Empathy, Emotional Intelligence and Connection in Business with Mike Weinberger

Emotional intelligence at work is easy to praise and hard to practice, especially once a business scales past the founder's own reach. In this episode of The Bliss Business Podcast, we welcome Mike Weinberger, Co-Founder and Head of Franchising at Replay Sports Cards and founder of Community Franchise Group.

Mike is a multi-brand franchise executive who has spent more than twenty years leading, scaling, and successfully exiting franchise brands across food and beverage, fitness, cannabis, and collectibles. A former attorney turned servant leader, he has built systems designed to empower entrepreneurs while staying deeply committed to preserving community-driven business experiences, most recently through Replay Sports Cards.

In this episode we explore:

• Why emotional intelligence is becoming essential in modern leadership

• How EQ scales culture from the top down as a business grows

• Why people are craving analog “third place” experiences again

• How Replay curates franchisees for community fit, not just capital

• What the Replay Gives Back initiative looks like in practice

• The one habit Mike says separates the best leaders from the rest

The Product Is the Experience, Not the Card

The easy assumption is that a sports card shop sells sports cards, Mike Weinberger says, but that's not the real business. “I call it the third place,” he says. “I call it the new Starbucks, right? Like we don’t sell coffee, we sell experiences, memories, and just a place where you can come exist.” The card is the artifact, the memory is the product.

Emotional Intelligence Scales From the Top Down

Mike ties EQ directly to how a culture holds up under growth. “We almost become less human” as companies scale, he says, focused on deadlines and goals instead of the people doing the work. His countermeasure is relentless and simple: check on people, ask what they need, learn their story. “If you embed that from the top down, then it flows through,” he says, and teams start treating customers the same way leaders treat them.

Franchisee Curation Is the Business, Not a Side Step

Scaling a personal, local experience is hard, Mike says, so Replay curates franchisees deliberately before it ever trains them. “We want people that want to be with us, that believe in the community first,” he says. Purely money-motivated operators might do fine elsewhere, “but that’s not what this is,” because community participation isn’t a marketing add-on at Replay, it’s the growth engine itself.

Replay Gives Back Shows What You Actually Value

Replay set a goal of donating one million base cards to kids without access to them and ended up collecting more than 3.5 million, distributed through charities, hospitals, and organizations like Ronald McDonald House. The bigger point, Mike says, is the scoreboard leaders actually track: “there’s a scoreboard we keep chasing in business that is often the wrong scoreboard,” and he wants leaders to add a second one for impact, not just margin.

That same instinct, treating community and connection as the growth engine rather than an afterthought, is the same discipline Zero Company helps brands build into their marketing systems: the numbers hold up once the human systems behind them do too.

🎙️ Hosted by Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa

🎧 Produced by Martha Huerta

Learn more about Mike Weinberger and Replay Sports Cards at replaysportscards.com. Watch the video: Mike Weinberger: Stop Waiting to Talk and Listen. Read the recap: The Third Place Is Coming Back. Explore more Featured Guest Series conversations.