Heroes in Business - Wan Kim, CEO Smoothie King, $600M annual revenue

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

How to Go From Customer to CEO. Wan Kim, CEO Smoothie King, $600M annual revenue is interviewed by David Cogan founder of Eliances and host of the Eliances Heroes show broadcast on am and fm network channels, internet radio, and online syndication.  

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups. Where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. Hi, what an incredible day we have today. And I'm just so honored by the most amazing people that I have the opportunity to share their experiences, the people that make a difference in the world with all of you listeners. Also, too, is later on coming up in the show, we have Ed Beegley Jr.

Yep, he's the TV star, movie star, and also now environmentalist. And later on, we're going to have, believe it or not, yeah, one of the founders. He's an inventor of the cell phone. Well, let's get started with our first hero today. I'm a big fan of his place and what he sells, and you're going to know why with that too. Welcome to the show, Won Kim. He is the CEO of Smoothie King. We're talking 600 million in annual revenue with 1300 restaurants and you can reach him at smoothieking.com. All right. So, so Juan, that's quite amazing. I mean, talk to me about

the beginning as far as how did you first discover Smoothie King? That's a good question. I actually started as a franchisee back in 2003. So when I was in college, back, back, back when I was a lot younger than now, obviously, I actually used to drink smoothie for actually in order for me to drink beer, I actually had smoothie so that I didn't feel a guiltiness to go back and drink alcohol. I mean, it's very, very sad story. But anyway, I got hooked up by drinking smoothies for my healthiness. And then when I actually went back to Korea, I saw a lot of opportunities that actually a healthy lifestyle was really rising in that country back in 2000.

So I really thought about, you know, I really tried to manage my body by drinking smoothies. And perhaps maybe many South Koreans would like to do that. That's why I opened my first store as a franchisee in 2003. Wow. Now, you know, that's not very common, right? Somebody starting off as a franchisee and then becoming the CEO of the company. So, you know, in the beginning, it was really hard, but I think we did a really good job of opening the market in Korea. And we were able to open about 110 locations by 2009 and 10. And then market got saturated. And I actually wanted to continue my journey. So I actually asked the owner at the time in the US,

his name was Steve Kuno, whether he's willing to sell the company. And about a year later, he agreed. And I was able to buy the company back in 2012. Congratulations. So now, how has it been like to be the CEO? I mean, you're now like, quote, on the other side. You see the back end of the operations, of the franchisor, the different aspect of it.

How has that experience been? And how do you continue to try and grow it with so much competition like you mentioned? So this is what I believe. First of all, I'm an entrepreneur and what I really believe is if I believe in something I can actually create my own path and what I really did was after I bought this company back in 2012, what am I believing in? And that has to be translated into three things. So we actually created our mission, vision, and core values. And those three things are our North Star that we believe in. And so far, that North Star has been guiding us. And I'll be

honest, I think our team did a fantastic job. When I bought this company, we were doing 170 million. And this year, we are doing 600 million. That's been only nine years. That's a big difference. That's a big difference. What are some of the secrets to the success do you see of being able to really grow at that much? That's a substantial amount within nine years. Well, I don't know whether I can say this in radio, but in my opinion, a shoot happens all the time, right? I mean, it happens. And you just need to understand that when it happens, what's the things that you want to use as a guideline to manage those bad things? And in my opinion, for the past nine years, it always happened, but we were able to manage the business with our three core things, mission, vision, and core values. Fantastic. And again, you're listening, watching me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show.

Make sure that you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. It is the only place where entrepreneurs align. And we have with us Juan Kim, CEO of Smoothie King. He's grown this company to 600 million in annual revenue, 1300 restaurants. And make sure you check them out by going to SmoothieKing.com. So Juan, since you've taken over, how do you go about developing the different types of flavors and the mix? And what have you seen, too, as far as when you first got in, as far as now the evolution of what's happened with smoothies? So when I bought this company back in 2012, everyone was selling smoothies and everyone was able to sell banana and strawberry smoothie. I mean, you name it, right? So our vision that we created as a team, it's we want to be the integral part of every health and

fitness journey. So when you look at our R&D team now, we used to think of, okay, what kind of fruits do we want to use? Is it going to be cherry, watermelon? That's not how we do. What we really think of is what's the lifestyle that's rising and what people are doing and what kind of product we can come up with so we can help them to achieve their lifestyle. For example, this year, we actually came up with a smoothie called Stretch and Flex. And we developed a smoothie with a gymnast called Gabby Douglas. She's a three times gold medalist. And because what we see is there are more people who's enjoying yoga pilates and any type of flex activities and we wanted to make sure we come up with the right product so that's what we've been

doing it for the past five years and it's not flavor driven it's very purpose driven because of our vision that we want to get to so whenever I go to a smoothie place and I go to order, I always ask one thing. What is the healthiest thing on your item? I am most interested in the healthiest. Healthiest over flavor, over anything else. So let me ask you this. At Smoothie King, what's the healthiest? Well, I will tell you this. We have about 150 ingredients. Literally, over the past four years, we had to change every single ingredient that we had in our bar because we announced a cream blends initiative. So we got rid of anything artificial in there. We don't use any GMO fruits, no syrups, and our vegetables are all 100%

organic. I mean, we transformed this business into very healthy business. So you can count on any smoothie that we sell healthier than any smoothie chain in this world. Well, and some of the questions that we've got from our listeners, one of those is in particular in regards to how did you save up enough money to buy the first franchise location? Oh, I mean, you know, opening one location wasn't, I mean, in Korea, it didn't take a lot of money at that time, very frankly. But then for the first years, I wasn't making money

because South Koreans didn't care about king. They didn't know what we were selling. So they were asking, what is smoothie? So when you think about you are selling ice cream and they're asking, what's ice cream? It's hard. It's really hard. So we had to really educate the whole market. But then the payback was great because we are the only one who was selling smoothies. And once people start to really get into it, it just exploded. Wow. And now you're doing other things too, right? You have a loyalty program, right? Is that right? Talk to me about that and how that came to be. Well, we really want to be the integral part of your health and fitness journey. So we wanted to understand, for example, David, when you join our Healthy Rewards app, not only you earn the rewards, but we want to make sure that what you are buying and based on that, we can actually customize your smoothie and we can also suggest things.

We need to understand you, right? customize your smoothie and we can also suggest things. We need to understand you, right? So the best way for you to really use Smoothie King as your integral part of health and fitness journey, please join our Health D.D. World app. Juan, what kind of secrets things can you share with children though, you know, that want to grow up, want to make their mark, every, you know, want to either maybe be a franchisee owner maybe want to start their own business I mean you can you very unique having started off as a franchisee to working and now being the CEO of the company and building it so much what kind of secrets can you share with the children to be able to grow well from my experience I always remember two things one is when you are

comfortable there is no way you can drive. So always put yourself in a position where things are not comfortable around you. Second, in my opinion, you have to have your own discipline and believe in yourself. You have to believe in yourself because a lot often people lose their own confidence and they cannot even perform what they are capable of. But when you actually believe in yourself, I really believe so many people out there have much more capacity to do what they can. But they just doubt themselves so much. And that's a big problem. We got time for one last question here.

I know we're in your office. I want to do some snooping around in your office right now. What is the one thing that you like or value most that's in your office? Wow. Well, so first of all, right now, our Wednesday, we work from home. So this is actually my home. But in my office, I actually have a menu board that was built in 1970s that we picked up from Smoothie King store back in 1970s and it's unfortunate that I cannot show you that but it's pretty cool looking. Excellent awesome well Juan your vision for your products is motivating and inspirational and health conscious that's a Juan Kim, CEO of Smoothie King. Make sure you go and visit him, smoothieking.com. This has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show.

Continue to stay tuned when we have Ed Bigley Jr. on.