Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Yetis slide into home base and then slip into a yellow tuxedo. Because today's interview is on the most fun franchise on earth, the Savannah Bananas.
Chapter 2: How did Jesse and Emily Cole meet and start their journey?
But this ain't a typical business interview, besties.
This is also couples counseling. Because we are here with Jesse Cole and Emily Cole, the husband and wife co-founders of the Savannah Bananas.
Chapter 3: Why do the Savannah Bananas refuse to take VC money?
Together, they have disrupted baseball from a four-hour slog into a two-hour viral hit.
While the Red Sox yawn in the dugout, the Bananas introduce dancing umpires. It's the Harlem Globetrotters meets basketball meets basketball meets Broadway. And it's Jesse and Emily's creation, the Cirque du Soleil of live sports. These two didn't just sell out a stadium.
They sold out every stadium, including, yeah, Yankee Stadium.
And they did it by changing the rules of baseball to eliminate every element of boring.
Chapter 4: What is the 'Burn the Boring' philosophy in baseball?
The boring from a struggling startup with so much debt they had to sell their house. To a $100 million new sport with a 1 million person wait list to get tickets.
The bananas have got 15 million followers on social media. Jack, can you sprinkle on some context, please?
That's more than the New York Yankees, the LA Dodgers, and the Boston Red Sox.
combined and they did it with one dancing pitcher at a time and by replacing walks with a walk-off fan who caught foul balls and the business is inspired by walt disney pt barnum and saturday night live oh and the grateful dead besties please welcome the shortstop of short skits the princess of dancing pictures and the king and queen of cartwheeling umpires jesse and emily cole are the co-founders of the savannah bananas and today's interview with this crazy couple is the best one yet
If you don't break out into the Macarena midway through this podcast, pause the pod. Guys, Jesse, Emily, fantastic to have you with us. Thanks so much for coming on.
Well done.
We never had that.
That was very intense.
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Chapter 5: What unique strategies do the Savannah Bananas use to engage fans?
We've actually never had a couple on the podcast, a couple and co-founders at the same time. So like the first thing we were wanting to know was, we got to hear the meet cute story on this, right, Jack?
You started a company together 10 years ago, right as you were getting married. Yeah. Tell us how you met each other. M-O-U.
Well, I was actually in the industry before we met.
Chapter 6: How do Jesse and Emily measure success beyond traditional metrics?
So a lot of people think that because Jesse is... The banana industry. Yeah, that he brought me into it. But we both worked in the industry and I was working for Ripken Baseball at the time. Jesse was probably the youngest general manager ever. He was 23 and was just a sponge and trying to learn. So he hosted his own conference, which is unheard of for anybody, but for a 23-year-old.
Really lofty, right? And he invited a lot of the executives in the industry from around the country to his conference. And my boss from Ripken Baseball went and heard him speak and walked outside and called me and said, I just met the guy that you're going to marry.
Wow.
I was 24 and not interested in getting married, you know, on the path to running teams and really building myself in my career.
Chapter 7: What is the story behind the 'Human Piñata' disaster?
But I said, okay, I'll at least reach out to him. And he was doing things like hosting grandma beauty pageants and having flatulence fun night and things that were very odd. in the industry, but I was intrigued. And so I emailed him as one does in 2009. Yes. And we stayed in touch. We emailed and disconnected professionally for a little while.
And then in 2011, we actually had our meet queue, as you say. We both walked into the Minor League Baseball promo seminar in Myrtle Beach, and that's where we kind of locked eyes from across the hotel lobby at that opening cocktail hour and really have been talking and dreaming together ever since.
Chapter 8: How do Jesse and Emily innovate and iterate on their ideas?
That is incredible. The fact that we could cover the start of a relationship, the start of a company, and farting-themed baseball games all in one kickoff answer. That says everything about what we're about to talk about in today's show.
But Nick and I actually have origins in the finance industry. Yes. And we jumped in T-boy style to what we think are your financial statements.
Now, a quick word from our sponsor.
You've said that you sold 2.2 million tickets last year. At around $35 a ticket and $25 of merch per fan, we calculated $130 million in revenue for the Bananas last year. Can you share with us how much money you've made and whether the business is profitable?
That's not something that we focused on. I'm very transparent. Emily and I, we don't even look at the bank accounts. We know we're very healthy. We know that number is inaccurate that you just shared.
I'm very transparent.
There's a lot of other parts to our business, but we also know that we invest very heavily. People don't realize how much we invest in every one of our people. We travel around the country, and the logistics are crazy. We have our own warehouse for merchandise. We do our own broadcast. We do our own ticketing. We built our own ticket system. We do our own entertainment. We do everything in-house.
And so, obviously, we invest a lot, and we're very fortunate that our fans support us tremendously. Yeah.
Well, that's totally fair, guys. Jack and I, similarly, with the show every day, we focus on just making the best show yet every day. We don't focus on what the numbers are. And we find that one follows the other.
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