Jesse Cole

10 years ago today, I got the call that no one wants to get.

At 4:45, I pick up the phone and hear, “You’re out of money.”

Many people don’t know this, but only 3 months into starting our new team in Savannah, we ran completely out of money.

At this point, Emily and I had just got married and this was not how we pictured our first year together.

I’ll never forget after the call, Emily turned to me and said “We have to sell our house” And she was right, we needed money to help fund the team and that was the only option.

So we put the house on the market, emptied out our retirement account and put the little money we had, which was $25,000, into the team to cover payroll.

We couldn’t afford much, but we found a 500sq foot apartment that was once an old garage and moved in. We got an air mattress to put on the floor and even had to sleep in our socks (Which is crazy) But the place was that disgusting.

One night I woke up to Emily screaming at me because a cockroach was crawling on my face.

It was bleak to say the least. We weren’t even eating real food as we only had $30 a week to grocery shop and Ramen and Hot Pockets could only go so far.

When it came to our new team, there was no momentum or any signs that this was going to work.  We had sold only a handful of tickets. We were getting rejected every day by potential sponsors and ticket holders.  We didn’t even have a team name yet. We were just the next team to fail.

But we believed in it.

We dreamed of a different type of fan experience with players dancing, all-inclusive food and drinks, breakdancing coaches and non-stop entertainment.
We knew if we could just convince enough people to come to our games, we could put on a show unlike anything they had ever seen before.

"Get to the first game, Get to the first show," we just kept saying over and over again.

When we finally got to Opening Night, everything changed. We played in green jerseys because we weren’t quite ripe. And the team lived up to it making six errors. And fans had to wait hours for their All-You Can Eat food.

But the Banana Baby opened the game and brought the house down, their were first bananas thrown, bananas in the pants, the Banana Nanas danced, the players delivered roses to girls, and we entertained non-stop until the final out was made.

After that night, the fans started telling everyone about our show. And the rest is history.

Looking back on that day in 2016, this was certainly our lowest point. Seeing now what our teams are setting out to do in 2026 is beyond anything we could ever imagine.

But we will never forget where we started.

For every player, staff member and every fan, who believed in us and helped make this dream come true, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We will continue to dream big and work to deliver the best show for you, ESPECIALLY when things get hard.

Which one should I go with for Fenway?

So proud to welcome Valerie Perez as our new Head Coach of The Firefighters, our third Banana Ball team. Valerie is a firefighter in Corpus Christi, TX and plays for the USA Baseball Women's National Team.

We have a big vision for this new team and wanted to bring someone on that understands what it means to be a firefighter. We want to continue to bring people together with Banana Ball and bring the fun...but with this team, also honor firefighters.

The Firefighters open up on May 30th in Savannah and they will be ready with the leadership from Valerie. In her first few days with the team, she has set the tone and shown she can be a great leader to our newest group of Banana Ballers.

All of of us in our organization are fired up to welcome her and our newest team members to Fans First.

The next frontier for Banana Ball.

Youth sports certainly has its challenges. It’s expensive, overly competitive and often inconvenient for families. It will take a lot of work to create something that is new and different. But we believe we can bring back the fun and affordability to parents and kids all over the country.

It takes putting ourselves in the shoes of our fans and focusing on one step at a time.

We started on this journey by hosting camps and tournaments and learned a lot. We have a long way to go on what can we be done all over the country. But we are ready for the challenge.

Thank you for all the love and support here on LinkedIn. It's been quite the journey sharing our story. Here is what I've learned posting for almost seven years.

1.) Get your reps in, and learn from doing

My first post got seven likes, and one comment, and my second post got thirteen likes, no comments. It took months before I started getting real engagement. I tried every type of content from book reviews, to One Minute Boosts, to sharing my podcast and other podcasts, to news articles, to just overall thoughts on business. Most posts got very little traction. But I learned by writing, getting on video and by putting myself out there. For the first three years I posted every single day. Over 1,000 posts and I learned that I didn't need to post every day. If I was forcing content, it wasn't always best. So I focused on what posts did the best and stayed with that.

2.) Don't be afraid to quit doing something, to try something else

I recorded Real Talk videos for years sharing all the challenges behind the scenes. I was vulnerable but it forced me to put myself out there and helped with my communication. I stopped doing them after seeing they weren't great for the audience and stopped bringing me joy. I also stopped sharing my podcast and other podcasts. I focused more on sharing the lessons I learned as we built the Bananas with our fan experience and our culture. That's where I learned the most and found that most people were interested in understanding the journey and the why behind everything we were doing.

3.) Find your own style of posting

For some on LinkedIn, they share the most popular business stories and give their own insights. When I've done that, the posts have received thousands of views and my best engagement. But that's not my style. I like talking about what I know best. And for me that's the Savannah Bananas and our vision, mission and fan experience. Sharing how we look at creating attention, marketing dramatically different and how we create fans. This isn't the most viral content. But it's what I know, what I love and what gives me energy to share. So I will continue to learn and lean in on my own style.

Still some people say my posts are too long and they don't read. At first this discouraged me, but then I realized well then my content is just not for them. That's how I enjoy sharing and it gives me energy, and while it may not be best for most people, it works for me and that's important.

4.) Great leaders are great communicators

I've written over 300,000 words and that has helped me be a better communicator, by sharing what I've learned. It has helped me have conviction with my beliefs on business. I am a better speaker to our team, a better writer and overall a better leader because I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to share the journey.

As I share with everyone, JUST START. You learn by doing and the more you you do, the more you learn. So stop thinking about what you could do, and just start doing.

Who's in your foxhole? This question is asked by our coaches to every player that comes through our organization.

For me, these two coaches Tyler Gillum and Adam Virant will always be in mine. No matter what, you can always count on them to show up and put in the work. Not only are they the hardest working coaches I've ever met, but they do it all with a positive attitude and an uplifting energy that is contagious.

It's inspiring to watch these coaches do their jobs day in and day out. Since Day 1, both coaches have found a way to get things done. No matter what is asked they find a way. I've learned that there are problem finders and problem solvers in every organization, and once in awhile you find someone that can do both and that's what these guys do for our organization.

Both Gillum and Viro often see something that may be holding us back and find a way to push us forward in the right direction.

All I know is every day I love showing up to work with these guys and know I'm a better person because of it.

They say you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and I'd be proud to be like them.

Cheers Gentlemen, let's keep shocking the world.

Epic start to Banana Ball Spring Training as we went all out for our player arrival.

From a police escort to the stadium, to color smoke bombs on the roof, to a carnival style lunch with custom items for each team, we wanted our players to have an unforgettable first day.

We wanted to set the tone for our players to know what Fans First is all about.

We've learned how you do anything is how you do everything.

As Walt Disney said, "The thing that makes Disneyland unique is the detail, if you lose the detail, you lose it all."

Proud to share our 2026 Fans First Report.

This is the first ever inside look into the business of Banana Ball.

Here’s a recap of the 26 minute deep dive that I posted on YouTube of information we’ve never shared before within our company. We know we have no obligation to share these details, but we have a responsibility to you, the fans.

We’ve come a long way in 10 years, from selling just a handful of tickets. But we have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to make the experience better for you. We’re just getting started. We remain in the first inning.

Thank you so much for all the support!

Hope you enjoy this as well as the video.

Link to full video in comments!

What’s on your future resume?

How many stories can you create? For us, It’s not about driving sales or driving revenue, it’s about creating fans and fans first moments.

As leaders, we love to recognize others rather than be recognized.

Nothing matters more than making people feel they matter. We obsess over finding that care factor in others and shouting it out in front of the whole company.

We have a lot of work to do as our company has grown to hundreds of team members. But I know we are on the right path as we have very little turnover, (less than 1%) and a growing waitlist of over 12,000 to work with us.

We are going International. Well we are at least taking the first step. We are so fired up to hire Jose Benitez, our first Spanish speaking Banana Ball broadcaster.

Now, all of our biggest games will be broadcast in Spanish for free on YouTube.

We will also have our biggest moments dubbed in Spanish as well.

One day, Banana Ball will be played live in countries all over the world. But first we need to create fans…and this is the first step to bring our game to Spanish speaking countries.