Hiring Fans First Employees

If you want your team to create an amazing experience for customers, you have to create an amazing experience for them. And so we map the journey for them. You know, our hiring process is very simple. For us, we have a three step process. First thing we want is a video cover letter. It's very important that we could see our people on camera. Do they bring enthusiasm? Do they bring energy? Do they look like they wanna serve people and bring fun? The next one is our fans first essay. You know, if your company has core beliefs, you're bringing people, do they max those core beliefs? We have them fill out our fans first essay on our fans first way and our core beliefs. And third and finally is our future resume. We don't necessarily care what you've done in the past. We wanna know what you wanna do in the future. That matters to us. You put those three pieces together, and they know how important our culture and our experience matters. The next step is when they start, you better believe it's gonna be a memorable day. If your fan's first impression walking into your ballpark isn't special, they're not gonna become a great fan. So for our team, our employees, when they show up that first day, it's completely mapped by the minute. How they show up, we're all in costumes. We're greeting them. We have silly string. We have their perfect breakfast of their favorite food. We have pictures set up for them, you know, of of their family and and a plaque ready to go in their office. Then we literally have a celebration at the end of the day where we cheers and put their name up on the wall. It's all mapped out. When we have interns join our team, we discuss these fans first stories, these examples, and so they understand what it looks like. And they have that opportunity to implement that with our team. So give an example. Barry Aldridge, who is our vice president now, when he was an intern, we had something that happened with a fan that he didn't know what to do. And so we were calling our fans, thanking them for tickets, and he couldn't get through to one fan. And they had bought eight tickets. It was a family. And finally, he got through to the father. And the father answered the phone and said, I'm so sorry. My wife bought these tickets for our seven kids, and she just tragically died. And all had young kids, wide range. So Barry comes into my office and says, Jesse, what do we do? And I turned to him and said, well, what do you think? What's fans first? And he said, well, we should try to create a great experience for them if we can. And I said, alright. Well, whatever you think is best, I trust you to do it. This is, let's create a special memory for this family if we can. And so he called the father back and said, hey. If you'd want, we'd love to have you and the kids at the game. We'll take care of them, make it a special, experience for them. The dad said, you know, it'd probably be good for the kids to get out of the house and come to the ballpark. So when the kids arrived with the dad, Barry set them up on the front row, and he presented the dad with a jersey with the mother's name on it and the amount of years that they were married. Then we had all the players come up to all the kids, have autographs for them, sign bats, and spend almost thirty minutes with them before the game. The family stayed to the end of the game, which never happens in a full baseball game. And after the game, the father went up to Barry and said this was the last gift the mother ever gave the kids. I couldn't imagine a better gift. And Barry was a twenty two year old intern. Now Barry is our vice president and help leading our team, and that family has become fans for life because of a simple decision to say say, what would create an special memory for them? What is fans first? We didn't think about costs. We didn't think about anything else other than create that special moment. That's a fans first moment that we share with our team always because it was an intern making a decision to create a special memory. It's sad, but it makes it made an impact, and that's what we're looking to do. Whether it's an intern, whether it's a part time staff member, what's a full time staff member, What's a normal way that they would come into a business? Here's some paperwork you have to sign. Here's your job. This is what it is. Treat them like a fan. And so that's so important to us because our biggest fans are our people. And when we talk about fans first, it's actually our employees and our team first. Those are the people we put first. You put them first, they take care of your customers, and then you have everyone that's a raving fan spreading your word.