Why I Joined Zoom Room

I have spent 20 years inside large, complex organizations — HP, Qualcomm, Capital One, Accenture, and Petco — working on the kinds of problems that sit at the intersection of finance, strategy, and transformation. How do you take a business that has a strong core and reposition it for a fundamentally different growth trajectory? How do you identify the right levers, allocate capital with discipline, and build the operational infrastructure to scale?

Those are the questions that have defined my career. And Zoom Room is where I see the most compelling answers right now.

What I Saw at Petco

My most recent role before Zoom Room was Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Petco. When I arrived, Petco was a traditional pet retailer in a category being reshaped by e-commerce, changing consumer expectations, and a fundamental shift in how people relate to their pets. The company needed to transform — not incrementally, but structurally.

Over the course of that transformation, we repositioned Petco from a product-focused retailer into a pet health and wellness platform. We rebuilt the strategy, restructured operations, invested in services, and reoriented the brand around the insight that modern pet owners do not just buy things for their pets — they invest in their pets' wellbeing. That work culminated in a successful public offering.

I share that context because it is directly relevant to why I joined Zoom Room. The same consumer shift that powered Petco's transformation — the elevation of pets from property to family, from accessories to members of the household — is the foundational demand signal underneath Zoom Room's entire model. But where Petco addressed that shift through retail and veterinary services, Zoom Room addresses it through something no one else has scaled: behavioral socialization.

Why Zoom Room Is Different

In two decades of evaluating businesses, I have developed a straightforward framework. I look for differentiation that is structural rather than cosmetic, a model with natural operating leverage, and a category dynamic where demand is growing and supply is fragmented.

Zoom Room meets all three criteria in ways that are unusual.

The differentiation is genuine. Zoom Room's curriculum is proprietary. The training methodology is positive reinforcement with the owner present in every class — which means the outcome does not depend on the trainer's individual expertise but on a system designed to produce consistent results through non-expert staff. The group class format produces natural margin expansion as utilization increases: the trainer cost is fixed, and each additional dog in the room fills existing capacity. That is textbook operating leverage.

The category dynamic is remarkable. Dog training is the one major segment of the pet industry without a dominant national brand. Daycare, grooming, retail, veterinary — all have scaled players. Training has thousands of independents and big-box sideline programs. No one has built the infrastructure to deliver socialization at scale. Zoom Room is doing exactly that.

And the unit economics validate the thesis. The system acquires customers efficiently and generates strong early revenue relative to acquisition cost. Retention rates and customer satisfaction scores place Zoom Room alongside the most admired consumer brands in the country. The top-performing stores deliver revenue and margin profiles that would be exceptional in any franchise category. And same-store sales growth consistently outpaces the pet industry benchmark by a wide margin.

Those are not projections. Those are measured results from a system of operating locations across the United States.

The Growth Opportunity

What drew me to Zoom Room is not just the strength of the current model — it is the magnitude of the opportunity ahead.

Today, Zoom Room operates as an efficient franchisor approaching profitability at the corporate level. The growth plan is built around four levers: franchise unit expansion toward national scale, demand marketing to drive same-store sales uplift, a private label product build-out that captures significantly higher franchisor margins on retail, and a digital tele-training division with independent economics.

Every one of those levers is within the company's direct control. The franchise development engine is being built under dedicated leadership for the first time in company history. The marketing infrastructure has already proven itself — lead volume is up dramatically and acquisition costs have dropped significantly. The private label transition leverages existing retail attachment without changing franchisee economics. And the tele-training opportunity extends Zoom Room's behavioral expertise into a geography-independent service line.

I have spent my career analyzing growth plans. This one is capital-efficient, measurable, and grounded in operating data rather than assumptions.

The Team

The other factor that made my decision straightforward was the team. Mark Van Wye has spent nearly two decades building and refining this model. He is a systems thinker who understands both the product and the franchise architecture at a level of detail that is rare among founder-CEOs. Ron Coughlin, who I worked with closely at both HP and Petco, is our incoming chairman — and his involvement speaks volumes about the caliber of the opportunity. Don Allen brings three decades of franchise operations from Orangetheory. Herb Heiserman designed retail environments for Starbucks and Whole Foods at CBRE. Anthony Polazzi, with 25 years in private equity and over 50 acquisitions, is both a board member and a multi-unit franchisee. Alex Samios helped grow Dogtopia to hundreds of locations.

I have worked inside organizations with tens of thousands of employees and multi-billion-dollar revenue bases. The leadership bench at Zoom Room would be impressive at any of them.

The Mission

I grew up with three German Shepherds. I understand the bond between a family and their dogs — how it shapes your daily routine, how it becomes part of your identity. Zoom Room's mission is to strengthen that bond through socialization: structured, positive, ongoing exposure that produces dogs who are calm, confident, and welcome in public life.

What the company has built is a system that democratizes access to that outcome. You do not need to be a dog expert. You do not need to hire a private trainer. You show up at your local Zoom Room, participate in a group class with your dog, and the curriculum does the rest. The experience is designed to make you feel successful — every visit — which is why customers stay for years and refer their friends.

The financial opportunity is significant. But it is the mission — making a meaningful difference in the lives of pets and their owners — that makes this the right place to deploy the next chapter of my career.