The Exchanges

Q you're eating, like steaks and Malbec and, but really what you're doing is you're working in finance, and when you were in Argentina, like you're a year, two, three years in, what did you think you were going to do? Did you, were there moments where you're like, I think I'm going to settle here forever. I think I'm going to live here. This is going to be my home.

A Yes. There were moments of that. Um, the hardest part for me was I missed my family. Back then, it was harder to get home. There weren't direct flights to Dallas. You would go through Miami. Uh, I had my, my mom's mother, my grandmother passed away, and it was very hard for me to make it in time. I didn't for her funeral. That made a big impact on me, and then also my sister, my older sister, started having children, and I felt very far away because it was hard for me to see them. So, although I loved being there and in many ways was thinking maybe this should just be home forever, there was that pull as well to come back.

AI assessment note: “Yes. There were moments of that. Um, the hardest part for me was”

Q And where, where were you living? Were you living at a youth hostel?

A So, um, I mean, the story's quite long, but just to kind of, to make it not too long, I, I become friendly with a taxi driver who spoke English, and he knew of, um, an apartment where the person, they were renovating it, and so I said, look, I'll make a deal. I will pay for two or three months worth of rent up front so they can finish the paint and whatever they have to do, but I get to sleep there every day while they're doing the, the work. So I would sleep on the floor. I used like a You know, a sweatshirt as a pillow, and they were finishing the construction of the apartment while I lived there. It didn't bother me very much, and I got to have a place where I could sleep and make food, so it worked out.

AI assessment note: “they were finishing the construction of the apartment while I lived there.”

Q What did he, what did you do? What was your job?

A So, at first, I was, for two years, I was in, um, strategic planning, and they were, at the time, growing branches of the bank. There was a really good years in Argentina, and business was booming. So, they wanted me to do Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoints and stay there all night printing things on the printer, and then collating them, and then stapling them, and then, so I, you know, I kind of did the lowest level of work for that office. And because I spoke English, there was a lot of presentations that had to be made in English to corporate from Boston, and so they liked having me there to help the C-suite of Argentina to go through the English parts of it, so they all got to know me.

AI assessment note: “I was in, um, strategic planning... they wanted me to do Excel spreadsheets”

Q Okay, so you have, you've raised 600,000 dollars to open a store in Dallas. It's 2002. First of all, what are you going to call it?

A So I know I actually had, in the business plan, when I built the plan, it already had the name. It was going to be Talenti Gelato from the very, very, very beginning. As I was doing research trying to understand gelato and the history of gelato, I was reading a lot about this gentleman, Bernardo Buontalenti from Florence. He lived in the 1500, and he's credited with basically inventing gelato. Actually, as the story goes, guy, there was this huge banquet by Catherine de' Medici, and each course, subsequent course, was going to be more fantastic than the previous, and it culminated with his gelato. So I basically took part of his name And, and it was like a tribute to him. Okay, this guy invented it. I'm going to name it after him. I've got this very old world labor intensive way of making things. And I'm sure he did it that way. So I'm going to, I'm going to name it after him.

AI assessment note: “It was going to be Talenti Gelato from the very, very, very beginning.”

Q Did it feel like a relief, or, or was it, were you sad, or was it both?

A All of the above. There was a lot of emotion involved. I had spent quite a long time working on it. I, I spent long hours there. It was a dream, and, you know, it felt like somewhat of a failure closing it down. I had to let everyone go, including my wife, and I basically ended up moving into a tiny little warehouse, taking the machines over there, And had one hourly helping me. And actually, guy, that move was scary because I had already started to sell to these restaurants in this one store. And you can't just disappear for a while because all of a sudden you're moving and they need it every week. They need the product because they're selling it. And I didn't have a freezer anymore once I was shutting down. And there was a very kind man who owned a frozen distribution company and Who I asked, do you mind if I put a pallet of product in your freezer? I'll pay you rent or whatever you need. I just, I have to have product to get through the next couple of weeks while I move. And he just said, don't worry about it. You just use it. You don't have to pay me anything.

AI assessment note: “All of the above. There was a lot of emotion involved.”

Q All right. You brought in that money fortuitously because we're about to enter a dark period in the, you know, starting in 2008 with a financial crisis that would last at least two years. How were you affected by this significant downturn in the economy?

A Oh, it was horrible for us. Uh, a few things had happened. This, there was a large sale that was made to a distributor. The understanding was that would then go to these different customers. What wasn't realized was it had it not been sold to those customers, we get it all back. So we got that sent back to us and you can't then resell it. So that was trash. So that was a hard one. Um, Steve really took over most, I would go with him, but he was heading up VP of sales, managing sales. I really dedicated most of my time to product and manufacturing and more of the trade. Um, and so we lost money. We lost considerable money that year, a lot of, of bad debt, and there was no more money out there. By, by the end of oh eight, it's right up. There was nothing left.

AI assessment note: “Oh, it was horrible for us. Uh, a few things had happened.”

Q It was like a personal loan you took out or what?

A Yeah. Personal loan. I remember because I'd been waiting to get the news, waiting to get the news, waiting to get the news, and it was amazing news, and then, of course, we stayed in business, but it was a moment. The entire time, every time I would call my father and say to him, you know, this is happening, and this is hard, and I'm worried about this, and he'd say, you, you keep going. It will work out. You keep going. It's going to be fine, and this time I called him, and he said, you know, Maybe you're going to have to close the doors, and that was just heartbreaking. But we didn't. We made it through. It was a real crisis moment.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Personal loan.”