Latest / Man in America Podcast / How the Elites are Stripmining the Middle Class—So You'll OWN NOTHING w/ Tiffany Cianci

Transcript

How the Elites are Stripmining the Middle Class—So You'll OWN NOTHING w/ Tiffany Cianci · Man in America Podcast

• 0:13
  Seth Holehouse: Welcome to Man in America, a voice of reason in a world of gone mad. I'm your host, Seth Hullhouse. So as we look around this country, you probably agree with me in in saying that a lot has changed in the last five years. COVID specifically, it changed the fabric of our entire country. Now maybe things feel a little more normal now than they did three years ago, But the problem is is that a lot of these changes that happened were happening in areas that we can't even see.
• 0:45
  And one of the biggest changes that happened in COVID was what happened to small bit small and medium sized businesses in America. So as an example, so in 02/2008, when there is a housing collapse, what happened was that the prices plummeted. A lot of people, they they they lost it. They were underwater in their mortgages. They lost their homes.
• 1:05
  Well, these big banking companies and private equity firms came in, and they were able to scoop up a lot of these houses for pennies on the dollar. And a lot of these biz these banks and, equity funds got their money from taxpayer dollars. Now fast forward to COVID, what happened is something very similar. That all of these small businesses that were shut down during COVID, it's like, oh, okay. Well, the strip club's open, but your day care is gonna have to close because wear your mask.
• 1:35
  So, you know, all these small businesses that weren't able to get through COVID or they were struggling so much. And then though, it created the most ripe opportunity for the again, these giant equity firms and banks to come in and buy up all these small businesses. And so, again, as I mentioned, so things seem pretty normal, but actually, if you look beneath the surface, you'll find out that your local hair salon, or in my case, in my example, the two prominent local HVAC companies I was talking to are owned by the big banks or owned by private equity. And this is really concerning because we've also seen that I'm not sure the exact numbers, but I would imagine that a record number of single family homes are not owned by single families. They're owned by corporations.
• 2:18
  They're owned by hedge funds. They're owned by banks. So what we're seeing happening here in America is this wealth transfer that, you know, for a lot of people in America, they they can't even figure out how to pay, you know, pay their bills or put food on the table. They're struggling working two or three jobs. Yet what's happening is amidst this, you have these big, massive, juggernaut financial companies that are buying up everything, and we don't even know about it.
• 2:44
  And so my guest today is a woman named Tiffany Sianci, and she's a wonderful, wonderful woman. And it was her own story that launched her into the limelight, because she was running a franchise for a a gym for little children, running a beautiful company, a great service to her small area, and everything was well and good until that fray the franchise goes bought up by private equity, and she saw exactly what was happening after that. She became very vocal about it. And now these private equity firms have spent millions and millions of dollars to destroy her life, but she keeps fighting. And she is sounding the alarm about what's happening in America.
• 3:20
  So this is gonna be, I think, a very, very important interview to watch, and hopefully, can share it if if you've had the same feeling about that I do. Because we have to get more people aware of this information, the fact that our country is being bought up and strip mined and sold off to the highest bidder. And, unfortunately, at the end of all this, what we're gonna find is you look around, and we will all own nothing. Just like, you know, the great Klaus Schwab, you will own nothing and be happy. Unfortunately, that's where things are headed.
• 3:49
  So this is a critical interview. She's you know, Tiffany's great. She's got a she's very high energy. You can tell she's wicked smart. She's well, maybe not wicked, but maybe angelically smart.
• 3:58
  You know, wicked smart's kind of a dark term, I guess, you could say. Anyway, she's highly intelligent. She's great, and she is a fighter. So please enjoy this interview with Tiffany Sianci. Tiffany Sianci, it is an honor to finally have you on the show.
• 4:14
  Thank you so much for being here with us today.
• 4:16
  Tiffany Cianci: I'm so excited to be here. I know it was a long time getting me on. I'm so I'm, like, just really grateful you were patient with me. It's been a a whirlwind the last few months.
• 4:24
  Seth Holehouse: Uh-huh. Well, you've you went, like, mega viral. Then all a sudden, I see you sitting down with RFK junior doing interviews. You're a regular guest on Tim Pool. You're doing stuff with Candice.
• 4:33
  And so you've really blown up, but for a very, very important reason. And so I guess, let me I'll let you give yourself a quick introduction and and and, I guess, in what brought us to where we are right now, because you're gonna tell your own story a lot better than I'll be able to tell it.
• 4:51
  Tiffany Cianci: It's a loaded question. I consider myself a small business advocate through and through. I grew up in a household where my grandparents were small business owners. And I went to work with them very young. I always knew I was gonna be a small business owner.
• 5:07
  I worked really hard to put my husband through law school so that I could become a small business owner. I became a small business owner that was then unfortunately shut down by COVID, like so many millions of small businesses in America. And I owned a franchise called the Little Gym. And our franchise, All Children's Services, suffered greatly during the shutdowns for COVID. We really suffered.
• 5:32
  My county shut me down for seventeen months. And it was a miracle we survived. But our company, the greater franchise that relied on our income for their income, had also suffered. As a result, many children's services businesses were acquired coming out of COVID by private equity. And they aren't alone.
• 5:52
  There were many veterinary clinics that were acquired. There were many daycare centers that were acquired, hardware stores, HVAC companies. So many companies that suffered during COVID were then scooped up for pennies on the dollar by private equity that have exploited that suffering of small businesses to their own benefit. And then as soon as they got there, started strip mining them. And that's kind of where I'm at.
• 6:14
  I was the president of our franchisee association, which is our union at the Little Gym, when a brand called Unleash Brands acquired us in a hostile takeover. And it was hostile. It was horrifying because we were a family owned brand. The same family had owned it for forty six years. They had some outside investors and this company swooped in and bought up all of their stakes and then basically forced the owners out.
• 6:41
  And this was a family. We served kids. We weren't people that joined these franchises to make money. You don't get rich teaching children. You make a difference teaching children.
• 6:53
  Our annual conventions were called reunion, and we all brought our children. And it was a family reunion. And then this company, this private equity backed company swooped in. We were the sixth business they had acquired in just under a year. They hadn't taken time to get to know a single business they'd acquired.
• 7:09
  They were just buying them up, vacuuming them up. And immediately they would pivot, fire the entire board of directors basically. They forced out our CEO, I think our CFO and a bunch of other board members during a live system wide call. Everyone was crying and they walked in and said, I'm your new CEO. It was horrifying.
• 7:31
  And again, we were a family. And when they took over, I was the president of our franchisee association, which is the collective bargaining arm for the franchisees with their parent company. In each brand that they'd acquired before us, there had been litigations that we'd learned about not everyone, but almost all of them. There had been litigations to break up their unions. We knew we would be next.
• 7:55
  There were class action filings in the other cases. We knew what to expect. We thought we did everything right. We hired the best attorneys. We pulled our resources.
• 8:03
  We got ready. We wanted to protect the kids. We wanted to keep them safe. We want to keep our businesses safe after we'd all almost lost them during COVID and everything we thought we'd done to prepare wasn't nearly enough. The day they found out we had a lawyer, they terminated my contract with no notice, no cause, no default.
• 8:25
  It put me on the line to my SBA loans that I'd taken out during COVID to survive. I've been debt free before that. It put me on the hook to my landlord. I still had a lease for it. And it immediately took me away from the children I serve.
• 8:45
  Immediately after that, they started targeting all of the members of the association with threats and default letters if they didn't give up their contracts. And this is a playbook that's happening at every small business acquired franchise almost in The United States. Not all of them, but about 95% of them. And they started trying to find ways to extract more wealth, to force them to pay more money. They started forcing them to sign contracts for things they didn't need.
• 9:10
  And every one of those things they had to buy would come with a kickback to the parent office. These companies had already suffered under COVID. They all took on debt during COVID. They were all barely hanging on. And so I started fighting.
• 9:25
  I fought very hard. I fought with everything I had, and I'm still fighting today.
• 9:30
  Seth Holehouse: Gosh. There's a lot to unpack there. But one thing that comes to mind is 02/2008. Right? Where you have if if you take a step back and you look at what happened in 02/2008, '1 of the big things that happened was that the home you know, homeownership, especially for middle class, is it really is owning a home is one of the most important assets for the middle class, because it allows people to have a place to kinda slowly build their wealth, you know, build their assets.
• 9:58
  They have this home, you know, say like, my my my parents, for instance, you know, we built a home in around February. And, you know, they had this home that slowly accrues value, and then and then, you know, that that becomes something they can then pass on, or it's a way of of kinda building up that that that wealth. Right? But then 02/2008, what you saw was so many people had to default on their mortgages. So many people lost their homes.
• 10:22
  But then what happened, you know, the years following is that our own taxpayer money was used to bail out these banks. But then also, they use a lot of these this this money to come in and scoop up all of these houses, to to buy all these homes for pennies on the dollar. It's it's like this huge shakeup. And I didn't think about it, because I I looked at COVID, which I look at as a as a giant psychological operation for many reasons. I look at one of the outcomes of that, or maybe one of the original goals of it, especially here in America, was a way to gut the middle class and to gut America from out of small businesses.
• 11:00
  They weren't going after the homes. But I know so many small businesses, whether they had gyms or restaurants or coffee shops, that they they they closed. Like, they had no way of making it through COVID and having to shut their store down for fifteen months or however long, but then would allow this these same parasitic and predatory banking institutions to come in and buy up all these these businesses for pennies on the dollar. It's just like, oh, gosh. It's it's $2,008.02 point o.
• 11:29
  And hearing your story even more so, it's like, gosh. Like, that makes sense. But I can only imagine that for you, you have this franchise business. You have these contracts. You have you're obviously taking a risk.
• 11:42
  You know? Because I've I've owned multiple businesses before. I've signed, you know, big, you know, eight year long leases. Right? You know, for sometimes you know, I I had a lease in in Manhattan for over $10,000 a month, right, for a business I was running there.
• 11:56
  Like, that's a that's a giant risk when you're signing that dotted line to take this risk on to own a business. And so here, you have these these big big money people coming in, basically stealing your your ability to earn income, yet you're left with all of the debt. You're left with the lease. You're left with the small business loans. I mean, it's it's insane.
• 12:19
  Tiffany Cianci: You know, RFK has a really good quote about this he uses when he and I talk. He says, Tiffany, COVID was just one giant money laundering scheme. Basically, he says, in COVID, we closed all of the small businesses down 35,000,000, 40 million small businesses down for $5.00 5 days. And in that same time frame, we created five fifty one new billionaires. Not one of them was a small business owner.
• 12:45
  Seth Holehouse: Gosh.
• 12:46
  Tiffany Cianci: Now, when you look at A lot of people are big on the word oligarchy right now, or technocratic oligarchy. When you look at what oligarchy really is, it's collaborating with the government to choose winners and losers. And it's very easy for us in our government to say we don't do that. We absolutely do that. We did it in 'eight when we chose the banks over the homeowners.
• 13:13
  And then we allowed private equity firms to swoop up all those homes, raise the cost of living to an unsustainable place and create the housing crisis we have now where they're buying up more and more and more homes and driving up the prices further. Right? We did it in COVID when we said that Lowe's and Home Depot could be open, but Ace Hardware had to close because they didn't sell lumber. I'm sorry. Why was lumber the distinguishing factor?
• 13:38
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Not screws or wire, but lumber.
• 13:42
  Tiffany Cianci: We said it in the state of Maryland where we had, for the first time in a long time, a Republican governor Larry Hogan, who said that all children's recreation and gyms had to shut down, but put in a carve out for all martial arts studios. Quick. Ask what his family friends do. So martial arts studios could thrive in the state of Maryland and everything else stayed shuttered for seventeen months. And we all lost everything.
• 14:04
  Our government chooses winners and losers every single day. They do it USAID. They do it through sweetheart government contracts. They do it through the fraudulent abuse of what are supposed to be small business contracts with our federal government. A lot of people don't know that huge numbers of contracts are supposed to be guaranteed to go to small businesses from our federal government.
• 14:25
  And they've rigged the rules so that if you have four ninety nine employees and not 500, you're a small business. And they don't publish those contracts anywhere that anyone other than a lobbyist can get to. So big businesses are grabbing all the small business contracts and forming subsidiaries in their own companies that have four fifty eight employees. They're calling themselves a small business. You know, 99% of the businesses in our country, 99.9% are small businesses.
• 14:52
  99.8% of all of the job creation in our country in the last fifteen years has been by small businesses. People don't know that. Big businesses, they're very good at efficiency. They're very good at creating more efficiency with less labor. They're great at layoffs.
• 15:10
  They're great at streamlining. They don't create jobs. They eliminate them and create profit. Small businesses create jobs. Every single report that comes out from the federal government that has job growth numbers, that's small businesses.
• 15:25
  And we have left them to fend for themselves at the behest of these corporations that abuse them, a government that left them susceptible to that abuse. And both parties love to scream that they support small businesses. But I can tell you right now that is not happening. Our SBA is basically becoming a money laundering scheme for private equity owned franchisors that are carrying out Ponzi schemes, like Premier Martial Arts and Burger M, and I Heart Mac and Cheese. These are franchises that got our government to give these people loans with personal guarantees, millions of dollars, and they're Ponzi schemes.
• 16:03
  And so we're seeing private equity win, we're seeing big corporations win, we're seeing the backbone of America's economy lose every single time, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.
• 16:13
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, so what's crazy with this is that and now I inherently have a a great distrust for the banking system. Probably started when I read, you know, creature from Jekyll Island. Right? It's like, oh, the Federal Reserve. And, oh, these guys are they're they're pretty bad people.
• 16:27
  Right? Yeah. Just you know, so I had been following you and watching, you know, because you had you had one particular video that you made. It's like a TikTok video that went, like, mega viral. That was how I first heard of you, and I and I did a show on it.
• 16:39
  I kinda played your entire
• 16:40
  Tiffany Cianci: video. Collab?
• 16:41
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Talking about exactly. Yep. And and it kinda hit me as, like, I I didn't see this coming. And but just in my own experience right now, you know, we bought a house about a year ago, and we're slowly making modifications.
• 16:54
  I have a studio I built, and I needed to do some HVAC work. Put in some mini splits to heat some different areas that are cool cool off my studio specifically. And so in my area where I live, there's two kind of main competitors or, like, the main HVAC companies that I You know, you see the trucks driving around, and so I thought, okay. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna set up an appointment with each of these two HVAC companies, and have them come in and give me a quote, and just, you know, see see what comes, and kind of compare them, and and choose the right one. So I bring the guy in, you know, from the first company.
• 17:28
  I'm talking to him. You know, friendly guy. You know? And I'm talking to him. I said, hey.
• 17:32
  Just so you know, I want, you know, full transparency. I've got the other this other company coming in next week to have a meeting with them, and I'm gonna look at both of your quotes and compare. And he goes, oh, okay. He goes, just so you know, full transparency, he goes, that other company, we're both owned by the same company. Yeah.
• 17:49
  And I said, really? He goes, oh, yeah. Yeah. We're both owned by Goldman Sachs. Yes.
• 17:54
  What? Wait. I said, you're you're just a small HVAC company, like, you know, a a middle sized town in America, yet you're both owned by Goldman Sachs? And I remember I talked to you shortly after that. We're going back and forth, and I told you that.
• 18:10
  And and you're like, oh, yeah. It makes perfect sense. And I was just blown away. So now I'm I'm actually gonna do it myself now. Like, that's my solutions.
• 18:16
  Okay. I'm gonna figure out how to do it on my own and just bypass this, because there's no way I'm giving them my money. Right? Because I thought I was supporting a small business. Like, I always if whenever I can, I will always try to support Yeah?
• 18:29
  The small business. But here it is, and I would have been supporting Goldman Sachs by trying to support the small local business. It's crazy. You
• 18:39
  Tiffany Cianci: have to understand the why behind that. So during COVID, this goes back to COVID. We're gonna keep going back to COVID. At the beginning of COVID, there was this big meeting in billionaire bunker Sun Valley, Idaho, where all of the big bankers got together and they said they were very worried about the forthcoming recession they assumed would happen. And this was before they negotiated all the bailouts that were going to serve their interests and drive up inflation and yada, yada, and greedflation and give them cover for unmitigated wealth creation.
• 19:09
  And they were trying to figure out what to invest in to ride out these difficult times. And there were some studies that were reviewed during that meeting. Every year, there is a study on how much we have faith in institutions in our country. Same study. It's been happening for, thirty years.
• 19:27
  Kennedy features it in our podcast, so you can see it. And it's you you can see how certain institutions have dropped over time. Our federal government, 15%, used to be 70. Our congress members, eight percent. Right?
• 19:46
  Big businesses 6%, giant corporations, small businesses 81%. And it was at these meetings that they determined that all of these private equity firms and these big bankers needed to acquire the only thing we would trust given how little trust we had for everything else. But not just that they had to acquire the small businesses we trusted. It wasn't enough to acquire the small business. They wanted to acquire small businesses in industries that we would pay for no matter what.
• 20:21
  It had to be intimately tied to a emotional attachment we had to the investment. And they chose certain industries. There were industries they knew that not only would we find a way to pay for it, if we couldn't find a way to pay for it, we would borrow it. If we couldn't borrow it, we would steal it. And so they targeted industries that they knew we would pay for no matter what.
• 20:44
  They started targeting daycare centers. They started targeting nursing homes. They started targeting veterinary care, home service centers because you were going to protect the only investment you had left when you lost everything else. So they started targeting home services like roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. They started targeting that's another really good There's so many.
• 21:07
  They started buying up children's services like crime fighting, automotive services, things that you would find a way to pay for dental care, pediatric emergency rooms, hospitals, funeral homes. Most people don't know most funeral homes have been acquired by big corporations now, almost all of them, including your local mom and pop one. And it wasn't enough to acquire those businesses. They needed you to still believe and have faith in them. And so what they did was when they acquired those small businesses, they also acquired the name, image, likeness of the former owners, their logos.
• 21:46
  And they quietly kept it out front that they were still the same small business serving your community because we're part of your community.
• 21:53
  Seth Holehouse: Wow.
• 21:55
  Tiffany Cianci: And it was all very intentionally crafted to deceive us into taking money from the real small businesses and giving it to these monopolist profiteer robber barons that have stripped mind the heart and soul out of the economic model and ingenuity that was America.
• 22:14
  Seth Holehouse: Just crazy because I can imagine that if I was a small business owner, kind of let's just imagine I own a small HVAC company that I built over forty years. And say I had 30 employees, and we're we're the main one in this little region. And, you know, those businesses over time, you can do well. And let's just say I put aside $2,000,000, hypothetically, over thirty years of operating this business. And let's just say that someone comes in, it's big hedge fund or whatever.
• 22:40
  They say, look, you know, we love what you're doing in your local area. We wanna support you. We want people to still know that your your name is behind this. But we're gonna, you know, we're gonna come in. We'll offer you $10,000,000 to buy your operation.
• 22:52
  Right? It's like, even if I knew I was selling out to the big bank, it's like, well, they're still gonna service the community. Maybe they're gonna bring in better technology, and, you know, I'm retiring. It's $10,000,000. It'd be hard for a lot of people, unless you're really a diehard, like, no, I you know, I I won't I won't do that.
• 23:11
  I could see it would be actually really easy for a lot of these business owners to say, gosh, actually, that makes sense, and we can really retire now. I mean, it's but then yeah. This is this is this is just mind blowing to to to think about this.
• 23:25
  Tiffany Cianci: Small step back from that, though. When you and I started before we started recording, we were talking about hedge funds buying up name, image like this, shows, that kind of thing. And I was recently on Digital Social Art podcast talking about this exact issue. For the people that didn't want to sell their souls and their communities, they just found another way. They would send in a broker that would say they were gonna operate it.
• 23:49
  And they would hold it for twenty four hours and then transfer it to the big corporation.
• 23:54
  Seth Holehouse: That broker could have been some other small When
• 23:58
  Tiffany Cianci: I advise small businesses or podcasters or even athletes, I regularly speak at like the NFL union meetings, stuff like that. When I talk to them about the value of their name, Image Likeness or the company they have built, I don't tell them to put a number on that value. I ask them to put a number on destroying their name on everything they'd ever built, and leaving them as the monster that created, that created what became something that hurt somebody down the road. Okay, because they're going to buy your name, image, likeness, and they're going sell it to someone else because they own it now. You don't have to approve that when it transfers.
• 24:37
  You should never assume you're negotiating with the person sitting across from you. Let's say the person you're negotiating with, you feel like is a kindred spirit that you can't wait to see carry your name into the future. Awesome. How great for you. You always have to worry about who they're going to sell it to next and assume that that person is the devil himself.
• 24:58
  And especially where it includes hedge funds and private equity. Private equity creates a fund to buy everything. And that fund only has a limited shelf life. So anytime that the private equity firm creates a new fund, let's say it's a hundred million dollar fund. They put all these pensions in there and they borrow 90,000,000 of it and they're going to create returns.
• 25:18
  They have to close out that fund by the end of eight years or ten years or twelve years, whatever they choose. Which means that everything they buy at the beginning of that fund has to be sold by the end of that fund. Nothing lasts. And God help you if the next one is worse than the last one. Okay?
• 25:37
  I'm gonna give you a good example. I'm just gonna say it. There is a private equity firm that actually does really good work. Okay. Every single time that I go and argue on Capitol Hill that we need protections, the franchisees of these three firms show up and go, we love our private equity.
• 25:53
  What's she talking about? Nothing but cakes. Tropical Smoothie Cafe was saved by private equity. FastSigns, the firm that bought them, very good people and their franchisees defend them. But their funds close out.
• 26:09
  Tropical Smoothie Cafe was just sold to Blackstone. It has to close out. It has to go somewhere. You have to imagine the next person owns it is going to be Satan himself. And you better make sure it's worth whatever you get.
• 26:27
  Because everything you've built will rely on that person or the one after them. And they don't hold all these for nine or ten years. The average length of a hold between twelve and thirty six months. They're trading them like Pokemon cards. You can't even get to know a company, but you can exploit the hell out of it.
• 26:44
  Sorry. Can I say that?
• 26:46
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. That's okay. Yeah. It's okay. Well, almost like I'm thinking, like, let's just say that you you own a house, and say you've you've spent fifty years building this beautiful home, and you've got your gardens, and you it's this this passion project.
• 26:57
  And say someone comes in and says, look. I wanna buy your house. I love your house. I love your gardens. I love what you've done.
• 27:02
  I can't wait to raise my kids in here the same way you have. And you you this emotional connection. You sell your house. They flip it two months later to someone else that comes in, and they they demolish everything, and they put in a a strip mall. It's it's kinda the same the same thing.
• 27:18
  So what is like, what's the bigger picture of this? Like, this is because I'm imagining I'm looking at, you know, kind of where our country's at. And and there's this whole movement of making America great again and saving our country, and God bless America. Let's go back to our 1776 roots. But what I'm seeing, though, is that, yeah, there's a lot of fanfare for that.
• 27:38
  There's a lot of movement initiatives and everything. But
• 27:41
  Tiffany Cianci: But who's actually doing anything?
• 27:42
  Seth Holehouse: But, like, if you strip it back, what you see is that, like, from this, you look at the housing market, now small businesses, that what's happening is that you have the greatest wealth transfer of of the history of mankind, probably. What's happening, especially here in America, is that everything is like we're being strip mined. Like and you go look at a strip mine, what's it look like? What's it do to the nature there? What's it do to the forest?
• 28:04
  What's it do to the ecosystem? What destroys it?
• 28:06
  Tiffany Cianci: Community after it's done? What happens when it's emptied and there's nothing left to take? Yeah. You know, our system, it is not easy for me to say this because I am a patriotic individual. I love my country.
• 28:24
  I've traveled enough to have seen countries that I would not love to live in. I love my country. But our country has at several instances in its past allowed corruption to corrupt absolutely. And we saw it in the 1920s with the robber barons and the massive wealth consolidation. And it took the correction of the 1930s and the Sherman Antitrust Acts and the Robinson Patman Act.
• 28:55
  And it took a very brave generation of prosecutors that were willing to challenge money and risk their future careers to break up those corporations and create the largest regeneration and growth of economy and wealth in world history. And unfortunately, lot of people are like wondering why we're not using those laws today. Why aren't we breaking up these monopolies? There are monopolies everywhere. Whether you're looking at a monopoly of of advertising for small businesses that Meta and Google have the luxury of controlling entirely, where you're looking at the the monopoly of AI that Sam Altman is trying to secure for himself, or if you're looking at the monopoly of HVAC in your small town and your region, you can look at HVAC companies in the Southwest that have acquired 80% of all of the companies in their region that are controlling the entire market.
• 29:51
  And unfortunately, what you have to understand is that the laws that we have on the books are insufficient.
• 30:01
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• 30:28
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• 30:51
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• 31:22
  Tiffany Cianci: They were written at a time where free digital services were never conceived of, where our country never conceived of a company creating a micro monopoly that only controlled eight states and stopping there so that you couldn't break them up. And then splitting off and making another company that controls the other eight states. We can look at Rourke Capital. Okay. They own like six or seven of the largest chains of delis, sandwich shops in The United States.
• 31:52
  But don't worry, they can own Jimmy John's and they can own Arby's and they can own Subway, right? They can own all of these Schlotsky's, they can own all these brands. But they built two subsidiaries. They have Inspire Brands and Focus Brands. So it's not a monopoly because we have two separate, you know, sections.
• 32:11
  They manipulate the laws as they exist so that they can be monopolists that are exploiting small businesses. Okay. We're seeing it in so many industries. There is one private equity firm that owns 37 chains of daycare centers. And they pay lobbyists to prance down to Capitol Hill, and tell them that private equity or not they say daycare is unaffordable.
• 32:34
  We need you guys to care about daycare. We want government subsidies because it's going to go to them, not saying they're press fixing it. They're setting those prices through collusion and illegal anti competitive practices. They own the daycare centers. You know, we see it in the food company.
• 32:55
  We see the fact that 88 to 93% in any given day of the entire American Stock Exchange system is held by the top 10% of earners in The United States. The remaining 7% is held by the next 40% of earners, and the bottom 50% of America owns nothing but debt. That used to be inverted. And we have allowed this wealth consolidation because we have a do nothing Congress on both sides that has been so captured by the people they are meant to regulate, that they have left us all out here to fend for ourselves in a system so corrupt, we have no way to fight. Because they won't pass new laws.
• 33:41
  They won't amend the existing laws. And every time someone starts to, lobbyists swoop in and get them forced out of their jobs, like just happened at the FTC. Where we actually had commissioners that were using the Robinson Patman Act in new and innovative ways. And they were forced out of their jobs, right as they were making a difference for the small businesses that that act is meant to protect. It's horrifying.
• 34:09
  And it's gonna take some bravery, but it's gonna take pressure from us. Trump recently said that he was dedicated to closing the carried interest loophole, which which is the loophole that allows private equity to make all of their billions while paying almost no taxes. Almost none, less than any other type of investment in the world, basically. And Trump said, I'm closing that loophole. And at first, I'm gonna be honest, I thought he was doing it as a fundraising maneuver to get private equity to donate.
• 34:40
  I'll be honest, I thought that. But he held strong to it. He held fast to it. And it gave me a little hope that he meant it. And then the private equity companies created a coalition of lobbyists that launched like a hundred million dollar advertising campaign that's broadcasting everywhere in America.
• 34:59
  Megan Kelly, I was listening to her podcast the other day, and she's advertising for them. I was like, Meaghan, come on. This is what you argue against. What are you doing? And two days ago, the house republicans pulled the closure of the carried interest loophole out of the big beautiful bill After Trump demanded it, they pulled it out.
• 35:22
  It's not done though. We can still demand it be put back in. We can do that. We can make these types of investments less attractive. We could also pass laws that force them to divest of the 44% of single family homes they're acquiring in every major metropolitan area in America.
• 35:40
  But we have to get in there and do it and we have to quit firing all the people that are doing it. But that's the problem when we have our bureaucracy so corrupted by money.
• 35:50
  Seth Holehouse: So, basically, we're at this stage in this country where the banking industry, which is it's very pure you know, pyramidal, that that's right word, you know, pyramid like in structure. It was much like you imagine that the dollar bill and the eye of Horus and all the all those kinds of things. Right? That's okay. And so you have this this this banking.
• 36:13
  It's it's like an octopus or some sort of creature that has a hydra. Yeah. It's got, like, a thousand heads. You cut one off and two to appear. Yep.
• 36:22
  The way you have it happening, though, is that the what's the American dream? Well, the American dream, I'd say, say, fifty years ago was that you could be a painter. You can have a small painting company. Right? You paint houses or or, you know, exterior, interior painting.
• 36:37
  Maybe you've got five employees. It's enough that, you know, you can own your own house. You own your own business. You you can have the white picket fence. So this American dream, which we all have of you can come here, and you can be a business owner.
• 36:49
  You can make it. You can own your own home, you know, and everything that comes out of that, that's being destroyed. It's eaten. But the crazy thing about it is that it's being done in such a sinister and hidden way that no one sees it. Like, I wasn't aware of it until I saw again, that the some of the earlier videos that you did talking about Joanne Fabrics or Forever twenty one or all these companies.
• 37:14
  You know, Joanne Fabrics as an example, which is like, that's a staple business in America for people that are that make their own clothes. Or, you know, I've been there so many times with with my mom or with my wife.
• 37:25
  Tiffany Cianci: The ways we're able to not support these conglomerates.
• 37:28
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly.
• 37:28
  Tiffany Cianci: Make our own things. It's also a necessity for for millions of small businesses that meet the stop gap on Etsy.
• 37:36
  Seth Holehouse: Yes.
• 37:37
  Tiffany Cianci: They need it. These households are starving. They are suffering. And we just took away the thing that they need most. And it's also such a good case study because you could argue just about any business went out of business because of Amazon, but not Joann's.
• 37:52
  Seth Holehouse: It's true.
• 37:52
  Tiffany Cianci: There's not a single SOIST in the in America. SOIST is the
• 37:55
  Seth Holehouse: proper
• 37:55
  Tiffany Cianci: ISO. There's not a single sewist in America that's gonna buy online fabric that we can't touch. No. No. We have the choice to touch fabric.
• 38:05
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, yeah. Exactly. You have to know
• 38:07
  Tiffany Cianci: what you're working with.
• 38:08
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:08
  Tiffany Cianci: There's nobody that's knitting blankets that doesn't wanna touch the yarn, and they just bankrupted the last fabric store in America.
• 38:20
  Seth Holehouse: It's okay. Yeah. Well, so so walk us into the February scenario. Because this is this is a whole so there's one part of this this story, which is these, really, you know, these big greedy bankers buying up and scooping up everything. This goes back to the great depression era.
• 38:40
  Right? You go back to It's a Wonderful Life and watching what happened at that point, watching the the wealthy the the disgusting old wealthy guy coming in and buying up the whole town, which actually I mean, actually, if you go back to the Great Depression, you can say you could argue that that was actually a completely engineered event to actually shut down pry the small banks. Like, you know, before the Great Depression, there were there were I think there's over 10,000 individual small banks in America. What the Great Depression did is it allowed them to destroy all those banks and start start the beginnings of a a banking cartel controlling all of the banking in America. Right?
• 39:13
  And that's a whole whole different story. But so that's one side of it, which is the the big money buying up all these assets out of the basically, from the American people. But the other side of it, though, is the risk that comes with this. And and what are the the the bigger picture, you know, ramifications or outcomes from this? Because if you look at what happened in 02/2008, that was just a housing market crash.
• 39:37
  Now a lot of things were tied into it, but this is a lot bigger. So can you walk us through what you discovered with the loans and and and basically why you think there's this ticking time bomb?
• 39:49
  Tiffany Cianci: So first, let me just say in 02/2008, the housing crisis did create a crash that was primarily housing. But if you grew up in o '8, then you'll also remember driving down the street and seeing your grocery store shut down, Or three out of the five Targets in your town closed down because people weren't spending money. And so, and then what happened in those same parking lots is that as soon as Target or Smith's or Kroger went out of business in that parking lot or the Old Navy shut down the anchor stores, all of the small businesses in those parking lots folded as well. And it created a cascade. Well, when I started researching why Joann's went out of business because I could not understand it.
• 40:28
  I did figure out and I did learn through. It's shocking to me that we don't all know this. That every time one of these private equity firms wants to buy up a corporation of any size, they would have us keep supporting and so many people support private equity. They their money, let them do what they want with it. Because we all have this weird idea that we're gonna be there someday.
• 40:47
  We're not. K? But they're not spending their money. If they're buying a hundred million dollar company, they're only raising 2,000,000 of it. They're borrowing the rest from pensions and banks.
• 41:00
  Okay? So they're buying a $100,000,000 company with 2,000,000 of their own dollars and the collateral they're buying it with is something called a leverage buyout, where they go to a bank and they say, I would like to buy ABC hardware. They say great, what have you got for collateral? They go, why is this $2,000,000? They're like, it's a hundred million dollars you're asking for that's not enough.
• 41:22
  They go, I'll give you ABC hardware. They say you don't own it. Where's your collateral? And they go, well, I will own it after you give me the money. So I want to give you ABC hardware as the collateral.
• 41:33
  But you don't own it. You couldn't go do that if you wanted to buy a business. You couldn't say, oh, I'm buying this wedding ring for my wife and I want to borrow a hundred thousand dollars. They go, what's your collateral? They go, the ring.
• 41:48
  They're like, but you're gonna have the ring. We don't have anything to hold. What are we gonna hold as collateral? In these instances, they leverage the debt they borrow onto the company they are buying. They have no accountability in how much debt they borrow and how much they stack on top of these companies.
• 42:04
  Now that has been going on really going back to Toys R Us, Domino's Pizza. We saw it with Payless Shoe stores. We've seen it with Bed Bath and Beyond. We've seen it like over and over again. We've watched how this plays out.
• 42:16
  Kmart, Sears, we've seen it. Okay? Playbook is there. They borrow money and they make the company they're buying pay it back while they have zero liability. So we knew that was happening.
• 42:28
  What I didn't understand is why over the last three years, companies that have seen enormous success coming out of COVID were still going bankrupt. I assume there was greed involved because when these companies buy these companies, they immediately start strip mining wealth out of them immediately. When they when they bought Toys R Us, good example, they immediately sold the real estate under every Toys R Us to their own real estate investment firms. They sold it for pennies on the dollar to themselves and then they leased it back to every individual Toys R Us for over market value. And they started printing money to themselves from something Toys R Us already owned and owed no debt on.
• 43:08
  Then they sold off all the warehouses to their own real estate investment trusts. And then they started renting the warehouse space back to Toys R Us. Again, that's something they already owned. So not only were they now going to make all the money Toys R Us made, they were going make Toys R Us pay them rent, and pay rent for their warehouse. Then they sold their fleet of trucks and rented the trucks back to themselves.
• 43:31
  So now we were gonna pay. We owned all this stuff. Toys R had all these assets. They built it over generations. Okay.
• 43:41
  So we knew they were doing this. We knew they were strip mining wealth out. They were also signing themselves up as advisors so that they got monthly dividends back in millions of dollars to tell them how to destroy their own company. Because they were the boss of them. They had no liability.
• 43:55
  They got to make all the financial decisions. No liability. They could bankrupt everything and leave the creditors holding the bag. Right? But I didn't understand what places like Joann's and Hooters that were otherwise doing very well were going bankrupt.
• 44:10
  And then I had an insider send me a bunch of documents because I was really digging. And we figured out that every one of these leveraged buyouts was being executed with what's called floating rate debt, which is the equivalent of an adjustable rate mortgage. So not only were they taking out astronomical debt and stacking it on top of a company that prior to their inclusion was successful, But they were doing it in a way that made it so that every time there's any economic downturn or instability, their debt goes up as their sales go down. And let me tell you, there's even benefits to that. Because as the company is slowly being bankrupted in StripMind, the investors through their other investment arm are shorting the stock, knowing they're bankrupting it.
• 45:02
  Because when it goes to zero, they get to keep a windfall of profits from shorting it, which is GameStop. Right? So we learned that there was adjustable rate debt stacked on every one of these monopolies in America. And that's why Party City just went bankrupt. And that is why Joann's just went bankrupt.
• 45:22
  That is why eventually, very likely Michaels will go bankrupt. It is why Payless went bankrupt, Kmart, Toys R Us. It is why Red Lobster went bankrupt. And you have to understand that right now, we're seeing record numbers of companies acquired by private equity going through bankruptcy. Statistically, once you are acquired by private equity in the year that follows, your company is 11 times as likely to go bankrupt as any non private equity owned company.
• 45:56
  But remember what I said about those funds closing out? The second time it flips and there's another leveraged buyout stacked on top of it, you are now 23 times as likely to go bankrupt as any other corporation. And the third flip is almost 100 times as likely to go bankrupt as any other corporation. This is an inevitability. This is a feature, not a bug.
• 46:22
  And as they've started to acquire all of the small businesses, the only way they can keep paying that floating rate debt is to extract more and more out of this, the local people that can't afford to live already. And to pay less and less to those same local people that need jobs. We are strip mining every community in America. And eventually, these robber barons will leave this country bankrupt, bereft of value, with nothing left to work for and no way to pay for anything. And they will move on to the next country they can go and manipulate and do it again in.
• 46:59
  And we will be left here with nothing if we don't fight, if we don't close the carried interest loophole, if we don't demand that Congress amend the antitrust laws to account for micro monopolies and digital products and private equity acquisitions. But we don't because we're really good at fighting each other instead of fighting together to stop the people that really hurt us.
• 47:24
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. It's all part of the the social engineering plan to distract us. I mean, almost like what I what I'm as I'm piecing together is that they are engineering a collapse.
• 47:38
  Tiffany Cianci: It does seem
• 47:39
  Seth Holehouse: that It's in their interest to have a collapse. It's in their interest to have a two thousand eight two point o.
• 47:45
  Tiffany Cianci: Well, it's just kind of expediting the inevitable. If we have another two thousand eight two point o when all these bubbles pop, what will happen? Who has all the money? They do. We will have nothing.
• 47:55
  And who will be able to buy up everything at that point for pennies on the dollar, everything that's left?
• 48:02
  Seth Holehouse: Them. Gosh. It's so if I understand correctly from watching some of your earlier videos with you know, so they're they're they're using these ARM loans. Right? These adjustable rate because similar, like, similar to an adjustable rate mortgage.
• 48:24
  Right? You buy a house. It's like, oh, wow. Your rates are at 2% or two and a half or 3% right now. That's great.
• 48:29
  And it's like, okay. But in ten years, what if the rates were at 7%? Like, you're getting hosed. Right? So but it's always cheap at first.
• 48:38
  It's always attractive at first. So if I understand correctly, what's happening is that they have all these you know, private equity having all these different businesses that they're that they're they're buying up. They're not they're using such a small amount of their money, but they're pulling in pension funds and and and bank, you know, bank assets. So they're they're pulling in you know, pensions is a big one. How many Americans worked for fifty years and retired, and and and they're relying on their pension, whether they're police officers or firefighters or teachers or any number of, you know, you know, professions like that.
• 49:11
  But then so but then they're using all that. They're using these assets, but at the same time, they're taking out these AR these adjustable rate loans. So when all what happens when those loans go up a few percentage points? I mean, it seems like that there's this again, it it's a time bomb. It's a ticking time
• 49:33
  Tiffany Cianci: go a step further because the bomb is bigger than that. First of all, there are no laws governing whether or not they can collateralize multiple lines of credit with the same assets because we can't see what they're doing. And I believe that's happening. I believe they're collateralizing multiple lines of credit with the same collateral, which is what happened in the economic collapse in 'eight. But two, you have to ask yourself why the banks are giving these loans, knowing the percentage risks of them going bankrupt in the years that follow each flip.
• 50:01
  And the reason is because the bankers aren't going be holding the debt. They repackage it into something called a CLO. A CLO, the collateralized loan obligation. Do you remember if anybody's seen the Big Short, you'll remember that in the OA collapse, there were what was called collateralized debt obligations, CDOs. And that's what takes the economy.
• 50:20
  Right now, the banks are reconfiguring these CLOs And by doing so, they're selling them and offloading them to pension plans and four zero one k's. Within two weeks of writing the loan, they get made whole. They have no risk. And so now, what's gonna happen is the pensions will lose the money. And the creditors will lose the money.
• 50:43
  And guess what happens when the creditors go under? Let's say that you're one of the people that was making let's say you're a small business, making 10,000 toys for Toys R Us, and suddenly they go bankrupt and they owe you $240,000 And now you go bankrupt. Well, guess who's going to come in and buy your company in bankruptcy? Another private equity firm. You know how we know that?
• 51:07
  Joann's was just bankrupted by private equity, right? Guess who came in and bought their intellectual property in the bankruptcy? A private equity firm.
• 51:21
  Seth Holehouse: Goodness.
• 51:22
  Tiffany Cianci: I feel like I am a crazy person screaming into the void constantly expecting a different result. You know? And I don't know how to do more than I'm doing.
• 51:37
  Seth Holehouse: So okay. Going back to the CDOs. And for those you know, for one, if if someone's watching this, and they haven't seen the Big Short, I highly recommend it. It's really good. It's it's really good explaining how these things work.
• 51:50
  And actually, on the video that where I covered what your original viral video, I think I played the casino scene from The Big Short. Just to illustrate, like, what happens when there's these bets on top of bets on top you know, how how they can create this multiple quadrillion derivatives industry and everything. It's it's all kind of bonkers. But what we're seeing with this is so they're taking all these different loans. They're which they know are gonna be bad.
• 52:13
  Right? They know that in a couple of years, these loans are gonna be going up. They're gonna wreck everything. But they're taking these loans. They're packaging them together as CLOs.
• 52:23
  So taking similar to the the CDOs. Right? They would take like, say, they take a hundred mortgages, which were high risk mortgages, you know, no no income verification, all all different things that would say, okay. Poor credit scores. These are these are terrible mortgages.
• 52:39
  You would never hold this mortgage as a debt and and feel comfortable with it. But they package them all up, get the ratings agencies to say, oh, yeah. These are triple a. Right? These packaged mortgages, these CDOs, they can then sell those.
• 52:50
  But so what's happening now, it's not just the housing industry. It's private equity. It's small business, medium sized business, but they're taking those. And instead of them, you kinda being owned by the banking industry, which is then bailed out by a taxpayer dollar, which probably planned ahead of time for 02/2008. They're actually taking these, and there's they're then reselling these to the pension funds.
• 53:12
  And and they're they're basically they're taking this bad debt, and they're selling it back to the American people. So when the time is up, it's the American people that actually like, you know, everyone always jokes about you, you know, you'll owe nothing and be happy. It's like, oh, yeah. Okay. The the globalist said, you'll owe nothing and be happy.
• 53:32
  Tiffany Cianci: No. No. That's really what's happening.
• 53:33
  Seth Holehouse: This is what's happening. My goodness.
• 53:39
  Tiffany Cianci: My son was seven last year when I had, like, a micro viral video. It was very niche. Viral video was short. And we were watching the Lego movie. If you've never seen The LEGO Movie
• 53:53
  Seth Holehouse: I saw him.
• 53:53
  Tiffany Cianci: Special named Emmett, and then there's Octane Corporation. And the police have Emmett, the special, who's just a regular construction worker, blissfully unaware, spending his expensive coffee money and buying sausages and doing the things that the Octane tells them to do. And he's in the police's chair and he goes, you know, you know President Business is going to destroy the world in three days. And he goes, President Business is a great guy. And Octane, great stuff.
• 54:23
  He's like, you know, they make like history books and school curriculum and all surveillance systems and all voting machines and wait a minute. And you have this moment, and my daughter goes, mom, Octane's private equity. And she was 11 at the time. And then my son, and I I happen to be recording me making something when all of this happens. My son goes, yeah, it's like the warning on monopoly.
• 54:51
  He couldn't say the word. It was very cute. Monopoly. And I'm like, and my daughter goes, what do you mean? And he goes monopoly is a warning.
• 54:59
  And I said, that's right, buddy. What's the warning? And he goes, that when somebody buys all this stuff, nobody else will own any of this stuff. And I said, and? And he goes, and then someone will have all the money and everyone else will have none.
• 55:12
  Monopoly was made as a board game to warn us against unfettered capitalism. It is not to say I don't believe in free market capitalism, it is still the best economic engine that has ever existed in human history, but it a math problem. And that math problem is deeply perfect in its execution. That is the most productivity, the most wealth creation, unlimited growth with limited resources. Eventually, those two things collide.
• 55:40
  Okay? And our goal is always going to be the close. Nobody likes it. Nobody likes it when I say it. But the perfect execution of capitalism is as close to slavery as you can get unlimited growth and wealth creation with absolutely little output as little output as possible for the cost of that wealth creation in labor, overhead expenses.
• 56:04
  And when you control the entire system, it's much easier to manipulate. That is why as a society, it is a duty upon our regulators, whether we like it or not, to temper the greed and passions of the human condition to make sure that it is still fair. It is still open. It is still transparent. It is not exploitative or abusive.
• 56:30
  And we have failed in that endeavor for the last twenty five to thirty years. And we are paying that price and it is going to get, the cost is gonna get higher unless we do something. Now, I have sat down with the most libertarian elected officials on God's green earth and talked to them about free market capitalism. And I have yet to find one that didn't walk away from a conversation with me when I brought proof and say we need regulations, not one. We have lobbied regulations on to small businesses to make it harder for them to compete with big business and stripped all regulation of big businesses acting like they can somehow regulate themselves.
• 57:12
  That is backwards. We should be lifting regulation at the bottom and increasing regulation at the top. I had a meeting with Rick Harrison from Pawn Stars, and he and I had a really good conversation about that just a couple weeks ago. Make it impossible for small businesses. And in the rare instances where small businesses are likely to be disruptive or to create anything, they have created roadblocks along the way to ensure that they can stop it through lawfare or through interception and exploitation.
• 57:40
  There is a reason that Microsoft, Google and Apple are funding every college think tank in America. That way, every disruptive invention that is being created in any university in America has had a building funded by Google. And each kid, when they got their funding for their project, signed their contract, not realizing what they were signing. They came with an arbitration agreement and a guarantee of granting that IP to Microsoft, Google or Apple or some horrible sub defense contractor so that either they can stop the disruptive technology from ever hitting the market and competing with them, or they can integrate it into their own to increase their market share. That's why we're not seeing anything truly innovative anymore because they're capturing it before we can learn it exists.
• 58:24
  Seth Holehouse: Now what about podcasts? Because when I hear you talking about how they've strategically targeted these industries that have a high trust. Right? Because I'm really looking at the the show recently or maybe a few months ago on Big Pharma. It helped me a Big Pharma trust went from, like, 80% to 10% or something like that.
• 58:43
  You know, rightfully so. But podcasts are, you know, one of the few areas I'd say that people feel like in general that that they're getting true information. Right? Like, you know, you and I don't have an agenda. I didn't I didn't, you know, bring you on and say, okay, Tiffany, here's our talking points.
• 58:58
  Here's what I wanna make sure that we cover because I've got this hidden thing that we have to make sure we're doing. It's like, no. I I saw your story. I invited you on, and and here we are. So are you seeing that this this also, the same kinda hidden hand is also kinda trying to control podcasts and and and the overall media landscape?
• 59:16
  Tiffany Cianci: I mean, George Soros just bought up almost every broadcast and radio station in America in a bankruptcy, and he's bought up dozens of podcasts, and they're not disclosing that.
• 59:27
  Seth Holehouse: Well, I would disclose it right now that I am not owned by George Soros.
• 59:31
  Tiffany Cianci: We should require those kinds of disclosures.
• 59:34
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Yeah.
• 59:35
  Tiffany Cianci: We should immediately be requiring those kinds of disclosures. But that's a law we could pass. There simple things we could do. We could require transparency and ownership of parentage. We could create enterprise liability.
• 59:50
  And this is this nobody in Delaware would like this and certainly nobody in Texas. But when a company is allowed to abuse to a degree of fraud, the amount of debt they're stacking on a company they know they will not survive and still manage to dividend themselves back $3,000,000,000 in profit while that bankruptcy is taking place and have no liability should not be allowed. When these companies are bankrupting entire hospital systems and leaving people dying in rural communities because it's a three hour drive via ambulance to a hospital, that should not be allowed. That company should be liable. They're not.
• 1:00:28
  We don't hold them liable. There is no enterprise liability because we don't regulate any of this. We could pass a law today that says that the art the corrupt arbitration system, one very simple law, the Federal Arbitration Act is where they're hiding the bad conduct. It's happening in secret courtrooms where no one can see it, including to me. Okay.
• 1:00:53
  1,400,000 of these secret court cases a year that come with a confidentiality agreement, a non disparagement clause, the requirement to not disclose anything that happened. Your kid falls off a zipline at urban air and breaks every bone in their body and punctures their lung and gets permanent brain damage and is now blind, which is the case for a child I am testifying for right now. You're forced to do a secret arbitration and the world doesn't know. If that would happen in 1992, we would have had politicians picketing with us in the streets and demanding regulation. And there would have been mass notices of it that it was happening to dozens of kids in The United States.
• 1:01:30
  And we would be out there boycotting, demanding new regulations for safety and holding these private equity firms accountable that made the cuts. But this is happening in secret because our free market is blind. Today, we could demand that they modify the Federal Arbitration Act in one simple way. Arbitrators have to follow the law. Can you imagine that every judge in 1,400,000 cases in The United States right now doesn't have to follow the law?
• 1:01:54
  They can do whatever they want and whatever that big private equity firm is paying them to do. They don't have to follow the law. That seems counterintuitive to justice. It seems like maybe we would have written that into the act, but we didn't. And our congress won't amend it, even though there's mass support on both sides.
• 1:02:12
  Both sides agree it should happen, but none of them are gonna risk losing the donations to the private equity firms to do it. These are simple things. This is not an overhaul of our financial system. The free market can't work when it's blind. The free market can't work when there's no competition because every competitive product is intercepted before it ever hits the market.
• 1:02:35
  The free market can't work when our court system can use secret courtrooms to litigate lawfare against somebody to the point of bankruptcy just to send a point so the other hundred litigants don't fight either. And it's not even like just companies. Just talk to the Swifties. When Swiftgate happened over at Ticketmaster with their massive monopoly, they tried to bring a class action. And immediately Ticketmaster said individual arbitrations.
• 1:03:03
  You didn't sign anything, but our terms and conditions on our website say you can't bring a class action against us. You each have to go find a hundred thousand dollars and litigate on your own. Like, these are basic things that used to control and temper the greed, exploitation, and passions of the human condition so that we could have a successful economic environment. And we are strangling it and blinding it, and we will all pay the price if we don't do something. We have to.
• 1:03:31
  Seth Holehouse: So there's two more things I wanna cover. One is what we can do is is which is really important. But two is also a little more of where you're at right now. Because you're you're the one person I know that's doing more than the 10,000 people I know. Right?
• 1:03:49
  So you're you are doing something, but because the fight was brought to you and you didn't back down. And and and and so you you stood up against it, and you've suffered immensely for that. So however you wanna cover these these two points, what we can do and what you're doing, and how we can help you do what you're doing, which is also important.
• 1:04:10
  Tiffany Cianci: I'm gonna start by saying that something we can do right now, every American can do right now, is to start seeking out the small businesses you know are small. Build websites, build Facebook pages, even though they're a monopoly. Build pages where in your community you guys can identify businesses that are small and support Give up your conveniences and your micro savings to save your community. It might cost you a dollar more and it might cost you an extra stop because you can't do it all in one Walmart. But if you want to bring wealth back to your community, it's literally the only path without the help we need from Congress and your state legislatures.
• 1:04:47
  Now, it comes to legislatures and legislative maneuvers, every single one of you should flood your Congress members right now. Everyone should be flooding congress with phone calls, emails, tweets. You should be president Trump demanding that carried interest loophole be closed. He was committed, and the cowards in the house have pulled it out because their donors demanded it. They're not serving you.
• 1:05:14
  They're not. You should demand that your politicians in your local economy pass laws to limit how many small business like if you want to go local is easier. It's harder to do things federally, right? You could demand that your legislature introduce acts to stop how many houses can be bought by a corporation. You do that.
• 1:05:37
  And then I'm going to say this. If you want to build a business and protect it, you can build clauses in equity into transfers that say your business has to keep doing certain things after you sell it. You could also build what's called a public benefit corporation that puts the needs of the public benefit you serve over the needs of the shareholders. You can do that. And you can also seek out and serve public benefit corporations.
• 1:06:04
  You can do that. But, but you need to demand immediately that our government starts serving us. And I've got to be honest, it's going to be an uncomfortable transition if we actually want to get there, because it's going to require voting out incumbents in both parties. Because their decision making is a very simple calculus. Right now, they're more afraid of losing their donors than they are of losing your vote.
• 1:06:30
  Because we are so hopelessly divided by rhetoric that is fed to us by a stream of the same five billionaires that own every media corporation America and want to keep their billions. We are so hopelessly divided that we vote however we are told. And that allows them to keep voting for billionaires instead of you. We need to vote out incumbents immediately on both sides. And that's not comfortable.
• 1:06:53
  But if they're not gonna serve you, they should be more afraid of you. And they're not. When it comes to me, they've spent millions and millions and millions of dollars. That's not an exaggeration. That's real money to destroy my life.
• 1:07:11
  I was a teacher in a tiny mountain town teaching special needs children music. More than 60 children took their first steps despite their delays and their physical limitations in my facility. Dozens of children said their first words in my class after being nonverbal for endless periods of time. And because I had the audacity to try to protect and keep those kids safe from the cuts these private equity firms were forcing us to make, I have paid with my life. I have paid with my daughter.
• 1:07:46
  I have paid with my future. I've paid with my kids' college funds. I've paid with my retirement accounts we liquidated. I've paid with the equity we took out of our home to pay the lawyers. And it's easy to say I'm the only one out here fighting.
• 1:08:05
  Because of these secret arbitrations, other people that would like to fight can't. The contracts they signed allow them to be sued if they speak. Like, you have to understand that it only happens through a change of law that we can fix that. For instance, it was only five or six years ago that a franchise just like mine that was acquired by private equity Massage Envy, also based out of Arizona, just like the one I'm fighting, that house their contract law in Arizona because it has horrible laws that don't protect consumers. They were able to force 181 women that were sexually assaulted and raped in their facilities into secret arbitrations.
• 1:08:41
  They threatened to sue them if they spoke to the press. This is because women signed in on an app on their phone to show up for their massage. 181 women were silenced by these secret arbitrations. You know what happened? Three brave women finally broke their confidentiality agreements, went to USA Today, went to Bloomberg, and a law was finally passed that has made it illegal to force a woman who was assaulted or a man who was assaulted or harassed for physical assault to be forced into an arbitration or to be made to keep it confidential.
• 1:09:16
  That law passed with almost unanimous consent once people realized that these politicians were protecting this conduct. Let me tell you, they're doing it now. I'm one of hundreds of small businesses fighting Unleash Brands. They're owned by Seidler Private Equity, the same private equity firm that owns the Padres. Unleashed Brands has destroyed hundreds of small businesses.
• 1:09:40
  They've exploited veterans, families with special needs kids, stay at home moms that just wanted to build a future. They are torturing people in these litigations through lawfare. And I've said on many podcasts, in my case, they've done the most horrifying things you can fathom. And they have spent millions and millions of dollars to do it. They've hired felons.
• 1:10:03
  They've terrorized my family. They've tortured my employees. They bribed my landlord with $120,000 cash. And at one point, they filed motions in my secret courtroom to force me to have an abortion against my will, just to terrorize me. And then every time they succeeded, they would write a press release and send it to all of the other litigants to say, You're next.
• 1:10:27
  There are more than three dozen publicly available FTC complaints right now from people that have been threatened with becoming the next me if they didn't drop their litigations, and they've gone to the FTC and said it, and no one's doing anything. There are other brands that are using me as the example, and that's also been documented in the FTC. So my case is going on, and they're going to continue retaliating against me until people make it uncomfortable enough for Seidler to force out the leadership at that company and restore the safety for these children. And I'm going to keep testifying for every single child that they have hurt in every courtroom, despite what they're doing to try to force me to stop. And we just found four more cases of kids that didn't think that they could tell anyone, that thought they were the only one because these are all in secret courtrooms.
• 1:11:22
  And I'm gonna keep testifying. I'm also helping three other women that they're terrorizing. We have a GiveSendGo we created for their legal funds. You cannot imagine how much money it takes. And when they can write a blank check to their lawyers to spend $10,000,000 to destroy a life.
• 1:11:44
  All you have is doing the right thing at that point, and that's what I'm going to keep doing. And it kills me because all I want to be doing is teaching babies. I was really happy doing what I was doing. I was really happy with my life. But if it took three brave women to change it, the sexual assault victims, I imagine it's going to take more than three to change this.
• 1:12:13
  But if they can force women to have abortions, there's a woman I learned they forced to postpone cancer treatment. Like they're using secret courts to manipulate you because the secret courts don't have to follow the law. They can deny you bodily autonomy, they can force you to have an abortion, they can force you to deny or delay cancer treatment. If they're using these secret courtrooms, imagine what the healthcare companies are doing in them. Imagine what the nursing homes are doing in them.
• 1:12:39
  Imagine what the pediatric ERs are using those secret courtrooms to do. And not a one of those judges has to follow the law. And every one of them is being paid $25,000 a week or more by these firms to choose for them, to find for them. So we have to change that.
• 1:12:57
  Seth Holehouse: Gosh. I wanna bring up a few things. This is your give, send, go. You just this is the first time you're actually putting it out publicly, which is why it's $0. So it's givesango.comslash, fightprivateequity.
• 1:13:12
  I'll make sure that link is in the show description. I encourage everyone who's watching, first off, share this interview. Like, that's like that that's the easiest thing. It costs nothing, because that's what's most important is the power of We The People. But We The People have to be united around a common idea, which has to be disseminated, which is why I do this podcast, is to get these this information out to the masses as best as I can.
• 1:13:36
  Supporting you on there. I wanna also bring up the this website. So so this is the private equity company. Right? So is it little Jim right here?
• 1:13:46
  Is this the
• 1:13:47
  Tiffany Cianci: That's that's what I owned. Yeah.
• 1:13:49
  Seth Holehouse: So this is the so, you know, you you come here and, like, let's just say that I owned a, like, a youth camp or something like that. And these guys showed up, say, hey, we we wanna buy your you know, we we believe in what you're doing. We wanna we wanna buy your company and take it to the next level. I I come to this website, I'd like, wow. This is great.
• 1:14:04
  Like, wow. Serving moms and families. Well, they've certainly served you plenty of legal papers. Yeah. They should put your they put your picture there, serving moms.
• 1:14:14
  Yeah. We've served Tiffany. You know, all these different documents.
• 1:14:16
  Tiffany Cianci: They tried to serve me yesterday.
• 1:14:18
  Seth Holehouse: Crazy. Like, you look at this, and you think, wow. This is wonderful. This is great. But to think that, like, what's actually happening is that this is just a front.
• 1:14:27
  It might as well be a front for a a criminal cartel. It's like, oh, that's not a laundry. That's not a laundry.
• 1:14:31
  Tiffany Cianci: Scroll down just a little bit so I can see all the brands. So for those of you that don't know, Premier Martial Arts at the bottom left hand corner, that was a Ponzi scheme. Literally, they had no proof of concept and they used that intellectual property in that brand to defraud 700 territories worth of business owners out of their life savings and their retirements. They filed a class action. Hundreds of them filed a class action Rico filing in Tennessee and they were forced into secret arbitrations.
• 1:14:59
  Because they filed RICO charges for cartel like behavior. We have recordings of this company saying they knew that they were defrauding people, that they were lying to these investors that were taking their retirement accounts and trying to plan for a better life. They were promising them huge returns on absentee business models. And it was all fake. It was a fabrication, right?
• 1:15:20
  So those premier martial arts locations bankrupted hundreds of people. One of them was also covered in the New York Times in my cover article. Urban Air, just above premier martial arts. That company is a big moneymaker for them. It is also terrifying when you read the documents that I've been handed by their whistleblowers, where they have told their franchisees to hire 14 and 15 year olds to manage literal attractions children can die on every day.
• 1:15:47
  We just recently on Candace Owens showed a letter between lawyers that said that they told them to pull the harness checkers on these zip lines that were 30 feet off the ground over concrete floors. So kids were checking their own harnesses. And the people at the bottom were 14 year olds and 15 year olds. And dozens of kids are falling off the 30 feet to concrete floors, breaking every bone in their body. And they're forcing them into secret arbitrations where they have to pay to fight while they're trying to get their kids out of the ICU.
• 1:16:21
  Right? When you look at all of these companies, they forced they need early on when they bought them. They said we want you to be part of our family. Your CEO is part of the family. We're not gonna ruin you.
• 1:16:34
  We're just gonna give you the tools you need for economies of scale. The little Jim, one of our founders, Randy McCoy, released a kid singing video, scolding Unleashed Brands for misrepresenting him and saying it doesn't feel good to be with them and he can't support the company anymore. But they lied about him in a message, and that's how he responded. It was covered in the Franchise Times. Right?
• 1:16:59
  Sylvan Learning Centers, they were bought in a bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, and now a bunch of their franchisees are bankrupt.
• 1:17:09
  Seth Holehouse: So they're basically
• 1:17:11
  Tiffany Cianci: company is really good at advertising. They're really bad at caring about small businesses.
• 1:17:16
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. I mean, you can see that what they're doing is they're coming in. They're buying these businesses using crony money. They're they're strip mining the businesses, selling them out, destroying all especially franchisees. It's one thing to buy an actual like, a bigger business.
• 1:17:33
  But when you buy a franchise and you've got 200 franchisees, two hundred small, you know, families, there's small businesses with people like yourself that took risk, invested the, you know, time and money to build this to build this business and help to grow that franchise brand. And they're coming in. And and, I mean, gosh, if if they were in the the organ trade, they'd probably they'd probably take your organs from you and say, okay. Might as well be Mainland China. It's like, oh, hey.
• 1:18:00
  You're a warm body. You're worth about half a million dollars. It it's like the the it's no difference. I mean, like, obviously, there's some difference, but it's like it's not far that not not that far to to stretch to get there.
• 1:18:12
  Tiffany Cianci: You know, Seidler Private Equity, the company that acquired Unleashed Brands, they own a bunch of baby brands. I think they thought they were gonna build this umbrella of cohesive marketing. The Seidler Private Equity owns UPPAbaby and their $1,200 strollers. They own Aiden and Anais, the most beautiful baby swaddles that everyone gets at their baby showers. They acquired Frida, the baby health care company.
• 1:18:35
  Right?
• 1:18:36
  Seth Holehouse: And I have a I have a question for you. So I I just googled because we we had, UPPAbaby strollers. So I googled, okay, who owns UPPAbaby? Here it says, as of 2022, you you come on here, you know, Wikipedia. It's like, oh, okay.
• 1:18:52
  This is a brand
• 1:18:53
  Tiffany Cianci: search Seidler Equity Partners.
• 1:18:55
  Seth Holehouse: Do you spell it?
• 1:18:57
  Tiffany Cianci: Seidler, s e I d l e r. Like, just search Seidler Equity Partners and pull up their portfolio and you'll see up a baby.
• 1:19:07
  Seth Holehouse: See.
• 1:19:13
  Tiffany Cianci: Go to maybe partnerships. I don't know. Haven't been on their website in a while. There you go. Okay.
• 1:19:20
  Quick, wet car washes. Up a baby. It's right there. See
• 1:19:23
  Seth Holehouse: it? Wow. Unleash brands.
• 1:19:25
  Tiffany Cianci: You can't see what's happened. They hide it. Frida is to give health care to babies. Right? UPPAbaby is baby strollers.
• 1:19:35
  Aidan and Ineus was supposed to be how you wrapped your baby in love. These are companies I have supported. I have bought products from. Oh, I bought buy a company like Unleash Brands that exploits children and hurts children and exploits small businesses freshly picked. That's a company that makes the most expensive baby moccasins and shoes and baby diaper bags in America.
• 1:19:57
  These were small businesses that they are monopolizing and corporatizing.
• 1:20:04
  Seth Holehouse: Gosh.
• 1:20:05
  Tiffany Cianci: And no one knows it.
• 1:20:08
  Seth Holehouse: And and you wouldn't even know.
• 1:20:10
  Tiffany Cianci: You know what, though? It's not too late for Seidler to do the right thing. They could force changes at Unleashed Brands to to restore faith in these companies. They could do it. They're just not doing it because the money must be that good.
• 1:20:24
  They could, though.
• 1:20:28
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Well, so here here's here's the the team. Here's the USA team and the Australia team. Yeah. You mean, I'm obviously
• 1:20:37
  Tiffany Cianci: believe don't believe they acquired on these brands knowing what they were doing to small businesses.
• 1:20:42
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah.
• 1:20:43
  Tiffany Cianci: They haven't done anything to stop them. They haven't done anything to help us or to save us. You think I wanna keep coming on these podcasts talking about them? There are a hundred private equity stories a week that need to come out. I don't have to do this.
• 1:20:57
  They keep me here. They terrorize me. I think we're at eight, maybe eight cases they filed against me or eight separate causes of action maybe in three different jurisdictions. Maybe five different courts now we're in or six different courts. Nobody can survive it.
• 1:21:22
  And all because why? Because I have the files that show they're hurting kids on ziplines? Because I stood up and kept my franchise association together so they couldn't exploit the kids and make them unsafe? Why? Because I told the world what they did to me when I was pregnant.
• 1:21:39
  Didn't keep it confidential. I mean, it seems to me their money would be better spent instead of spending $100,000,000 on legal fees and settlements last year. They could have invested $100,000,000 in the safety of children. Seems to me that would have been a better investment. It seems to me that spending $100,000,000 destroying the people that serve small businesses and serve these children, instead of using $100,000,000 to invest in your small businesses and in new technology and new safety mechanisms.
• 1:22:11
  That would have been a better investment, you would think. But if that's not their goal, if exploitation and litigation and lawfare and capitulation are the goal, well, then this makes perfect sense.
• 1:22:25
  Seth Holehouse: It also makes me wonder, you know, companies like this, like, you know, Seidler, who they, you know, they own, you know, the other brand. Right? So they own Unleashed. But it's also makes me think, okay, well, who owns Sidler? Like, that's the thing is that it's who owns them, and who owns the company that owns them?
• 1:22:39
  And and and so it's like, might you you trace all back, and it's like, oh, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street. You realize it's just like this the whole thing is this giant pyramid. And unfortunately, just seems like the end goal of this is truly a some sort of final collapse.
• 1:22:59
  Tiffany Cianci: Middle States.
• 1:23:00
  Seth Holehouse: Well, back to
• 1:23:00
  Tiffany Cianci: the Lord
• 1:23:01
  Seth Holehouse: and I'm creating
• 1:23:02
  Tiffany Cianci: the land.
• 1:23:02
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Where no one owns their home. You're you're you're renting everything. I mean but, like, we we have to fight that. And then which is why I I'm so grateful that you've given us your time today because you're someone that is fighting it.
• 1:23:16
  And and I so I wanna highlight just as as we're wrapping up. Again, I wanna bring up your your gifts and go. Encourage people to support what you're doing. Other thing you mentioned, which I think is really, really important is do research and and figure out where you're spending your money. Which brands are you supporting?
• 1:23:34
  And that that's that's that's something that we can all do, actually, is just figure out, okay, am I supporting like, for us, for instance, we try our hardest, a, to not buy made in China. Right? I'm not I I don't wanna buy slave labor stuff that's made in China. Now I I always try to be you know, buy made in America if I can. But there's certain things like this.
• 1:23:55
  Like, you know, good luck finding a made in America mouse at this It's it's it's difficult, but I'll keep looking.
• 1:24:00
  Tiffany Cianci: But Your wife picked that one out? I like the lavender.
• 1:24:03
  Seth Holehouse: This is yeah. Yeah. This is hers. This is, this is I I use the, the trackpad. I'm not a mouse kind of guy these days, but, yeah.
• 1:24:10
  But we've got I've got four different computers all merging together here for the studio. So, but that to me, that's an easy thing. Right? So, you know, go to the farm market. You know, meet your local farmers.
• 1:24:23
  Tiffany Cianci: Join a CSA.
• 1:24:24
  Seth Holehouse: Join a CSA. Yep.
• 1:24:26
  Tiffany Cianci: Join your co ops. I'm a I'm an owner in my local co op. We have a co op grocery store here. I pay $25 a quarter to support local farms, and that grocery store stocks local produce. And I go there.
• 1:24:37
  Not everybody has that luxury. There are food deserts. There are difficult circumstances, and fed is best when you're when you have big kids and when you have babies. But if you have the choice in the shoes you stand in, please make that choice. Exactly.
• 1:24:53
  Make that choice.
• 1:24:55
  Seth Holehouse: Well, Tiffany, thank you so much for giving us your time today. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. You are you're a a fireball in in the best way possible. And I I just you know, any way I can give you strength and give you encouragement, please accept it from me. And I just I thank you for doing what you're doing.
• 1:25:14
  But also, thank you for putting yourself out there. Because I you know, look, as someone that has, like, I say things that most people would only say behind an anonymous profile on Twitter. But it I've I've chosen to do that. Right? Like, it's like, okay.
• 1:25:26
  This is me. Like, I'm I'm I'm putting myself on the line. This is my face. You're the same. You're not just someone hiding behind a social profile, which some people they have to, you remain anonymous for job.
• 1:25:36
  I'm not not kinda bashing that, but you're on the forefront of this. You're out there. You're doing interviews, and I'm I'm grateful that you've been able to catch this viral wave, that you're hitting these big podcasts, because we have to get this information out to more people. And so thank you again for doing everything that you're doing.
• 1:25:54
  Tiffany Cianci: I hope everybody, if you guys wanna know more about private equity, come follow me. I'm Tiffany Sianci on TikTok and YouTube, and I'm the vino mom on x and Instagram.
• 1:26:03
  Seth Holehouse: And, also, your just your website, tiffany sianci That's my website. Com, which I'll put this in the description. So people can come here. They can sign up to your
• 1:26:11
  Tiffany Cianci: email list. All of my podcasts there, all of my appearances there.
• 1:26:14
  Seth Holehouse: Exact yep. There you go. Even this podcast will be on there soon.
• 1:26:19
  Tiffany Cianci: So Yes. It will.
• 1:26:20
  Seth Holehouse: Great. Well, Tiffany, thank you again. It it's been such a a pleasure speaking with you, and I'm sure we'll do more of these shows together. Thank you for giving us your time.
• 1:26:29
  Tiffany Cianci: I'm so glad to be on. Thank you.
• 1:26:32
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• 1:27:02
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• 1:28:02
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• 1:28:32
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