The (Improbable) Story of Savannah Bananas' Rise to a $1B Empire

My First Million

Hubspot

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get the free Side Hustle Ideas Database 👉 https://clickhubspot.com/nsv Episode 772: Sam Parr ( ⁠https://x.com/theSamParr⁠ ) and Shaan Puri ( ⁠https://x.com/ShaanVP⁠ ) talk to Jesse Cole ( https://x.com/YellowTuxJesse ) the owner of Savannah Bananas and creator of Banana Ball. — Show Notes: (0:00) 200 fans, $260 in the bank (3:00) The team no one ever heard about (9:01) How to become an idea machine (13:30) Lessons from PT Barnum, Bill Veeck, Walt Disney (15:55) Surviving embarrassment (19:16) Rock bottom (23:34) Inside Jesse's creative process (27:00) Stealing from MrBeast (28:39( Jesse opens his idea book (32:00) Meeting Bob Iger (33:28) Identifying the chip on Jesse's shoulder (38:58) 11 principles (48:14) The 12-star experience (53:12) The sacrifice of extreme hard mode (58:08) Attracting vs recruiting — Links: • Savannah Bananas - https://thesavannahbananas.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano //

Transcript

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0:00.0	You gotta create attention first.
0:01.5	If people don't know who you are, good luck trying to create something.
0:04.0	You guys have a multi-million person wait list for tickets.
0:08.0	On TikTok, you have 10 times more followers than the New York Yankees.
0:11.0	Ideas are more valuable than anything.
0:13.0	Whatever's normal do the exact opposite.
0:15.0	No one comes home and said,
0:17.0	oh, do you hear this thing? It's so normal.
0:18.0	You get excited about remarkable, unforgettable.
0:20.0	You're one of our Mount Rushmore type of guys because you're playing the game on extreme hard mode, and I respect you for it. It's way harder than I thought. So we completely ran out of money. We had nothing left. And then Emily turned to me and said, we have to sell our house. So we sold our house. Did you have conversations of wanting to quit? I mean, it was brutal. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it
0:43.2	like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Never.
0:45.9	What's up guys? Oh my God, it's Jesse Cole.
0:48.6	What's up? How are you guys doing? We almost wore the same thing today.
0:54.6	You should have.
0:55.2	You should have. There's a lot more going around these days. I think I'm keeping them in business. When did you start the yellow suit, yellow hat? What was the day? Before the bananas. That's the crazy thing. People didn't even realize that. It was before the bananas. That's the wild thing. Oh, yeah, man. And we had a team in, talk about First Million. We had a team in Gastonia, so I was wearing this before because of PT Barn. I'm inspired by him, not just to be the same, same regular host like everyone else. Do you know what you're getting into at all with this? I know. I've listened to your show, and I'm ready to rock. I love the one with the uh two you had the owner of the uh
1:28.7	the jazz that was an interesting that was more of a sit down when I was hanging out with him I was
1:33.5	telling him a bunch of Savannah banana anecdotes I was like you got to you got to do this you got to do
1:38.3	you got to get the grandmas on the court where he loves hearing all the other things he should do
1:41.9	yeah yeah that's probably what he liked Sean you probably like. No, it was very well done and very well produced as well. You did a great job with that. Well, thanks, man. Well, we're excited to have you here because you are, you're one of our like entrepreneurial Mount Rushmore type of guys because you took some, you know, it's the, it's about the gap. It's about the gap of going from nothing to something.
2:02.9	And the way, how far you went with nothing to something incredible is pretty remarkable.
2:08.5	Just to give people a sense.
2:10.2	I mean, I don't know a soul in my life who wanted to go watch exhibition or minor league baseball.
	...

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