Bananas For Business Season 2: A Front Row Seat To The Bananas Business
After five seasons of tremendous success, even bigger things are coming for the Savannah Bananas in the next three to five years. As part of the big changes that are coming, Jared Orton introduces Season 2 of the Bananas for Business Podcast, where you will get an inside look of how the Bananas pull off their incredible seasons. What does their marketing look like? What does the sales process look like? What’s the content plan? How are they hiring people? What is their vision for the future? How are they inspiring people? What does their culture look like? It will be a raw, unfiltered take on what the Bananas are doing to transform sports experience and what the future looks like for the team. Hop right in as Jared peels back the curtain to the future!
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Bananas For Business Season 2: A Front Row Seat To The Bananas Business
We are kicking off season two. I know we took a little break after the Coronavirus thing. It was ravaging the entire sports industry and we’re going to get into that as we get into season two and talk about how we pivoted and overcame. We’re one of the only sports teams that we’re able to operate. We had a super limited crowd over the course of the season, but we did it. We were able to pull it off and we’ll get into that later on in future episodes. I wanted to kick off season two and we’re going to pivot. We’re going to take this in an entirely different direction.
Season one was all interviews about the customer experience and employee culture. We interviewed some great, amazing business leaders and thought leaders and we interviewed some people on our team and the marketing side. We had a couple of COVID episodes. As I started thinking about what season two would look like, I was going into it thinking about the one question that we get over and over again. As long as I’ve been in this industry, I think I’ve gotten it because I think people are genuinely curious about what this whole place looks like from a business perspective and that question is what do you guys do in the offseason. It is such a loaded question. I wish I could explain it in one sentence, but it’s crazy. It’s an incredible journey and I think, for the most part, we’re one of the only random industries where we only open our doors for 28 or 30 nights a year.
We work nine months out of the year to plan, sell, execute, promote, and plan content. Then we have the season and then that’s it. We’re incredibly seasonal and that’s a blessing and a curse sometimes. I think people are genuinely curious, what are the bananas do to pull off these seasons? What’s the marketing look like? What’s the sales process look like? What’s the content plan? How are we hiring people? What is our vision for the future? How are we inspiring people? What’s our culture look like?
I want to take this time to go on a journey and I want you as a reader to go on the journey with us as we start mapping out. We’ve been in existence for five years now, completed our fifth season. There’re some exciting things that are happening in the future. I want to peel the curtain back a little bit and take you as a reader on the journey of how we pull off, not only this season. I’m going to share the vision of the bananas for the next 3 to 5 years with our team. I’m fired up about it. Our leadership group has been going through it. We read Michael Hyatt’s The Vision Driven Leader book. Who are we going to impact? What do the sales and marketing look like? What does our team look like? What does our promotion look like? What does our product look like?
We’ve got some exciting things that we’re going to be sharing with our team tomorrow and lay it out there for them on this is our next journey. This is our next destination, our mission, our core values, who we are and what we’re about. Those will never change. We’re always fans first, we’re entertainers, our core beliefs of always being caring, different, fun, enthusiastic growing, and hungry. Those will never change but the destination has to change. I think in any business, what we’re realizing is we’ve done this for five years. When we first came in, we had this amazing vision of celebrating this place and bringing it back to life. We’ve fundamentally mostly done that. We’ve accomplished and we’re going to share with our team on what that vision is.
In the following couple of episodes, I’m going to lay out what this vision is, what it means for our team, and what it means for the product. I want to share that the written document of what that vision is with your readers. We’re going to post that on social media. We’re going to post that on our website. We’re going to make this a public thing and it’s a big piece of who we are and what we do. I think that’s going to be the theme of this season two. As we get into this is giving a raw unfiltered approach to what the bananas are up to, what we’re thinking about, the controversies we’re having, the things that we’re struggling with, the new challenges and pursuits that were going on. The things we’re testing, the things we’re trying, the things that we’re curious about.
What I want to do is also open that up to you pour readers. What questions do you have about what we do? We want to be transparent with it. What questions do you have? Shoot us an email, shoot me a message, call me, text me whatever that might be because we want to answer these things. I want to take you on a journey of what this looks like from a day-to-day basis and week to week basis. What’s going on in our mind from a leadership standpoint? How are we getting our team to the next level? How we’re driving this business forward. How we’re not going to be satisfied with what these past five years and with what happened this past year with what’s going on next year, we want to get big in our thinking.
There will be a time when we can challenge the way that the sports experience happens for the fans and for the team. Click To TweetWe want to get big in our strategy and we want to start sharing these things with the world. That’s what people are going to be able to expect from what’s going on. There might be a few interviews but I want to make this untraditional. I don’t want this to be just, “We have a guest and we have some questions and they have some answers and then boom, next, next interview.” This is going to be raw and unfiltered. It’s going to be a lot of us sharing the challenges that we’re going through and sharing the vision of where we’re trying to go in the next 3 to 5 years.
We’ve got some big announcements that we’re going to be making. There’s going to be a time where we believe that we can challenge the way that the sports experience happens for the fans, for our team, and our people. We’re going to be challenging that. We’re going to be fighting against that. We’re going to be pushing that forward. We believe there’s a better way to experience a baseball game and to experience a sporting event. We believe that there are ways that we can do things that changed the way that that’s done for the fans. It’s going to be exciting. This show will be a creative outlet for me to share everything that’s on my mind. I share a message with our team on what’s on my mind, what’s on my heart, what I’m inspired by, and what I’m challenged by and also personal reflections. It’s been a way for me to get it out there to our team on what’s going on and I’m experiencing and what that might mean for them.
What I’m thinking about the team at this moment, what I’m thinking about the business, things that I’m seeing that we could potentially take on the future and that’s what you’re going to get during these conversations. They’re going to be sometimes short. Sometimes they’re going to be a little bit longer. Sometimes they’re going to be specific and about a topic that we’re working on. Sometimes it’s going to be about potentially insider access to what we’re launching or what you can be following us for. I want to celebrate the good things that happen but I’m going to be vulnerable during these and share with you some of the challenges that we go through and the things that don’t go right.
I think sometimes on shows, all we hear is the, “Everything went right and this is exciting. Look at this person. They’re successful.” That’s not always the case here. There are some challenging, struggling times that we have as a company. I 100% believe that as we lay out this next vision for the company, as we try to pursue these things and as we go about them over the next 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 3 years, 5 years, we’re going to have hiccups. We’re going to have pain points. We’re going to have internal conflicts. There’s probably going to be external conflicts. I’ll share some of this stuff that happened during the Coronavirus and COVID and all that stuff that we had and some of the conflicts that arose around that.
What I hope it does through all this is it inspires you to continue to drive forward with your company, your business, your team and potentially set out a new vision for the next 3 to 5 years of what that would look like for you. Also, potentially be able to recognize that we’re all in this life, in this business, and this world together. We’re all doing great, amazing things and we’ve got to continue to push every single day. I hope this will be an inspiration to folks that you guys can see that it’s not all fairytales and roses from the Savannah Bananas. We go through a lot of different things in our business every single day and every single week, every single year but at the end of the day, we’re willing to share them, put them out to people and use that as encouragement for folks along the way.
That’s the idea of what this next foray of the show will be. I’m excited about it. I’m excited to share with people what it’s going to be like. I’m excited to share the raw intense pieces of what this business has been for us over the past years and what it’s going to be like over the next years. I’m excited to share in the decisions that we’re going to make to put us towards the next level. I’m excited to see if will it pay off, will it work? What are the stakes on this? What if we fail? You’re going to get a front seat to every single one of those moments as we go along.
I appreciate you reading this short blog, an intro episode of the show. The next episode that I’ll be sharing and recording will be everything related to the vision of the Savannah Bananas as drafted by myself and Jesse and Emily and Marie and Berry. We’ve drafted this thing together. What the business will look like, what our dreams are, what our aspirations are, what our team will look like, what our product will look like, what our sales and marketing will look like. What our impact will be on our customers, on our fans, and this world in those 3 to 5 years because of what we do and the things that are accomplished.
That will be on the next episode. I hope you will enjoy reading to it. You can get in touch with us through our website or you can call us, you can email us, you can text us, you can get in touch in any way, hit us up on LinkedIn or social media. We want to talk, we want to hear your questions and we hope you enjoy going on this journey with us. Thanks again for reading and we’ll see you soon.
Important Links:
- The Vision Driven Leader
- LinkedIn – Savannah Bananas
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Jared Orton
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