The Best One Yet - 🍌⚾ "Burn the Boring" — Savannah Bananas Co-Founders Jesse & Emily Cole

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Watch the interview on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/eyS-eokvP-UEveryone laughed when Jesse and Emily Cole said they were going to save baseball by turning it into a circus. The traditionalists said it was a mockery. The investors said it wouldn't scale. Babe Ruth woulda blushed.But today, while the Red Sox and Yankees yawn in the dugout, the Savannah Bananas are selling out those very same stadiums… while on stilts.In this episode, we sit down with the husband-and-wife co-founders to uncover how they turned a struggling startup - with so much debt they had to sell their house - into a viral phenomenon with a waitlist of over 1 million people.We dive deep into their "Fans First" business model, why they refuse to take VCmoney, and how "burning the boring" let them create a new sport and disrupt a 100-year-old industry.They even got engaged in the middle of a (rainy) baseball game.WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:The "Anti-Business" Model: Why they refuse to take investors, sell advertising, charge for hot dogs, or collect sales taxes.Burn The Boring: How they audited every second of a baseball game to eliminate friction (goodbye, bunts and walks).The "Do The Opposite" Strategy: How a philosophy inspired by P.T. Barnum & Walt Disney helped them win in the attention economy.Metrics vs. Magic: Why Jesse and Emily ignore traditional ROI data to focus on "Return on Fan".(And why you should check the weather before proposing)TIMESTAMPS:0:00 - Intro: The "Cirque du Soleil" of Baseball2:05 - The Meet Cute: How Jesse & Emily Met5:20 - Why They Refused VC Money (Owning 100% Equity)6:48 - The Walt Disney Lesson on Control8:45 - Leaving $50 Million on the Table12:55 - Burning the Boring: Inventing Banana Ball19:00 - Failures: The "Human Pinata" Disaster24:00 - The Strategy: "Whatever is Normal, Do The Opposite"31:00 - Making Decisions on Intuition vs. Spreadsheets42:00 - The Story That Defines "Fans First"51:40 - Rapid Fire QuestionsNEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter OUR 2ND SHOW:Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/NEW LISTENERSFill out our 2 minute survey: https://qualtricsxm88y5r986q.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dp1FDYiJgt6lHy6GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Linkedin (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/Linkedin (Jack): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. 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. 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 introduced dancing umpire. It's the Harlem Globetrotters meets basketball meets basketball meets Broadway.

And it's Jesse and Emily's creation, the Cirque de 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. The boring, from a struggling startup with so much debt they had to sell their house. To a $100 million new sport with a one 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 L.A. 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, P.T. Barnum, and Saturday Night Live. Oh, and The Grateful Dead. Besties, please welcome the shortstop of short skits, the princess of dancing pitchers. 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 for coming on. Well done. We never had that. That was very intense. Poetic dee.

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.

Amphal you? Well, I was actually in the industry before we met. 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 Ripkin 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 Ripkin 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. Oh, my God. I was 24 and not interested in getting married, you know, on the path to running teams and really building myself in my career.

But I said, okay, I'll at least reach out to him. And he was doing things like hosting Grandma Beauty Pageants and having Flatchelance 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. 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 bucks a ticket and $25 of merch per fan, we can. We can. You know, you sold 2.2 million tickets last year.

calculated $130 million in revenue for the bananas last year. Can you share with us how much money you've made and whether the profitable and whether the business is profitable? That's not something that we focused on. And we're 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. There's a lot of other parts to our business. But we also know that we invest very heavily. I mean, people don't realize how much we invest in every one of our people. We travel. 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. Well, that's totally fair, guys. You know, 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. But there is another financial question that you have shared publicly that we found fascinating, which is that 100% of the equity in your business is owned by the two people we're speaking to right now, you two is a couple, which is incredible. And Jack, just to share with the besties and yet, he's listening right now, why is that shocking? I mean, all of the startup world is glorifying

venture capital and billion dollar fundraisers. How did you two resist taking outside money and keep everything remain the masters of your own destiny? That takes a lot of discipline. we just didn't know any better. I mean, we started as kids running baseball teams. And, you know, we didn't know. There was no, like, blueprint for us. We just knew we didn't want to work the same way as everyone else was doing. And so you mentioned earlier in the deduction.

Yeah, Walt Disney, you know, he studied in Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Yes, they all had funding. But, like, we were such a small little, you know, startup that, like, we didn't even think about it. We just needed our fans to buy tickets. And so, yeah, we learned how to do it with nothing. When our first year, we only sold a handful of tickets when we started. we had to, yes, sell our house, empty out our state's account.

We were, you know, sleeping on airbed and struggling, but we learned how to make ends meet with very little. So we didn't need all this extra support. And so if we could figure out how to do it with very little, even as we grow, we're trying to do the same thing. And that's what we've been able to do. Yeah, Jesse, if I can interpret what you're saying here, you're basically saying, like, yes, we resisted taking that outside venture capital money, but it meant we took all the risk on ourselves as a couple and as a household and literally had to sell our house. Yeah, well, a hundred percent. Well, think about this and what we've learned, you know, when Walt Disney, when he lost control, you know, he lost control of his first character,

you know, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, he lost control of the distribution rights. He lost control. And so he's like, I need to gain control back. You know, he only gave out control again when he was building Benadeland, building Disneyland. I'm sorry, that's a huge. We will. We will build Benial. But he gave away control to ABC and his publishing company, but then he bought it all back within five years. And what we've learned is whenever you have to, shareholders, different investors, other people. We've had numerous people reach out. They want to return. They want to have control. They want to affect the experience. They would do so many things that aren't fans first for us, which is keeping no ticket fees, no convenience fees, no service fees,

pay our fans taxes, no shipping fees, keeping all our games free on YouTube, not having sponsorship everywhere. All the things that we do that's unconventional, a shareholder investor would want to do that. And so we have no interest in playing that game. We want to keep doing what's best for fans. So, Jesse, we love that you and Emily plow every dollar you get back into the business. and some sort of investments, as you were mentioning earlier. But it also seems like you're limiting the number of dollars coming into your business. The way Jack and I put it was, your business model, as we studied, the Savannah Banana's baseball phenomenon, is an anti-business model.

Now, to slow down the rundown you just gave us. Yeah, Jack, why don't you sprinkle in the context? You have forbidden in-park advertising at your stadium. Food and beverages with the $14 hot dogs and $11 beers. You include that kind of thing in the tickets. It's all-inclusive pricing. TV deals, you insist on being free to watch on YouTube. You even cut out Ticketmaster, eliminated the ticket fees, and pay the sales tax for your customers.

I've never heard of anything like that. Add it all up, it appears you mainly make money in two ways. Ticket sales and merch. So we're curious. Like, how is it? Why leave so much cash on the table? I mean, it's very simple. Our North Star is fans first.

What takes care of fans? we focus on them, the long-term fan, over short-term profits. And so when you look at it with that lens, it's very easy to leave that money on the table because that's not who we're serving. We're not serving the corporate sponsorships who want a big return on having a huge billboard. That's not who we're taking care of. We're taking care of the everyday fan, the family who's coming out to the ballpark. And so when you think about it like that with that lens, it's actually a very simple decision,

a very easy decision for us on what to say no to and what to focus all in on. Yeah, guys, think about this. Five years ago, we served 100,000. thousand fans. We were playing traditional baseball. Okay. And we left a animal, disrupted ourself. And that model was college. You couldn't pay the players. It was a very good, healthy business model. Let's go to professional now spend millions of dollars investing in players and travel and everything else.

It was free labor. But it was best for fans. So let me went from 100,000 to 500,000, to a million to 2.2 million to over 3.2 million this year. If we did all those other things and had all the extra fees and all the things that aren't fans first, we couldn't serve that many fans because they wouldn't be interested. And so when you're playing the game on how to create fans, everything else takes care of itself. Yeah, do we leave $20, $30, $40, $50 million on the table? 100%. But that's not, the business is still very healthy.

We can take care of our people at a high level and, you know, the business is growing. By focusing on the customers, essentially what you're saying is the return you get isn't necessarily in that dollar back that they spend. It's on the customer returning and referring and returning and referring and growing and adding more customers and fans. Let me be an example. There's 4.2 million people on our watering list. You mentioned a million earlier. There's actually, it's over four million on our line. We got an update in number.

And during the holiday season right now, and we don't look at the dollars. We look at how we serve fans. We are doing thousands of orders every single day online all over the country. For merchandise. For merchandise. Just merchandise. And so we have 100,000 square foot warehouse with numerous people serving fans all hours throughout the day.

And so, like, that because of that trust we built and that loyalty we built, that our fans continue to come and support us. I think about, like, consumer. surplus. In other words, like, how much money did I spend and how do I compare that to how much fun I had? There's a business school chart right now, Jack, that's crying as you're describing this. I feel like people who leave a Savannah Banana's game have so much consumer surplus because they spent way less than they would have expected, having gone to a crazy game, and just received way more as a customer than they could have imagined. And that customer love, it'd be calculated as

like NPS in the boardroom. But it really does pay dividends. terms of, Nick, like you said, when people leave a game, they say, oh, my God, you have no idea how much fun it was. You need to get on that wait list. Jack, if I could put everything you said into like a math cultural equation here, and almost put it as like happiness equals reality minus expectations. Right. And that's what Jesse and Emily are able to deliver with the product. Well, expectations keep rising. Everyone's expectations of experience and service keep rising. That's true. And if people are a good at really well, think about Taylor Swift, you know, on our errors tour. She goes, I'm going to do a set that's almost four hours long.

That's crazy. I'm going to give people signs from every single error. What her thing is, like, these people are coming from all over the world to see me. I'm going to give them the best concert event I could ever give them. And back in the day, Michael Jackson used to think the exact same way and go over the top of these performances. And so what people don't realize is a show that starts at 7 o'clock for us, we actually start entertaining at 2 o'clock. We actually do a rope drop. And we have our players greeting fans as they walk into the stadium signing autographs.

And then we do a pre-show from 3 to 430. Then we have a March. And then we have pre-entertainment from 430 up until 7, like 72 different shows, promotions, music. Then we have our two-hour game. Then we have an hour post-game plaza party. Then we sign a monograph until the last fan leaves, which goes to 1130.

And we're not asking for your money. We just want to give more to our fans, and then hopefully they continue to get to us. Okay, Jack, I feel like we're at a point where, you know, we're talking about this sport, and we're talking about in high-level terms here. But maybe we should define what banana ball is and what we're speaking about here,

because we want to get to how you burn the boring, your strategy with a formula for fun, and all of these things that our audience can take with them in their jobs, in their companies, in their lives. But to start, let's talk about burning the boring, your strategy for developing and inventing this new sport called banana ball. You literally walked through the rules of baseball and the experience of baseball,

inning by inning, pitch by pitch, play by play, and found every element that a fan might find boring and said, let's eliminate that from the game. Ultimately, you created a new sport. You burned the boring. We compared you to basketball earlier. What are the highlights of banana ball? Literally, what's crazy back six, seven years ago,

so I do an idea book every single day, or I don't have an idea. And the original ideas, which we call the game Showball, is in the Hall of Fame right now. And a lot of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstow, which is really, really cool. But yeah, we looked at everything. So what are the parts of baseball?

Stepping out of the box. I remember watching a game when Yassil Pui was stepping out. I was taking 20 to 30 seconds immediately pitch. I'm like, this is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. The mound visits. Like, again, you watch, and it's the way the pitching coach, the slow walkout today.

And everyone's just sitting there like, really? And we know it's a strategy. We brought to get another pitcher warmed up and delay the game. But like, like, there's not one fan in the world. I hope there's mound visits tonight. I want to see at least two to three mound visits. It's going to the best game in my life. Brutal.

That doesn't help. You know, you keep looking at walks. Like, I think the walk is a hilarious concept. This is an athletic sport. You're playing called a walk. Okay, all you do is you kind of scroll and just nice easy job. Let me really happen if you get the first base, okay? Eliminate that.

The average baseball game a few years ago, I'm looking, was three hours and 12 minutes. Now they're out of the pick clock, and they've got a lot better. But it's like, do we hours and 12 minutes? What people don't know is a few years ago, we actually took pictures and videotaped, our crowd every 30 minutes from 530 all the way until the end of the game. And we want that 9 o'clock, an influx of fans start to leave two hours into the game, and then a 915 more, and then at 930, it was a big influx. And so, like, when we said a two-hour time limit, most people were like, just go two and a half. Baseball's already three, two.

I'm like, no, you want fans to want more. The George Costanza rule. Yeah, leave him wanting more. You know, think about this, you don't go to a great movie and you walk out in the middle and say, ah, that movie was great. I left in the middle. We're like, oh, I love that concert. That comedian was so good. I left in the middle, but he was awesome.

But yet in baseball games, people lead. games early all the time. And so what do you got to do that? You're going to make the game faster. You're going to eliminate the boring things. And so, yeah, all that. You know, you could steal first. Fans can catch foul balls for outs. No bunting because bunting sucks. Like literally, if you bunch, you're thrown out of the game. No, Jack and I think about this a lot with our show. You know, we're all competing in the attention economy. And there are just distractions everywhere too. And so we often talk about like burning the boring, whether it's in an interview episode or an episode we weave up on a daily basis. Like, it's just not worth that waste.

Yet he's, I'm the son of a New York Yankees fan who's very much a traditionalist. Like, he loves that the Yankees had their no facial hair policy, for example. I figure he would hate the bananas, you know? And so at first, I had a little reluctance to what you were doing because I thought it was disrupting tradition. But now that I've actually learned about the rules of banana ball, I'm like, this sounds like a friggin blast. Like, you said there's no walks.

Yet he's, instead of a ball four and a walk, a ball four means the runner, may start running not just to first base, but to second, third, and fourth base. And he can go as far as he wants until the defense throws the ball to all nine players on the field. Joe Tori would spank you if you tried doing that. Joe Tori's like a piano. He said, I realize you guys are making fun of the game. You're making the game fun. That's what he said when he went to our game.

I'll rephrase that. Don Mattingly would spank you if you did that, John Maddie. Mother Hugh did in with baseball is blowouts, but banana balls more like match playing golf where each inning is a point that can be won. And so the game remains close. And then the final inning is like bonus ball. So even if you're down a few points in the final inning, you can still win the game if you score a few runs.

It's just really impressive. I got to tell you about how the score rule came about. So, like, part of it was August 4th, 2014. And we were running our team in Gastonia, North Carolina, the Grizzlies. And it's my night, I'm going to propose to Emily. Like, I am ready to go. No way. Oh, I'm like, it is a moment.

Like, we, I had a surprise fireworks show plan, which. again, I had to get a permit, and she usually got the permits. I had to do all these things that were usually meant through her because we were the ones running the team. And so we got all of our friends there, which like no other friends would come to a game because we're still college summer baseball. So we had all of our friends there, our family there. Everyone's ready to go. I'm set to propose in the sixth inning and I'm ready to make this like this is my moment. Then all of a sudden our team lets up nine runs in the first inning.

Oh my God. Literally like it was 30, 40 minutes happening. We're doing T-shirt tosses and promotions while we ain't going on. We're like, our fans are bored just, let's be saying, wait, and I'm really like, fans are already like, we're leaving. And I'm like, no, this is a special moment. And so we're our past friends who are like, they're like, no what's happening. Like, we're not going to wait for this.

Like, this is ridiculous. And I'm like, well, that inning could have been over quickly. It could have been if you win the inning, you get a point. And so it's only worth one point and it keeps moving. And like, you're going to have walkoffs. And so the concept of that, plus my dad, we played golf came up with that. It was like, how do you make each inning matter, make him out? There's never a blowout.

So always it comes down. to the last inning. And now the last inning, everyone counts as a point. So even if a team's three to one, you can still come back and win in the ninth inning. So that was put later in flight. So everything has tried to do to make the game more exciting as it goes on. And I was able to propose it. She still said yes. So it happened, but that night was very, very tough. Congratulations. As Jack pointed out, I mean, these are fantastic iterations. They are fantastic disruptions burning the boring from the sport you're disrupting, essentially. But funny thing, Jesse, you know, Jack and I have listened to every interview you've ever done, I think.

You've written three books. And there's one quote we loved in particular. You said, there is no innovation without iteration. So in addition to all these incredibly successful disruptions and ideas you've had, what are some that you did that didn't work? What are some failures that you tried where you realized it was a problem and you had to end it? We have failures all the time. I mean, I think that's one thing that people see, you know, they look at and they're like,

oh, overnight success or they look at it and they see the big shiny headlines now. but it's only because we've had hundreds and hundreds of failures that have led us to the things that do work. Some of my favorite ones. Well, slash the Lund Spund Night, I mentioned earlier, but that was a failure, I will say, because it was a very appropriate night. Well, we have whoopee cushioned you away, and we had a Fee and Burrito contest just in the water. Yeah, so we can spend it and makes it positive. But we had the human pinaata where we dressed somebody up in a pinata costume. We had little kids hit them with plastic bats and they had to throw candy.

That was... HR disaster. Human pinaata. We had the horse head race where we put. kids in horse head costumes and they were supposed to like trot around the bases, but the horse hens were so big that they couldn't see. So they ended up at the outfield. We were like hurting these children, horses off the field, the lay of gay... The crowd must have loved that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So, you know, to the crowd, they're laughing at us, but to us, you know, we're looking at clocks and we're looking at HR disasters and we have these things that are going wrong. I would say one of the things that I have continued to say no to that Jesse is adamant is going to happen is he wants all of our players to skydive to their positions. And I'm, you know, I'm worried about, frankly. A lot of things. Yeah. A lot of things.

Insurance. There are failures that I try to anticipate that we deal back and don't do. But for the most part, Jesse gets to push those things forward. And we try it. I mean, again, like, trying to get players to write a bowl in from the bullpen. So it'd be a bullpen. You're going to have a live bowl in the bullpen. But I want to jump on one, like, a big event that we did.

Tap of the morning beer festival. because you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. And so we said, all right, whatever is normal, do the exact opposite. And so a beer festival, you know, normally it was at night. And we're like, we're going to have one starting at 9 a.m. And I think 27 people showed up. They had the time in their life. I mean, it was the best day they'd ever had.

But it did connect with people as much as I thought it would. So, but again, like, that's, you learn by doing. Yeah. We do 10 to 15 new promotions every single night with each one of our teams. We have six teams. So when you think about it, and a given. weekend, we're doing 150 brand new things this year with six teams. That is crazy. But I guarantee we are going to learn faster than any other sports organization. Most sports teams say, hey, we're

going to do fireworks every Friday night. Here's a bobble. Here's a good away. Here's our 90s night. Here's night. I'm going to take it away. I learned a lot from that industry when I started. But it's so easy to do the same things over and over again. It's so hard to do something that might fail. And we are willing to fail every single night by putting ourselves out there because we know we're going to learn faster to get better for our fans after that. Well, Jesse and Emily, you know, when you add all this up, the failures and the successes, Jack and I like to think about business like chefs sometimes, like if there are recipes for success, would you say there is a formula for fun? There's a formula for fandom you can follow? There's a formula for fandom, and I mean,

she had it in the book. I think fun is a little bit more complex, but for fandom, what we realize, and again, what did Steve Jobs say? You don't, you connect the dots looking backwards. It's hard to connect the dots moving forwards. And so, like, we didn't know this when we started, but when we started looking back on how we were able to create fans, we realized the starting point of all innovation and creating fans is to eliminate the friction. And if you look at any company, you know, you look at what Netflix did to Blockbuster, what Uber did to the Cavs, any company that really creates fans in the beginning, they look at all the friction from the customer point of view, put themselves in their shoes and eliminate it. And so for us, the friction was baseball too long, too slow, too

boring. You get nickel and dimes. There's ads everywhere, and we eliminated all that. So that's where it's starting. So first step, eliminated friction. The second one, entertain always. You know, we look at mapping the perfect experience. So reverse engineer, what is a five-star experience? Or Airbnb, Brian Chesky said, what would it be 11-star experience be? Right. Then you experiment constantly. The only way you can get better for your fans is if you're constantly trying new things and learning from doing. Engage deeply, do for one, what you wish you could do for many. And then finally empower action. You empower your team to try things, to get out there, get out of their comfort zone, to let loose, to have fun, and experiment.

If you put all those together and it's constant, you're doing it every single day. I believe that's how you can create fans. Even if you do one of them, if one company just eliminates the friction of the process, like if the DMV said, all right, we're going to make the waiting room, not the worst waiting experience ever, they would probably get some fans. Yeah, so that's a start. I don't know for fun, Emmett, if you've ever thought about that, but, you know, we think of things that, like, are fun for us.

I think the greatest creators create things that they would love. And if you're trying to do something or get people to buy into something, and you're not having fun, do a buck. Fun is contagious. Yeah. And then it starts without players and ourselves trying to make the game the most fun, I think. Yeah, I would just say that a lot of that comes up in our referrals.

So people don't know this, but we have an entire rehearsal day before each show. And that's exactly what happens is our cast and our staff and our players. We jump in and we do these promotions or we act out the choreography or we practice the trend that's going on. And if we have fun, if we're, you know, filming each other and having a good time doing it, we're like, okay, this is going to resonate with people tomorrow night. so let's write that into the script. So it's just a lot of testing things out

and trying things ourselves and not taking ourselves too seriously. There's a lot of actionable lessons from what both of you just said. Yeah, Jack, I saw Jack scribbling furiously over there to whip up the takeaways, as we'd say. Jack, what do you got? One I just want to explore a little bit more

is what's normal, do the opposite. Have you seen great examples of companies doing that outside of the Savannah bananas? Or is that just like a starting point for your brainstorm for new skits? Tell me a little bit more about what's normal and do the opposite. Yeah, well, if they say even something as simple as chip fillet, you know, being closed on Sunday, like that's true to who they are.

And that's the exact opposite of what you would think you would want is more sales. So let's be open for another day. But they're so true to who they are and taking care of their people. That's kind of the opposite of what you should be doing, quote, unquote, at the business, as a fast food joint, but they're thriving. And so that's one example. We look up to. Yeah, we'd on games on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, and we actually take time off in July

in the middle of the busiest time in the baseball season. Like, that's completely unconventional. But when our people come first and make sure that they love what they do, you want to make sure that they always have energy for our fans. But let me give the origin of whatever is normal to do, the exact opposite. I was 23 years old at the Beck conference. So Bill Vec, one of the pioneer baseball owners, brilliant for what he did. Grandstand manager's game.

He gave 12 live lobsters to a fan in the middle of the game. He had, you know, a fireworks going off before any else, put names in the back of Jersey. This guy was brilliant. He was hated by all the other owners because he was doing things that were great. Right. About baseball. his son was just as brilliant. His son was, again, a pioneer, Mike Vect,

own St. Paul Saints, Charleston River Dogs, numerous teams. And when I was 23, I heard he was having a conference in Charleston. And we were in Gastony, North Carolina, so I was like, heck yeah, I'm going. And so I first got there. And the first thing he had was an idea box on everyone's table. And that was where I first came into the power of ideas because he said, his dad said, there's ever a fire in the house. The number one thing you need to get is the idea box.

It's nothing more valuable than the ideal. That's awesome. I think Emily, as her mother, would question that. But they had a speaker come out, guys. And I think, you know, you think about, you're so impressionable. You hear, like, you know, music that you love. It's like in your teenage years and your youth. And, like, for impressionable in the business industry, like, from a professional family,

it's like 23 to 28. The people you learn from the people you see. And, like, that was so impressionable. So I was this new kid trying to learn everything. They had this speaker come in and he starts running around throwing $2 bills. Like, literally, just hundreds of $2 bills. I'm like, this guy's a little dollar bills. And it's like, oh, I mean, $8.

Like, whatever. they're all excited. And so then he goes, what's so unique about a $2 bill? He starts talking about, I always keep these in it. He always keeps them in his pocket. And he talks about it. And he goes, well, I want to tell you about the book that I wrote, called Innovation on Demand. And the concept is whatever's normal to the exact opposite. He goes, how do you think I sold my book? And they said, well, it ruins like Amazon at a book floor. And he's like, no, that's the normal way of selling a book. What did I do? I bought an entire retail store in Minneapolis, a couple thousand square feet. And I made my own bookstore just for one book, my own.

And so he had his book, animation on demand, on all different sections like business and self-up in history. He had a sign for shopliftings encouraged. He just wanted people to have his book, right? People magazine, NBC, Fox, CBS, everyone did a story on the one book bookstore. Yeah. And so what that concept is, if everyone's going this way, I'm going to go this way. And so he has inspired us tremendously.

It's still a good friend to today, but even my first book, Find Your Yellow Tucks, we did a world book chore at Epcot. And so we literally went to Epcot and did the world book to the world book. No one gets excited about normal. No one comes home and says, honey, I'm not the most normal person today. He was so normal. Like we get excited about memorable or remarkable. And so whatever the normal things in your industry are, right, what would be the exact opposite? And start creating that way.

That's what creates attention. That's what gets people excited. And attention beats marketing 1,000% of the time. What was company they have a marketing plan? Do you have an attention plan? And that's kind of what we're always thinking about. How are we creating attention? What new things are we doing that people have never seen before in a baseball field?

And that gets fans excited. No, it's incredible how much we've seen this, Jesse, and like it isn't embraced in a wide way. Like, Jack, I'm thinking we did a story in the summer about a luxury brand. I can't remember if it was like Gucci, Prada or someone who did not have a social media account. Like every luxury band is all about posting on social media and showing photos. And they just said, yeah, we're not going to do this for three years. That's different. That's different. What if they just had a MySpace page? Or what if they just like, they just on AOL or Messenger or they're

doing just newspaper ads or whatever? Like that's actually today. It could be interesting. No, you're absolutely right. And it's amazing how powerful that is, but how little you actually see it. Now a quick word from our sponsor. You know, you just mentioned attention. We're all competing in the attention economy. to two masters of keeping and attracting attention. What's your secret to social media success? And Jack and I are saying that as two guys who have a podcast with a big daily audience, but we're still trying to figure that out on social media.

Like how do we convert our podcast content to work on social? That is a really hard thing to jump between different types of content platforms. How often are you guys testing? Not enough. Not enough. How often do you guys post or is it always the similar type of content? Probably one to two videos a day of a story we did. and maybe a test video.

Well, you guys are dynamic and you're charismatic and you obviously have good guess. Just kidding. So my point is that can always work. But then one of the things that you're trying and again, being okay with failure. So if you get more reps in, you know, I always look at the example who had the most hits in Major League Baseball. It was Pete Rose, he had over 4,000 hits. He also had over 14,000 in vats. He had 2,000 more of bats than anyone else that ever played the game.

One I'd say that is maybe there's not enough of bats. You're probably out at the same time and doing the same exact thing every single time. Yeah. And so, you know, we're obsessed with testing new things. Every day we're putting out new social media and we're testing, you know, we say, what are we going to do from the dugout today? What are we going to do from the bullpen? What are we going to do from the crowd?

Are we going to do something on the video board and film that today and test that today? You know, all those things we're constantly testing. And a lot don't work. But if you find one good one, then you have your whole new arsenal of things you can do that you haven't done it for. We have a low tolerance for failure. We probably don't do enough that's experimental. in a broader basis for worries about reputational risks that you're saying are probably not a big deal.

Guys, again, same example. The player that failed more than any, in major league history, more than anyone else, he struck out more than anyone else and no one knows his name because of the strikeouts. They know his name because of his three home runs in Game 6, the 1977 World Series as Mr. October. He's a Hall of Famer. It's Reggie Jackson. He's not remembered for his strikeouts. He's remembered for his hits, especially in social media. It disappears. We won't remember it. So my thought process is like, yeah, we're going to have videos that get no views. But then what's the next to that the next day? No, you're absolutely right, Jesse.

You know, when it comes to, like, actually making the decisions on building this product, you know, you guys have invented a sport and you're testing all these things all the time. You know, how much of it is metrics versus magic, graphs versus guts, how much of it is making decisions on information versus your intuition? I haven't said a lot of it is intuition. Honestly, we are not a company powered by. numbers and charts, of course, to have some sort of responsibility. We do use it a little bit, but like Jesse said earlier, we personally don't log into bank accounts. Like, we don't look at

certain reports every night. What we're looking at is how many fans do we serve, that the things that do matter to us. A lot of it is the heart and the intention. That is how we make a lot of decisions. When we, when something goes wrong, we are very quick to jump in and create a solution even if it ends up spending millions of dollars. We don't look at what that number is going to be. We go in and make the decision first of, hey, let's make this right or let's adjust this. And then later we get the report. But I would say a lot of it is just from heart.

And I think that also that is one of our superpowers in that we don't have outside investors and we don't have a board and we don't have people that we have to show fancy reports to. It's us. And it's our leadership team. And we're the ones making decisions. And because we're leading with heart, that's how we get to make the decisions. We don't have a responsibility of certain metrics that we have to end. So give the example, guys, would it be cool to do?

So, like, we think about this, would it be cool to do a cruise ship and banana land at C and just invite all our fans on a cruise ship and try to entertain them for four to five days without playing our game or banana ball? Yeah. Would that be cool? It would be fun? And so we did it. And it sold out. And we're doing it again.

It's sold out. And it's like, wouldn't it be cool to play a game at a football stadium with 100,000 fans. Yeah. Let's try it. Let's go do it. Wouldn't it be cool to play a game on a beach? Wouldn't it be cool to do all these things like an aircraft carrier? Wouldn't it be cool? And so this, what if philosophy, what if we did this? And if we think that would be cool and that'd be fun, we just try it. We don't know how to do it. You don't know how to do a cruise ship. No one teaches you that. You don't know how to play a football stadium. No one teaches you that. You learn by doing. And so I think a good mindset is, is would that be fun? Do you get excited about it? If you get

excited about something and you're passionate about it, same thing with our team. If they have an idea for social media, and we may know it's probably not going to work, but if they're so tired up about it and they're energized by it and they're going to choreograph and block every step with it, we let them do it because they're going to learn more about it. You want people showing up with passion and energy and fire, and that's how creativity comes. And so that's kind of what we preach and it starts from the top. Well, Jesse, let's get into this creative process because, you know, Jack and I have a creative process every day. Like we go through, we've been inspired in the past by we actually, Jack and I were,

former freshman, your roommates. That's how we met. You know, that's our meat cute. We walked into the same dorm room with, he had season two of Seinfeld DVDs and I had season three and it just kind of was a match made in heaven. But, you know, our creative inspirations, grandpa, Seinfeld, the daily show with John Stewart, South Park. And it's all kind of informed the elements that we bring entertainment into business news. But with you two, Jack and I were keeping a whiteboard list of all your inspirations. And Jack, what do we have up there? We had like Disney, P.T. Barnum. Who else? I mean, just in this interview, you guys have mentioned Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky, you've mentioned the Harlem Gold Trotters, The Grateful Dead, Cirque to So Lay, Dave Matthews.

So we're kind of just curious about your creative process. Like, do you set up time to read every week to absorb all this information? Do you get into a writer's room due to a focus group? There's books everywhere. But is reading the key to your business success? Your input affects your output. Mm-hmm. You know, constantly every morning I start with reading and writing and ideas.

That's part of my system and for creativity. And it's really important to not to create before you consume. So often the night before, I'll write down, what is my idea bucket? What's my theme that I want to work on? And then so I have that in my mind when I wake up. I can already start thinking creatively as opposed to just scrolling through social, going through previous emails. And then you become other people's priorities is what you're focused on,

not your own priorities of creating. The best days, Emily knows, when I come down from my office early before the kids are up, and I'm like, I had some great ideas. I just, I'm going to win the day. Yeah. And if I'm just trying to fix all these things, it's tough. So I think you've got to win the morning, when the day is how old Rod says from the miracle morning. But yeah, creativity is, it's tough to teach.

You need to find, you know, what works for you. But yeah, I mean, Saturday Live, Grateful Dead, WWE, they're constantly thinking what are the new things they're doing every single day a week? I think that's big for us. Well, and you can go into the cadence of the actual week and the idea sessions and everything. But I do think that one thing that's worth mentioning is that people think that it's all his ideas or it's all the creative department ideas. But one thing that we've really focused on is enabling everybody in the company to come to the table with ideas.

And so it's not just the creative department that's coming up with the ideas every day. There are hundreds and hundreds of people on staff and they're all doing this. All the players, they're coming up with ideas for their own walk-offs and their own celebrations. And so when you have 150 people who are playing on the field every night, but they're also coming up with the ideas, that helps this train keep going with new ideas every night. And when he says we're testing 10 to 15 things at every game, it's only possible because you have hundreds of people offering up ideas. Yeah.

Our final dance first principle is we will always plus the experience. You mentioned that a couple of years ago. Plusing from Walt Disney had a huge impact on you. It's basically a tactic as part of a formula for fun. Can you guys share more? Walt Disney said Disneyland is a living, breathing thing. We will always plus the show and it'll never be complete. And so that mindset, which is interesting,

why do people think like the movies are complete and they think irregular steam parks complete. You already built it. No, he saw it was constantly living, it was growing. What can we enhance it? He said a movie. He got tired of the movie business

because he's like, I can't join anything anymore. It's done. The movie's done. Like, I can do a sequel, which are boring. He said, he can't talk pigs with pigs. He learned that from three little pigs because every other movie after that wasn't that good. Sorry, I've done a lot of research on Walt Disney,

but you always plus the experience. And so one great, great story. A great example was this during Christmas time. Yeah. He really wanted to have a big Christmas parade. And it was going to cost, $350,000. And everyone, everyone was like, no, we had our highest propacity right now. That makes no sense. They're already here. And he goes, no, we need to always give them a reason to come back.

That's why we should invest the money and invest the dollars. And he was obsessed with that, plusing the show. Yeah, that's a plusing. Okay. To borrow your what-if framework, wouldn't it be cool if there were 32 teams? Team number two, the party animals, has more followers than any major league baseball team. True. Playing hundreds of games. You got the Texas tailgators. Is your goal to be bigger than Major League Baseball? No, zero interest. No, zero interest.

For us, I mean, this respect, that's just the wrong question. We don't think about that. And we constantly think, how can we create fans? And, you know, we're competing against ourselves. Every single night, every day, how can we get better for our fans? How can we create a better experience and a better show? And we got a long way to go. We're still in the first inning because we're doing things that are extremely hard.

We have no idea. We're playing in 45 states this year. Yeah. We're playing from Billings, Montana, to North, Dakota to the Superdome to, you know, 100,000 seat stadiums in Tennessee and Texas. I mean, it is extremely hard. We haven't even gone international yet, and we're getting all these opportunities. Like, we got to focus on one fan at a time and creating fans.

And we're not competing against MLB. I hope that we're both working together to create fans of the game, even though our game's a lot different. I applaud them because they have made a lot of adjustments over the years to make the game better. And I think we're both hopefully winning together to create fans. Well, guys, speaking about this league that you've launched and how you're expanding the Savannah Bananas into its own league, you know, Jack and I have noticed this trend in the last few years we've covered on our show of disruptive new sports. You've got professional pickleball.

You've got professional bull riding. You've got major league lacrosse, and then you've got professional lacrosse, which has a touring model. You got the XFL trying to make a comeback. You have the X games now considering like a touring model instead of just once a year in Aspen. As you can tell, we found a lot of examples of this disruption of professional sports. you wouldn't have dreamed of when we were kids. So one thing Jack and I get curious about is like how you determine a fad from a trend. Like how do we know this is part of a long-term trend? What are the signals you guys look for to ensure that what you're doing is a long-term trend?

Well, I would just say that we continue to get our answers from our fans. They're continuing to show interest. Our interest list is growing every year. Again, that's who we're answering to. And so we are trying to keep the game fun and exciting and give them different things. But that's the lead indicator for us, is if there are more people interested in coming or at least watching the event. I will say it's not only live. Live is a totally different experience, but there are so many people who are tuning in and watching through the broadcast now. But all of those numbers are proving to us that this is something people want to watch.

And when they watch from the East Coast game and then they switch over and they start watching the West Coast game, I mean, those are things that are proving to us that this is something that people are invested in. and they are becoming fans of multiple teams in the league, which is interesting because in normal sports, you are a diehard Eagles fan, or you are a diehard cowboy stand because your grandfather was. And for us, we're seeing that people are fans of the party animals and the Texas tailgators because they grew up in Texas,

but now they have a party animal vibe, right? So it's fun for us to see that people are investing in it in multiple ways. They're buying merchandise from multiple teams. They're going to see us in multiple cities. They're watching the broadcast in different time zones. those are the indicators to us that show that we're at least on the right path. Not that we haven't figured out, but that we have a product that people are willing to watch. The people that think we're a fan, they don't know the DNA of organization.

And they don't know how obsessed we are with the show and obsessed with our fans. And so every day we're thinking about how do we make our show better. We know that's the differentiated for us. It's the greatest show in sports of what we're trying to create. And that is that experience that there's always something happening. If you blink, you may miss something. And that whether you're in the upper deck, you're going to get greeted by our cast or our players or if you're right behind home plate, we're going to try to create that

one-on-one experience. And it's hard. 50,000 fans, 100,000 fans. It is extremely hard. We're not there yet. But it's that obsessive focus. And that's the greatest creators. I mean, I've got a chance to connect a good amount now with Jimmy or Mr. Beast. And he's upset with YouTube more than anyone else in the world. And there's a reason why he has the most followers than anyone in the world. Because he looks at every single second, every single detail on how to make it better for his viewers. that's how we look at our shows. And I think that in my thinks we're going to get fad, and there's thousands out there.

I save a lot of the comments. They're 15 minutes are up. It's a fad. They are inspiring me because everyone thinks we're going to be gone. And in 20, 30, 40 years, I can't wait until they see what this has become. Well, Jesse and Emily, you know, we asked you that question because we're curious about your response. But the reason, one of the reasons, Jeff, I wanted to bring you on the show is because we think you're a long-term trend, not a fad.

And it's funny. We've been speaking actually a lot about fun and the brighter, like, positive elements of what you've created and the sport you've invented and brought to the world that also is commercially successful. But a signal that we've seen that you guys are here to stay long term isn't on the fun side. It's actually on kind of the opposite end of the spectrum

on like the meaningful side. You know, you guys do things that don't scale. And there's this great example you gave a couple years ago, Jesse, that early on when you guys were also just still very new, you found out a fan was coming and one of their parents had passed away. And I think they had like six siblings or seven siblings. And you asked an intern, I think at the time.

You gave them this huge responsibility and said, how do you make this the best day of their lives? And I don't know anyone else in a major sport or in one of these other fatty sports that would have made that type of bet, that risk, that investment to do so. And you guys delivered on that. Can you share a little bit more of that story?

Because to us, that's a signal that you guys have done something that's deeper than just fun or a fad. That first year was special for many reasons. And I think that's really where we found out who we are. You know, yes, we had fun. Yes, we had the banana nana's dancing. We had the banana baby.

And we had all the fun. But it was those moments that really stood out. And it's the stories that make a brand and make a company. And so, yeah, that was a, we found out that a father, they had seven kids. And their mother had just tragically passed away. And the mother bought the tickets for the family to come to the game. Thank you, calls. Yeah.

So we make thank you calls every, we actually were doing them today. We call our fans to thank them for buying tickets and merchandise. So Barry, one of our interns at the time was calling and thanking them and we called them. And the, you know, the dad don't answer the phone. He said, you know, I'm sorry. This is what happened. We're not going to be able to come. And so very sorry, I'm so sorry.

And came to me right afterwards. He said this happened. And I go, well, what if we were able to get them to come? What could we do? Could we make it special? And he called him back and said, you know, we'd love to take care of you guys, make it a special night for us. And he said, you know what, probably good, you have kids out of the house.

And so he immediately got a cell phone, greeted them there, got them seats right behind home plate, had jerseys set up for them, had players greeting them, meeting them. And the whole night was focused on that family. And at the end, Dad left and said, that was the last gift. That was the last gift that she bought the kids. And I couldn't imagine a better gift for our kids. And so when you think about that, that moment, that power. And Barry, he has risen up with us. He's been there 10 years from vice president.

He's now leading all of our recruiting for all of Banana Ball. He is responsible for bringing in these people, these players that create those moments every single night at our ballpark and to see him and what he's done. And just another story. And we have so many examples of that. So that inspires us. But yeah, it's due for one when you wish you could do for many. And Barry obviously lived up to it.

That's meaningful to hear the details of guys. it also speaks to this bigger thing of investing in doing the things that don't scale. And that's the kind of thing you do when you've built a real connection with people. And those are the real connections that make this a long-term thing. So that's really cool to hear. Thanks for sharing that. You know, it's great. And so many.

The stories involved those sad moments. But there's so many. I think people need that. I mean, my heart is a little bit bigger. Jack, it reminds me we did a whole deep dive guys on the business of Sesame Street. the origin stories of Sesame Street. And similarly, I think that actually became one of our most listened to shows ever. And I think it's because it had that tension. I mean, Jack and I always say great brands have tension, right? They're able to balance things that are opposing and opposites

inside. Like, we like to be pop culture, but also business news. And for you guys, it's creating these incredible funds and laughs, even in someone's darkest moment. I mean, that is the ultimate tension. That's what a brand is. And the world needs it. You know, I think there's a lot of conversations now on the anti-AI bet and the anti-social. that people are going to want to be together and bringing people together to have moments and experiences. Like, we're all in on that. And obviously, that's what we're investing in because people need it. There's a feeling that you get when you're together.

And, you know, Journal of Games where everyone, the lights go off and everyone's holding their light up and their flashlight and singing yellow together. It sounds like Kumaa, but 50,000 people lights up singing yellow together is a moment. There's nowhere else in the world that's happening. Yeah. And it's a core moment. And so we look to try to create those. Well, other investors must be seeing this and thinking, okay, there are opportunities here elsewhere. I mean, Jack and I get questions all the time about jumping verticals.

Can you do a sports version, a fashion version? I mean, do you guys get vertical pressure like Savannah bananas for hockey? Savannah bananas on the football field? Like, are those questions you guys getting at something you'd ever consider? Daily. You consider it daily or they come to you daily? Daily zero consideration. No, I think that that is, again, one of our superpowers is that,

we've been able to just stay very simple in our focus. It is the fans in our area, in our domain. Like, that is who we're going after. We are not trying to disrupt other sports or, you know, do these other wild things right now. We're not trying to go to the moon quite yet. That's a joke in our company. Everyone's saying to be asked. We're going out on the moon. But we're just, we're very focused on what we're in front of us. Jesse always says that we are just in the first inning. and I do believe that, but we are very focused on where we are. Have you guys studied Todd Graves at all for Raising Cains? We've covered his story on the pod a few times, yeah.

Yeah, it's, I mean, again, chicken mirrors. We're going to do the best chicken finger in the world. Everyone's like, no, you can't do it more than chicken fingers. You're going to do us. He's like, no, we're going to do one thing, do it better than anyone else, and they are dominating, them and Chick-fil-A. And so I think that there's such a great lesson there. Where people try to spread out and do too many things, you know,

the way to fail at something is to do it half-assed. And that's what a lot of people end up doing when they spread it out. Be a steak knife, not a Swiss Army knife. Well, I guess on that note, Jack, do you want to pitch Jesse and Emily right now? Well, we love your fan-first mentality. And we got to ask, is there an IPO in the future where you can give fans partial ownership of the organization? So there's an interesting mindset because you let us with the fans.

Yes. Yeah, you kind of have to say yes, it feels like. It was a trap. I'm going to say, we studied the Green Bay model a little bit. Oh, there you go. staying a little bit, you know, that fans come in. But I don't think we have that all figured out yet. So it's not something that we're focusing on.

No, from day one, we let fans help come up with suggestions for the name. We don't come suggestions for our mascot. We let them literally draft our first three players and fan franchise our players for upcoming draft. Our fans are heavily, heavily involved. But I think, you know, there's the tough things, the decisions you have to make that fans don't know, they don't know things in the future. For instance, when we left Coastal Plain League, traditional baseball, went to banana ball, We had so many fans saying this is a terrible decision. We're no longer in a sport.

We saw where the game of baseball was going and we saw where banana ball could be. We just did a draft, which was very unique with all six of our teams. We had a lot of fans that didn't love it, but we see where this is going. And so if you involve fans at a high level from ownership too much, you might have the opportunity of seeing a vision that you have relentlessly been studying and your team has for years where they at this point happens. So we'll continue to evolve them, but I don't think it. you all are getting involved in that point is something that we're thinking about right now.

Well, so it sounds like we'll wait a few years before the next interview on the New York Stock. All right, Jack, should we whip up some takeaways? Well, normally Nick and I whip up the takeaway of a story, but we're going to give you the honor. So, Emily and Jesse, what is the takeaway on the Savannah bananas? I would say, for me, it's just caring about people. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what we try to teach all of our people. And people come to us and they say, you know, what's the secret sauce and how are you pulling this off? But it really is that simple.

We just take away the friction for our fans and we walk in our fans' shoes. And that's how we make the decision. That's our North Star. We put the fans first and we try to entertain them. So that's my takeaway. It's just continuing to care for them in any capacity with any departments or countries or whatever we grow to, you know, that will still be our North Star. And I think that hopefully that will be our shining Earth Star for a long time.

You know what I just thought about our first fans first play. book. And so we've developed fans first playbooks and kind of who we are, what we stand for. And in the back of the first cover, it said, be patient in what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. And I think that's just a mindset. We are extremely impatient on going above and beyond for our fans and doing things that other people won't do. And when you do what others won't do, you'll be able to do things you never imagined. And we're getting to do that. Walt Disney said it's kind of fun to do the impossible. And we get to do the impossible every day because of our relentless focus on our fans. I don't know how you guys were able

to whip up this skill set, but, you know, we've interviewed a lot of people in the show. No one, I think, speaks like you to where everything you say could be bottled down. It's like a takeaway or a quote or, you know, it should be in Bartlett's book of quotations. It's incredible how you're able to distill these complicated concepts, emotional and business-wise, in a way that's just super repeatable. It's really cool. You shouldn't see how bad we were when we started. We listen to your podcast during the pandemic, Jesse, like your old podcast. Getting out of reps in.

I'm telling you. You listen to every one of my interviews. I laughed because I did over a thousand podcasts. You've done a lot. If you went back in the 2017, 2017, 2018, 2019, go to. But my point is, like, that's the reason you get your reps and get your reps and get your reps and get your reps. Do things that don't scale. 100%.

Jack, should we kick off some rapid fire questions to wrap things up? Rapid fire question for Jesse and Emily from Savannah Manaz. What is the best brand out there that's not the Savannah Bananas? Okay, I'll just say Disney. What is your dream collab or partnership? Can't be Disney. We already done that. They did Savannah Bananas Day at Disney.

That was fun. Okay, this is not going to be what you expect that I'm going to say something within the foster care space. So it's not a company. And I don't even know if it would be nationally like the Department of Social Services. But we are foster parents ourselves and we have a nonprofit called Banana Sposters. And so the ultimate collab for me and what I think would get the most impact would be a collaboration with a large organization like that. What's the best stadium you've ever performed in?

For me, I'm going to go with Fenway because that's where I grew up. Because you're from just outside Boston. The real answer is probably one of the next ones. We haven't performed there. It's going, doing something at a stadium or not even you would imagine as a stadium and putting on a show there. That's going to be pretty special. What's the best business book you've ever read? I am really all in on our hiring right now,

so I'm just going to say, The Ideal Team Player by Pat Lincione. It's not really a business book, but it's a business book for me and that I'm trying to bring in the best people, and that has helped guide me on who we're bringing in. I'm going to go on a classic, Bill to Last, Jim Collins.

And finally, Jesse and Emily, if each of you were stocks, what would be your three or four letter stock ticker symbol? Thanks. Emily, he beat you too. You're in trouble. You could go Nana. Oh, and one more.

What's the best restaurant in Savannah, Georgia? Corleons. No. Yeah, I mean, Coralans. We love that. We love Italian. Oh, that's so tough. All right, sorry, guys.

That's a really hard. That's where it started. Toge's quarter. Where it started. It was a, yes. Sports bar out there. Sports bar, that would all started where all the ideas were. Yes, that's where it started.

Well, given your proposal day when the team lost by like nine runs, maybe that's the place for where you guys renders. new year vows in a couple years. Yeah. That's good. That is poor as far. Jesse and Emily, we're huge fans. I'm going to send this episode to my dad, and I think I can win him over to become a

banana fan. You've both been truly inspirational to us as entrepreneurs. Like, we are literally going to listen to this episode and write down on the whiteboard some of your best takeaways. So thanks for sharing all of your best secrets and for creating an amazing game. And for evolving the game of baseball, a hundred-year-old game that Ken Burns did a documentary on. I think you're making it a really, really fun and interesting new thing that I'm excited about. And in the spirit of doing things differently, you know, like you said, Jesse, you've done

a thousand of these interviews. Emily, you've done thousands of these interviews. We'd like to do something you haven't done an interview yet, which is smash our chiching button virtually. So if you could just wind up like you're taking a big bat at the plate and then swing. You're ready at the same time? Here we go. Here we go. Ready? All right, here comes to the pitch. Three, two, one. All right, there we go. You had to do a money sign too. Fans and happiness are joy. We're smashing money because we don't care about it.

I just lost a bet. I told Nick one of you was going to be a lefty, but it's okay. No, you're the daughter who's a lefty. Yeah. Not us. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on. We can't wait to see it the next one. All right.

Appreciate you guys. Take care.