AI Summary
5 min readIn 2018, Jesse Cole walked up to Lewis Howes at a conference wearing a yellow tuxedo and told him he had taken over a wooden bat baseball league and was trying to turn it into a new experience. Howes remembers thinking the idea would be extremely hard to pull off. At that point, Cole had already spent a decade running a small college summer team in Gastonia, North Carolina, where he had a laboratory for testing entertainment ideas but was stuck playing traditional baseball. He was bored. He noticed fans leaving games early no matter what he added around the edges. That observation — that the core product itself was the problem — eventually led him to invent Banana Ball, a radically compressed, entertainment-first version of baseball that went from a single experimental scrimmage in 2020 to selling out major league and football stadiums by 2025. The Savannah Bananas organization now plays in front of over 3 million fans annually and has a waitlist approaching 5 million. Cole remains the owner, refuses to sell, and insists the business exists to serve fans, not extract value from them.
The 10-Year Laboratory Before the Breakthrough
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of The School of Greatness
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (03:00) **The Origin Story: From Boredom to a Baseball Laboratory** - Jesse Cole explains how a shoulder injury ended his playing career and led him to coaching, where he realized he was bored out of his mind.
- 2 (09:56) **The 10-Year Grind and the "One City World Tour" Mindset** - Jesse contrasts his 10 years building a successful but limited college summer team with the moment he realized he had to change the actual game, not just the atmosphere.
- 3 (14:59) **The Birth of Banana Ball: COVID, Chaos, and Iteration** - Jesse walks through the scrappy, chaotic origins of Banana Ball, from a rained-out college practice to a COVID-era scrimmage with 1,000 fans.
- 4 (26:04) **The Billion Dollar Brand Mindset: Why Money Doesn't Excite Him** - Lewis asks about the leap from a $3-4 million wooden bat league to a billion dollar brand, and Jesse explains why that framing makes him uncomfortable.
- 5 (33:10) **Winning the Upper Deck: Scaling from 4,000 to 100,000** - Jesse describes the psychological and operational shift of going from a 4,000-seat stadium to 100,000-seat football stadiums, and how they maintain the fan experience.
- 6 (41:50) **The Fear of Irrelevance: Personal Wounds as Fuel** - Jesse opens up about the deep personal driver behind his relentless pursuit: a fear of being irrelevant and bored.
- 7 (48:56) **The Marriage and Family Behind the Empire** - Jesse details how his wife Emily's support and their shared journey through foster care and adoption has shaped the business and his purpose.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
He slept in his socks on a garage floor because it was too filthy to touch. That was Jesse Cole eight years ago, broke, sleeping on an air mattress, betting everything on a wooden bat baseball team nobody wanted.
Jesse is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the man behind the Savannah Bananas, the "Find Your Yellow Tux" author who turned a dying college summer league into a movement that now plays in front of millions.
He explains the moment he realized baseball itself was broken and why he studies Walt Disney more than any business book. He also opens up about the night his wife got a text from a birth mother on Mother's Day that changed their family forever.
You'll hear how a bat trickster became a starting first baseman and how a Broadway A-lister ended up pitching in front of 80,000 fans. Jesse still signs autographs until the very last fan leaves, every single night.
This conversation will change how you think about customers versus fans, and about what it actually costs to build something the world has never seen before.
Jesse's books:
Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas
Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience
Find Your Yellow Tux: How to Be Successful by Standing Out
In this episode you will:
- Discover why "whatever's normal, do the exact opposite" became the founding rule behind Banana Ball
- Learn how studying Walt Disney's obsession with "plussing the show" turned a dying league into a movement
- Hear the Mother's Day text that changed Jesse and Emily's family forever
- Understand why Jesse believes fans are different from customers, and why that distinction changes everything
- Explore the mindset shift required to go from 4,000 fans a night to 100,000
For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1963
More SOG episodes we think you’ll love!
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertisin
More from this podcast
The School of Greatness →