How to Turn Customers Into Raving Fans with Savannah Bananas Owner Jesse Cole
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How did Jesse Cole’s early baseball career and injuries shape the founding of the Savannah Bananas?
this is the edmund all right welcome back to the show everybody man i've wanted to have this dude on for a long time i think he's one of the great if you know top five entrepreneurs that i'm excited about in the world today literally one because it's sort of connected to baseball but more because this dude gets culture he gets client experience better than anybody i think on planet earth okay and let me just give you some stats First of all, you know the Savannah Bananas. That's probably how many of you would know. That's one of the teams. But he actually has Fans First Entertainment. He's the owner of the Banana Baseball Champion League. Let me tell you how popular these guys are, okay? As I understand it, as of April of 2026, 4 million plus people on the wait list to get a ticket to one of the games.
They fill up stadiums with 100,000 fans. Last night, he was at something with 80,000, 90,000 fans. Just to give you context, guys, Super Bowl had 71,000 fans, okay? They've got over 21 million followers on social media. They got a new deal with ESPN and Disney. This dude is one of the great American business stories because he gets the most important things in an AI area, which is experience and culture for the fans. I'm fired up, dude, for you to teach people all these lessons today. So this is Jesse Cole. Jesse, welcome to the show. I love it, man. Let's rock and roll. He's he's a Boston boy, too, which I was just discovering, which means he's good people on top of everything else. OK, I want to know this all for my personal edification.
So you're filling up all these stadiums, which is insane to get 80,000 to get eight. thousand people to come to something is no pun intended bananas take me back to the beginning of this just for a second because there's a lot of entry-level entrepreneurs listening to the show today they've got their startup they're in their third year their fourth year their tenth year where'd the idea in the first place come from and what did the early years look like for you and the company
Yeah, well, people don't realize they think it's an overnight success, but it's going on almost 20 years now. And so, yeah, I mean, the bananas are going on 11 years now. But go back before that. I spent 10 years in a little tiny town in Gastonia, North Carolina, running a college summer baseball team with no one wanting to come to the games. $268 in the bank account of the team my first day and fans coming to the game. That's what we started as a 23-year-old general manager.
Are you serious?
Yeah, so people don't realize that. So I had played baseball my whole life. Big baseball guy. Was fortunate to get a Division I scholarship. Went down to South Carolina and played at Wofford. The dream of playing pro ball. Scouts of the games. Getting letters from the teams. This is going to happen. And then I tore my shoulder the senior year. Just like that. Right like that. Three tears. Done. Never played again.
Wow.
And everyone's like, you're going to go into coaching. You've been around the game your whole life. You're going to go into coaching. And so, yeah, that's what I thought I would do. And I coached for one summer in the Cape Cod League, which I know you're familiar with. Yeah, yeah. I realized one day I'm sitting in the dugout, the best scene in the house with the best players. All these guys go play pro. They're the best of the best. I'm bored out of my mind, Ed. I'm just sitting there. I'm like, I played my whole life, but I'm sitting there. I'm like, I know what's going to happen. We're going to do this. We're going to try to bun them over. We're going to run. I'm like, I'm not in the game. I'm watching the game.
And I realized I'm bored, man. What about the fans?
Yeah.
Parts of the game. So I learned this. I started studying Walt Disney religiously and, When he took his daughters on Saturdays to Daddy Daughter Day, they'd go out to the park and went out to the carousel and went to Griffith Park. And he said, I wish there was a place adults and kids could have fun together. And that's where the thoughts, the ideation of Disneyland came about.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Jesse Cole’s early baseball career and injuries shape the founding of the Savannah Bananas?
0:09–6:36
2
What forced Jesse and Emily to risk everything and move from a failing Gastonia team to Savannah?
6:36–12:46
3
How did the ‘Fans First’ mindset turn two tickets in three months into a 4‑million‑person waitlist?
12:46–18:39
4
What’s the difference between a customer and a fan, and why do fans defend a brand when things go wrong?
18:39–23:42
5
What is the ‘Friction Question’ and how can any business use it to design a better experience?
23:42–28:59
6
Why does Jesse say attention beats marketing 1,000 % of the time, and how does he capture it?
28:59–35:40
7
Which two Walt Disney principles does Jesse apply to keep the experience fresh and future‑proof?
35:40–43:13
8
How does the Energy List help Jesse show up as a leader, a dad, and a sustainable entrepreneur?
43:13–50:30
Speakers
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