Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman

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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  We spent the whole $14,000. We had zero in the 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 let's make it work.

• 0:30Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:42Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz. And on today's show, how three immigrants from Colombia turned a scrappy aerobics class into one of the biggest fitness brands in the world.

• 0:57Guy Raz?

  OK, so it's the new year. And, you know, we're all thinking about getting back to the gym, even if it's just for like, 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 there is a good chance that the class they're taking is Zumba.

• 1:25Guy Raz?

  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 Cali, 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.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  And the only music that I have with me in this moment was a cassette with Latin music, more cumbia, merengue, salsa, different kind of music. But I start 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, OK. 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.

• 2:29Guy Raz?

  So Beto basically started to teach this new kind of fusion aerobics class in Cali for a long time, and it became really, really popular. So he decided to try his luck in America. And he sold all his stuff. He bought a ticket to Miami and he started to knock on doors.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  I went to the gyms and finally everybody pay attention to me. I didn't speak English. I can't 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, OK, I want to do audition with you. And I said, perfect. I went with my friend. She translate everything. She say, Beto, OK, they do the audition. And I tell them, where is the people? No, she want only you and her. Oh, my God. Like a party time, only with one person.

• 3:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  It's like a strain. But OK, I went to the gym. It was Friday, like 3:30 in the afternoon. This time, all the gyms in the planet is empty. And I, OK, let me see what song we want to play. And I play Oye Como Va, the Tito Poynt. You know?

• 3:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Oye Como Va.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  And she, wow, it's smile. And I start to teach my first steps, my first step. And in this moment, a lot of people come to the gym to go to the training, maybe lift weights or something. And they come in, in the aerobics room, because they think it's a class. They don't know it's audition.

• 4:11Guy Raz?

  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?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Exactly. And they coming in, three people, four, five, six. In one moment, I had like 25 people and people clap every song. And the audition, it was for 15 minutes. And I danced for one hour.

• 4:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  And this moment, the woman tell me, OK, 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 they need. And I come back to my city, to Bogota, and I sold my cars. So, you know, I sold everything. I paid my bills. And I come back and I, the first thing that I buy is a Pontiac 85, no air-conditioned, a car for $400. And I rent a little apartment with $400, too, in the little Havana.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  And my first bed, it was an aerobics mat with two blankets. And I teach my first class. And I came late because I lost. In this moment, it doesn't see 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 or excuse me because I didn't speak English. And I play the music and I say, please, God, help me. And I start the party and people smile and have a good time. And the rest is story.

• 5:56Guy Raz?

  Okay, Beto, I'm going to pause the story for a sec because I want to bring in another guy who comes into the picture at this point.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 6:02Guy Raz?

  Hello. Can you hear us? Who helps Zumba become Zumba.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Two arepas with avocado.

• 6:10Guy Raz?

  And for everybody listening, it's going to get a little confusing for a sec because this is also Alberto.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  No, call me Alberto, call him Beto. So Alberto is Alberto Perlman and Beto is Beto Perez.

• 6:22Guy Raz?

  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. This was around 1999.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  And all the guys my age were starting internet companies. And I said, why not?

• 6:40Guy Raz?

  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.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  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 his 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, right? I mean, are you thinking to yourself, hmm, this seems a little weird. Like, that's not really my thing.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  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, 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, 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

• 8:22Speaker 00

  and dancing in clubs and dancing in gyms. And, and so it was like a juxtaposition, right? With all the violence happening and then there's this, this kid making everybody happy in his town, right? And so he told me his life story, and I said, I gotta 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?

• 9:07Speaker 00

  It's people are suffering, they're forcing themselves. It's 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.

• 9:35Guy Raz?

  Hmm. So you said to him, what'd you say to him? Did you say, hey, let's start a business?

• 9:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  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 this, in the funny way, you know?

• 9:49Guy Raz?

  And did you, did you, did you take him seriously?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And and he say, no, he say, OK, let's do it. You want to be my business partners? Yes.

• 9:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  OK, give me your hand. Perfect.

• 9:58Guy Raz?

  That was it.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so then we said, OK, let's, we need to create some videos 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 and so that was the original idea.

• 10:22Guy Raz?

  So the idea was to like, it was just a workout video, like jazzercise, that you were just going to sell in an infomercial. And that was hopefully going to be your business.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, like our, what was fresh in our memories at that time was Taibo. Remember Taibo?

• 10:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah, the martial arts workout thing.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  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.

• 10:52Guy Raz?

  I get that, but I'm trying to figure out, what was the thing that made Roomba size different from other fitness classes more fun?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  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, bang, and third, everybody can do it. Always, I was always thinking that my mom can do my class.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  And one of the things that Beto did that was very smart in 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 cueing. 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 FEJ, F E J, freeing electrifying joy. We said that moment is 20 minutes into the class

• 12:07Speaker 00

  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're completely disappears and it's just them and the music.

• 12:29Guy Raz?

  So did you have to go out and raise money to start this?

• 12:32Speaker 00

  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 hadn't gotten the wire transfers yet. And then September 11 happened and everybody backed out and said,

• 12:54Guy Raz?

  Everyone pulled out.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, we don't know what we're gonna do. And we didn't know. I mean, for the next two months, we're all confused, what's gonna 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.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Let's introduce 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. And 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.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  And I'm in a room full of Total Gyms. You remember the Total Gym? Chuck Norris machine? Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm in a warehouse full of Total Gyms. And this lady is looking at a tape that we created of his class. We just filmed this class with a Handycam and showed it to her. And she said, this is hot. I'm gonna call my boss. And finally, the CEO comes down and says, this is fun. I like it. But does Beto speak English? And because I 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, Beto, they're asking if you speak English.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  And he said, tell them yes. Dígale que sí, dígale que sí, dígale que sí. So they loved it. And they said, OK, 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 Roomba size? The word Roomba in Spanish means to party. But it also means a type of dance. There's a ballroom dance called Roomba. 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 Roomba. So Boomba, Kumba, Wumba sounded like pregnancy workout.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  Tinga, Congo, Punga, Tunga, Timba, Mango, Manga, Zumba. Hey, Zumba. Yeah, with Z. And Beto's like, I love the letter C. And we said, yeah, let's call it Zumba. And that was it.

• 15:42Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Beto and Alberto hustled their way to a contract and eventually set their sights on something much, much bigger. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 16:15Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. 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 Aguión. And in case you lost count, Zumba is now being run by three Albertos.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  And so I fly back to Miami, and Alberto Aguión and I are teaching Beto English for the next two months.

• 16:58Guy Raz?

  Because the people who are going to make the infomercial, they won't make it unless Beto speaks English?

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And to speak to these guys, these guys were coming down to Miami to meet him in two months.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  When they come into Miami, before I say to Alberto, Alberto, don't worry. Because Alberto was worried. Because he say, yeah, he's speaking English with a little, you know, little Latin accent. And I say to Alberto, you know, tell me how you say, mucho gusto, perdón, me tengo que... And you say, nice to meet you. Sorry, I need to go.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  But that was on day, like, 50. Because we were 50 days trying. And it's like, this is not going to work, man.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  The plan is this. When these people coming, 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 meet you. Sorry, I need to go. And escape. And I escape. And Alberto say, sorry, he need to go because he's so busy, so famous. And, 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. Alberto come in again. Hey, where are you? I'm here in the parking lot. What happened? Yes, they do it. They wanna do it.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  They wanted to do it. So Alberto Aguion and I had to write the whole infomercial script in Spanish phonetics.

• 18:15Guy Raz?

  Hola, Beto.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Hola, and welcome to Advanced Zumba.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  And we launched that and we thought, well, this is it.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  It's like having a party while you're working out.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Released Zumba. Now we're gonna 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 gonna do.

• 18:34Guy Raz?

  And so the deal was that you would get a royalty, but they owned the rights to it?

• 18:38Speaker 00

  We licensed. We licensed it to them. 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.

• 18:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah. When you guys launched Infomercial, were you making money?

• 18:48Speaker 00

  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.

• 18:56Guy Raz?

  Was it enough to, to like, you know, fund your life and like pay your rent and everything? Or did you have to do another job?

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Not really. Not really. Beto still taught his classes.

• 19:05Guy Raz?

  And did you have other jobs?

• 19:06Speaker 00

  I had a morning job.

• 19:08Guy Raz?

  What was it?

• 19:09Speaker 00

  I was selling food to Latin America. I was helping American brands sell foods to Latin supermarkets.

• 19:16Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you guys were all basically, this is your, this was 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.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough times. I mean, it was very long hours. We, I mean, I worked in the mornings and then in the afternoon, I went over to Alberto Aguion's house and stayed there till 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.

• 19:51Guy Raz?

  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 almost were almost collapsed?

• 20:02Speaker 00

  I remember Alberto Aguion walking over to me saying, listen, this is, this is not gonna 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, and it's hard. It was just hard to keep the lights on.

• 20:21Guy Raz?

  How much money did you have in the bank?

• 20:24Speaker 00

  We had about fifteen thousand, maybe.

• 20:27Guy Raz?

  That was it?

• 20:28Speaker 00

  That was it.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yes, we was close to broke and we have the conversation with, okay, guys, I think this is it. And one day Kellogg's called us.

• 20:40Guy Raz?

  The cereal company or the food company?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the cereal 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 had one Tony the Tiger. Remember Tony the Tiger, like a superhero?

• 21:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  They paid for one guy, put the costume and, you know, move a little movements, like, yeah, nothing special. I say, Alberto, Alberto, you know what? Let me, I wanna put the costume of Tony the 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?

• 21:27Guy Raz?

  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 the costume and did it instead?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, yes. And I put the Tony the Tiger and I think I was, 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 costume, dancing like crazy, sweating inside. It's like, you know.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  He said, who is this Tony the Tiger? We had to give him oxygen in between songs. It was crazy, it was crazy.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  And this moment, they.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  That kept us going for like a couple of years.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, good contract, like a fifty thousand dollar for a contract.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  That helped, that helped, but it was not enough.

• 22:13Guy Raz?

  Still not enough, so what did you guys do then?

• 22:16Speaker 00

  So then people started calling their call center.

• 22:21Guy Raz?

  You're talking about Kellogg's?

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Saying, eh, 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 a MetroPCS cellphone eh, next to Alberto Guion's bed. And at 2:00 AM, 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 and Beto and told us, you know, we've been getting all these calls from instructors

• 23:02Speaker 00

  that they want music, they want eh, choreography, they want eh, newsletters, they want eh, community, that they want events, that they want all these things. Maybe we can, we can put it all together and create something, a service for them, to give them everything that they need.

• 23:22Guy Raz?

  Like a subscription service?

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yes, and so, we, we called up 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 we 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. Eh, let's create their career in a box, basically. And so, we came up with a name. We called it the Zumba 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.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  We created this beautiful email. It went out and Alberto Guion told me, okay, if 200 of them join, we will continue with this business. We pressed 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, they said, we love it. And 450 instructors joined.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  And so that's when we said, this is, this is going to be our life and, and let's make it work.

• 24:58Guy Raz?

  And, and at this point, you guys are, are still entirely self-funded?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was just from the, the royalties we got and then Kellogg's and then the, the fees from the trainings and it was all like 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 like pay the bills. So we'd say, Peter, 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, and find ways to do it.

• 25:39Guy Raz?

  So, so you guys are training all these instructors to teach, to teach Zumba, but presumably they need a place to teach the classes. So, so were the gyms interested in this?

• 25:47Speaker 00

  No, they would laugh at us. So I remember that 24 Hour Fitness had a class called salsa moves at that time. And LA 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 you, 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.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Then all the big gym chains followed Equinox and Crunch. And Crunch always had it because of our initial relationship with them. So they were really the first one.

• 26:42Guy Raz?

  So as you guys were doing all this, how were you getting the word out about Zumba? I mean, was it just word of mouth or were you advertising?

• 26:48Speaker 00

  So one of the things we were able to do in 2007, 2008, we had bought the rights back to, 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.

• 27:23Guy Raz?

  So what was like the tipping point? Like, when did this this model really start to take off?

• 27:27Speaker 00

  So in 2008, the network was growing, but we 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.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  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.

• 28:39Guy Raz?

  Wow. So the financial crisis actually helped your business?

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. We were a solution that people turned to during those hard times.

• 28:48Guy Raz?

  I want to ask you about something that happened around around this time, which I was reading that around this time, you guys were actually approached by Pitbull, like by the artist Pitbull, who was like new, founded about Zumba and was like, hey, can we work together? What's the story there?

• 29:02Speaker 00

  So you know what happened? In 2009 and 2010, and Beto kept telling me, one day, trust me, the artists 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.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Calle 8, you remember that song? I Know You Want Me?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  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."

• 29:54Speaker 00

  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 thought, "You're serious?" And he said, "Yeah." "And I'm gonna give you my songs as soon as they launch, put them 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 White Clef, we worked with Daddy Yankee.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  We also worked with Shaggy. Most recently, we've been working with Timbaland. So both the hottest Latin artists and some of the top US 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.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  And I think the lyric artists, lyric music companies know that Zumba is a perfect way to promote your own music. Because when we send every month the music, we select 13 songs. And we send every month to the instructors. And that's mean, these 13 songs going to around the world, around the world in one month.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  We have people dancing to Daddy Yankee's music in China. Right? We have people dancing Pitbull's music in Japan.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  We launched a choreography for Shakira and Carlos Vives. They have a new song called La Bicicleta. And in aggregate, the choreographies were shared 50 million times on Facebook.

• 31:53Guy Raz?

  Do you guys know how many instructors you have now?

• 31:56Speaker 00

  We don't disclose that, but we basically focus 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.

• 32:13Guy Raz?

  So what do you think explains that?

• 32:15Speaker 00

  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 rooftops.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Karate Studios and Dance Studios.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  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.

• 32:51Guy Raz?

  Petto, when you think about how you were teaching this class, this class called Roomba Size in Cali, Colombia, like 25 years ago, that 25 years later, we would be talking about something that has really become one of the biggest fitness stories in the last decade. Could you have imagined that?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Somebody told me one day, you know, in the United States, it's hard to make money, but it's super hard to be somebody.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  If you are somebody in this country, you did it. And I didn't 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 and, 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 their heart for something you do, it's amazing. It's amazing.

• 33:59Guy Raz?

  That's Beto Perez, co-founder with Alberto Perlman of Zumba. And by the way, Zumba hasn't just been lucrative for the company. Lots of Zumba instructors teach full time. In fact, there's an instructor in Santa Barbara who pulls in six figures just teaching Zumba classes. And her monthly subscription fee to Zumba, just 35 bucks.

• 34:25Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes. And please do us a favor and write a review. Let us know what you think. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Rund Abdelfatah, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Thanks for sticking around. We're now at the end of the show, and it's time to hear how you built that.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  My name is Nicholas Gilson, and I am one of the original founders of Gilson Snowboards.

• 35:14Guy Raz?

  Nick and his business partner sort of fell into the snowboard business. They were middle school teachers in Nashville and did a science project where they challenged their students to build a better snowboard.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  I brought in the original prototype for an idea I had when I was my students' age, when I was in middle school.

• 35:31Guy Raz?

  And that idea was basically to design a board, which, instead of being flat at the bottom, was curved. And Nick hoped that it would make for a faster ride. And even though their first design totally failed, they eventually came up with one they loved.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  With this board, you can actually ride close to flat and engage these really surfy, drifty maneuvers that allow you to get through the trees way easier with way more surfy motion.

• 35:58Guy Raz?

  And so with barely any money, Nick and his partner quit their teaching jobs and set up a snowboard shop inside a stable in Pennsylvania.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  It was an active stable. It was an active stable. There were donkeys and horses next to our machines.

• 36:11Guy Raz?

  And in that stable, Nick says, they were able to make their boards even better.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  And we then started to travel the country, starting a company much the way our grandparents would have. We need to tangibly and physically share something with people. And so we went out and immersed ourselves in the community, traveled 17,000 miles from coast to coast, and started getting these people on the boards.

• 36:32Guy Raz?

  Nick says since they started the company three years ago, it's been growing pretty fast. They've sold thousands of boards. They now have 16 employees, and they have a small factory in Pennsylvania, just down the road from the donkey stable.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  There was a week-long period in November where we got in more orders than we did in our first several years combined. And we were looking at each other like, all right, I guess we'll take a nap next week. You know, this is just nuts.

• 36:57Guy Raz?

  That's Nick Gilson of Gilson Snowboards. If you want to tell us about the company or idea you're building, go to build.npr.org. That's build with a D, dot npr dot org. And thanks.

• 37:13Guy Raz?

  And just one last thing. 1A is NPR's new daily show inspired by the First Amendment. 1A is the news show with those who make the news. Great guests and topical debates, all framed in ways to make you think and engage. Each day, 1A will champion your right to speak freely. Check out 1A with Joshua Johnson from WAMU and NPR. You can find it on the NPR ONE app or visit npr.org/podcast.