Jesse Cole stopped by The Best Ever You Show yesterday to chat with me about his life, wife and the world of everything Savannah Bananas and Fans First!
Watch Interview:
Jesse is the founder of Fans First Entertainment, who owns and operates the Savannah Bananas. The Bananas have welcomed more than 1 million fans to their ballpark and have been featured on MSNBC, CBS Sunday Morning, Access Hollywood, HBO Real Sports, CNN, and ESPN. The Savannah Bananas currently have sold out every game since the first season and have a wait list for tickets that’s over 90,000. Cole is an in-demand speaker and author of “Find Your Yellow Tux – How to Be Successful by Standing Out,” and “Fans First, Change the Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience.” Cole believes to be successful you need to Stand Out and Be Different. He releases blogs and videos regularly on LinkedIn. He is passionate about creating attention, loving your customers more than your product and loving your employees more than your customers. Cole’s mantra is “Whatever’s normal, do the exact opposite.”
I absolutely love Jesse's books. In fact he has a new one coming out in May called The Unbelievably True Story of The Savannah Bananas.
The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again.
This is their story.
For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that only he could have imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia’s professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball.
Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to Thriller or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. The ticket is food all-inclusive! And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it’s an out, and players might go to bat on stilts, or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it.
But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time, in this book Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America’s oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again.
This is a story that’s bigger than baseball, and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the “ringmaster” of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse’s telling, it takes heart, creativity, joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America’s great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories—love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans.
This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story, of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.
Visit: TheSavannahBananas.com for more information.
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