Zumba

“Alberto Aguillon and I had to write the whole infomercial script in Spanish phonetics.”

“And 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.”

“So we have fifteen million people taking classes, and we're in 200,000 gyms.”

“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, everyone pulled out.”

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

“So we spent the whole 14,000 dollars. We had zero in the bank.”

“And so then we said, okay, 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 ar…”

“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, …”

“Yeah, good contract. Like a 50 thousand dollar for the contract.”

“We have more locations teaching Zumba than there are McDonald's in the world.”

“In fact, there's an instructor in Santa Barbara who pulls in six figures just teaching Zumba classes.”

“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”

“We launched a choreography for Shakira and Carlos Vives. They have a new song called La Bicicleta, and in aggregate, the choreography was shared fifty million times on Facebook.”

“When we send every month the music we select 13 songs, and we send every month to the instructors, and that means these 13 songs going to around the world in one month.”

“We called it the Zoom Instructor Network, and we launched it in 2006, in January of 2006. So we spent the whole 14,000 dollars. We had zero in the bank.”

“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”

“We licensed. We licensed. 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.”

“We have more locations teaching Zumba than there are McDonald's in the world.”

“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, everyone pulled out.”

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

“We had bought the rights back to the infomercial from fitness quest in 2004, 2005, cause they had stopped airing.”

“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, …”

“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.”

“We launched a choreography for Shakira and Carlos Vives. They have a new song called La Bicicleta, and in aggregate, the choreography was shared fifty million times on Facebook.”

“And 450 instructors joined.”

“So we have fifteen million people taking classes, and we're in 200,000 gyms.”

“Everything goes to the instructor.”

“So we went to our favorite DJs, DJs like Steve Aoki, Or producers like Timbaland, and we said, can you score music to this workout? Instead of the music being in the background, let's score music, just like you would score music to a movie, like a training sce…”

“So we are seeing people coming in. It's not as big as the 2008. And it's not as big as what we predicted was going to happen at the beginning of the year, but we are seeing every day a large group of people registering to become Zoom instructors.”

“And to our surprise, within a month and a half, we had about a million people a week taking Zumba classes virtually, which is amazing for a new virtual product.”

“So we didn't do any layoffs. We didn't do any furloughs.”

“Obviously the number one thing that drives people to Zumba is bring a friend. Is when somebody tells you, Hey, I'm taking this amazing class. I found this amazing instructor. Do you want to come with me? It's one of the best marketing tools we have.”

“I know instructors who were making 25 dollars a class teaching at the YMCA or 30 dollars a class teaching at the YMCA. Suddenly when they switched to virtual, they're making 150 dollars a class. So some of them are making more money Than before the pandemic.”

“We have pre-pandemic, over fifteen million people who take Zumba classes every week. And we're in 186 countries, and pre-pandemic, we were in 200,000 locations.”

“We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising Find the Class. Even though we don't make any money from Find the Class, right, because that money all goes to the instructors, we advertise it all the time, and it's one of our biggest line items in our co…”

“We have fifteen million people taking Zumba classes every single week.”

“I remember I offered investment in Zumba to four or five different friends of mine at the early days, and they could have bought a third of Zumba for 300,000 dollars. And I'm glad I didn't do it. I'm so glad I didn't do it because that equity down the road was…”

“We spent the whole 14,000 dollars. We had zero in the bank. We created this beautiful email. We press send, and we're praying, please, please, and suddenly, 450 instructors joined”

“We're in 200,000 fitness facilities right now.”

“We sold fourteen million Zumba video games.”

“Instead of us raising money, we ended up financing through Kellogg's. Our deal with Kellogg's in the early days of Zumba is what allowed us to sustain the business.”