Lou Pearlman is a classic U.S. success story, the simple son of a rich aviation family, who saw an opportunity and exploited it.

He is, in short, the guy who created The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC in a blimp hanger in Orlando, Fla., and watched his bright ideas generate more than $2 billion in sales.

Pearlman is a keynote speaker Friday at Canadian Music Week at the Harbour Castle.

"I just always wanted to be in the music business and the aviation business too," says Pearlman on the phone from Orlando. "When I was in a band in the late '70s, we called it Flyer."

It was a fateful booking in 1991 when a band called New Kids On The Block chartered a jet from his family's Queens, N.Y.-based firm. Curious how kids could afford a plane, he was told NKOTB grossed a billion dollars in records and merchandise.

Inspired, he set about becoming the man-who-created-boybands. He canvassed Smokey Robinson for tips about how the old Motown grooming system worked. He learned about harmony from his cousin Art Garfunkel.

The result was a production company, Transcontinental Records. "The idea was to create our own bootcamp, a finishing school with PR training, choreography, vocal lessons."

Sadly, the one blemish in this little Damon Runyon story is that when his boys hit platinum, lawyers got into the act. The Backstreet Boys sued over their contract, which saw him collecting as both producer and manager. And NSYNC sued for the right to switch record labels over Pearlman's objections.

"I was the only one believing in the project, so I stepped up to the plate and put my money where my mouth is," Pearlman says of his multi-million dollar investment. "Next thing you know problems happen. Why? 'Cause there's always that relative that's an attorney who takes a look at this thing and says 'Hey, he's getting paid from both ends! That's double dipping!' And I said, 'Why didn't you say that when I put up the money?'"