The Man in the Yellow Tux, Jesse Cole was our guest on the February 2021 Party in the Back Podcast. Jesse talked about his book and how the Savanah Banana’s Fans First approach drives their success.
If you want more insight from Jesse Cole, I highly recommend his book “Find Your Yellow Tux“. Jesse digs into how doing business differently can lead to your most rewarding successes, on the field and in life.
Here is a bonus excerpt from my interview with Jesse regarding value of hiring the right people who compliment your skills.
Jon Cudo: That’s fantastic. So your book is it’s not just a sports book, it’s a business book. And a lot of what you do, you’re sharing ideas that people can take into their own business. And one of the ones that really jumped off at me was we talked about the strengths and weaknesses and knowing who you are as a person and as a manager and hiring around that. And, you know, one of the examples that you give is apparentlyJesse you’re really bad at operations.
Jesse Cole: I’m as bad as it gets. You know, literally, the staff still calls me “Jesse Ops” like every day. If they see me, like lifting something or carrying something, they know I’m probably going to drop it, break it or lose it. I’m bad. And so it’s a it’s a big joke.
I just shipped my underwear. #DolceandBanana #GoBananas #freeshipping pic.twitter.com/BTq4MdYcfu
— Jesse Cole (@YellowTuxJesse) December 17, 2020
Jon Cudo: When I read that I was just like, this guy has awareness and and again, it’s knowing what you’re good at and then hiring around that. And I think that’s super important. And I just wanted to hear you talk about that in your hiring decisions and who you bring into your team based on that, whether it’s you or other people in your team.
Jesse Cole: And I’ll say this, it sounds crazy in the beginning. And you’ve obviously been a part of this, I’m sure in the beginning you say yes to everything to find out actually what you are good at, what you’re not good at.
I believe in the essential as a mindset and the one thing and and narrowing down and saying no to everything. But in the beginning, you never know.
I mean, I never I never assumed I’d be so bad at putting up signs and trying to do things as far as food and beverage. I was the worst, but I had to do it. And unfortunately, it was me and Emily, my wife, we were just running our Gastonia team, the two of us. So we did it everything. And I was bad, a lot of that. So I evolved my thinking into thinking, not just say, well, that’s easy.
Just do what you’re good at. Here’s the game changer that happened to be probably about a year and a half ago. And, you know, you and me we both have a lot of energy. You know, some of our buddies in the industry, you could tell they love it. They have a lot of enthusiasm for it. And I started realizing, like some days at the end of the day, I was exhausted and I finally did an audit.
I did an audit on my energy. And I looked at my calendar and I started realizing certain days that I was exhausted what I was doing. And for me, it was getting involved in details and trying to do spreadsheets and trying to figure out the whole entertainment scripts. I get exhausted with all those details, all those other things I’m doing ops or any of that. And then I realized what days I have the most energy.
And those were days that I’m creating, sharing or growing.
So if I’m creating videos, coming up with ideas and jamming about ideas, if I’m sharing like on a podcast or on a speech or talking to the team about ideas or if I’m growing, if I’m reading books, learning listen to podcast, growing, I am at the end of the day, I have more energy at 5:30 than I do at 4:30 when I wake up because I was doing things that gave me energy. So I created my energy list and I challenge anybody in business, write down what are those things.
Not just what you like and don’t like. What gives you energy that when you do it for an hour you could do it for another hour. And so that has helped me more than anything, be more aware of the things that don’t give me energy, get them off my list, the things that energy do more of them and hire the people. Bring on people that do what I don’t like or I’m not good at, what doesn’t give me energy, but it gives them energy because everybody has something different.
I might give them energy.
Jon Cudo: Yeah, I love that. I’m not one upping you because it’s straight right out of your book. I’m just saying what you said next: it just lets you amplify your skill set like instead of doing the stuff that you dread and you’d burns up your energy, all of a sudden you’re off doing the stuff that you’re really great at and that actually makes everybody better as well. So I thought this was a really great lesson in terms of hiring and building your team.
And I really I just took that as being such a key point in terms of not only getting the best out of the best people, but the best out of yourself afterwards.
Jesse Cole: Yeah. And, you know, I mean, obviously, what you’ve been doing for many years, I mean, it’s you know, in the US, you’re not a robot. They’ll be days that are more challenging. But usually it’s because of something else that took away energy that you were doing. You know, if you’re if you’re in your moment, you’re in your element. I mean, I’ll tell you, Jon, my favorite times in the world are at the end of the games.
When our band is playing, they play these Mardi Gras jam session songs. And I am dancing like a lunatic, like an idiot sweating my mind off at ten o’clock. There’s kids coming up to me. We’re dancing. I mean, I look terrible as a dancer out there, but I am not thinking about anything else. And I have more energy at ten thirty on a game night dancing because that’s just what I love doing.
I love being out there having fun and and sharing the joy that we’re doing. So I think just really that audit is really important to look at. And I tell our whole team, I said, are you doing what’s giving you energy right now? What’s firing you up? What’s doing that. And we’re constantly asking those questions and bringing in people that have energy because that’s how you get the most done and achieve more.
