WHO TRANSFORMED SMOOTHIE KING?

He more than doubled the company's size. He made the drinks healthy again. And he's an unlikely franchisee from Korea with an incredible story to tell.

- PAUL KIX

Wan Kim has this strange ability to raise the gooseflesh. He doesn't look like he could do it. He's all slight build with glasses and mild manners. And yet: Goosebumps. Every time you talk to him.

He's the owner and CEO of Smoothie King, which, again, doesn't suggest a hair-raising lifestyle. But the business of blending fruits and protein powders is also, in its own way, the business of life and how to lead it. For Kim, it goes way beyond some "healthy-first" influencer-speak, or even the actual nutrition his smoothies provide at more than 1,300 locations around the world. For him the business of life and how to lead it is about pursuing something almost transcendent, the oldest of human quests: Our need to evolve, to rise above our origins and refuse what society deems acceptable for our lives.

Wan Kim has, after a long trial, succeeded in this quest.

When he tells you how-well, goosebumps.

WE SHOULD PROBABLY start at the beginning. That's in South Korea, during the Korean War. Wan's grandfather died in the war when Wan's father, Hyojo, was only eight. It's hard to imagine the deprivations of that war: just death and scorched earth everywhere. Hyojo had to scrounge for food every day amid the dead bodies.

But it fueled him. As an adult, Hyojo built a company, Kyung In Electronics, that became a manufacturing behemoth, with Sony and Samsung as clients and profits north of $200 million a year-and ultimately, while Wan was growing up, an initial public offering on the South Korean stock market. Hyojo wanted to give his two sons the childhood he never had. In return for his first-class plane rides and postsecondary U.S. education, Wan knew Hyojo expected from him an undying fealty.