Tyra Banks doesn’t start our interview with a pitch or a polished story. She starts with a problem delivered with that unmistakable Tyra energy: bright eyes, expressive gestures and a ‘smize’-ready presence that fills the room before she even finishes her first sentence.

It seems the freezer at her Sydney flagship – the SMiZE & DREAM ice-cream shop positioned on Darling Harbour between the marina, playground and a high-traffic run of restaurants – has broken down. It’s the only time the hot Sydney sun beaming through its floor-to-ceiling glass walls isn’t a good thing.

“My Sydney flagship ice-cream freezer had a compressor issue, and it broke down,” Banks tells The CEO Magazine. “And we have an insane amount of melted ice-cream that has to be discarded.”

It’s not the opening line I expected, but it is a blunt snapshot of where her entrepreneurial life sits these days: in a business that’s part-creative, part-systems management and 100 percent hands-on.

Banks’ sweetest pivot yet

While today’s freezer setback is immediate, Banks shares that the origins of SMiZE & DREAM stretch back decades. For her, the foundation of the brand was never a commercial concept. It began with a Friday-night tradition with her mother in a parked car in Los Angeles, many moons ago.

“Those Friday ice-cream dates with my mom weren’t just dessert – they were soul time,” she recalls, the sheer thought of the memory lighting up her entire face. “We’d sit in her car and talk, dream, laugh, cry … all over a cone.”

As Banks grew older, she realized those nights were about much more than the creamy dessert.

“The ice-cream wasn’t the point – connection was, dreaming big was,” she says, smiling. “Talking about those dreams and making plans to make them come true.”

The name, the logo, the emotional core – all of it, she says, ties back to those precious moments with her mother.

“My mama is still the heartbeat of the brand,” she says. “I even changed the logo to her face so the world and I will never forget why SMiZE & DREAM exists.”

A taste of reinvention

Banks has had several careers, each high-profile and demanding in different ways. Yet what surprised her most when stepping into entrepreneurship was how interconnected those worlds truly were.

“The skills I thought belonged to one industry, actually belonged to me,” Banks explains. “I used to see my career chapters as separate – fashion, TV, entrepreneurship. But they’re not. Storytelling is storytelling. Leadership is leadership. And vision is vision.”

“I thought I retired from modeling and fashion roots, but no. I didn’t leave my previous careers behind; I brought them with me.”

Before launching SMiZE & DREAM, Banks spent time studying the category. Sure, she saw excitement, passion and even heritage. But mostly, she saw complacency.

“Ice-cream is beloved everywhere,” she says. “But the category had gotten expected. Same formats. Same expectations.”

And therefore, ripe for innovation. So when she got to work creating the market’s missing piece, her goal was to create a brand with range, with luxury and playfulness, nostalgia and innovation and emotional value and commercial strategy.

“I wanted to build something that wasn’t just a scoop – it was a world,” she explains.

That world has been built on several core pillars from the performers and storytellers who elevate in-store experiences lovingly referred to as ‘cone-cierges’ to the SMiZE SURPRIZES, which are the hidden sweet truffles placed at the bottom of every pint.

The cherry on top is immersive retail and character development that work to round out the entire experience. And where most entertainment intellectual property typically develops on-screen first, Banks is reversing that.

The Sydney, Australia home of SMiZE & DREAM, conceived as an immersive ice-cream boutique built around fantasy, flavor and spectacle rather than a traditional scoop shop

“We’re incubating characters inside the ice-cream shop and then scaling them outward into TV, film, animation, books and beyond,” she says.

One early example, Banks shares, is Santa SMiZE, who began as a seasonal character in the store and is now evolving into a broader entertainment persona.

“She was born through experience first – not screen first. And let’s just say, I know her well,” Banks says, winking, hinting at the character’s likeness to herself.

“We call all of this a ‘Banksperience’. They’re emotional, immersive, story-driven moments that turn a simple visit into something cinematic.”

The surprise of Sydney

Banks is no stranger to the unexpected, but when she made the decision to relocate to Australia, even she was surprised.

“Living in Australia has been a dream come true,” she says. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with the lifestyle the way I have.”

At first, the travel was practical. SMiZE & DREAM had cruise-ship accounts departing from Australia, and Banks regularly flew in to develop flavors. But the people, way of life and mere enchantment of the land Down Under drew her in.

“The vibe here is different,” she says. “It’s grounded. People are present. There’s this beautiful work–life balance – people actually take weekends off.”

The change, she admits, shifted her thinking, pace and priorities.

“I slow down. I spend real time with my family. I get up early, have my black coffee and breathe,” she says.

“This chapter in Australia is calm, colorful and deeply inspiring. And I’m just getting started.”

Where creativity meets discipline

While SMiZE & DREAM may look whimsical on the surface, Banks is clear about the commercial rigor behind it.

“I lead with big imagination, but I ground it with discipline, data and a lot of practical thinking,” she says, aware that creativity is often dismissed as frivolous in corporate settings.

But her response is simple – she builds for both emotion and margin.

“I don’t create just for creativity’s sake. I’m a savvy business person too,” she says. “Over the years, I’ve learned how to let creativity and commerce support each other.

“For example, when you walk into SMiZE & DREAM and see the gilded archways and the golden lighting, yes, it’s beautiful and magical, but it’s also intentional. Everything has both an emotional purpose and a business function.

“It’s never just ‘pretty’ – it’s part of how we tell a story, welcome people and create a place they want to return to.”

A triumphant return: Tyra Banks came out of modeling retirement at 50 to close the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show

The progression to SMiZE & DREAM might seem like an unusual turn for her to take, but throughout her career, Banks has understood what it means to break new ground – and importantly, what it means to widen the path behind you.

“I broke down barriers in fashion and entertainment as a Black woman, and those experiences shape how I lead today,” she says proudly.

“I am not the first Black woman to start an ice-cream company, but there aren’t many of us in this space. But the ice-cream world connects to agriculture, consumer goods, retail and hospitality.

“And Black women absolutely belong in these rooms, on those farms and leading those factories too.”

Banks sees the role of SMiZE & DREAM as demonstrating what’s possible for the next generation of creators, founders and leaders.

“I want little girls to look at SMiZE & DREAM and see leadership, imagination and global expansion – and know that they can do the same,” she says.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris visited the SMiZE & DREAM pop-up in Washington, DC

“I want SMiZE & DREAM to say: you matter, your ideas matter and your magic matters. If I can build something like this on an international stage, I want young people to know that they can build their dreams too and that the world is big enough for their brilliance.”

The scoop on what’s next

As our interview comes to a close, the frozen inventory crisis is still waiting for Banks’ attention. But she’s managing it in parallel with everything else happening that same week.

“Here’s the funny thing: While I’m dealing with a broken freezer in Sydney, I am also planning a hot ice-cream debut in New York with some of the top chefs in the world; developing a music launch tour for one of our SMiZE characters; sitting in a meeting to decide if we should finally share a next-level recipe the world keeps asking us about; polishing the curriculum for my nonprofit ice-cream school for underserved youth; and working with a robotics team – yes, actual robots – on future experiences for the brand.

“So it’s freezer chaos on one side and big global scaling on the other,” she says, laughing.

If anything, that sentence captures what this chapter of her life truly looks like: operational challenges, creative ambition and commercial discipline all running at once.

“One minute your world is melting,” she says. “And the next, you’re building something that might change the world.”