Michael Browning Jr. is the Founder and CEO of Unleashed Brands, the youth enrichment platform behind Urban Air Adventure Park and six other brands. In this CEO Series interview, filmed inside an Urban Air park, he walks through how a single trampoline park became a multi-brand platform serving more than 20 million kids a year, what he believes greatness actually means, and how he thinks about franchising, private equity, and parenting today.
Michael Browning Jr. is the Founder and CEO of Unleashed Brands.
Unleashed Brands is the world's first and largest youth enrichment platform for kids. We get up every day to partner with parents and help them raise well-rounded, purposeful kids who are life-ready. We do that across seven brands. Urban Air Adventure Park is the one I founded in 2011, and it will always be my baby. Since then we've acquired six more: The Little Gym, Snapology, Class 101, Premier Martial Arts, Sylvan Learning, and Water Wings. Together we serve over 20 million kids a year.
We have more than 1,500 locations and we're in all but about two states. Sylvan is our largest brand by unit count, with over 550 locations. The Little Gym is close to 300. Urban Air has over 218. Premier Martial Arts and Snapology are each over 100. For me it has always been about the impact we make, not only the numbers.
I'm an '80s kid. My parents told me to go outside and play and come home when the street lights turned on. We climbed trees, rode our bikes to the grocery store, did things that were slightly risky. All of it built responsibility and perseverance. You had to figure things out. I think kids today are missing a lot of that, and it's a big part of how we became who we are.
All the time. When I meet a local franchisee, like I did walking in today, it feels like an honor. This person believed in me, believed in the concept, and built something beautiful with it. That never gets old.
It's not that we're overthinking it. It's that more is being thrown at us than ever. Anyone with a phone and the internet can have an opinion, so it's noisier than ever to be a parent. What matters is for parents to really understand who their kids are and how they're wired.
It's not that we're overthinking it. It's that more is being thrown at us than ever. Anyone with a phone and the internet can have an opinion, so it's noisier than ever to be a parent. What matters is for parents to really understand who their kids are and how they're wired.
I was traveling and saw one of the first trampoline parks. I run everything through an opportunity recognition filter, where one axis is innovation and the other is scale. I want both. Something only innovative is usually too expensive, and something only scalable means everyone competes on price. This had both. At first I just wanted to build a place in Southlake, Texas where kids could celebrate special moments, escape the hardships of the world, and socialize through play. I called my dad, who was in the home building business, and asked him to build it. He said he'd build it and that I'd run it and create the business model. We invested every penny we had and had to be scrappy, because we didn't fully know what it would cost.
About a year and a half.
Yes. That first location made money day one and week one. We paid our capital back to ourselves in 10 months. It was a fabulous return.
It came back to opportunity recognition. Our Dallas-Fort Worth locations were in some of the best spots in the metroplex, so people would visit over the holidays and tell their friends back home. Then I'd get calls asking me to open in other states. One man, John Becker, kept calling because his sister lived in Southlake. I had no franchising experience beyond having seen the movie The Founder, so I kept brushing him off. Then my grandfather, who we called Grandman, pushed me. He told me I sounded a little lazy and needed to put in the work. So I did. A company in Dallas, Fuzzy's Tacos, gave me a crash course in franchising. I called John Becker back and made him my first franchisee.
He's still a franchisee today. I just saw him last week at our annual convention. He has three Urban Airs now, and his general manager has opened a Little Gym. They're all in.
Urban Air was my baby, with a tribe of people who believed in me and disrupted an industry alongside me, so I can move quickly there. In a brand we acquired, change is harder to drive. As a young entrepreneur I had to learn to slow down, listen, take it in, affirm what people were saying, and then explain where we need to go, what's in it for them, and why. Early on, I went too fast.
I don't take for granted that more than 25,000 people get paid every two weeks because of a business I started. I take that weight personally. I'm also passionate about the next generation. I was a young entrepreneur, and people constantly told me I wasn't old enough to do something great. I don't believe kids have to wait to be great. The world tells them greatness is likes, followers, views, scholarships, and being a D1 athlete. Those things are great, but they aren't the whole definition. Greatness is also confidence, integrity, perseverance, and curiosity. The pendulum has swung too far toward performance, polish, and image, and I want to rebalance it. I'm a dad, and parenting is hard.
I can't dictate that to franchisees, but I can lead by example. In our last private equity round, I put over $15 million of my own money into a variable appreciation investment pool so my home office employees are now owners in the business. Because I've done it myself, I can sit with a franchisee and ask whether they've thought about making their general manager a partial owner.
Parents are leaning toward hovering and making sure every moment is structured and safe. We've leaned too far that way. We need to get back toward the middle and let kids go and play.
Yes, three. They're 14, 11, and 6.
I teach in the entrepreneurship department. My course is Introduction to Franchising, and I teach it every other semester. Too many people, and too much of America, don't realize franchising is one of the best models for becoming an entrepreneur.
Too many people think entrepreneurship means starting with a blank sheet of paper and a wild idea. It can also mean owning your own business and operating a great playbook, which is what franchising is. To be a great franchisee, lay a strong foundation by running the franchisor's playbook first. Then layer in innovation in partnership with the franchisor. It's like algebra. Put too many variables in at once and you can't solve for what's working. If you do go out on your own, expect people who won't catch the vision until later. Every bank told me no, and every landlord told me no, until one landlord finally gave me a spot. Never bet the farm on any single idea, and always be testing and improving.
Our first private equity, or family office, deal was in March 2018. I wasn't seeking it. The sponsor was friends with one of my franchisees who was posting on Facebook about opening an Urban Air in Minnesota and the success she was having. At that point we had about 36 locations, roughly seven years in, so we had real scale across multiple sites, locations, and geographies.
It takes the right balance. We're a for-profit business and we're not ashamed of that. Very few companies in history have had the chance to make tremendous profits and a tremendous impact at the same time, and those two things intersect for us. Our decision-making filter is simple: when our customers, the parents and kids, win, our franchisees win, and when our franchisees win, we win. I've always loved working with private equity partners who believe in the mission and take a long-term view, and we've been very intentional about who we work with.
It started as a glorified high school concession stand, prepackaged chips and a can of soda, with third-party vendors bringing pizza for parties. That was a kink in our operations, because relying on someone else's business to deliver on time and with quality hurt our net promoter score. So we started making our own pizza. Urban Air is really two businesses in one: a theme park and a fast-casual restaurant. We run the food and beverage side on its own P&L, and if you isolated it, we'd be one of the highest-grossing fast-casual concepts in the country.
Yes, we're looking to add more brands, and a lot of it comes from what our customers ask us for. We acquired Sylvan because parents who trusted our other brands were asking where to get help with math and reading. We found Water Wings because parents wanted somewhere to teach their kids to swim. Right now, parents are telling us they want traditional sports, fine arts, and some type of preschool.
It started as a glorified high school concession stand, prepackaged chips and a can of soda, with third-party vendors bringing pizza for parties. That was a kink in our operations, because relying on someone else's business to deliver on time and with quality hurt our net promoter score. So we started making our own pizza. Urban Air is really two businesses in one: a theme park and a fast-casual restaurant. We run the food and beverage side on its own P&L, and if you isolated it, we'd be one of the highest-grossing fast-casual concepts in the country.
Yes, we're looking to add more brands, and a lot of it comes from what our customers ask us for. We acquired Sylvan because parents who trusted our other brands were asking where to get help with math and reading. We found Water Wings because parents wanted somewhere to teach their kids to swim. Right now, parents are telling us they want traditional sports, fine arts, and some type of preschool.
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