One player wears stilts.
Another, a cowboy hat.
The owner never appears in public without his yellow tuxedo and bowler hat.
Any spectator can challenge a rule on the field.
Games end promptly at the 2 hour mark.
The team regularly sells out not only MLB stadiums, but NFL stadiums.
You have to join a lottery for the chance to buy tickets.
Everyone dances.
Have you heard of the Savannah Bananas? IYKYK. If you haven’t, welcome to the club.
The Bananas are an entertainment-first baseball, well, at this point, league. They started as a regular ol’ collegiate summer baseball team, but played their first exhibition game, “banana ball” style in 2018. They won several league championships and pivoted entirely to exhibition style games in 2023.
The Bananas are a phenomenon. Selling millions of tickets each year. Getting butts in the seats to watch baseball, something Major League Baseball can’t do.
How’d they do it? By focusing on creativity and customer experience.
It’s baseball. . . with a twist.
Attendees feel like they are part of show. . . because they are.
If you watch the team’s videos, you’ll see that it is statistically impossible to be unhappy at one of their events.
IT’S BANANAS!
At any given time if you ask me how things are going, I’ll say “Bananas.”
Does anyone else feel like once about April 15, 2020 hit and it became clear that gardening was everyone’s new hobby, nothing has slowed down?
Do you feel bored and frantic at the same time?
Were your sales ok this spring and summer and fell off a cliff over the past few months?
Do you want a year-long sabbatical and also to create something new and interesting and lasting?
Do you want a pony?
(I do and I very nearly acquired one this summer. Well, he is a horse. I didn’t and it’s a good thing and also a story for another day.)
But bananas, man. Feels like I’m swimming in them.
And not just because the Savannah Bananas have a hefty Meta ad budget.
When life gives you bananas
Invite your friends over and make something.
In an August 2025 article, columnist Lynn Schmidt wrote that The Savannah Bananas are actually helping with the loneliness epidemic in the United States “by creating an experience where the primary goal isn’t winning or losing but collective joy.”
Listen, I might be in my own bubble, but I have talked to ZERO PEOPLE over the past three months who aren’t at their wit’s end right now.
Here’s how the Savannah Bananas put that feeling on pause, and here’s how you can, too.
Get out the duct tape
Head to Trader Joe’s and buy a banana for 23 cents and tape the banana to the wall.
Just don’t put a picture on Instagram. You’ll get sued for copyright infringement.
I’m referring to the 2019 artwork Comedian by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
Here is a quote from a sign put up at the art fair where it was sold for $120,000, generating much chatter and an intervention. (Someone ate the banana.)
“Comedian, with its simple composition, ultimately offered a complex reflection of ourselves. We would like to warmly thank all those who participated in this memorable adventure, as well as to our colleagues. We sincerely apologize to all the visitors of the fair who today will not be able to participate in Comedian.”
You might be thinking, HAVE WE LOST THE PLOT HERE?
But what is marketing if not getting people to talk about you?
But what is art if it doesn’t incite a reaction?
What is brand awareness if not everyone bringing up the “duct tape banana” almost 7 years after its original display?
All from a simple banana.
Magic in the Mundane
In September I did a big trip to visit clients and friends in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.
We set up project management systems and ran creative workshops. We picked up plants and hauled things around for markets.
We made art with leaves.
In the middle of the work day.
We did blind contour drawings.
On a Wednesday afternoon.
We took the farm mobile out into the trees and drew Becky’s favorite old hackberry.
“Why don’t I do this more often?” Becky said.
We held Pawpaw leaves up to the light and marveled at how they look like stained glass when the sun shines through them.
We collaborated: mixing memories of fireflies in mason jars with paint and glue guns to create something out of nothing that reminds us of everything.
We “looked closely with great heart” as my friend Lorene says, and learned how to capture the spirit of our gardens in our sketchbooks.
We learned how drawing an interesting picture is like designing an interesting garden and the more interesting your garden, the more interesting your picture.
We played with paint and glue sticks, learning collage and how different textures make for a pleasing design, as it is on paper as it is with plants.
We swore a little when the glue got stuck to our hands and our hands got stuck to our scissors.
We laughed with our families.
We made new friends.
We made magic from the mundane.
A banana is a banana is a banana
The thing about bananas is (right now) they are cheap.
They are not confusing or scary.
They’re “regular.”
You can make a lot of things with bananas.
We need more bananas.
People at the top of the economic food chain can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Create a $155 centerpiece class. My mom will sign up.
The people who fly on private jets? They get their centerpieces brought to them.
The rest of us? Give us a glue stick and some colored pencils. We can’t and won’t sign up for an $80 class twice a month every month.
We’ll do it for special occasions, but if you want us to come back over and over and over again. . .
Feed us bananas.
We’re hungry for them.
Recipes
Here are some ideas for you.
- Create and sell kits. Kits are HUGE right now. Amanda at Aster Gardens makes ever-changing themed moss mosaic kits.
- Make art with plants – leaves, flowers, sticks
The workshop pictured below was hosted by Parenthèse in France.
- Make a pun, any pun or refer to pop culture and memes. Like this amazing subject line from Johnson’s Nursery.
“Maybe She’s Born with it, Maybe it’s Maple Leaves”
- Take fun product pictures – with people and FACES in them like Sow True Seed.
- Combine mundane items in unusual ways (Like this pencil bouquet for sale from Greenleaf & Blueberry or this veggie bouquet created by Eat Sunny, a company that makes dressings and dipping sauces.
Business does not have to be boring.
In fact, research shows that if you want your business to do well, creativity has to be a part of it. And not as some abstract concept, but as an ongoing practice.
I know that I talk a lot about art because I like making art, but I like making other things, too.
I like making seventeen step email workflows.
I like creating project designs.
I like strategizing on voice.
I enjoy making silly little reels.
I fulfills me to NO END to help other people find creative spark.
If you answered “yes” to feeling bored and frantic at the same time, take one task, one thing that you do each day and figure out how to do it differently.
Then keep doing that.
Goodbye Cold Cuts and Slides
None of us choose to sit in a conference room watching slide presentations and eating soggy sandwiches in our free time, so why should we do that for professional development?
It’s time to QUIT THAT.
If you’re a gal in Minnesota for Northern Green, you can get a taste of what’s next. And this is just the beginning. The baby banana.
CLICK HERE to join us and make sure to tell your friends!
Also, BIG THANKS to Bailey Nurseries for being an event sponsor. If you’re interested in sponsoring, send me an email. We have opportunities starting at $250.
Handy Links
Each newsletter always has a mix of fun and functional links.
Why Following Your Dreams Isn’t Enough (Poetry & Plumbing)
Does your email newsletter look like crap in Outlook? Why should you care?
Will I see you? I’ll be at Northern Green in Minnesota. Might be at iLandscape in Chicago (TBD as their invite got stuck in my spam and it is possible the grid is filled). Heading to Indianapolis mid February.
As you can tell, snow doesn’t bother me, so if you’d like a workshop, an email migration, a project management system set up, website help or a talk this winter, reply to this email or book a discovery call and we’ll cook something up. (Even if you don’t like bananas.)
Yours in colored pencil shavings,
