Normal Gets Normal Results: The Systemic Advantage of Being Unreasonable

Jesse Cole’s work with the Savannah Bananas shows a simple truth: most businesses fail to innovate because they prioritize professionalism over memorability. By mapping where customers experience friction and engineering moments that people have to see to believe, Cole shows that competitive advantage comes from being willing to absorb short-term costs to build long-term loyalty. This analysis is for leaders who feel their growth has stalled and want to stop copying industry standards that only produce average results.

The Hidden Cost of Normal

Most organizations use professionalism as a safety net. They copy industry standards like fireworks or standard game formats because these tactics are low-risk and socially acceptable. Cole’s insight is that this creates a feedback loop where you get the same results as your competitors. The system gives you standard outputs because you provide standard inputs.

To break this, Cole suggests doing the unreasonable. This is not about being different for the sake of it. It is about finding where an industry is boring and removing the friction points that customers have been conditioned to accept.

> "No one gets excited about normal. No one gets excited about professional. They get excited about memorable. They get excited about remarkable."
>
> -- Jesse Cole

When you remove the normal parts of a service and replace them with something memorable, you change the customer's incentive to return. You stop providing a commodity and start providing an experience.

The 18-Month Payoff: Why Values Cost Money

The biggest tension in Cole’s story is the conflict between immediate profit and long-term brand equity. When his team accidentally sent a ticket email to 44,000 people instead of 4,000, they had to choose between hiding behind a technical error or following their Fans First value.

Choosing the latter cost the company $6 million in immediate revenue. In the short term, this looks like a failure. However, it was a high-leverage investment in brand resilience. By buying back tickets and taking care of every fan, they turned a potential disaster into a story that strengthened their culture.

> "Do you stand by your values? $6 million loss pretty big hit. You go back three four or five years ago. That's more revenue than total company brought in. Right. But if fans first and that's what we're gonna do it and that's how we're gonna make those decisions."
>
> -- Jesse Cole

Most companies would have protected the $6 million, saving the quarter but damaging the trust that drives their 4.2-million-person waitlist. Cole’s willingness to take that hit creates a barrier that competitors, who are unwilling to endure short-term pain, cannot cross.

Scaling the Unscalable

A common trap for growing organizations is abandoning high-touch interactions. Cole rejects this, arguing that you must do the unscalable to do the scalable. By treating internal team members as the first fans, he uses storytelling to keep everyone aligned across multiple touring teams.

Instead of relying on financial KPIs, Cole holds only one financial meeting per year. He replaces traditional management with Fans First storytelling, making sure every team member understands the why behind their actions. This shifts the culture from compliance to creative execution. When the team understands the goal is joy rather than just ticket sales, they start fixing friction points themselves.

Key Action Items

• Audit for Friction (Immediate): Identify one ordinary interaction in your business, such as an invoice or a sign-up process. List three ways to make it more useful or memorable.
• The You Wouldn't Believe Test (Next Quarter): Evaluate your current projects. If a customer cannot tell a story about your interaction that begins with "You wouldn't believe what they did," it is likely too normal. Pivot toward something more remarkable.
• Implement a Gratitude System (Immediate): Start a daily habit of sending personal thank-you videos to clients or team members. This creates a cycle of goodwill that pays off in long-term loyalty.
• Decouple Growth from Financial Meetings (12-18 Months): Shift your leadership focus from constant financial reporting to reinforcing core values through storytelling. If your team knows the why, the how becomes more efficient.
• Treat Failure as Discovery (Ongoing): Stop labeling setbacks as failures. When an experiment fails, analyze the data to inform the next iteration.
• Get Your Reps In (Ongoing): If you want to be a great leader, you must be a teacher. Share your journey, your mistakes, and your wins out loud to build a culture aligned by narrative rather than just policy.