Building Community and Connections in Business with Mark Van Wye
Mark Van Wye, CEO of Zoom Room, joins The Bliss Business Podcast to explain community as infrastructure: how a dog training franchise builds belonging on purpose and turns connection into retention, referrals, and growth, with practical advice for leaders in any industry.
Community as infrastructure is how Mark Van Wye, CEO of Zoom Room, describes a business most people file under dog training. In this episode of The Bliss Business Podcast, we ask how a franchise builds belonging on purpose, and what that connection is worth.
🎙️ Hosted by Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski
🎧 Produced by Tullio Siragusa
In this episode we explore:
• Why Zoom Room trains the people who love dogs, not just the dogs
• How franchisees add local flavor, from doggy disco to shelter fundraisers, without losing brand consistency
• Why the curse of knowledge makes empathy a teaching skill
• How positive reinforcement shapes the way leaders treat franchisees
• The numbers behind connection: word of mouth, 87 percent retention, and a 25 to 1 lifetime value to acquisition cost ratio
• What love in business looks like when people walk out smiling
People do not really want to train a dog, Mark says, they want a socialized dog, and that comes through community. So Zoom Room keeps a consistent core and leaves room to play: Friday nights become doggy disco or a fundraiser for a local rescue.
Empathy shows up as teaching. Mark explains the curse of knowledge, the trap of forgetting what it felt like not to know, and how Zoom Room uses psychological safety and affect labeling (naming the feeling out loud) so an embarrassed owner can speak freely.
The business case is concrete. More than a third of Zoom Room’s business comes from word of mouth. For a founder with no data yet, Mark suggests calling the people who did not stay and asking what could have been different.
Scale comes from scaffolding, not slogans: standing touchpoints, a dedicated contact for every unit, and playbooks with real follow-up.
The same holds for any brand: audiences stay where they feel known, the starting point for the brand storytelling and audience engagement work Zero Company does with clients.
Key Takeaways
• (1:54) On the real business: “I know on paper we’re a dog training company, but the reality is it’s community infrastructure.”
• (5:16) On consistency without sameness: “there’s always room to play.”
• (10:23) On teaching with empathy: “you have to learn to adopt a practice of the default status confusion, to adopt this beginner’s mind.”
• (20:59) On the ROI of connection: “we are able to achieve a 25 to 1 ratio from our lifetime value to our cost to acquire a customer.”
• (28:06) On a simple habit for connected teams: “Don’t try to be too purposeful about it. Be stupid about it.”
• (36:32) On love in business: “I challenge you not to smile when you go in there.”
FAQ
What does community as infrastructure mean in business?
Mark Van Wye, CEO of Zoom Room, uses it to describe a company whose real product is belonging, not the service on the price list. Zoom Room trains dogs, but it works as a gathering place where owners, franchisees, and neighborhoods connect.
What is the ROI of building community in a franchise?
Mark Van Wye says more than a third of Zoom Room’s business comes from word of mouth referrals. He reports an 87 percent retention rate, an NPS (customer loyalty score) of 90, and a 25 to 1 ratio of customer lifetime value to acquisition cost.
How can a franchise stay consistent and still build local community?
Mark Van Wye says Zoom Room keeps a consistent core and leaves room for franchisees to host local events, from doggy disco to shelter fundraisers. Network calls and a dedicated support contact for every unit keep that freedom aligned with the brand.
Connection is not a soft skill, it is the foundation of scalable, sustainable success. Learn more about Mark Van Wye and Zoom Room at zoomroom.com. See his guest profile, watch the video, and explore more Featured Guest Series conversations.
CEO of Zoom Room
Mark Van Wye is the CEO of Zoom Room, the premier dog training franchise, and author of the #1 bestselling book, Puppy Training in 7 Easy Steps. He’s a systems architect who saw white space in the $100 billion pet industry and positioned dog training as behavioral infrastructure for modern life. A lifelong builder of scalable learning environments, he taught adults to code at eleven, developed a national learning platform for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and has spent his career designing environments – physical and digital – that scale without losing their human edge.
