YouSaid · the spoken record

Beto Perez

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32
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2017-12-04
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2017-12-04
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  1. “Yeah. We have classes in Russia with Ukrainians in 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “We have people dancing to Daddy Yankees' music in China, right? We have people dancing pit bulls music in Japan. We launched a choreography for Shakira. And Carlos Bibes, they have a new song called La Visipleta. And in aggregate, the choreographies were shared 50 million times on Facebook.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “And he said, Well, you guys are like the 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 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 Wyclef. We worked with Daddy Yankee. Wrestled with Shaggy. Most recently we've been working with Timberland. 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “So, you know what happened in 2009 and 2010. And Beto kept telling me, when they trust me, the artist will come to us because 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, Pitfall came to us and said, what are you guys doing? And we're like, what do you mean? And he said, this song. You remember that song I know you want me She 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “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”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “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 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 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “So, one of the things we were able to do in 2007-2008, we had part the rights back to the infomercial from FitnessQuest 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 their word out, and there was word of mouth, and there were more people coming to class. And when something's good, And so other people were saying, Well, this instructor must be doing pretty well. Maybe I should become an instructor too.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

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

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Yeah, it was just from the royalties we got and then the Kellogg's and then 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 pay the bills. So we'd say, Pet, why don't we do a special masterclass because we're running a thousand dollars short. And so we would email everybody we knew and say special masterclass. And so we would all chip in and I'll help each other and find ways to do it.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “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 launch 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Yes, and so 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. Let's create their career in a box, basically. And so we came up with a name we call 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. And Alberto Guillen told me, okay, if 200 of them join, we will continue with this business. We press.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “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 Guillaume'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 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 a choreography. They want newsletters. They want a community that they want events. They want all these things. Maybe we can put it all together and create.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “I remember Alberto Guillaume walking over to me saying, listen, this is not going to work. 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Yeah, it was tough. It was tough times. I mean, it was very long hours I mean, I worked in the mornings, and in the afternoon I went over to Alberto Guan's house and stayed there till midnight. 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “We licensed. We licensed it. Because we didn't have money to do it ourselves, right? And we didn't know how to do it, frankly, they knew how to do it.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Release Zumba. Yeah. Now we're going to get a royal team. And maybe we should find some other products to sell via television. We didn't know what we were going to do.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “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 Boomba, Kumba, Woomba sounded like pregnancy workout thing.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “I mean, a warehouse full of total gyms, and this lady is. 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? Because they needed to film an infomercial with him talking, right? 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 Spanish. So they loved it and they said, okay, we'll test this infomercial, we'll license the brand. This class called. And we had just that last week discuss changing the name.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “And then around November of that year, Beto told me my boss at Crunch wants to 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've 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “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 wire transfers yet. And then September 11th happened. And everybody backed out and said, 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “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. The magic is letting the music lead the choreography, lead the class. And there's a moment in the class that we call fedge 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 the Life there completely disappears, and it's just them and the music.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Yeah. And so then we said, okay, 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 so that was the original idea.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “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? 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “200 And he told me his life story, which is unbelievable. I grew up in Columbia also, so I knew what was happening in the country. But he was in Kali, and Kali 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 Azumba 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “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 Beetho's class. And at that point, Beto here in Miami, he called this class Roomba size because Roomba 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.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “We spent the whole $14,000. We had zero in the bank. We created this beautiful email. Send and we're praying, please, please. And suddenly, 450 instructors joined. So that's when we said this is going to be our life, and let's make it work.”

    2017-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT