WW 07: Two Ways of Thinking About Putting Fans First
Hello, Wondering People!
Wonder Work recently acquired its 50th subscriber. I appreciate every one of you who subscribes, recommends, or tells a friend. To keep from getting on the hedonistic treadmill (see Wonder Work 06), I decided to ask myself, “what if I never acquire another subscriber? Would the project still be worth doing?” The answer is yes, absolutely.
I hope Wonder Work continues to grow, but instead of focusing on attracting more subscribers, this week, I want to think about how to create the best possible experience for the subscribers I have. So, I’ve considered two men with very different ideas about what it means to put fans first. One is known for his bright yellow tuxedo. The other is known for bespoke fine dining experiences.
This issue of Wonder Work doesn’t present one small idea; instead, we’re we're examining two radically different approaches to the same fundamental principle. Because the most interesting insights don’t come from choosing sides, but from understanding how the same truth can be lived in completely different ways.
So, are you ready to wonder?
Two Ways of Thinking About: Putting Fans First
The Spark: the Savannah Bananas and Unreasonable Hospitality
Amazing things happen when you put your fans (or customers or students) first, but only when you forge a path based on your own authentic philosophy.
Nancy Martira
Clew Strategy
Two men have revolutionized their respective industries by obsessing over the people they serve. Jesse Cole went from managing the worst team in baseball to owning a franchise that has sold out every game since their inaugural season, with a waitlist of more than 2 million fans. Will Guidara transformed Eleven Madison Park from a struggling two-star brasserie into 2017’s best restaurant in the world.
Photo of the Savannah Bananas via LA Times
Both men built their success on the same foundation: putting fans first. But their approaches could not be more different. Jesse Cole is a revolutionary who has created a legion of fans through joyful disruption; Will Guidara is a perfectionist, winning fans through meticulous elevation. Which method should you copy? Neither, friend. But there’s much to learn from both.
"No one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable." Will Guidara
The Revolutionary: Jesse Cole's Joyful Disruption
Jesse Cole spent his entire life playing baseball until a shoulder injury ended his career trajectory to the Major Leagues. At 23 years old, he was the new general manager of the Gastonia Grizzlies, a summer league team that attracted about 200 fans per game. It should have been fun, but Jesse was bored. The fans were bored. Finally, he asked himself, “why does this feel like a job at the DMV when it should feel like Disneyland?” That was the day Jesse decided to stop trying to build a better baseball team and instead build something … unforgettable. Jesse "looked at every part of the game that was slow and boring” and began devising new rules that would make the game play faster and more exciting. His solution wasn't to perfect existing baseball — it was to invent something entirely new.
Cole's Philosophy: Break the Rules to Serve People Better
After years of trial and error, Cole landed on the mantra, “Fans First. Entertain Always.” Every night, Jesse dons the bright yellow tuxedo to welcome fans to “the Greatest Show in Sports.” But this isn't just about entertainment — it's about systematic transformation. Cole doesn't want to make baseball better; he wants to replace it with something that actually serves families, casual fans, and anyone who has found traditional baseball slow or inaccessible.
The results speak to the power of revolutionary thinking: 98% of fans stay until the last pitch, which is, uh, not normal at most minor league games. They've gone from playing in front of empty stadiums to selling out 74,000-seat NFL stadiums on their world tour. (The Albuquerque game sold out before I could get tickets. Again.)
"If we had money pouring in and plenty of resources, we might have been tempted to go with the status quo. With no money, we had to go with the capital we did have: each other. We had to outthink, not outspend."
Cole's revolution is fundamentally democratizing. Ticket pricing is all-inclusive with no hidden fees, and the goal is to make the experience joyful for families and casual fans. His innovation scales: every Banana Ball game follows the same rule set that prioritizes fun over tradition. The Bananas now play exhibition games exclusively, and Cole’s empire has expanded to include three more teams: The Party Animals, The Firefighters, and the Texas Tailgaters. Other independent and collegiate league teams like the Florence Y’alls, the Charleston Dirty Birds, and the Madison Night Mares are starting to adapt the Bananas “fan first” family entertainment philosophy.
As Cole explains: "If we'd had money pouring in and plenty of resources, we might have been tempted to go with the status quo. With no money, we had to go with the capital we did have: each other. We had to outthink, not outspend." Constraints forced creativity, leading to a completely reimagined product.
Five Unsexy Comms Projects
Even the most mundane assets deserve a strategic foundation. So while you're putting out fires, let me take some lingering chores off your plate. Here are five specific ways I can help with the projects no one wants to own.
The Perfectionist: Will Guidara's Meticulous Elevation
Will Guidara looked at fine dining and saw unlimited potential for transcendence. Rather than breaking the rules of hospitality, he decided to perfect them beyond recognition. His goal was to be "unreasonable in pursuit of people" while continuing to "strive for excellence" within the existing framework of fine dining.
Before Guidara wrote Unreasonable Hospitality, before he became a Co-Producer on The Bear, before the conference, the summit, and the TED Talk, Will Guidara was a restaurant guy. Specifically, he was the co-owner of Eleven Madison Park in New York City. In the first year after Guidara and Daniel Humm bought Eleven Madison Park from Danny Meyer, it earned three Michelin stars. Five years later, it was named The Best Restaurant in the World. How did he do it?
Unlike Cole, Guidara’s path to success did not involve stiltwalkers or geriatric cheerleaders, but he was inspired by a ballpark classic: the hot dog. When Guidara overheard European tourists in the Eleven Madison dining room lamenting that they hadn't tried a New York hot dog, he "dashed outside to a nearby cart to buy a hot dog, convinced a chef accustomed to preparing four-star meals to serve it and delivered a $2 hot dog with Michelin-level garnishes to a table of unsuspecting tourists." Guidara frequently tells this now-famous story on podcasts and in speaking gigs. “I brought out what we in New York, call a dirty water dog. And I explained it. I said, ‘Hey, I wanna make sure you don't go home with any culinary regrets. Here's that hotdog’, and they freaked out and kind of systemizing that is what led to everything that came from there.”
Guidara's Philosophy: Elevate Every Detail to Create Transcendence
Guidara follows the "One-Inch Rule," a concept emphasizing the importance of attention to detail and staying present through the final stages of any task, particularly in service-oriented environments. As Guidara instituted the rule for his team, he instructed them to put plates down gently in front of guests, as that was "the final inch in a long chain of people who invested many hours of work into the experience." The One-Inch Rule is a reminder to stay present and follow through to the very last step.
The Eleven Madison Park Dining Room
In addition to sweating the small stuff, Guidara’s team created "Dreamweavers." Dreamweavers are people dedicated to delighting customers through "improvisational hospitality" that relies on listening to customers at every step of their journey, including "eavesdropping on a table, and responding to something overheard." As a result of this service espionage, Dreamweavers have whisked off a family who had never seen snow "via limo to Central Park for a few hours of fun" and created "a replica of a beach in a couple's private dining room, after their tropical vacation flight was canceled".
The Personalization Factor
Guidara states: "if what you're trying to do is give people a sense of genuine belonging, one size fits one". Each gesture is unique and non-replicable. "No one had ever reacted to anything I served them better than they reacted to that hot dog," Guidara said, not because the dirty water dog reached new gastronomic heights, but because it was exactly what those specific people needed in that specific moment.
While Jesse Cole credits resource restraint for his team’s creativity, Guidara’s approach requires lots of resources: Eleven Madison Park operates with a $500 per-plate price point, enabling the kind of bespoke experiences that define unreasonable hospitality. But within that context, the focus remains entirely on how to make each person feel seen, known, and cared for.
Curiosity
If Will Guidara’s hot dog story sounds familiar, you may have watched FX’s The Bear. Chefs, servers, and television critics have written odes to the show, particularly S2E7 titled “Forks.” After days of shining forks, Cousin Richie starts to understand the lesson about obsessive service that Carmy sent him to learn. A little one-on-one time with Olivia Coleman helps, too. In a “moment of triumph”, Richie tells the dining room captain that one of the tables is talking about wanting to try Chicago deep dish pizza. A pizza is covertly ordered, plated by the chef de cuisine, and delivered to the table by Richie. The Bear came by this story idea honestly; Will Guidara is a co-producer of the show.
Two Experiments: Test One or Both Approaches
To understand which path resonates with you — revolutionary disruption or meticulous perfection — try experimenting with both approaches in your own life this week.
Here are two small experiments to try:
The Disruption Test:
Identify one process, tradition, or "way we've always done things" in your work or personal life that consistently frustrates the people you serve. Instead of trying to improve it, ask: "What if we completely started over? What would we create if our only goal was to serve these people better?" Spend 20 minutes designing something entirely new, ignoring all existing constraints and conventions.
The Elevation Test:
Choose one routine interaction you have with others — a weekly team meeting, client on-boarding, or even family dinner. For one week, pay obsessive attention to every tiny detail of that experience. Ask yourself: "How could I make this single moment more thoughtful, more present, more precisely calibrated to what this specific person needs right now?" Focus on execution, not innovation.
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What's remarkable about Cole and Guidara isn't just their category-busting success, it's how their completely different approaches reveal the flexibility of putting people first. Cole's path requires courage to disrupt and reimagine. Guidara's path requires discipline to perfect and elevate. Both require the fundamental commitment to care more about the people you serve than about industry norms.
Cole asks the revolutionary question: "What if . . . ?" and has found that simple question "can turn the most ho-hum, run-of-the-mill experience into something completely new." Guidara focuses on intentionality: "Intention means every decision from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane matters."
Different personalities, same principle: Both men discovered that when you genuinely put others first, they become your marketing department, your advocates, your ambassadors. There's profound freedom in recognizing you don't have to choose between revolution and perfection. The question isn't which approach is "right" — it's which approach serves your specific people in your specific context. Sometimes the most radical act is burning everything down and starting over. Sometimes it's taking what exists and executing it with such care that it becomes transcendent.
A Night at the Ballpark
A Night at Eleven Madison Park
The Wonder of Authentic Service
Both stories remind us that genuine service isn't a marketing strategy—it's a way of being in the world. In the seventh inning of the Savannah Bananas' very first game, when 18-year-old Logan Moody walked up to the stands to deliver a signed baseball to a woman who had requested one and sat with her family for an entire half inning, bringing her to tears, Jesse realized they were "on to something special.” When Jesse asked Logan about the gesture afterward, the young player simply said, "It's fans first, right?"
That moment crystallized everything: whether you're revolutionizing an industry or perfecting an experience, the magic happens when serving others becomes so natural that even an 18-year-old understands it intuitively.
The Question
Looking at your own work or relationships, are you more naturally drawn to Cole's revolutionary approach (breaking rules to serve people better) or Guidara's perfectionist approach (elevating every detail)? What would change if you experimented with the opposite approach for just one interaction this week?
And now for the Mystery Link!
You did it! You've made it all the way to the end of this essay. This week, we've got examples of art made by incarcerated people. So, which will you choose: Door Number One or Door Number Two?
(or buy me a coffee.) Meet Nancy Martira. I'm a brand strategist and communications consultant who brings endless curiosity to every project. If you've got a challenge that needs a fresh, unexpected perspective, let's talk!
Communications consultant, brand strategist, & Wonder Work creator. Curious about everything from terrible orchestras to happiness algorithms. Feed your curiosity; starve the doom — one small idea at a time. Let's wonder!