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

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 cofounders 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 introduce dancing umpires. It's the Harlem Globetrotters meets basketball meets baseball 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, 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 $100,000,000 new sport with a 1,000,000 person wait list to get tickets. The bananas have got 15,000,000 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 short stop of short skits, the princess of dancing pictures, and the king and queen of cartwheeling umpires. Jesse and Emily Cole are the cofounders of the Savannah Bananas. And today's interview with this crazy couple is the best one yet. If 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, guys. A man shot. Yes. We never had that. That was very intense. Poetic demeanor. We've actually never had a couple on the podcast, a couple and cofounders at the same time. So, like, the first thing we were wanting to know was, we gotta hear the meet cute story on this. Right, Jack? You started a company together ten years ago, right as you were getting married. Yeah. Tell us how you met each other. And who are you? Well, I was actually in the industry before we met. So a lot of people think that because Jesse is The banana industry. A green guy. 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 in 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 …