Candace
Ian Carroll Unleashed! | Private Equity, Big Pharma, And The Diddy Trial | Candace Ep 184
Tue, 13 May 2025
Ian Carroll hosts his first episode of Candace by discussing Candace's crazy experience with the hospital after the birth of her son Roman, Trump going after big pharma, the Diddy trial, and a scandal that started at kids birthday parties at Urban Air Adventure Parks which led to one mom spending the last three years fighting against a multibillion dollar private equity machine. Follow Ian Carroll here: https://www.youtube.com/@UCCgpGpylCfrJIV-RwA_L7tg 00:00 - Start. 00:57 - The story of Tiffany & Unleashed Brands. 27:56 - Candace's hospital story. 29:27 - The Diddy Trial. 36:03 - Trump's new executive order goes after Big Pharma. 39:16 - The Macron "baggie" controversy. GNO.LAND Learn more at http://www.gno.land Pure Talk Make the switch today at http://www.PureTalk.com/Owens Take Lean Go to https://takelean.com and use the promo code CANDACE20 to get 20% off! Disclaimer: Results vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease and is not a substitute for care from a healthcare provider. Candace Official Website: https://candaceowens.com Candace Merch: https://shop.candaceowens.com Candace on Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/Pp5VZiLXbq Candace on Spotify: https://t.co/16pMuADXuT Candace on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/RealCandaceO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What crazy experience did Candace have in the hospital?
Also, Trump goes after Big Pharma, Diddy starts his trial, and claims the freak-offs were all consensual, and the internet is losing its mind over Macron and his buddies allegedly getting caught with a baggie of Coke. But first, a scandal that started at kids' birthday parties at Urban Air Adventure Parks is blowing up in a massive way.
And one mom who spent the last three years fighting against a multi-billion dollar private equity monster is about to topple the whole house of cards. All that and more right now on Candace. So imagine you're a mom or a dad and you want to take your kids to the adventure park for a fun day, maybe a birthday party, right?
Chapter 2: What scandal started at kids' birthday parties?
That's where today's story starts with a young girl, seven years old, being taken by her parents to Urban Air Adventure Park. And They were expecting just a normal day. They were expecting a wonderful day with their kid. And if you've ever been to Urban Air, you would know that there's all kinds of crazy things for the kids to do.
Chapter 3: What are the details of the Diddy trial?
And theoretically, their staff kind of help and keep them safe, help and run the rides. And this little girl teed up to get on one of the most popular rides at Urban Air. We have video from that day.
Chapter 4: How is Trump addressing Big Pharma?
You got it.
Chapter 5: What is the Macron 'baggie' controversy?
Now, this is called the Skyrider attraction, and it's going to play a big part in today's story. But I just wanted to jump in really quickly and give you a disclaimer that the next part of this clip is pretty traumatic, and it doesn't show anything extremely graphic.
But if you're a parent or you have young kids, this is going to be very hard to watch and listen to because they were not expecting their day to go like this.
Are you okay? Sweetheart, are you okay? Are you okay?
So that little girl, unfortunately, suffered a punctured lung, a traumatic brain injury, broken bones, and permanent disability, including learning deficits, hearing loss. And her injuries are still uncertain and sustained to this day. They have been in secret arbitration up until... right now. And this is just one poor little girl's story at Urban Air.
But unfortunately, it is very much not the only story like this. And today, I wanted to tell you a story about Urban Air because Urban Air is a very small piece of a very big picture. And it starts with a man named Michael Browning. Michael Browning is the son...
of let's just say a very wealthy man, also named Michael Browning, who is famous in the Indianapolis real estate development scene and the founder and chief partner of Browning. But his son, you know, Michael Browning Jr., grows up in this lifestyle and wants to, you know, be like dad, I presume, and be a big, a big shot.
And so after founding a couple of companies in 2011, he founds this company called Urban Air and it's an adventure park, right? And he's growing Urban Air Adventure Parks, you know, with the goal of being a big shot, like his dad, I would presume.
He eventually, in 2018, gets a whole bunch of private equity funding and expands his business rapidly all around the United States from 45 parks at the time up well over 100. They initially got investment from Ross Perot's private equity firm, MPK Partners. And they took them from just a small business in the Indianapolis area to a nationwide chain. And they started franchising.
Franchising allowed Michael Browning Jr. to expand this business out and allow other people to buy into his franchise and to have Urban Airs opening all around the country and to have those businesses opened by local people that wanted to change their lives and their community by starting a business and buying into the Urban Air franchise.
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Chapter 6: What happened to Tiffany Cianci and Unleashed Brands?
So following a trend that is rampant in private equity right now, in 2021, Browning decided to scale up following a hot new trend in private equity that gets referred to as platforms, where the
they will buy up different companies that are in the same niche, in the same sector, so that if you wanted to fix up your house, they've got AC people, they've got cleaning people, they've got painting people. This is just one example, but it happens in all sorts of different areas of our economy. And Michael Browning Jr. decided that
he was going to take on the niche that was all things children. Why not apply the private equity playbook of cutting costs, streamlining businesses, and maximizing profits to all businesses' children? So that's what he did.
And he bought up a number of businesses in rapid succession with backing from his private equity buddies, including Sylvan Learning Centers, Waterwing, Snapology, XP League, Class 101, Premier Martial Arts, and The Little Gym. But among all brands, it has 1,200 locations across the country and serves 25 million children a year. It generates $1.1 billion in annual revenue. Michael Browning Jr.
seems to be doing pretty good. But... problems started to arise as they acquired each of these companies. And they didn't start with The Little Gym, but our story starts at The Little Gym today. Founded originally by Robin West and Robin McCoy. And I just want to show you their faces because I get the feeling we'll come back to them in the future.
But the story really comes to a head when Tiffany Cianci enters the picture. And Tiffany Cianci bought into this franchise as a mom that was doing other business and wanted to spend more time with her kids around 2017.
And so she thought that buying one of these franchises would be a great service to her community and a great way to spend more time with her kids because her kids could attend the little gym. And if you've not been to the little gym, it's a space for...
Children of all types, but particularly targeted children that have special types of needs, whether that be auditory, sensory, learning, cognitive, whatever. It's a gym for all types of children to do gymnastics and learn through physical movement. And Tiffany Cianci really found her passion there.
We're going to be drawing from news reporting and articles that have reported on Tiffany's story over the last three years as it has gotten crazy.
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Chapter 7: How does private equity affect children's businesses?
is not just that private equity is buying up and taking advantage of small businesses, not just that private equity is applying the private equity playbook to these businesses that are focused on kids, mind you, but that those practices that private equity uses are inherently counter to safety. Tiffany gave this quote to the New York Times.
That might be okay when you're cleaning a dryer vent, but it's not when you're throwing around a four-month-old and you need them to be safe. Ms. Sianci said, he was moving faster than we would need to get to know the business, referring to the changes happening at the little gym. And the key word there is safe.
And as the clip that we opened this segment shows, safety is obviously not the first thing on the mind of Unleashed Brands and of Urban Air. But that is just one video and there are many other videos from Urban Air.
Again, we are going to blur out the most sensitive parts of these videos, but we just wanted to get you a sense of what you can find just on YouTube if you go searching for this type of stuff.
FOR THE FAMILY IS SUING AFTER THEIR SON FELL FROM A ZIPLINE AT AN AMUSEMENT PARK. A WORD OF WARNING, THE VIDEO MAY BE DISTURBING TO SOME VIEWERS. YOU CAN SEE THE 10-YEAR-OLD COME AROUND THE CORNER AND THEN FALL 20 FEET FROM THE ZIPLINE. An investigation by the Florida Department of Agriculture found the boy's harness was not properly secured at the time of the incident.
Urban Air says the employees involved in the incident don't work there anymore and others have been retrained.
So there's examples of kids falling, but there's also examples of adults and parents getting hurt. In the next video, a mom almost died in front of her own daughter at their birthday party.
The video is shocking. A mom is hanging by her neck, helpless, as she finds herself trapped on an indoor zip line. Time is running out. She's in real danger of choking to death. It happened after she says the harness apparently came loose and slipped around her neck.
It seemed as if they put the harness incorrectly. Instead of strapping it under my arms, it seemed as if they strapped it.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of secret arbitration?
that the woman in that video made purposeful note that the harness didn't seem to be put on correctly. And that's because these rides are not staffed correctly because, A, Urban Air hires children under the age of 18, 16 and 17-year-olds, and you would think that you'd need a couple of them to staff these rides. But there's documentation that seems to show that, quote,
Michael discussed reducing the number of attendants from two to one on the Skyrider attraction, stating that eliminating an employee from an attraction can save a park $10,000 per year. That very same weekend in Ahwatukee, the Skyrider attraction had one employee working when a major accident occurred. In LOFA's opinion, this short-term cost segmentality is a major concern.
You might notice LOFA is Leap of Faith Adventures. The company that I had mentioned had originally designed this ride. The company that I had mentioned It appeared that maybe Unleashed Brands and Michael Browning Jr. might have done something nefarious to take that patent and that attraction from Leap of Faith Adventures. And now Leap of Faith Adventures is unfortunately no more.
But this document, as well as several others that we have, are actually from when Leap of Faith Adventures started. took them to court because they were not okay with what was being done with their rides, the ways they were being set up, the ways they were being run, and they made specific claims about what was going on.
That's not to mention that there's evidence that seems to suggest, both human testimony as well as email testimony, that Unleashed Brands was flying in Chinese nationals to put together their adventure parks because it was cheaper than paying American labor. You know, doesn't
really strike me as the kind of thing that's safe when you're putting together all sorts of rides and dangerous equipment that children are going to be playing on, but it is cheaper. I'll give them that. So, What Tiffany Cianci and all of the other franchisees at the Little Gym have been through has been horrendous.
It has been a multi-year process of intimidation and of coercion and of very complicated changes to their businesses that do not benefit them or their children. At least that's how they see it. But... There's a darker and deeper side of the story. And that's when you start to realize that private equity is a team. It's a club. And they are all friends together.
And none of them really want the boat to be rocked. And so when Tiffany started rocking the boat, when Tiffany stood up to these people and organized with her other franchisees, and then when she wouldn't go away and be silenced, they decided that they were going to make an example out of her. And they have done a number of things over the years, things that are almost unspeakable.
And we don't have time to speak of all of them because there are so many. But perhaps the most unspeakable or at least the most inhumane that was done to Tiffany was captured in court during one of her depositions. And... I'm going to let her speak for herself, but I do want you to know that this is going to be hard to watch, especially if you're a mother.
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