It's so key to play the long game.

We are willing to take some short term hit, some short term pain, smaller profits to really be focused on our singular one fan at a time.

We'll play in front of 2 million people next year, 2025.

But they're made up of ones every single day.

If we don't wake up and do something amazing for our fans is the day that we are starting to lose them.

Are you looking to increase sales, grow your brand and share your leadership message?

Then check out our business podcast program.

Each week, more people listen to podcasts than have Netflix accounts, and one third of the us population listens to podcasts regularly.

So your customers and team are already listening to podcasts.

It should be yours.

Discover our five step profitable podcast framework and what results you can expect for your company by setting up a 20 minutes call with my team@benleads.com.

schedule.

That's Benleads.com schedule.

Welcome back to lead the team with number one bestselling author and in demand corporate trainer, Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders, and accelerate your career.

Let's get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey there.

Leave the team nation.

Welcome back to another big and great episode.

Today I've got Jared Orton, who is president of the Savannah Bananas, and he's been with them, by the way, since day one, when the team began.

Now, this team, if you're not familiar with them, they've sold out every game since their inaugural season in Savannah and has since grown a ticket waiting list of more than 2 million fans all over the world.

And by the way, they've got over 15 million social media followers, which is greater than all major league baseball teams, including the Yankees.

Sorry, Yankees.

Banana Ball puts a fun twist on traditional baseball with new rules, featuring a two hour time limit.

No walks, no bunting, no stepping out of the box, no mound visits.

And best of all, I love this.

That fans can catch a foul ball for and out.

And, y'all, there's lots of dancing, lots of fire.

It is so cool.

And no wonder that 98% of the crowd stays until the end of the game.

They're celebrating the recent largest crowd in Savannah, Savannah banana history, playing in front of a 42,000 sellout crowd at National park just a month or so ago.

And they just announced their world tour, which I hope we get to talk about today.

Jared, welcome to lead the team.

I think you nailed it.

Every.

I mean, what else is there to say?

Fans first.

Fans first.

I got to hear, because our fans want to hear about you all and all of your amazing achievements.

That's great.

Thank you.

Glad.

Glad to talk today.

So I gotta first ask you, what in the world is it like being president of the Savannah bananas?

Well, it is a roller coaster in the sense of it's the smallest business that we've.

It's the smallest it'll ever be today.

It's also the largest that it's ever been today.

And it's like that thing strapping in on that is, it's fun, it's challenging.

It keeps you up at night.

It also fires you up to walk in each day and say, what are we doing today?

Not in a sense of what the heck are we doing today?

But in the sense of there is something in front of us that we get to do today and we're going to build this thing and we see where it's going.

But to think that we were going to be here when we got here on day one, to think that we were going to be here nine years later, going on ten years is no imaginative person could even comprehend where the bananas would be today and leading this team today.

But it's fun.

It's exciting.

The things that we get to do for people, with our people, for our fans, are things that we feel like don't exist really anywhere else in sports and entertainment.

And we get to make memories with them and make memories for them and give them fun and be that place where so many people get to come together and enjoy themselves.

And so that's what it's like.

But like I said, it's something that we walk in the door every day and it's like, holy smokes.

This thing just keeps going and going and going and going.

And where is it going to go next?

You're in the unique position, as I read in the intro, to be with this team from day one.

Yep.

And what, so you look back at your background, you were with some other baseball teams before the Savannah bananas doing baseball.

Baseball.

Baseball.

Right.

Or traditional.

Right.

What.

And I suspect the leadership skills and what, how you need to show up was a different then versus becoming Savannah bananas versus, you know, then.

Then you're taking over Savannah.

And this we knew.

I know the story.

I'm a thinker.

I'm not sure all of our audience does.

We've had Jesse on before, but like this.

And you guys transform the whole Savannah situation into this mega thing.

And now you got this world tour, right?

How are you?

What were the skills you needed then versus the skills you needed midway through versus now?

And also, how's your mindset changed throughout this whole.

Yeah, that's a lot to think about.

It's like history.

I think I got it early on.

So I fell in love with the idea that you could use sports and entertainment.

And in that sense, my whole life has been baseball.

And at that time, minor league baseball.

And when I first met Jesse, we were doing the college summer league thing in Gaston, North Carolina.

What is college summer league?

For those of you that, yeah, so there's.

There's obviously everyone knows what Major League Baseball is and there's the minor league system, which is your local, your Charleston team or your team in Louisville, Kentucky, or anywhere in between.

And then there's less than that, which is college summer wooden bat league, which is basically a combination of college athletes, student athletes who are division one, division two, division three, et cetera.

And they need a place to play during the summer to hone their skills, play with a wooden bat, potentially get drafted, things like that.

And so we were running a league like that.

And these leagues actually got started when minor league baseball left those cities and left these really tiny, rundown, usually stadiums.

And so I first met Jesse in Gastonia, North Carolina.

We had a mutual baseball coach who just kind of introduced us together.

And so a couple thousand people would show up every night.

But I fell in love with this idea that you could entertain people.

And when I first met Jesse, it was entertainment.

It was fun.

It was dancing players and grandma beauty pads and Krispy Kreme donuts stacked on top of each other with hamburgers in between and garbage can nachos.

And he actually was wearing a yellow.

A yellow tuxedo.

He had transitioned from a black tuxedo to a yellow tuxedo because it was about 150 degrees in Gastonia every single night.

It wasn't a banana.

It wasn't a savannah banana, yellow tuxedo.

Initially, it was, I can't take.

It was a yellow golden tuxedo.

And I just fell in love with this idea that we could do this.

We could have fun, right?

We could bring entertainment and enjoyment and excitement to people and use the vehicle of baseball at that time to do that.

As I transitioned into minor league baseball, I worked for a team back home and we tried to do the same things.

But at that time, from a leadership perspective, when I first got to Gastonia, there was three of us.

It was myself and Jesse and Emily.

And so it's not like you're leading an organization.

You're just doing it, all right?

You're selling the tickets and flipping the hamburgers and opening up the merch store and shoveling trash out to the back.

And when I went to work for the minor league team, we had a whopping two full time employees.

And so literally, it's just your hands are in it.

You're doing every single thing, and you have real no capacity to lead to.

It's really just do, do, do, go as fast and as hard as possible.

And that only gets you so far.

As that capacity only gets you so far.

And at some point, you've got to be able to level up and teach and lead and go out in front and say, okay, this is where we're going.

This is where we want to take the team.

Come on, everybody.

Let's do this thing together.

And that has been a long transition.

I don't think I ever really understood what it meant to lead people.

Lead them well, shepherd them, take care of them, hear them, show them over the horizon, clear all the crap out so we can charge and take the hill.

And that has been a long journey over these past nine years.

And I hope it never stops.

Right?

I hope I look back nine years from now and say, oh, my gosh, I learned so much and how to lead these people.

But that's been the massive transition from going from little college, summer, a couple people to now we're actually leading a legitimate organization.

Well, that is incredible to imagine.

You and Jesse make flipping burgers to what y'all are doing now.

And what did you do to help accelerate your leadership?

Because that's a huge leap.

And you, I guess maybe you could just sort of evolve into it.

But I, that's still, even in ten years, that's a massive, a lot of people are still running the, flipping the burgers, right?

Or maybe there were people working for them.

It is.

And, yeah, we tell our team we're not above doing it.

We're not above doing any of it.

We will pick up trash and flip burgers and get on the phone and type it.

We'll do anything we possibly need to do.

We are never above it.

We never will be above it.

But I remember years ago, gosh Price, six years ago, went to a conference and heard a guy by the name of art Williams give a speech.

He was at Dave Ramsey's conference, and, man, it just fired.

We had no idea who this guy was, but, man, it fired people up.

And come to find out, he was an old football coach, and he had basically flipped the life insurance industry on its head and started this whole team and motivated millions of people.

He started talking about leading people, and he said, no one needs a boss, but everyone needs a coach.

And he started talking about the differences between what a boss does and what a coach does, what a boss does and what a coach does.

And people remember their coaches, their teachers, the people who taught you piano lesson or dance or cheer or your soccer coach or your first grade teacher or whatever.

And bosses intimidate people.

They point their finger at people.

They're getting on them about the things they're doing wrong and not getting on the things they're doing right now.

He was very clear.

And we talked about this as well, internally.

This is not just a kumbaya, pat everybody on the back and tell them good job and attaboys, but it's genuine, authentic recognition, as David Novak would say, the CEO of former CEO of young Brands.

He talks about powerful, authentic, specific, timely recognition in public.

And when you do need to critique people, you got to do that in private, but it's got to be timely and authentic and specific as well, but not in the sense of, I'm going to lash out on you.

And so I remember there was time early on where we were just bosses of people.

You just tell them what to do and get on them.

And not that we were ever mean spirited, but I remember a time where people listening probably are familiar with this.

You're in a meeting, right?

And it's the same topic that's come up, like, for the 19th straight time.

And I just, in my head, it just spewed out of my mouth.

And I said, haven't we talked about this enough?

Haven't we solved this thing?

And everyone's heads went to the floor, eye contact dropped to the floor, and someone kind of muttered, it'd be nice if we knew that we were appreciated.

And their heads went to the floor.

My heart went to the floor.

And I thought, what a jerk.

What a jerk.

How could I do this to people?

Just come in and just be raw and emotional and haven't we solved this before?

And I think about what Art Williams said.

Everyone needs a coach.

Everyone needs a coach.

Everyone needs a coach.

And that has been the pivot that we've been trying to make and I will always continue to try to make in the future.

Never perfect.

No, certainly never perfect.

But that mindset of let's teach, let's coach, let's get beside someone and do the thing with them.

What a mindset shift.

And I love this idea.

Hey, no one really wants or needs a boss, but they sure do need a coach.

And it is true.

You remember the coaches or the bosses that behave like coaches?

You do remember the bosses as well.

Hopefully.

Hopefully.

If we do it right or if we do it wrong, get remember the wrong reasons.

I think you're pointing that out, dude.

So I'm curious.

So you and Jesse been in the same for a long time.

How do y'all work together as a team?

Because that's like, y'all basically are like a marriage.

If you met that long ago, ten years ago, and you're still together, making music today, making baseball, how did, how was that relationship gone?

And how did you know?

Hey, this is somebody that I can see myself working with for a decade, right?

You know, again, going back to early on when it was just a few of us, we were the doers of everything.

We went to all the meetings, we scheduled things, we bought things.

We hired.

We hired people, and we wrote the emails, cast the vision, answer the phone, take the tickets, all that stuff.

And it was very, it was easier during that time to just be like, okay, I'll focus on this.

You get that done.

I'll get this done.

You get that done.

I'll get that.

It's very task oriented.

Right now that we've grown the team and grown the organization, obviously, again, capacity to do individual tasks, I've only got, you've only got the same amount of time.

And every single day, we've only got 24 hours and we got to sleep, and we can only do what our bodies and minds are capable of from a task perspective.

We read a book.

I always caution when I say we read a book, it's like, oh, you just read this one thing and it's the Silver bullet, right?

But we read Rocket fuel many years ago, and those guys have written a bunch of book traction and things like that and entrepreneurial operating system, and we read rocket fuel, and it talks about the visionary and the integrator, and it was like, whoa.

Oh, oh, wait, that's us.

It was just like a mirror flipped.

And we realized, oh, there are two roles here, and they're both really important, but they're both very distinct, and they have to complement each other.

They have to supplement each other.

It also kind of lays out when they fight each other and the messes that can kind of get, they can kind of sabotage not the people, but the ideas can kind of sabotage each other sometimes and strengthen weaknesses.

And personally, that was like, whoa, this is it.

And so where we now come together.

Is Jesse very much clear on this is where we're going?

This is the vision.

This is the creative scope.

I see this thing next year, two years from now, three years from now, but also sometimes like, hey, tomorrow or a week from now or whatever, and then it's my job to come in with him and say, okay, I see that.

Let me figure out how to get it done.

Or, I see that.

And you remember last time we tried that and it just did not work.

And here's some mistakes that we've made over time that I could see us making again.

Or, hey, remember when we hired a person that way the last time we stumbled through these three or four things and start giving color and context and scope to where we're trying to go and then integrate that amongst the team.

We try to keep our business very simple.

We do a few things.

We try to do a few things very well.

Sometimes we get a little too wide and all of a sudden it gets messy and we get too many things involved.

But that vision and integration system has allowed us to accomplish really exciting and fun things and get the team basically integrated into that as well to say, okay, this is where we're going now.

Let's figure out how to do it.

That's cool.

And I've, I have heard that framework, but I haven't necessarily heard the behind the scenes on how, how people are making it work.

And it sounds like it's working really well for you guys.

But explain the challenge on the integration side for, because I remember this from Jesse's interview.

He's like, you guys, he challenges everyone to come up with 15 ideas, new ideas at night that you've got to integrate and test, I guess, and examine to see what's working in every single game.

Yeah.

Where I sit and, okay.

Also, so there's the vision integration piece, but then there's also some role based things.

So he also sits in really what you would call that chief creative role based seat on the team.

And it's a creative and marketing and show, and our players are in that and the content and all those things and a lot of branding and design and those pieces, the fan experience type stuff.

He sits in that world and actually, in a way, almost integrates it himself and has people on the team that can integrate.

Leader of marketing team and leader of entertainment.

And obviously, we have our coaching staff who takes those players and casts and characters.

And so I actually, I don't completely stay away from everything creative, everything show element, but I do stay away from it as far as I know that he's got that really handled extremely well.

Where I come into play is tickets and merchandise and operations and getting stuff from here to there.

And our team and our people and our finance and taking the product.

The thing that we do show fun games, banana ball on the road.

And then I say, okay, how do we take all of our business units and roll them up into this thing to make sure that we're sold out?

And we got tons of merch and we got good items and we got people to do it and we got places to go and we know how to get there.

And we got financial support systems and technology support systems and things like that to say, okay, let's take this product and actually put it into our business unit.

And so that's where I get to sit.

And then we come together on, on certainly bigger things.

And it's my job to take some of those units and also ask, now, we're not introducing 15 new merchandise items every single night.

That would be psychotic.

But we are looking to how do we plus, how do we plus, how do we plus, how do we plus.

Okay, I've seen this item and this item and this item work really well.

What is item two x or 2.5 or.

Okay, here's how we've done ticketing for a while.

I've seen this opportunity here.

Let's try a meet and greet.

Okay, what would that look like?

How do I come together with players and cast entertainment and say, okay, Jesse, I feel like there's an opportunity here.

How do we integrate show and fun and excitement and now add this new ticket package and things like that is where I get to work on with our team.

And we are constantly innovating and thinking of new ideas and thinking of those new concepts because it's paramount across the organization to be able to bring that or else we're just going to be status quo.

Would you or your CEO be a good fit for this podcast?

If you know a uniquely talented leader who has a story to share and a message to deliver, then we'd love to host them on the show.

Go to benleads.com apply to fill out a quick form where you can let us know a little bit about yourself.

And my team will take a look to see if we're a good fit.

That's benleads.com apply.

Yeah.

So what's a common misconception that people have about the savannah bananas?

Oh, my goodness.

Well, if you want one, then it's fake.

One of the greatest compliments we receive, but gets misconstrued.

They say, well, oh, this is like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball.

And people mean that with the most sincere compliment they can possibly give.

Because it's like your brain is like, I've seen this before, I think, but I don't know how to describe it.

Let me use something that's parallel to this.

And so they say, oh, you guys are the Harlem Globetrotter baseball.

And we say, yes, thank you so much.

That's so kind of you.

Because the Harlem Globetrotters were innovators.

They were doing things 50, 60, 70 years ago that blew people's minds.

And they were selling out venues and they were going on tours and they were playing at Madison Square Garden and they were showman, showman.

There was big showmanship and the slam dunks and the tricks and all those things.

And then it changed.

And it changed quite dramatically in the sense of just becoming a repeatable model that had no stakes and no one really cared about.

And now they run a fine business and they do great things.

They're not immoral, they're not illegal.

They're not con artists or anything like that.

They run a wonderful business.

But we realize we don't want to just be the same thing every single night.

If you come see us in Miami or you come see us in Seattle, it's just like, oh, yeah, I've seen that before.

I get it.

Seen it once, don't need to see it again.

That, and Jesse is super, you maybe say paranoid about it.

If we become that, that is extremely, extremely, extremely dangerous to our entire business, culture, fan base, etcetera.

And so what we have keyed in on is every game, we want it to matter.

There's winner, there's a winner, there's a loser.

Bananas don't always win.

The party animals, our first team that we introduced, in addition to the bananas, they win all the time.

We introduce a third team, the Firefighters, firefighters.

They're in.

We just introduced a fourth team, the Texas Tailgaters.

They're going to take over and do amazing things.

And so it matters.

Every game matters.

There's a winner, there's a loser, but there's tons of entertainment, there's tons of trick plays.

You mentioned the 15 new things every single night that happens in the show.

Whether we're in Nashville and doing stuff with country music or we're in Cleveland and doing rock music, or we're in LSU and it's the Tigers and the pep band and Joe Burrow and crap like that.

We're doing all these new authentic, very specific things.

And then the other thing we just announced is that at the end of this year, at the end of 2025, there's going to be what we're calling the Tour championship.

All four teams competing for a championship.

And then in 2026, we announced, we just announced, but in 2026, we are going to officially form the banana ball championship league, where there'll be standings and it matters.

And there's, again, winners and losers, and there's high stakes, but we also have to entertain, and there's also got to be trick plays, and there's also got to be celebrations.

And we got to figure out how we're going to blend that together so that every night matters, every night's different.

You never see this same game twice.

So that is extremely exciting from a fan perspective.

I am pumped.

And I did not know about the league formation.

That is extremely cool.

I mean, ESPN, it's like, yeah, you can watch baseball or you can watch the banana ball league.

Yeah.

Or both the same time.

Maybe both at the same time.

That's the.

Sounds cool.

I'm excited.

Okay.

Are you having heart palpitations yet from this?

Because that is so the Harlem Globetrotters formula works, right?

It's cost effective.

Operationally, you don't have to have as many people, your people can practice the same play over and over again and always pull off that same dunkin.

And you may see it as an audience member, you might see it three or four times and you'll be like, I love it every time.

Yeah, you guys are, it feels like you're in the business of risk taking because you've been, you've been at risk taking the whole time, even with launching a new league.

But every night's a risk.

And I think hearing from Jesse, I'm like, coming out ready to, yes, it's going to be awesome.

But operationally, I'm really curious because how are you as an integral, as an, as an integrator, experiences as a leader?

I think a lot of leaders have this right.

They've got somebody out there casting this big vision, talking about stuff, but.

But the doing has got to happen and happen.

Well, if they don't pull off that trick play with the fire, like, people might be sad.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Well, I would say probably the thing where most you only, you don't know what is going to happen until you actually just do it.

And we have been.

That's not good for doers, is it?

Maybe it is not.

Sometimes we have been doers since day one.

And I think that's just how we learn.

We maybe not for everybody.

I think that's how we learn best.

We learn by doing.

And now we put planning into things, and we put thought into things, and we put what ifs into things, and we put if thens into things, but we do them, and we see people's reactions, and we see what the behavior said.

I remember when we were just first starting the banana ball concept, just the game theory.

We were changing legitimate game theory.

Baseball is a game that works.

There is a start, there is a finish.

It doesn't break down.

There's a winner, there's a loser.

Everything in actual game theory makes sense.

We got to some points in our first couple of games.

We were like, okay, the team is up to three to two, but there's only one more inning left, which means this team can't score two more points, but there's still time on the clock.

Wait, I think the game's over.

Yeah, I guess the game's over.

There was, like, these weird things that just happening, but you can't script all that stuff out on a whiteboard or on an Excel sheet or PowerPoint presentation.

You got to start with version one and beta test it and beta and test it in real life and test it in front of people and get this thing out there.

And then, okay, version two or version 1.5 or whatever.

When we first did the banana ball touring thing, and even people don't realize, we first tested the idea of the rules of this game all the way back in 2018, 2018, we did a private workout for two.

College for a college, and just said, hey, we got these ideas for a game.

Would you guys mind playing?

And we'll just start tinkering and watching laboratory, and people see us in 2024, and they're like, oh, you guys just started this thing?

Like, yeah, kind of six years ago.

And then in 2021, right after Covid, we did a one city world tour, and we went to mobile, Alabama, and low risk, low reward, low risk.

Aim small, miss small, and we fired that thing off.

7000 people showed up over two nights.

We went from a one city world tour to a seven city world tour.

We keep using that world tour.

People love, all people love.

When we say world tour, by the way, and we do a seven city world tour, then, as Jim Collins would say, we went from rifle shots because we kept testing, testing, testing, testing to Cannonball bingo, and we go, 33 city world tour in 20, 2023.

And then it's like, dude, we're all in on this thing.

2023.

2024.

Obviously 2025.

But those are the iterations of these things over time.

And it's rifle, rifle, rifle, and then those big cannonballs.

And so, yeah, we take risk.

We certainly take risk.

It's risky.

Nothing is guaranteed in our business.

Nothing is guaranteed any day that we have.

We're not a part of a league.

We're not a part of an investment group.

We're not a part of venture capital.

We're not.

We don't have a huge credit line.

We have no investors.

We didn't get rich in another business.

And then just cool.

Start a sports team.

Every single day, if we don't wake up and do something amazing for our fans, is the day that we are starting to lose them.

And so that's what keeps us up at night.

You talk about heart palpitations.

We've got to do that.

We've got to deliver a wonderful experience to our fans.

And it takes all of us.

It takes the creative, it takes the games, it takes the stakes.

It takes all of that every single night to pull that off.

Wow.

I love.

I love so much about that.

And the way I'm experienced.

It is.

Is like, hey, how you're.

How you guys started the team, how the team evolved.

And thank you for sharing.

Like, the financial structure, it gives you an edge in the business to create powerful things.

Right?

Because you've got to come up with a bunch of bad ideas to find the magical ones.

We've had a bunch of them.

We've had a bunch of them.

What's your favorite worst one that you're.

Like, oh, that wasn't bad.

Yeah.

Grandma beauty page.

I don't know.

No, that seems to be popular.

Actually, I saw it.

Actually, it resurrected itself on me last night.

We had our live, our banana ball world tour draft, which is when we announced the cities.

So it's a city selection show.

And I saw this lady wearing a t shirt.

And it's a t shirt that I just.

Every time I see it, I see it maybe once a year, if that.

Once every couple years.

It just brings back this flood of bad memories.

And it was the beach bash t shirt.

And back in the day, 2017, 1819, we thought we were experts at everything.

We thought we could sell anything to anybody, ice to eskimos.

We thought we could create any event, and anyone would come to it.

We sold out these baseball games.

Why wouldn't anyone just come see anything?

We do beer festivals, kickball leagues, haunted houses, festivals, beer festivals, like, all these crazy things, concerts.

And we thought, man, we're going to do a Jimmy Buffett impersonation band, Margaritaville type thing, beach bash.

And it poured.

Hurricane came through.

We couldn't sell the tickets.

We bought all these t shirts, and we had to cancel the event, had to pay the promoter.

He was pissed.

I mean, it was just a train wreck.

And so we just gave the t shirts away.

All the people who bought tickets, we said, we're so sorry, by the way.

We bought all these stupid t shirts.

Here you go.

And to this day, people still wear them.

We see them, like I said, once every couple years.

I saw one last night.

And the whole thing.

And the whole thing.

In all of this, I remember people.

It dawned on me one time, lady came to one of our very poor events and she said, so when's the bananas game?

When do those start?

And I thought, oh, yeah, the thing that we do.

The thing that people actually love us for.

Yeah.

Oh, that thing.

Yeah.

And, man, we canceled the.

We're not doing events.

We're not.

We're not doing these things because there's one thing that we're the best at and there's one thing that people know us for, and let's be great that thing and go all in on that thing, because that's what we feel like.

That's our blue ocean.

And we don't do events anymore.

We do banana ball.

Oh, what a great story.

And I just love the idea of, you get these occasional reminders from the universe because the beacher emerges from the darkness and they're like, hey, just remember what you do.

Don't.

Don't do the Jimmy Buffett stuff anymore.

Do the baseball.

All right.

So I was going to.

I usually ask a question about, like, your vision for this, but you already cast it, right?

You got the banana ball league coming up.

So take this last question really, in any direction you want to.

Jared, what, what's your parting thought for our listeners?

Well, it's.

It's so key to play the long game in this thing.

And it's been something that we talk about a lot here.

A lot, a lot, a lot is we are willing to take some short term hit, some short term pain, sometimes some short term smaller profits, to really be focused on our singular one fan at a time.

Yes, there are millions.

We'll play in front of 2 million people next year, 2025, but those 2 million are 2 million.

2 million.

2 million people will see banana ball next year across this great country, but they're made up of ones.

You and the next person and your family member and your friend, and they're made up of ones.

And so we have to be very intentional to be in the moment, present thinking about doing something for that one person that we wish we could do it for everybody.

Andy Stanley said that.

Pastor Andy Stanley said that.

Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.

I love that mindset because it's like, now I get to focus on doing something for you.

It's like Will Guderra talks about unreasonable hospitality, like, let's do something unreasonable for this person, but also in having that long frame of mind that let's be in this for the long term.

Let's be in this where this person comes back over and over and over and over again.

Let's be in a position where this person tells their friends about us and their family and for us.

Let's be a place where this person grows up and their kids are banana ball fans.

Because the things that we did for this person and how we made them feel and because this next generation got to come along with them.

And so have a long frame of mind.

Be relentless about who you are, who you're doing it for, why you're doing it.

Be fanatical about the fan you serve, the singular fan.

And have fun, man.

Just have fun doing this thing so, so good.

People are going to want to, people listening, they're going to want to experience band of all, but they may refer back to, oh, my gosh, they've got a waitlist of 2 million fans.

If they want us catch you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, so we have a lottery list.

It just opened.

It closes November, I want to say November 1, 2024.

And that's for the 2025 campaign.

And so you got to get on the list.

You got to join the lottery.

It's a lottery.

It's a random.

If 100,000 people join the list for one specific city that's real, there will be 100,000 people just joining a one, like, one list for one city out of the two, 3 million.

And there's only a certain amount of tickets we can obviously sell.

And so they gotta join the lottery list.

It'll be a random number selection of, you know, maybe only 10,000 people from that single list can buy tickets, or maybe 20,000, and we'll make those selections.

They'll get notified of, and then they'll have the opportunity to buy.

I will caution people, there is a million people out there in the world who say that they have Savannah bananas tickets.

Don't trust them.

Do not trust.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially with the high demand that you guys have.

Yes.

Yeah.

And we've seen that time and time again.

But I do think that's representative of the brand, how you do it, right?

Yes.

Or a lot of people interested, but it is a lottery, so you've got a chance.

It's not a Taylor Swift situation.

Yeah.

Everyone's got a chance.

We do have a fan club who does get priority access.

Very limited number of people who get to join and be a part of our fan club.

They got to go through some certain criteria, but really everything else is lottery based.

Some of the teams, if you're maybe a season ticket holder of a certain team, you may have a little bit of access, but really it's lottery based.

And there's 300 million some odd people in this country.

We only have 2 million tickets.

And so it's frustrating.

And people say, why didn't you come to my city?

Or I've been trying to get tickets for years.

And we get it.

We truly do get it.

I wish we could take care of 300 million people, 350 million people.

And it hurts.

That's right.

It hurts because it's like, man, we're saying no to a lot of people.

It's not intentional.

It's not on purpose.

It's not.

We're not picking on people.

We are really doing our best to grow this thing, to bring it to as many people as possible.

All right.

All simplest thing is go out and get your name on this list.

That's it.

Enjoy us the banana ball.

Jared, thank you for a fun, fun episode today and looking forward to sharing your message with our audience.

Absolutely.

My pleasure.

Want to boost your productivity and decision making?

Get vital insights from each episode delivered directly to your inbox.

A great resource.

Whether you've listened to the episode or not.

Go to benfanning.com insight.