HEIDI, HEIDI HO : Frogen Yozurt Boss Was Born to Succeed, and ‘That’s Probably Why We’ve Gotten Where We Have . . . ‘
They have told Heidi Miller that the next time she goes to Japan, she will be so popular she will probably need a bodyguard. Seems they have a penchant for petite blondes.
No big deal. When you are a former body-building champ and the reigning Queen of Frozen Yogurt (as Business Week magazine recently called her), notoriety goes with the territory.
And the territory is expanding rapidly for Heidi Miller, 33, who watched America going to seed and decided that frozen yogurt--not hamburgers, cookies and ice cream--was the answer.
First Irvine. Tomorrow the world.
From a one-shop operation in Irvine that opened in August, 1982, to a six-state operation that now sports 41 outlets in Orange County and a total of 110 locations, Miller has accelerated into the fast lane.
She recently returned from Japan, where she filmed a commercial and her company signed an agreement with two Japanese companies to begin setting up Heidi’s Frogen Yozurt shops in the Orient. The agreement calls for as many as 353 shops to open in the next three years. And after Japan, there are several other Pacific Rim countries that may be interested.
Miller said she owns 23 million shares of the company, currently valued at 80 cents a share. Miller, it seems, is getting fat off yogurt.
Not that any of this has surprised Miller, a Northern California native who believes above all--with the possible exception that the sun will rise and set each day--that she was born to succeed.
“That’s probably why we’ve gotten where we have in such a short period,” she said in her Laguna Hills office. “I’m a positive-thinking person. I’ve always been that way. That’s why I’ve always gotten ahead. I’ve always believed in myself, I never looked back, I never let other people tell me what to do. I did what I thought was right. Because of that, I’ve been successful in every single thing I’ve done.”
Most people say that, and you immediately hope they get a flat tire on the freeway.
But there is something about Miller’s mien that lets her get away with it.
One reason is that she is totally unabashed and unpretentious about promoting herself. She knows that her body-building background, including a Miss Natural America title and a top 10 finish in the 1982 Miss U.S.A. competition, makes her a marketable commodity. As such, she has a “Body Sculpting” video that gives instructions on how to mold the body to its most perfect proportion by using hand-held weights.
In the company’s early days, when there were just a few Heidi’s shops, she tried to establish a personal presence in all of them. “Even today, most people know there is a real Heidi, but we’ve still got a lot of people (in the area) who are new or who just moved here.”
So, she will be attending a steady stream of new store openings throughout April and May, she said, spreading the message that yogurt is the way to a healthy future.
“Being a nursing major in college, I saw what was happening with the American people,” she said. “I’d go to the beach, here I was 25 or 26, I’d go in a bikini, and every guy in the world was looking at me. They didn’t look at the 15-, 16-, 17-, 18-year-old girls because they were heavy. They had cellulite on their legs. I didn’t know what cellulite was. I was in shape. I saw what was happening in the world. All of a sudden, doctors were doing heart transplants, double, triple, quadruple bypasses. Everybody had diabetes. Everybody was on a diet because they were obese. I saw what was poisoning the American population.”
She tried to convince a friend to join her in business, but he balked. He wanted to start a mailbox business. “I said I wouldn’t hear of it,” Miller said. “I said, ‘I’m not going to get stuck in some back room licking labels and stamping boxes.’ He said, ‘What’s your idea?’ and I said, ‘Frozen yogurt.’ He told me I was crazy. Of course, he had never been an athlete. He was the one with cellulite, not me. Little by little, he saw what I was creating . . . and how it might be a viable product, and about a year later, he said, ‘Let’s be partners.’ ”
The man, Brian Pallas, chipped in $30,000 and Miller came up with $60,000, half from taking out a second mortgage on a Sacramento home she bought with money made as a sporting goods sales representative. With the $90,000, they opened the first store.
With the stores sporting Heidi’s body-building posters, recognition was bound to follow. And while that would bother some people, Miller enjoys it.
She speaks about 75 to 100 times a year, to groups ranging from high school kids to corporate executives. She said she never prepares anything. “When you’re sure of yourself, you can do just about anything. I’m very sure of myself. I get up there, and I speak about what is of most interest to me, which is my company. It’s a rags to riches story.”
One of five children, Miller credits her father, a professor at UC Berkeley, with instilling the drive in her. He was also the unwitting originator of the play on words in the company title, which came when his tongue stumbled over the words “frozen yogurt.”
And while she has all the trappings of success--including houses in Sacramento, Laguna Beach and the Mexican resort town of Cabo San Lucas, a boat and a Mercedes--she quickly added: “I grew up stable and unassuming. I’ve been that way all along, and I always will be. I just always knew I’d be successful. And I have never failed.”
As if she knows how that looks in print, she said, “When I say I’ve never failed, sure, I’ve made mistakes. Everyone has. But instead of being someone who says, ‘Oh, I failed,’ I say, ‘I made a mistake, but I learned from that mistake, corrected it and will never do it again.’ So when I say I’ve never failed, that could be a very pompous way to put it, but it’s not the way I put it. I’ve made mistakes, but I don’t call them failures. I turn them around and make them positive.”
In March, after a largely positive portrayal in Business Week, the last paragraph of the story said Heidi’s company lost $1.5 million in the last four years. Far from being upset, Miller was more bemused that she was the focus of the article and that the magazine used a large photograph of her. “What do I get when we’re tremendously successful,” she said, “the cover?”
The ledger loss, she said, reflects “deferred franchise fees,” which must be carried on the books until the stores open. But because the initial $800,000 franchise fee from the two Japanese companies will be recognized as income, the company expects to turn a profit this quarter, she said.
Referring to the growth of the company, Miller said, “On the surface, it might look like things have gone relatively smoothly, but anytime you have a business of this nature, and a business of this dollar value ($20 million in gross sales last year), there’s always going to be troubles. Three or four times in Heidi’s career, there’s been no money, my back’s been to the wall. Everybody else was biting their nails down to the nibbies. I’m not. I say, ‘Hey, it’s going to happen.’ And it always does.”
Despite being rich and famous, Miller said her life style would make for uninteresting reading. She may jet away to Cabo San Lucas for a weekend of sport fishing but, she said, “I’m so domestic, it’s sick. I sew, I cook, I do those crafty things. I love my dog. I don’t have a wandering eye.”
Never married, Miller said she isn’t certain she will ever walk down the aisle. “It would really depend on the right man. I’m very happy without a family, but I would be very happy with a family. I don’t want to get married until I’m sure because I don’t want to be a statistic. That would be a failure. That would be a big failure. Maybe that’s why I’ve been apprehensive about getting married.”
Which might lead you to believe that someone with her looks and money and success would be cavorting in the world’s capitals (or, at least, Orange County nightspots) with a legion of men.
“I’ve only dated two men seriously in the last 20 years,” she said, “the first one for 13 years and the last one for seven.”
Still, she said, she isn’t sure about marriage. “I mean, when there’s constantly a negative in the back of your mind. . . . It’s not been a walk in the rose bed. Perhaps if it had been a walk in the rose bed, and it smelled sweet all the time, I would.”
In the meantime, she said, she is happy with her life and is positively gushing with expectancy about the company’s future.
“I don’t care about the trappings of success, per se,” she said. “I’d rather give them to others who have less.” Recently, she has bought cars for her mother and a brother and spends a lot of time raising money to combat cystic fibrosis.
And when she is not doing that, she is busy being Heidi Miller, yogurt queen.
“It’s fun being successful. I don’t even think of the wealthy part. I’m thankful for the success, and I’m extremely happy. I have been all the way along. . . . But every day is a new obstacle or a new challenge. That’s what keeps me going.”
