How I Built This with Guy Raz - Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017)

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live show, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Zumba. Zumba began as a mistake: aerobics teacher Beto Perez brought the wrong music to class, then improvised a dance routine to go with it. For his students, it was more fun than work — and it eventually grew into one of the biggest fitness brands in the world. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," how Alex McKenzie is hoping to upgrade the menu of your neighborhood ice cream truck by offering exotic flavors, high fat content, plus low-guilt options for the health-conscious. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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bank. We created this beautiful email. We pressed send and we're praying, please, please. And suddenly 450 instructors joined. And so that's when we said, this is going to be our life. And and let's make it work. BrahminPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how three immigrants from Columbia turned a scrappy aerobics class

into one of the biggest fitness brands in the world. Okay, so it's almost the new year, and, you know, we're all thinking about getting back to the gym or getting into shape, even if it's just like for a new year. a week or two. But during those glorious two weeks, you might stumble into a class in which everyone just seems to be really, really happy. And if you do, there is a good chance that that class they're taking is Zumba. Yes, this is Zumba. It is a kind of mashup of aerobics and

Latin dance and hip hop. And it actually all began with a guy named Alberto Perez. He goes by the name Beto. And Beto is a dancer by training. And back, in the 90s, he was living in Kali, Colombia, which is where he's from. He taught aerobics during the day to make extra money, and at night he would dance in a company. Anyway, one day he was heading to his aerobics class when he realized that he left his regular music at home. And the only music that I had with me in this moment, it was a cassette with Latin music, more cumbia, merengue, salsa, different kind of music. But I started the class. I didn't say to my students

I make a mistake. I tell them, listen, the class today, I want to do something different. They say, okay, only follow me. And I start my class, and everybody love it. And this moment, I discover it, and I say to myself, I need to do this for my

life. I love it. It's so cool. So Beto basically started to teach this new kind of fusion aerobics class in Kali for a long time, and it became really, really popular. So he decided to try his luck in America. And he sold all of his stuff.

He bought a ticket to Miami, and he started to knock on doors. I went to the gyms, and finally nobody paid attention to me. I didn't speak English. I can explain what I do. And I come back to Bogota, save money, and I come back again to Miami, went to the different gyms, four times. And finally, in the third time, one American woman in the north of Miami, Williams Island, And they tell me, okay, I want to do the audition with you.

And I said, perfect. I went with my friend. She translated everything. She said, Beto, okay, they do the audition. And I tell them, where is the people? No, she won only you and her. Oh, my God. Like a party time, only with one person is like a strain.

But okay, I went to the gym. It was Friday, like 3.30 in the afternoon. This time, all the gym. and the planet is empty. And I, okay, let me see what son I want to play. And I play, Oje Como va, the Tito Pente.

You know? Yeah, yeah. Oje, como va. She, wow, it's smile. And I start to teach my first steps, my first steps. And in this moment, a lot of people come to the gym

to go to the training, maybe lift wakes or something. And they come in in the Arabist room because they think it's a class. They don't know it's audition. You mean the people who were just like at the gym working out saw you auditioning for the manager and they started to like come in and check it out?

Exactly. And they coming in, three people, four, five, six. In one moment I had like 25 people and people clap every son. And the auditioning was for 15 minutes and I danced for one hour. Wow. And this moment the woman told me, okay, you know, I want to do a chance for you. come here in one month and teach a master class. Only for demo.

In this moment, my friend translated all this new. I say, wow, perfect. This is the only thing that I need. And I come back to my city, to Bogota, and I sold my cars. You know, I sold everything. I pay my bills. And I come back.

And I, the first thing that I buy is a Pontiac, 85 no air condition a car for $400 and I rent a little apartment with $400 too in the little Havana and my first bed it was an aerobics math

with two blankets and I teach my first class and I came late because I lost in this moment a dozen six the GPS and I came late 15 minutes late I can't believe it but anyway I come to the room, the aerobics room, people was quiet.

I didn't say sorry, excuse me, because I didn't speak English. And I played the music, and I say, please, God, help me. And I start the party, and people smile, have a good time. And the rest is story. Okay, Beto, I'm going to pause the story for a second, because I want to bring in another guy who comes into the picture at this point. Hello. Hello.

Who helps Zumba become Zumba. Tell me what you had for breakfast. Two arrepas. with avocado. And for everybody listening, it's going to get a little confusing for a sec, because this is also Alberto. No, called me, Alberto, called him Beto. So Alberto's Alberto Prilman and Beto is Beto Perez.

Okay, so Beto is the guy who invents Zumba in Colombia, brings it to Miami. Alberto is the guy who was going to help him make it into this huge thing. But before that happened, Alberto Perlman was living in Miami. He was 23. It's around 1999. Then all the guys my age were starting internet companies, and I said, why not? So he launches an incubator to help Latin American startups. And it seemed to be going fine for a short period of time until the dot-com bubble burst.

And Alberto's company collapses. Yeah, so I personally was out of a job, and I had no money in the bank. And I didn't know what I was going to do. And I was having dinner at my parents' house. And my mom kept talking about. Beto's class. And at that point, Beto here in Miami, he called this class Rumba size. Because Rumba in Spanish means to party. And then she turned to me and said, why don't you meet with Beto? Maybe since you're looking for something right now, maybe you and him can start a gym

together or something. And I said, I don't know if I'm going to start a gym, but I'll meet with him. Yeah, because I mean, your background was in technology and in like direct market sales. I mean, are you thinking to yourself, hmm, this seems a little weird. That's not really my thing. Well, the thing that popped into my brain at that time was, could this be an infomercial? Could this be something that we could basically sell some videotapes of this class and do something with it? But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure.

So the next day I was meeting with Beto at a Starbucks. This is in, like, what, 2000, 2001? 2001. Okay. And he told me his life story, which is unbelievable. I grew up in Colombia also, so I knew what was happening in the country, but he was in Cali, and Cali was the epicenter of violence. And here's this 15-year-old kid dancing on the streets and dancing in clubs and dancing in gyms.

And so it was like juxtaposition, right, with all the violence happening. And then there's this kid making everybody happy in his town, right? And so he told me his life story, and I said, I got to go see this. class. Because a Zumba class, the interesting thing about a Zumba class is that the instructor is always telling a story, the music selection, how they teach the class. So I went to see the class. And the one thing that I noticed was that every single person in the class was smiling.

And I had been a gym member before, and I knew that normally a smile is not the typical face people are doing when they're exercising really heavily in the gym, right? It's people are suffering. They're forcing themselves. It's kind of like the drill sergeant mentality. But then there was this class, which was like an oasis inside the gym where every single person was smiling, but they were drenched in sweat at the same time. And I'm like, this guy doesn't know it, but he has discovered like the magic pill.

He has discovered the exercise that people want to do instead. of the exercise that people have to do. So you said to him, what did you say to him? Do you say, hey, let's start a business? Yeah. He told me, hey, Beto, what do you want to do? And I said, I know, man, let's do and conquer the world. But, you know, in the funny way, you know.

And did you take him seriously? And he said, no, he said, okay, let's do it. You want to be my business partners? Yes. Okay, give me your hand. Perfect. That was it. Yeah.

And so then we said, okay, let's, we need to create some video. of your class and basically create a collection, a DVD set. It was VHS at the time, actually, a VHS set, and sell it on TV. So we can explain where it comes from and why and what the results are. And so that was the original idea. So the idea was to like, it was just a Borkat video, like Jazzercise, that you were just going to sell in an infomercial, and that was hopefully going to be your business. Yeah, like our, what was fresh in our memories at that time was Taibo.

Remember Taibo? Yeah, the martial arts workout thing. Yeah. So we were like, that was the theory because Beto told me, when people come to my class, they don't leave. And it's because the class is fun. We say fun equals lasting behavioral change. I get that, but I'm trying to figure what was the thing that made Roomba size different from other fitness classes, more fun? I think we do the same thing that Jane Fonda do in the beginning.

Everything, it's easy. Second, the music. No Latin music only. I do with different kind of music around the world. Hip-hop, Indian, Banga, and third, everybody can do it. I always thinking that my mom can do my class. And one of the things that Beto did that was very smart at the beginning is he said, I don't want a microphone.

Because if I have a microphone, I will interrupt the music. And people need to be able to hear the music. And so he doesn't scream at people in the class or there's no talking. It's only visual queuing. So with hand signals, we tell people what to do. And the magic is letting the music lead the choreography, lead the class. And there's a moment in the class that we call Fetch. F-E-J, freeing, electrifying joy.

We said that moment is 20 minutes into the class and the person suddenly feels completely liberated. They're having fun. They're not thinking about what they need to cook that night or their job or their kids or everything that is in their life. They completely disappears and it's just them and the music. So did you have to go out and raise money to start this? So it was July of 2001, and we went to some of our investors that had invested in Spider Labs, which was the incubator.

And we told them about this, and they said, we love it, we're in, we had raised about half a million dollars, but we haven't gotten the wired transfers yet. And then September 11 happened. And everybody backed out and said, everyone pulled out. Yeah, we don't know what we're going to do. And we didn't know. I mean, for the next two months, we're all confused, what's going to happen with the world. I mean, you remember that time. It was very tough.

And then around November of that year, Beto told me my boss at Crunch once introduced you to the CEO of Crunch at that time. And Crunch is a gym chain. I don't know if you've heard of it. Yeah. And so I met with her. Her name is Donna Cyrus. And Donna told me, go meet with Doug Levine, the original founder of Crunch. So I flew to New York, met with Doug.

and he told me, listen, I've seen Beto Teach, and I love what you guys are doing, and I said, would you like to invest? And he said, I can't invest because right now I'm selling my company, but I can introduce you to some interesting guys in Ohio who do infomercials for a living, and they might be able to not only invest, but also help you. So the next day I'm on a plane to Ohio to meet with a company called Fitness Quest, and I'm in a room full of total gyms. You remember the total gym?

Chuck Norris machine? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, a warehouse for the total gyms, and this lady is looking at, out of tape that we created of his class. We just filmed this class with a handicam and showed it to her. And she said, this is hot. I'm going to call my boss. And finally, the CEO comes down and says, this is fun.

I like it. But does Beto speak English? and because they needed to film an infomercial with him talking, right? Yeah. And I'm like, well, you know what? I've never spoken to him in English. Let me call him. So I call him up and I'm like, Peto, they're asking if you speak English.

And he said, tell them yes. Tell me in Spanish. Digal like that. Digalekhle that. So they loved it and they said, okay, we'll test this infomercial, we'll license the brand. What's this class called? And we had just that last week discussed changing the name. What was wrong with Rumba size?

The word Rumba in Spanish means to party. But it also means a type of dance. There's a ballroom dance called Rumba. So it was a very difficult word to trademark. So we sat in a restaurant and we basically went through the alphabet. Anything that rhymed with Rumba. So Bumba, Cumba, Wumba sounded like pregnancy workout. Tinga, Congo, Bunga, Tunga.

timba mango manga zumba hey zumba yeah with zi

and betto's like i love the letter c and we said yeah let's call it zumba and that was it when we come back in just a moment how betto and alberto hustled their way to a contract

and eventually set their sights on something much much bigger i'm guy ross and you're listening to how i built this from npr it's how i built this from npr i'm guy ross So, it's the early 2000s, Alberto and Beto have a business model for Zumba, which is basically to make these dance videos for people to play at home. But first, they need an infomercial.

And before they can make that, they have to make sure that Beto, who is the dance teacher, can speak English, which he can't. Oh, and also at this point, a new business partner enters the picture whose name, and I'm not making this up, is also Alberto. Alberto Aguillon. And in case you lost count, Zumba is now being run by three Alberto's. And so I fly back to Miami and Alberto Aguion and I are teaching Beto English for the next two months. Because the people who are going to make the infomercial, they won't make it unless Beto speaks English? Yeah, exactly. And to speak to these guys, these guys were coming down to Miami to meet him in two months.

When they come into Miami before I say to Alberto, Alberto, don't worry because Alberto was worried because they said, He said, yeah, he speaks English with the little, you know, little Latin accent. And I said to Albert, you know, tell me how you say, much gusto, pardon, me think, okay, you say, nice to meet you, sorry, I need to go. But that was on day, like, 50, because we were 50 days trying, and it's like, this is not going to work, man. No, the plan is this. When these people coming in the end of the class, I want to introduce you, and I say that, hi, how are you?

Nice to meet you. Sorry, I need to go. Nice to me. just already to go and escape. And I escape. And Alberto say, sorry, he need to go because so busy, so famous. You know, we need to put a little show. And I went to my car, waiting in the parking garage in my Pontiac 85 in our condition.

And the conversation continued. Albert, coming again, hey, where are you? I'm here in the parking lot. What happened? Yes, they do it. They want to do it. They wanted to do it. So Alberto Aguon and I had to write the whole infomercial script.

in Spanish phonetics. Hello, Beto. Hello, and welcome to advanced Zumba. And we launched that, and we thought, well, this is it. It's like having a party where you're working out. Release Zumba. Yeah. Now we're going to get a royalty.

And maybe we should find some other products to sell via television. We don't know. We didn't know what we were going to do. And so the deal was that you would get a royalty, but they owned the rights to it? We licensed. We licensed it to that. Because we didn't have money to do it ourselves, right? And we didn't know how to do it, frankly.

I mean, they knew how to do it. Yeah. When you guys launched the infomercial, were you making money? A little bit. It was good. It was good. I mean, they sold, I don't remember what the number was, but it was enough to keep the lights on and keep going. But it wasn't.

Was it enough to, like, you know, fund your life and, like, pay your rent and everything? Or did you have to do another job? Not really. Not really. Beto still taught his classes. And did you have other jobs? I had a morning job. What was it?

I was selling food to Latin America. I was helping American brands. sell foods to Latin supermarkets. Wow. So you guys were all basically, this is really what you wanted to do, but this is kind of like your side project because you really had other real jobs to pay the bills. Yeah. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough times. I mean, it was very long hours. I mean, I worked in the mornings and then, and the afternoon I went over to Alberto Young's house and stayed there until midnight and packing DVDs or whatever we were doing.

Like we were doing every single thing. We were doing all the jobs. which is great because when you do every single job, then as a company grows, you know what to hire for. Was the business healthy? I mean, were you guys, did it seem like you were going to thrive? Or did you ever get to a point where you were almost collapsed? I remember Alberto Guillaume walking over to me saying, listen, this is not going to work.

You know, it's great. We're all working hard, but we can't sustain it. We can't pay the bills. We have one employee, and we're all doing everything else, and it's hard. It was just hard to keep the lights on. How much money did you have in the bank? We had about 15,000, maybe. That was it.

That was it. Yes, we were close to broke, and we had the conversation with, okay, guys, I think this is it, and one day Kellogg's call us. The cereal company or the food company? Yeah, the serial company. They want to send something, a DVD inside of the cereal box of Zumba for the Latin market, no? And we say, okay, good, do it. And when we went to the set to film the video, they have one, Tony a Tiger.

Remember Tony a Tiger? Oh, yeah, of course. They pay for one guy, put the custom and, you know, move a little movements. Like, yeah, nothing special. I say, Alberto, Alberto, you know what? Let me want to put the costume of Tony a Tiger. Because Tony the Tiger is like a superhero, dynamic. It's no, stupid.

You know, Tony do step by step side to side, no. Wait, wait, hold on. They hired somebody else to play Tony the Tiger, but you were not happy with how he was dancing, so you put on a costume and did it instead? Yes, yes. And I put the Tony and Tiger, and I think we were so lucky because in this moment, the CEO of Kellogg's

come to the set. We didn't know. And I was inside the custom dancing like crazy, sweating inside. It's like, you know. He said, who is this Tony the Tiger? Oh my God. We had to give him oxygen in between songs.

It was crazy. And this moment, they... That kept us going for like a couple years. Yeah, good contract. Like a $50,000 for contract. Yeah, yeah. That helped, but it was not enough. Still not enough.

So what did you guys do then? So then people started calling their call center. You're talking about Kellogg's. Yeah. Saying we want to take Zumba classes in our area. Or some people started calling saying, we want to become Zumba instructors. How can we become Zumba instructors? And they were like, well, we'll give you the corporate number.

The corporate number was Metro PCS cell phone. next to Alberto Gion's bed. And at 2 a.m. it would ring when the infomercials were airing. And people would say, I want to become an instructor. The first, like, three times he hung up. But, like, the fourth time, he's like, there's something happening here. And he called me in Beto and told us,

you know, we've been getting all these calls from instructors that they want music. They want choreography. They want newsletters. They want... community, that they want events, that they want all these things, maybe we can put it all together and create something, a service for them to give them everything that they need. Like a subscription service?

Yes. And so we called the Beto and we started brainstorming. And we said, well, what do we need to do? We said, the first thing is we have to make sure that we deliver 10 times more value than what it costs. So he said, what do they need? Well, they need choreography. They need music.

They need students. How do we get them students? How do we get them more participants in their class? So marketing support. Let's create their career in a box, basically. And so we came up with a name. We called the Zuma Instructor Network. And we launched it in 2006, in January of 2006.

So we spent the whole $14,000. We had zero in the bank. We created this beautiful email. It went out. out and Alberto Vion told me, okay, if 200 of them join, we will continue with this business. We press send and we're praying, please, please. And suddenly, instead of getting email responses, we got phone calls. And the instructors were saying, we're loving that you launched this and we know you guys

are trying to make this work. Can we pay the year in advance? And everybody says how much? And we said, well, it's $35 a month. At that point it was 30. And they said, that's it. That's it for my entire career. That's all I have to pay.

And we said, yeah, that's all you have to pay. And they said, we love it. And 450 instructors joined. And so that's when we said, this is going to be our life. And let's make it work. And at this point, you guys are still entirely self-funded? Yeah. It was just from the royalties we got and then the Kellogg's and then the,

and then the fees from the trainings, and it was all inch by inch, very slow growth. And thank God we were always able to meet payroll of our two employees. Sometimes we would do things to pay the bill. So I would say, Beto, why don't we do a special masterclass because we were running a thousand dollars short? And so we would email everybody we knew and say a special masterclass. And so we would all chip in and all help each other.

and find ways to do it. So you guys are training all these instructors to teach Zumba, but presumably they need a place to teach the classes. So were the gyms interested in this? No, they would laugh at us. So I remember that 24-hour fitness had a class called salsa moves at that time, and L.A. Fitness had a class called Latin Impact. And they would tell us, like, why we have our own brand?

Why do we need your brand? But then when you went to one of those classes, they had five people, four people, three people, those classes were empty. And we said, no, we have a formula. We have a formula that works. Our class attracts people, and people love it. It's different. And they wouldn't understand at the beginning. And finally, the first really big chain to bring it in was 24-hour fitness in 2007. And it exploded. And they had to hire multiple instructors per location than all the big gym chain. followed equinox and crunch. Crunch always had it because of our initial relationship with them.

So they were really the first one. So as you guys were doing all this, how are you getting the word out about Zumba? I mean, was it just word of mouth or were you advertising? So one of the things we were able to do in 2007, 2008, we had bought the rights back to the infomercial from Fitness Quest in 2004, 2005, because they had stopped airing. And so we did our own infomercial. and we started airing that and that was helping get the word out

and there was word of mouth and there were more people coming to class and when something's good people find it and so other people were saying well this instructor must be doing pretty well maybe I should become an instructor too so what was like the tipping point

like when did this this model really start to take off so in 2008 the network was growing but we saw started seeing what was happening in the economy, and we got very nervous. And I remember that we sat in our conference room and we said, this is going to be a very tough year. I mean, look at everybody's losing their jobs.

People cannot pay their mortgage. But over the next few months, we started seeing that our instructor trainings were getting packed and that there were more and more people who wanted to become instructors. And we also saw that the instructors were reporting to us that their classes were packed, calling us, telling us, we don't know what's happening, but we've doubled from 25 people, now that I have 50 people in my class, what's happening? And so we started asking people, and there were two things that were driving it. One was some people were out of a job, people were sad.

They turned to Zumba, and they said, for one hour, I'm going to forget everything that is happening, and I'm just going to be happy. and people who needed extra income said, well, now I'm going to get paid to work out. And so I'm going to become an instructor and I'm going to make this part of my income. Wow. So the financial crisis actually helped your business. Yeah. We were a solution that people turned to during those hard times. I want to ask you about something that happened around this time, which I was reading that around this time you guys were actually approached by Pitbull, like by the,

the artist Pitbull who was like new found out about Zumba and was like hey can we work together what what's the story there so you know what happened in 2009 and 2010 and Beto kept telling me one day trust me the artist will come to us because we it was a tough thing to be able to license the music and it was always hard and he said trust me one day they're going to come to us and in 2010 Pitbull came to us and said what are you guys doing and we're like what do you mean? And he said, this song, Calle Ocho, you remember that song? I know you want me. He said, people are stopping me in airports, wearing shirts that say Zumba, saying that it's their

favorite song. What are you guys doing? And we're like, well, instructors are just playing it in their class. And he said, well, you guys are like a radio station. You guys have all these DJs playing in gyms around the world and you guys, I think you guys can break records. And we said, you're serious? And he said, yeah. And I'm going to give you my songs as soon as they launch, put him in the Zumba classes and you guys start breaking records. So Pitbull was the first guy to discover that Zumba was a way of promoting music. And then we worked with Wyclef. We worked with Daddy Yankee. We also worked with Shaggy.

Most recently, we've been working with Timbaland. So both the hottest Latin artists and some of the top U.S. artists have all been noticing that Zumba is a great way to reach 15 million people. We reach 15 million people taking Zumba classes every single week. And I think the allureate artists, allurek music companies know the Zumba is a perfect. way to promote your own music. Because when we send every month the music,

we select 13 songs. We send every month to the instructors. That's mean these 13 songs going to around the war. A rendezvous in one month. We have people dancing to Daddy Yankees'

music in China. We have people dancing pit bulls music in Japan. We launched a choreography for Shakira and Carlos Bives, they have a new song called La Bicleta and in aggregate

the choreographies was shared 50 million times on Facebook. Do you guys know how many instructors you have now? We don't disclose that, but we basically focus more. more on the number of people that are taking classes.

So we have 15 million people taking classes, and we're in 200,000 gyms. We have more locations teaching Zumba than there are McDonald's in the world. So what do you think explains that? Music and dance are a universal language. We have classes in luxury neighborhoods. We have classes in the inner cities where the class is free, and we have classes in schools, we have classes in churches, we have classes in basements, we have classes on the rooftops.

Karate Studios and dance studios. Yeah, we have classes in Russia with Ukrainians and Russians that, I mean, the governments are fighting each other and they're together. We have classes in Israel with Arabs and Jews taking classes together. Dance brings people together. Beto, do you, like when you think about how you were teaching this class, this class called Rumba size, in Kali, Colombia. be like 25 years ago, that, you know, 25 years later, we would be talking about something

that has really become one of the biggest fitness stories, you know, in the last decade. I mean, could you have imagined that? Yeah, it's, it's, somebody tell me one day, you know, in the United States, it's, it's hard to make money, but it's super hard to be somebody. If you are somebody in this country, you did it. And I understand in this time. Now I understand because Zumba and me and my business partner, we are somebody. Because a lot of people have money.

You know, it's one more of the millionaires here. But when people recognize you for your labor, for your work, and when they open the heart for something you do, it's amazing. It's amazing. It's Beto Perez, co-founder with Alberto Pearlman, of Zumba. And by the way, Zumba's reached way beyond gems and community classes. Former First Lady Michelle Obama held a Zumba class on the front lawn of the White House. And it turns out there was even a weekly Zumba class in Antarctica. And stick around because in just a moment

we're going to hear from you about the things you're building. Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today's story starts off with a poem. Call the roller of big cigars, the muscular one, and bid him whip in kitchen guns. This is Alex McKenzie, and he is not a literature major. He's actually building a business, but he got the idea for that business from this verse by poet Wallace Stevens. The finale of Seam, the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. The emperor of ice cream. That became the name of the business that Alex started a couple years ago.

He'd always wanted to do something with food. But when his wife showed him that poem, something clicked, and he decided to take a fresh look at the ice cream business. So my wife and I hit the road. We toured the country. We ate ice cream at mom and pop shops all over the place. We went to grocery stores to see what was in the aisle. And I was just becoming sort of bored with what the established market had to offer. So we thought, why not recreate one of the great joys of childhood, the ice cream truck? Except instead of dishing out the usual soft serve or bomb pops, he'd offer a much more creative variety. It would be so great if a family could roll up and mom could have a vegan strawberry sorbet and dad could have a high-fat, low-air southern banana pudding ice cream,

and the kids could have a low-sugar milkshake and maybe a gluten-free ice cream sandwich. Anyway, so that was Alex Sank. vision, a more up-market ice cream truck. And when he was still at college, there was a business competition, so he submitted this idea, and he actually won, which meant he got $50,000 to launch his first ice cream truck. The only problem? His wife had just gotten a job at a place where starting an ice cream business is not

a winning idea. Big Sky, Montana. We definitely had some reservations. We realized we were going out on a limb, you know, moving to this very remote. place, but, you know, we came out here and we were shocked to see how many people were actually in the town center every night. There was no one here serving ice cream, and there were all these families with money to spend who were just looking for something fun to do. So Alex and his wife, Christina, settled into Big Sky, and with his $50,000, he started experimenting with ice cream.

All of the flavors I began developing at home with just a little quiz and arc that we bought on Amazon for like $50. And he wasn't making good. vanilla and chocolate, Alex was going for much more exciting and exotic flavors like bourbon pecan pie and mountain huckleberry. And eventually, he found a local factory that could make the ice cream for him. So he bought a van and he started to dish it out. We kill it in the summer, but that's two months. Summer here starts late and it ends early. So it's basically July and August. And we've been able to gross about 50 grand in just four months in a town of 2,500 people. But now he's trying to get outside investors to help him expand the business to do things like buy more trucks.

But so far, he hasn't had much traction. We're not a tech company. We're not a medical device company. We're not Airbnb, you know. So we're trying to sell these really sophisticated Silicon Valley types. But I'm not getting as many bites as I'd like. But over the past few months, Alex has raised over $30,000 from his friends and family. And he's hoping to get at least one more truck to make in.

roads in the southwest, and then eventually, if things go well, to go national. Yeah, in a perfect world, I would love to have at least 600 trucks so I could go head-to-head with Mr. Softie, and we would love to ship our stuff on Amazon, and we're talking to them now about that. For the moment, Alex still just has that one ice cream ban in Big Sky, Montana, and he's not making a profit, but he absolutely loves what he's doing. A lot of people ask me, what's your exit strategy? I don't have an exit strategy. I grew up poor and I would be thrilled to run my own ice cream company for the rest of my life.

That's my exit strategy to not exit. That's Alex McKenzie of the Emperor of Ice Cream. To find out more about Alex's company, head to our Facebook page. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, you can go to how I've built this.npr.org.

Please also subscribe to this show at Apple Podcasts or however you get your podcasts. You can also write us, that's H-I-B-T at NPR.org. You can tweet us at How I Built This. Our show was produced this week by Rund Abd al-Fahtha, with music composed by Routin Arableu. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz meshkent, Claire Breen, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Diana Mustak. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR. are