When I started Urban Air in 2011, I was 25 years old, trying to convince banks, investors and landlords to take a chance on a trampoline park. Most said no. It was a relatively new concept, and few were willing to finance something they hadn’t seen before.
I saw an opportunity. Parents needed places where their kids could get off the couch, burn energy, socialize and have fun. In Texas, where temperatures can reach 105 degrees, an indoor, climate-controlled environment made perfect sense.
I did take the rejections seriously and I think that’s important for entrepreneurs. You need the courage to challenge conventional wisdom as well as the humility to consider whether the people telling you no might know something you don’t. So I considered the objections, but I still saw an unmet need in the market.
Eventually, we secured a lease because of my dad’s reputation in the community, and my family invested nearly $1 million of our own money. My dad brought in his construction crews. I learned to drive a forklift, my sister handled graphics, my mom planned birthday parties and my wife helped with HR. It was a real family affair.
Opening day, October 28, 2011, there was a line out the door and I remember thinking, “This isn’t Monopoly money.”
My family had sacrificed. I had 40 employees counting on me. I worried constantly about what might happen to the people I loved if the business failed. Entrepreneurship comes with enormous responsibility, much of it invisible to the people who see only the confidence and optimism.
Fortunately for us, the customers validated our conviction.
A successful location isn’t a scalable business
Within 10 months, we’d recovered our nearly $1 million investment. I went to my family and said, “I think we should open two more.”
As we expanded, I began to understand how much of our success depended on my personal involvement. But that became more challenging as we grew. With one location, I could know every employee, greet every customer and solve problems as they arose. Replicating that experience across dozens or hundreds of locations required a different approach.
I started watching the fundamentals: unit economics, repeat visits, birthday party bookings, labor efficiency and consistency of the guest experience. I wanted to know whether our success in Southlake, Texas, reflected demand we could serve in other markets.
We also needed systems for hiring, training, safety, labor management and operations. A business built around the founder’s constant involvement eventually reaches a ceiling. So I began asking, “How do I build a business that allows someone else to operate a successful location?” It was a question that changed how I approached growth.
Remember what the customer hired you to do
As the trampoline park industry expanded, I saw competitors opening nearly identical facilities: warehouses filled with trampolines, birthday party rooms and concession stands.
I knew that would eventually lead to price competition. So I started thinking about the experience families actually wanted. What if Urban Air could become an indoor adventure park, with attractions appealing to different ages, giving families more reasons to visit?
We began adding activities beyond trampolines and creating destinations where families could spend hours. That broadened our customer base and strengthened the economics for franchisees. The decision drew criticism from industry veterans who said we were moving away from the model everyone understood.
But I kept coming back to the customer. Parents weren’t waking up Saturday morning saying, “I need to jump on a trampoline.” They were asking, “What are we going to do with the kids today?”
That insight guided our evolution from Urban Air Trampoline Park to Urban Air Adventure Park.
Every CEO should periodically ask what problem customers are really paying the company to solve. The answer can open opportunities well beyond the original product.
Borrow what works—then test it
In 2018, I proposed launching a membership program. I’d been watching Netflix, Disney and fitness clubs build recurring relationships through subscriptions. Our industry relied heavily on individual ticket purchases, leaving us dependent on families deciding to visit again.
We had years of customer data showing visit frequency, spending patterns and length of stay. That gave us a foundation for modeling memberships. Once again, industry veterans warned that subscribers would overwhelm our parks and destroy our margins. But we studied likely usage patterns, capacity and pricing before moving forward. We tested monthly memberships ranging from $6.99 to $14.99. The program worked, and we ultimately signed up around a million members.
The recurring revenue improved predictability, while memberships gave families more reasons to visit and deepened their relationship with Urban Air. Competitors eventually followed. Some struggled because they didn’t model utilization and pricing as carefully.
That experience reinforced something I believe strongly: CEOs should look outside their industries for ideas. Proven business models can create enormous value when applied to a new market; the discipline comes in understanding the economics and testing assumptions before scaling.
When crisis forces you to think bigger
As it was for so many other CEOs, Covid was one of the scariest periods of my entrepreneurial career. On March 17, 2020, I told our franchisees they had to close. These were entrepreneurs who had invested their savings, borrowed money and put everything on the line. Overnight, their revenue disappeared.
We had roughly $20 million in annual corporate payroll, and royalties stopped coming in as locations closed.
We immediately began renegotiating obligations with landlords, vendors, insurers and anyone else who could help us preserve cash. I believed the financial burden needed to be shared across the system. Three months later, we began reopening and ultimately didn’t lose a single Urban Air location.
Meanwhile, my wife and I were sitting on the couch trying to find activities for our kids who needed opportunities to be social— gymnastics, tutoring, sports, STEM programs—and I kept noticing how fragmented the youth enrichment industry was. Families had to navigate dozens of separate providers, each serving a different need.
I remember thinking, “Why hasn’t anyone built the Marriott Bonvoy of youth enrichment?”
Marriott brings distinct hotel brands together under a platform that creates value for customers and owners. I wondered whether we could create something similar for families.
“You’re crazy,” my wife told me. “We haven’t even survived Covid yet.”
I told her, “Just let me study it.”
“You don’t just study,” she said, “you solve.”
She knows me pretty well. The more I studied the opportunity, the more convinced I became that we could use the infrastructure we’d built at Urban Air to help other youth enrichment brands grow. We already had national capabilities in franchise development, real estate, construction, marketing, technology and operations. Emerging brands could benefit from those resources immediately.
We presented the idea to our board, secured support and began acquiring businesses, starting with Snapology and The Little Gym. In July 2021, we officially introduced Unleashed Brands.
The pandemic forced us to examine our business from a new perspective, to stabilize operations and confront difficult financial realities. At the same time, we discovered an opportunity that might have remained hidden during more comfortable times.
I encourage CEOs facing a crisis to ask, “What is this situation making possible that wasn’t possible before?”
The brands own what makes them different. The platform owns what makes them better
Our platform thesis is straightforward: Great brands can grow faster when they have access to capabilities that would be difficult and expensive to build independently.
If you’re a founder who has built a great concept with 50 or 100 locations, you might have an incredible brand but lack the resources to take it to 500. That’s where I saw the opportunity. What if we could acquire great brands, preserve what made them special and give them access to capabilities they could never economically justify building on their own?
I often describe it this way: The brands should be responsible for what makes them different. The platform should be responsible for what makes them better.
The Little Gym, for example, should be focused on delivering an incredible childhood development experience. Sylvan should be focused on helping kids succeed academically. Urban Air should be focused on creating unforgettable entertainment experiences.
But does every brand really need its own technology infrastructure, franchise development organization, procurement capabilities and real estate team? I don’t think so.
And there’s another dimension to the thesis that I think is even more powerful. Our brands serve the same household at different moments in a child’s life. A parent might take their toddler to The Little Gym, enroll their elementary-school child in Snapology, use Sylvan for academic support and celebrate a birthday at Urban Air.
Historically, those would have been completely separate customer relationships. But it’s the same parent, the same household, the same desire to help their child grow and reach their potential. That’s where I think the platform opportunity becomes really interesting. We’re building an ecosystem around the household. And when you consider the millions of families our brands serve, the opportunity to connect those relationships is enormous.
One size fits one
The greatest challenge of rapid growth has been organizational complexity. Our brands have different customers, business models, cultures and franchisee expectations. What works for Urban Air might make little sense for Sylvan or The Little Gym.
Early on, we focused heavily on the opportunities to share capabilities. Experience taught us to be more thoughtful about where standardization creates value. We have a saying about that: “One size fits one.”
Decision-making also becomes harder as an organization grows. In a small business, you can make a decision Monday and implement it on Tuesday. In a larger company, decisions can get caught between departments and approval processes. I like moving fast, so that frustrates me. Along the way, I’ve had to recognize that I can’t personally solve every problem. When every important decision comes through the CEO, the organization slows down.
The assumption I got wrong
One of my biggest mistakes was underestimating how much the people, culture and unique characteristics of each business matter.
I believed a successful operating system could be applied across different businesses with similar results. In practice, integration requires much more judgment. It’s tempting when you acquire a company to immediately start addressing outdated technology and inefficient processes. I’m just wired that way. I see a problem and want to solve it.
But moving too quickly can damage the very qualities that made a business successful. Sometimes an apparent inefficiency serves an important purpose. Sometimes the founder understands something about the customer that a spreadsheet can’t capture. So I’ve learned to spend more time understanding the business and earning people’s trust before making changes. Integration really takes patience. You need to align teams, understand the economics and help people feel part of something bigger while preserving the identity that made their company successful.
Growth can also conceal operating problems. When revenue is climbing and acquisitions are happening, there’s plenty of activity: new locations, new executives, new initiatives and new deals. I try to keep our team focused on the results underneath that activity. Are franchisees more profitable? Are customers happier? Are teams more effective? Are we generating stronger returns on invested capital? Those measures tell us whether we’re building a healthier business.
What I’d tell another CEO making the leap
If I were sitting across from a CEO trying to turn one successful business into a much larger platform, I’d offer five lessons:
- Know why your businesses are worth more together. Be specific about the value your platform creates. Can you improve unit economics, accelerate growth, strengthen the customer experience or provide capabilities the brands couldn’t afford independently? Your platform thesis needs to produce measurable benefits.
- Protect the fundamentals. Unit economics, cash flow, customer satisfaction, franchisee profitability and culture determine whether growth is sustainable. As the business gets bigger, mistakes become more expensive.
- Be selective about standardization. Centralize capabilities that create clear advantages, while respecting the differences that make each brand successful. Listen carefully to founders and operators before changing their businesses.
- Build accountability into execution. Every priority needs a metric, an owner and a deadline. Give leaders clear decision rights so the organization can move without waiting for the CEO.
- Remember why you started. Growth brings the challenges you once hoped to have. More employees, customers and locations mean more responsibility. Keep perspective on what you’re building and the people who make it possible.
When we opened our first Urban Air, I thought success meant getting the doors open. Then it meant recovering our investment, opening 10 locations, reaching 100 and building a billion-dollar business. Every time you reach a milestone, the goalposts move.
So I’ve learned to find satisfaction in the process of building, the people I work with and the impact we make. For me, that impact has always been about kids and families. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished financially, but what gets me out of bed is knowing that millions of kids are having experiences that can shape their lives, and that entrepreneurs across the country are building businesses and providing for their families.
The skills I needed to open our first Urban Air have evolved considerably. Back then, I was driving a forklift and figuring out the cash register. Today, I spend my time building the team, systems, culture and strategy that allow thousands of other people to succeed. And I’m still learning.
So my advice is to think bigger, stay curious, challenge your assumptions and surround yourself with people who are better than you at what they do. Build the discipline to let others make decisions and the humility to recognize when your approach needs to change.
And remember why you started. I’ve never wanted to build something big just for the sake of being big. I’ve wanted to build something that matters.
