the pregame announcements for 30 minutes as fans were leaving the stadium. Alright, it’s ridiculous. Did it draw any extra fans? No, but he made people leave the stadium say you know what, that was fun. Right? people interact with your company, they interact with you personally or your people. What are they say? What are those words you want them to say with us? We just want fun. We think that’s most important for our brand. As its It is so important. You know, one thing that you did mention was around employee experience. How do you get buy in to everybody else in their organization saying, Alright guys, I’m gonna put the yellow hat down for a second. And what we’re going to do is all of our players have to dance. What I want you to do is have somebody give out free high fives. What I want you to do is have a grandma pageant pageant and get crazy how did you get that buy in from everybody else? struggled at it first. There was a 23 year old GM with a first team you know, I was just constantly doo doo doo because I don’t think you can learn until you start doing you know doing them learn. Henry Ford had that in front of the Henry Ford museum. He said he learned by doing same thing here. So we were just constantly testing things. I think it really started to happen when we started to realize what the big difference was in the intentionality of the fans first experience we named our company fans first entertainment. We made our mission fans first entertain always we made every decision that we make is based on asking the question is it fans first. And so when that intentionality we came up with our fans first way which is our core beliefs and follows the alphabet always be caring, different, enthusiastic, fun, growing and hungry. And we hired a fans first director to oversee all this. I mean, we started having clear intentionality and it happens well before this. So for instance, all the videos we put out, we talk about who we are, as a leader I share every day on LinkedIn, I’m sharing stuff. So not only just for, you know, fans and followers, but for our people, you know, Bob Iger with Disney said it best he goes often, I just lead by press release. I was like, What do you mean, Bob, and he goes, Well, I would say this is the vision of where the company is going. And everyone on Disney will see that. And they see it from the top. So I set that tone as a leader sharing who we are and what we believe in. And we interview in video our people constantly I mean, get hired with our staff, you have to do a video cover letter, because we want to see your energy, how you come across the screen, we have a full video team. So we’re filming everything at the ballpark. But we do our fans first essay how you fit the fans first core beliefs. And then we have a future resume, not what you’ve done in the past. We want to know what you’ve done in the future. And what’s really important is before people even get to that three step process, we have videos where we interview our people say who should not work for our company. I think it’s very intentional. And everyone on our staff said the same thing. People that can’t deal with change, people that can’t deal with constantly things moving a fast paced environment. So if you’re already know that beforehand, we’re already phasing out people that shouldn’t be part of our company. Right? And, and last year, Nick, when we hired a new position, a director of group experience, I wrote a post I said do not apply for this job. And I gave all the reasons on why you should not work for this company. And we got very few applicants. And our staff is like Jesse, we’ve got very I go, it worked. Yeah, because out of that I don’t I was 2025 applicants, all of them were pretty qualified, they knew what they were getting into. So I think you got to be really intentional in who you are, but who you are not for. And that starts the whole process of how we create that fan first experience for our people as well. Yeah,

Nick Glimsdahl 9:39
the thing that I think I’ve heard throughout that whole process is is is test and verify but also get productively uncomfortable. Right, like thinking through that process. There’s a lot of things that you’re going to fail at.

Jesse Cole 9:52
But you’re going to learn a ton and a ton faster than everybody else. Yeah. How fast can you learn? It’s the only way you learn so fast is it How fast do you test So what are we testing today? What are we testing tomorrow? What are we testing next week? I tell our people if at the end of the season, we don’t know a lot more, we didn’t test it. We didn’t try enough things that might not work. Hmm. So you did a lot of you’ve done a ton of promos, and you’ve tested a lot of them. What was the one that you thought was the craziest that actually worked? No, she’s, you know, it’s it’s so funny, and I’m gonna, I’m not gonna completely politically answer this, I’ll get to the answer. But I get asked this question. And the question about, you know, the biggest failures we’ve had, and I’m constantly thinking this, I go, I’m not even focused on what we did in the past and focus on what our next at bat is. And again, I want the best things Pete Rose had more hits than any major league player in the history of baseball. Yeah, he also had 2000 more bats than any other player in Major League history. You got to keep having more bats. So we’re constantly focused on our next bats, but Oh, geez, I mean, we did cold turkey last year, where we actually had two grown men on the field with actually huge frozen turkeys. This was not this is breaking every health code violation areas. We literally had two adult men try to get the turkey as hot as it could possibly did. And we took the temperature of the turkeys. So these guys are rubbing it on their belly. They were sitting on it they were putting against their face. It was completely disgusting. We’ll never do that one again. So that didn’t work as well. The Living pin yada. We did last year, we literally had an intern get in a turtle costume. We had two kids with plastic bats and they went on the field, and they had to start hitting them hitting the turtle with the bats. And while he threw candy in the air that was called a living pin. Jada will never do that again. But the answer your question, the person that worked the best was the breakdancing first base coach. We have a breakdown of the first base coach that dances every game. It’s unbelievable. Our banana Nan is our senior season dance team that danced to Justin Timberlake our 25 beats band Banana, banana Pep bands, unbelievable. Our male cheerleading team, the man is the night we play in kilts. Our players are actually undefeated, playing and kilts. There’s a lot of things that we do that’s fun. And like even this year, we’re testing we got a new intimidation coach. He’s a Lutra dorm professional wrestler from Juarez, Mexico. And he’s actually in a full Nacho libri type wrestling outfit in our dugout, and he’s right next to our team, grandma coach, we have a grandma 65 years old in a rocking chair. So those are two of our coaches this year. Not to mention, we also hired a professional sign spinner, who actually you know, throw signs up in the air. Yeah, he’ll be giving signs at first. So oh my god signs. So those are some of the things we’re trying for this year. But again, one or two of those won’t work, but maybe one does. Yeah. What does the What does everybody else in your leagues think of you guys regardless of what they think it doesn’t really matter. But you know, when you have a sign spinner who’s giving out signs to, to, you know, or a third base guy or a breakdancing first base coach, what does everybody else think? You know, are they saying do I want How do I get on your team? Or how do I stop laughing at these guys and actually play baseball? Yeah, so that’s a that’s a loaded question. So players want to play for us. We’re very fortunate you play in front of a sold out crowd, you’re treated like a legend. When they go out. They don’t have to buy meals much. I mean, people I can’t say that cuz NCAA violation. So I can not say that right there. But the reality is, they’re taking care of really well. We have over 1000 players have the opportunity to play for us every year, we only choose 30 other coaches or their owners, they shake their head at me a lot in what we’re doing. They think it’s a sometimes a mockery of baseball. And I think I think the traditionalist of baseball is a mockery of baseball, if we’re losing fans everyday. I think that’s the mockery of baseball, the fact that baseball hasn’t changed. They’re losing fans every day and the average baseball fans over 60 years old. That’s my opinion. But then, overall, I think people know when you come to Savannah, it’s a circus. I mean, we just hired fire breathers, stilt walkers unit, cyclers, aerialist to hang from the Mount, like, we’re having a circus, literally this summer at the ballpark. So I think you know what you’re signing up for. And if you’re on our team, it’s a great home field advantage. We’ve won more games than any team in the league in the last four years. And I think that’s part of the advantage. Yeah, that is awesome. The one thing that I believe I heard from you, at another organization or another event that you were speaking on, is when players come to you, and they are actually performing at a higher rate than they have their entire career.

Nick Glimsdahl 14:09
Can you explain that?

Jesse Cole 14:11
Yeah, if it’s something that I said, candidly, I mean, you know, I like to share a lot and talk a lot about the craziness. And I was speaking at Georgia Southern, and with front of a professor and students and I was talking about, hey, our players play better than any other team in the league. We’ve won more games, you know, here’s our record. And it’s because they have fun in the culture. And I didn’t know it at the time, but the professor was just shaking his head at me. He’s like, what is this? And so three months later, after that presentation, he sends me an email and says, Hey, Jesse, your statement about the players play better because of the fun the culture in the atmosphere. Well, the last three months, I’ve been studying this, and we’ve studied every player in your league, how they played at college and how they played for the teams during the summer. And I think you’d find the results pretty interesting. And oh my god, geez, he probably found that it’s not true as he goes. We In the correlation, we looked at strikes, but strike to walk ratio, batting average on base percentage, we looked at all this, because every team in the league had zero correlation, they actually did not play better, except for one. And it wasn’t even close, it was the strongest correlation we could see, by putting on a bananas uniform, you actually played better. And because of the fun the atmosphere in the country goes, it’s proven. And then we did the stats last year, you sit back up again. And now he’s coming back for this third year. And it’s individually working with 15 players to follow them and get more info. But yeah, he’s doing a whole research project. And it was proven when you have fun. When you’re part of a great culture and a great atmosphere, you will perform better. It’s that recognition feedback loop that I think every company should focus on. How are you making your people feel like they’re doing a great job, given them fun, and you’ll see their performance take off as well. As so cool. So what does the MLB have to learn from you? Let’s say that, let’s say the Red Sox, right? They didn’t call you. But let’s say they they are now calling you and saying hey, Jessie, how do I get my players to play better? And how do I create a better fan experience? And I in the Pocket Books open? What do I need to do? Well, the crazy thing is you don’t need any extra money. I mean, we’re dealing with a shoestring budget. We have zero marketing budget, we put money into the experience. But you know, I have a love for the Red Sox. I was bad boy, when I was five years old set x to Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens and I got to pitch at Fenway when I was 20, which was really, really cool. But very simple. You got to break down the barriers, break down the barriers between the ballplayers and the fans. And what I’ve realized more than anything is seeing our players go into the crowd and deliver roses to little girls during the games. You know, they dance on the dugouts. They have fun, they do music videos, they’re out there interacting, they pass out programs and take pictures before the game and after the game and give up free s’mores to the fans. You know, they are part of this. And what happens is they get this unbelievable feedback loop as well. The players and the fans are hearing this how great what they’re doing so they just want to keep doing it. I mean, just the other day we and Savannah we have a beach 30 minutes out Tybee Island, where my wife and I have a small place as well. And they we shot Baywatch. We literally had all of our returning players in bananas, bathing suits, diving into the ocean running on the pier with banana inflatables, and the guys came back to me and they suggested that was the most fun shoot we did I Why? Because everyone had their cameras. Everyone was go bananas. Everyone’s chanting. And I was like, How good is that feel as a college ballplayer to be like treated like a celebrity, like you actually matter, just not because of what you do on the field. But because of how you have fun. So for MLB get rid of the traditional nonsense. Think about how can your players have fun with the fans interact, show them behind the scenes show cameras, and the dugouts in the locker of show them doing things but the fans in the crowd, don’t make it just about how well they perform in the field. Every guy can hit a double, every guy can hit a homerun every guy can strike out. We’ve all seen it before. show how to interact and make that fun. And you’ll have a big difference on the fan base that you’ll start generating. That’s so awesome. So So I will have to tag the Red Sox and maybe a shout here. either call you to come play baseball or or give them some insight. The Baseball thing happened. I’m probably throwing about 60 miles an hour now. So maybe the other side. But you know you think about the opportunities that teams like the Miami Marlins that literally they’re drawn less than 5000 actual people per game. What do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose. The game’s already too long, too slow, too boring, but at least get your players involved in making it a show creating. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Baseball takes itself too seriously. And Nick, I’ll argue this. I think most businesses take themselves too seriously. No one gets excited about saying I met the most professional person today. You know what I was working with the most professional company. We want unique, we want fun, we want authentic, we want vulnerable, we want refreshing. And I think if people didn’t take themselves too seriously to be amazing the connection they will start developing with people and developing real fans. So what is the risk? What is the risk of doing all of those things you just mentioned? What people will think criticism. And why did why does that matter? Well, it matters to a lot of people because it hurts. It hurts when we came up with the Savannah ban his name.

And I immediately start getting hate emails and messages the owner should be thrown out of town you guys are embarrassment to the city. You’ll never sell a ticket biggest mistake Savannah has ever made. We got all those now you better believe a year later we did a mean tweet video with all those and half of them ended up being season ticket holders. That’s a whole nother story. It hurts. It hurts. We’re playing this year and we’re getting some criticism, you know, it hurts. But if you know who you are and what you stand for, and for us our company’s fans first and that’s how we make decisions. You have to get past that. But I believe strongly if you’re not getting criticized, you’re not doing anything. Yeah, that’s a great point. How do you keep your fans and your players engaged in the offseason? Good question. So especially this year with COVID that was even a bigger challenge. And so as we shut down the office, you know, a week or two before was mandatory here. Trying to be extra safe and we had an idea Palooza we said guys all right, no longer are you ticket you know ticket people no longer you operations people no longer you food and beverage. We’re all together to be fans first entertained, always. I go, what can we do to entertain our fans more. And so some of the greatest innovation came then we literally said, Alright, let’s start to cooking with bananas. So we started going into each other’s homes and everyone cooking, none of us can cook. We’re all like, just like millennials who are learning how to cook. And so cooking with bananas. We didn’t use a trivia with our announcer we started doing music videos with our fans and our players at home, we start doing coloring books, we started literally engaging the different way. And then we came up with that. Alright, we’re going to create bananas, 24 seven. And so that’s when our banana insider an entire new streaming way of watching games and documentary footage, and TV shows we’re creating our own Netflix 24 seven. So we started asking that question. You’re right with 30 games. For us. 30 home games, fortune when you sell every game, it makes it a pretty good business model. But you can’t rely on things. I think that’s the biggest thing I learned from Walt Disney is that he focused on control your dependencies. And when Walt Disney realized he said, All right. The Disney experience depends on movie theaters. It depends on literally, is it clean? Is it dirty? What’s the temperature there? How’s the video showing? He said, we need to take this in house, we need to create our own Disney World experience and obviously started with Disneyland and the 1955. And so that’s what he realized. So now I’m like, Alright, how can we control our own experience? How can we start doing more things? Our own food products? Aren’t drinking products are bananas. 24 seven, Netflix, I think everyone should ask that question. Right now. What are your dependencies? And how do you eliminate them? Yeah, yeah. What I heard you say though, was something called idea Palooza? What the heck is that? It’s a monthly thing we do. It’s a ideas are everything for our culture. And I think they’re everything for most businesses, often, a lot of times, they just come from the top. Well, now we crowdsource our ideas in our team, because we want to make sure everyone knows how important ideas are. So we have an idea box at the stadium. And every month, we ask a certain question that we’re trying to figure out for our fans, like, you know, what, what can we do to make fans want to stay to the end of the game? You know, what’s, what’s a new food experience that we can provide? We can get fans excited, 24 seven, not just during games, and everyone contributes 356 ideas, we go to our stadium club where we have a big whiteboard and says yes, maybe and needs work, we don’t have any notes, because we don’t want to skunk anybody. And what we do is we go through and we pitch these ideas. And by the end of the session, everyone puts a name next to it initials on who owns it, and who’s going to implement it. And some of our best, most creative ideas have come from those. And I’ll tell you, it’s a we have drinks, we have fun, it brings our culture together. It’s a big employee experience thing as well. But also it pushes our company to continue to innovate and come up with new ideas. I think that’s something that a lot of other companies need to start learning to do is listening and acting about what people are paying into what our people are saying, and hearing what they’re saying. And then saying, here’s what I’m going to do about it. Yeah, and dedicate time for it. You know, we get so far in the business, that we’re just focusing on the fire that’s in front of us right now. Now dedicate time to ideas to innovate, and not just for a few people put your whole team together. Yeah, that’s what’s been so valuable for us. So what’s next for Jesse? Cool, 1234 or five years out? You know, it’s funny, if I said that five years ago, I never would say where I am right now. But yeah, you know, we’re asking questions. And so I think when you ever you think about where you want to be in four or five years, don’t ask yourself, where do you want to be in four or five years? Ask, you know, what problems do you want to solve? What questions do you want to solve? And so the questions that we’re asking is, how can we deliver this experience the bananas experience to more people in a completely unique way? So we look at how can we take the show on the road? globetrotter style, we look at how can we show this? 24? Seven? How can we have new food items, new drink items? How can we have Airbnb? Is that our ballpark? How can we create a new banana land type theme park experience at our stadium? You know, those are the questions we asked, Do we know what’ll happen next? No. But that’s what makes it fun.

Nick Glimsdahl 24:02
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I wrap up every podcast with two questions. The first question is what book or person has influenced you the most in the past year? And the second question is, if you could leave a note to all the customer service and all the customer experience representatives and professionals, what would it say? Okay, all right. Let’s go the first one. So a person or what was the other part of the question a person what book or person

is influenced you the most?

Jesse Cole 24:32
All right, the books the books are tough because I read about 100 books a year. We do book reports on everything. And now I did it this year, I did a revisit. So what I did is every every book I came back to almost was completely revisited this year. And two books that made a huge impact to revisit. Nope, I’m gonna do four. So I’m gonna break the rule. Sorry. Alright. Built to Last Jim Collins was fortunate to speak at an event with him. He’s amazing. Onward by Howard Schultz. Great story about reinvention. And with Starbucks. The third one was our first book that we read as a full team. And that was nuts, the Southwest story. And then the last one is business for punks about brewdog. The story about little brewery that that was a revolutionary fighting their way. So all four of those have made a big impact this year. So they’re actually so they’re actually and brewdog is in Columbus, Ohio. Yes. Okay. brewdog. Yes, great story, you know, talk about someone James Watt, who like shares what they believe in, and they are relentless and unapologetic about it. That’s our whole staff read that one too, and got us fired up as well. So that’s, that’s the books on people. It’s always my wife. She’s in my mice on Maverick Sorry, I learned more from them on a daily basis than anyone. And then the question note, I could leave for anyone. It’s a note that I put on the back of our fans first playbook. And our fans. First playbook we share with everyone our staff, our players, our coach, our gameday staff or interns or full time staff, and it says Be patient and what you want for yourself, but be impatient and how much you give to others. And I believe that is the best note that’s helped me and made more impact on us. It’s the people that focus on giving without wanting anything in return, that make the biggest impact to get the most given back to them. And so that’s why I write a thank you letter every single day I started since 2016. Written 1000s of thank you letters, just give without wanting anything return and be patient and what you want for yourself and patient what you want to give to others. All right, cool. See, all my listeners you can connect with Jesse on his website, find your yellow tux calm or the Savannah bananas calm. LinkedIn is yellow tux. Jesse. Twitter is at yellow tux. Jesse. Jesse, thank you so much for joining me today. I had a blast, and I hope you go bananas. Thanks, Nick. Appreciate you

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The Press 1 For Nick podcast is both educational and engaging, and each episode offers listeners a dynamic blend of insightful stories, best practices, and invaluable lessons.

Nick’s guests – each with a unique wealth of knowledge – include leaders from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Some of his guests include:

Customer service & customer experience leaders
A hostage negotiator
Award-winning authors
Home Depot’s Senior Director of Customer Care
Former VP of Disney’s Magic Kingdom
Lyft’s Head of Partner and Customer Engagement
Deputy Chief Veteran Experience Officer from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

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What book or person has influenced you the most in the past year?
If you could leave a note to all the Customer Service and CX professionals, what would it say?

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