Unleashed Brands: Michael Browning Jr., Founder & CEO

Michael Browning Jr. is the Founder and CEO of Unleashed Brands, the parent company of youth enrichment franchises that serve millions of families annually across 1,400 locations, including Urban Air Adventure Park, The Little Gym, Snapology, Premier Martial Arts, Class 101, XP League, and Water Wings. Michael and I delve into the business of building and expanding magnetic franchise brands: How to make a brand stick, how to attract operators, and ways in which to become part of a customer's multiple life stages.

Katerina Schneider, founder and CEO of Ritual, has redefined the supplement industry through transparent science and sourcing.In this episode, we revisit her launch of Ritual a decade ago—while she was pregnant—driven by her inability to find a supplement brand she could trust. We explore how her company challenged industry norms, treats customers as “Chief Health Officers,” leverages branding to fuel growth, and why a well-crafted brand image only matters when matched by flawless execution.

Jake Danehy runs the apparel brand Fair Harbor, which has repurposed nearly 40 million plastic bottles into best-selling apparel. He started the company in college with his sister and scaled it into a multi-million-dollar values-led brand.We talk about his childhood beach days in Fair Harbor, which inspired the brand’s name, how you can launch with as good as no funding, that you never own your brand - you only own your company, and how important it is to create guardrails once your brand grows up.

Yousuf Ahmed made his way from the music industry via Goldman Sachs to upcycling leftover oats (a byproduct of making oat milk) into what he describes as plant-based and protein-packed upcycled crunch puffs that taste like summer camp and save the world.When I prepared for the show, I saw that his company, B-Sides, had just announced that their brand design had fallen a bit flat with consumers and that they were about to rethink it all. So here I was about to jump on a call to talk branding with Yousuf, and then that bombshell.Needless to say, this episode has more of a brand workshop vibe to it, and I personally really enjoyed thinking through the brand on the fly and hearing Yousuf’s very smart and insightful takes on consumers, packaging, and branding. 

5 years ago, Jen Pelka was the founder and CEO of The Riddler, a beloved champagne bar located in San Francisco and NYC, where she offered hundreds of champagnes to a clientele of mainly badass women, quite similar to the team who served them. Then the pandemic hit, and fast-forward to today, where Jen is the Co-founder and CEO of Une Femme, the fastest-growing sparkling wine brand in the US. Jen and I talk about how today's wine consumer has changed, going through a big pivot, the challenges of being a degree separated from the end consumer, how her brand is about embodying the idea of fun, and the power of building a brand from within an organization. 

Brian Sheng is the CEO and Co-Founder of Aquaria, a tech startup that literally makes water out of thin air. The company supplies premium drinking water for homes, businesses, and outdoor spaces and backup water generators that are completely independent of plumbing infrastructure. The brand was named one of TIME magazine’s best inventions of 2024 and has secured 102M in funding for large-scale Aquaria Air Water Infrastructure projects.How to tell this story, the many A-HA moments across his journey and why a founder-led brand voice is crucial are all topics Brian and I dive into in this episode.

Ben Christensen founded Cambium, a company that is building better supply chains, starting with wood, to make it possible to source every material in a regenerative way. This approach creates local jobs and is done just as efficiently, if not more efficiently, than it is today. And Ben and his team put storytelling at the core of their business, so not-surprisingly, their brand design and messaging stand out in an industry that is not known for getting either right.In this episode, we discuss the power of storytelling, the importance of giving customers a sense of ownership, and the smart move of repositioning something mundane into something attractive. This is a conversation not centered around wood, but around brand, with wood at its core.

Before starting chocolate brand Spring & Mulberry, Kathryn Shah was a brand strategy consultant who served as the Vice President of Global Marketing at Pantone and the Brand Manager for Veuve Clicquot Champagne, two brands 99% of us love and look up to.It was a trip to India and a cancer diagnosis that led to her launching her startup Spring & Mulberry, a line of date-sweetened chocolate bars. After having Jeni Britton of Floura on the last episode, this is part 2 of another serendipitous series where I have two highly accomplished female founders of innovative health food brands on the show back-to-back.This episode is filled with insights from Kathryn’s brand-building journey - from working at Unilever on building the Ragu Pasta Sauce brand, to driving brand growth at Veuve Cliquot to launching her own brand in a very poetic and decisive manner.

Many of you know Jeni Britton from episode 28, where we did a deep dive into Jeni's Ice Creams, which she started at age 22 and now sells in 80 scoop shops and 12,500 retailers with an annual revenue north of 125 million. Today, we dive into a new chapter of Jeni's entrepreneurial journey with Floura. Floura is a next-generation fiber company that currently offers fiber bars, which she calls Fruit Crush Bars, in multiple flavors.As was the case in my previous conversation with Jeni, this episode is us nerding out on all things branding, from focus groups to customer perception, from deriving your brand DNA to naming to organic branding. At the same time, you learn about the power of fiber. A delightful and inspiring conversation you do not want to miss.

This is the first time I get to say ‘welcome back’ on Hitting The Mark as I had Till Janczukowicz, the founder of Berlin-based IDAGIO, which is often described as 'the Spotify for classical music,' on episode 21.But this is not a Let’s catch up with Till episode to check in on IDAGIO. Instead, I recently saw that he is preparing for an exciting brand launch that features none other than John Malkovich to kick things off.The idea? Spend a month with John. Hello Genius is the brand's name, and it fosters a whole new level of mentorship, access, and community.On this episode, Till shares his vision for the brand in his typical intellectually stimulating and curiosity-evoking manner.