How to keep going when no one believes in your dream yet

Eight years ago, a man walked up to me in a yellow outfit that you could not miss from a million miles away.

He told me he had taken over a semi-pro baseball league and was going to turn it into something people had never experienced before.

Something called… Banana Ball?

I thought what he was describing was going to be extremely hard, but he had a lot of passion and belief in his dream, so I wished him success.

Then, a few years later, I started seeing viral videos of a bright yellow sports team playing a new game called Banana Ball.

Today the Savannah Bananas sell out football stadiums, have five million people on a waitlist to see them play, and are valued at half a billion dollars.

What I didn’t know when meeting him was everything he had just sacrificed to chase his dream.

Years before, Jesse and his wife Emily drove to Savannah, Georgia to take over a baseball team. When they got there, the phone lines were cut. The internet lines were cut. The former team had taken everything out of the stadium.

They found an old garage, put an air bed on the floor, and moved in. The floor was so dirty they slept in their socks. They were grocery shopping on $30 a week.

In their first few months, they sold two tickets. On January 15th, 2016, Emily told him they had run out of money. They needed to sell their house.

So they sold it, emptied their savings, and kept going.

It’s easy to talk about your big dream, but we don’t talk enough about the specific feeling of being the only person in the room who looks like they believe it at first.

The awkward silence when you describe what you’re building and nobody knows what to say. I experienced this many times when I started my podcast.

The moments walking into bigger rooms with more accomplished people, knowing some of them are thinking, “Who does this guy think he is?”

Jesse still gets it from people. They see a grown man running a baseball team in a yellow tuxedo and assume he has an ego.

He answers that it’s the best version of himself.

Most owners are up in the suite in a suit, and he wants to be down with the fans, showing people that you can dress up, be a little silly, and not take yourself so seriously. The outfit gives others permission to be the more authentic versions of themselves.

It’s why he stood out to me when we crossed paths all those years ago.

If you have an ambitious dream that you want to go after, let this story be your inspiration to take action on it this week.

You don’t have to have it all figured out.

Jesse wasn’t selling out stadiums eight years ago. He just had the belief in himself that this dream could work out. He had the confidence to walk into rooms he didn’t yet belong in and share his vision.

Will some people think your idea is too crazy to work? I’m sure of it. But people were also sure of it for Jesse when he talked about his new Banana Ball concept.

However, he’s the one with 5 million people on a waitlist to attend one of his events.

That’s only possible because he kept going.

If you want to hear the full story, check out ​my conversation with Jesse Cole.​

Let me know how this inspires you,

Lewis