Building Community and Connections in Business with Mark Van Wye

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with my co-host, Mike Liwski and our special guest today. So Gallup's latest research shows that only 33% of employees strongly agree they feel connected to their company's mission. That disconnect impacts not only engagement, but also profitability and innovation, as we know. The companies that thrive in today's worlds are the ones that build communities where people feel seen and valued today. We explore how community and connection can drive both human and business success. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (0:56)
It will be my absolute pleasure, Stephen. Our guest today is Mark Van Wye. He is the CEO of Zoom Room. It's the innovative indoor dog training gym that is transforming the pet service industry. Mark, with a background spanning education, neuroscience and franchise development, Mark is really known for building purpose-driven organizations, which we love to talk about here.
Really, where relationships come first, as well as under his leadership, Zoom Room has become one of the fastest growing franchise systems in the country, by combining dog training, human connection, and community building, which we'll talk a lot about today. All of those, he's put those into one cohesive experience, so we can't wait to hear more about how you've done that, Mark. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today.

**Mark Van Wye** (1:54)
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate it. I know on paper we're a dog training company, but the reality is it's community infrastructure. Our motto is we don't train dogs, we train the people who love them. It's right in our name. I didn't wear one, but our staff shirts actually say, love unconditionally on them. I think we started off recognizing that people don't really want to train dog anymore. What they want is a socialized dog. That's what people want in their lives, and you get that through community. It's really integral to what we're all about.

**Mike Liwski** (2:34)
That's awesome. I'd love to get a shirt.
Hopefully, we can. That's awesome.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:40)
I love that. Put in love front and center right there on the shirts and everything. So Mark, research from Deloitte shows that companies with a strong sense of purpose outperform competitors by 42 percent in growth and employee engagement. So how does purpose show up in the way you've built the Zoom Room?

**Mark Van Wye** (3:02)
It's 15 years ago, we'd be having a conversation about how dogs are now part of the family. People treat their dogs like children, but that's really not the story anymore. While that's still true, people now choose where they're going to live, where they're going to work, where they're going to travel, where they go out for a beer based on dog friendliness.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:24)
I'm going through this right now. I'm going through this right now like where I'm looking for apartments and stuff. I'm literally in Google looking around for the dog area right in the neighborhood. I mean, it's absolutely, I'm like, this is totally different for me than before.

**Mark Van Wye** (3:40)
And just because someone says you can bring your dog to work, doesn't mean you should or that you feel comfortable doing it. You may want to run into a store and grab a pair of headphones or something, but what do you do? And there's this moment when you come home with your dog, where you have this dream and this vision of what that's going to be like in your life, in your family's life, and the reality hits you pretty soon. And it just fills you with so much anxiety and really stress, and things don't work out the way that you thought it would be. And going for a walk, going outside becomes so stressful. So for us, this mission of reconnecting people with that moment they first had, building that self-confidence, building back that just sense of belonging and their sense of family, that's really what we're about. So we're really improving the world, one relationship, one family, one neighborhood at a time, and helping people interact better that way. So it really, I think, is critical to our country's infrastructure and comes down to just who's living in your home and where you're living.

**Mike Liwski** (4:48)
That is a massive impact when you put it like that, Mark. That's never really thought about it that way. Maybe delving in, because it sounds like this point of connection then is a real competitive advantage for Zoom Room. I'm curious, can we delve a little bit deeper into how you say intentionally created community across your franchise network, while still, I guess, trying to maintain some consistency across the brand?