Mark Rampolla: Author of An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom and Founder of ZICO

Episode 752

On today’s episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we welcome Mark Rampolla, Founder of ZICO Coconut Water and author of An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom. Mark introduced coconut water to the U.S. market, scaled ZICO into a global brand, and sold it to Coca-Cola for over $200 million. Years later, he bought ZICO back — and today, he’s leading it into its next chapter while also helping entrepreneurs rethink success and freedom.
Mark shares the inside story of building and selling ZICO, why he decided to buy it back, and what feels different about running it now. He also dives into the core themes of his new book, An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom — from why so many entrepreneurs aren’t truly free, to how success actually starts with freedom, to the daily practices and inner work that help founders reclaim their lives while building great companies. Packed with powerful insights and actionable takeaways, this episode is a must-listen for founders, leaders, and anyone chasing a vision of success that also leaves room for freedom.
Don’t miss it!

Resources from
this episode:

Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up, that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Today’s guest is someone who has shaken up many industries but but the beverage world is where I know him from, and he continues to inspire entrepreneurs to think differently about success. So I’m talking today to Mark Rampolla, who is a friend and current found he has always been a founder, now a long time founder, but current CEO of Zico coconut water. We’ll get into that story. But also, I’m so excited to share his brand new book that we have here. It is called an entrepreneur’s guide to freedom, seven steps to living beyond limits. So I got a preview of of the book, and absolutely love it. It is so spot on, and I’m so excited to have mark with us here today to talk a lot more about it. For those of you who are not familiar with Mark, he grew actually, he introduced coconut water to the US when nobody really knew what it was. I remember when he and I were running around the shows back in the early days, we were the underdogs in the early days of beverages, he grew Zico into a leading functional beverage brand, and sold it to Coca Cola for a couple 100 million dollars. And then years later, he bought Zico back and is once again at the helm. Along the way, he’s also become an investor. He’s always been a mentor, now leading also ground force capital, but perhaps most importantly, he’s redefined his own philosophy on life and on leadership. So as I mentioned, an entrepreneur’s guide to freedom, Mark shares a bold and actionable playbook for breaking free from the hustle trap and redefining success on your own own terms, and finding freedom every step of the way, not just at the end. So I absolutely love, love, love the book, and cannot wait to dig in with Mark. So welcome. So excited to see you.

Mark Rampolla 2:53
Thanks, Kara, thanks so much for having me. I’m a huge fan of your show, like so many in the in the industry and around the world, so it’s a real honor to be here. And yeah, in part, because, look, you’ve, you’re a model for me as well. I think you’ve carved your own path from the beginning with hint and with your show. And so I think in many ways, you’re, you’re a model of freedom. So I love, love the opportunity to be here with you. Thank you.

Kara Goldin 3:17
Thank you. Well, so, so nice. So let’s start, actually, with the book, an entrepreneur’s guide to freedom. So how did you think about writing this book? Like, what was it that said it’s time?

Mark Rampolla 3:31
Well, look, you know, I think I’ve come to learn about myself, that I work out a lot of my own stuff through writing. I didn’t know that years ago, but I actually maybe in some ways, did. I journaled for years, and I did write my first book after Zico high hanging fruit, which helped me sort of process it and understand that this book came about. Because I’d say maybe about about six or seven years ago, I hit some pretty serious walls in my, in my life, and some barriers and some hurdles. And when I, when I look back, you know, I was sort of, in many ways, the conventional definition of success, like you mentioned, started Zico, quit a corporate job, built it over nine years, sold it to Coca Cola. You know, millions in the bank, beautiful house overlooking the beach, but yet, over a period of time, I came to see God, I’m still trapped by all these limiting beliefs and fears, and I became a little bit of a ridiculous idiot with money investor. And my health wasn’t great, and my marriage eventually fell apart. And so I started to look around and say, Wait a second, is this really the success I was after? What would that? What does it look like? What did I believe, and am I really free? Am I really free? So that question drove me for about seven years to read, go deep work. With therapists and analysts and neuroscientists and cultures around the world to try to understand what it means to me, and along the way, I also work with hundreds of entrepreneurs on a regular basis. Began to see, yeah, we’re all sort of bought into this myth. Have a great idea, work your ass off, make a ton of money, and you’re free. You’re free. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, or maybe you’re stuck in the middle for decades, or maybe it fails. But I found that so many really don’t feel free. We may look like it on the outside the definition of success and freedom, but on the inside, we’re still trapped by all these things that held us back. So that’s what started this journey for me.

Kara Goldin 5:37
I’d love for you to take people back to those early days when we first met with ZICO.

Mark Rampolla 5:45
Oh yeah. Look, I have such good memories about that, Kara, I remember you particularly in New York, right running around New York and work with big guys and distributors. You know when I look back, I had my background quickly for listeners, was I had grew up in Pittsburgh at college and Midwest. Then I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America, and then I had a corporate did do an MBA in environmental degrees at Duke. And had a corporate job for a couple of years, part of which was in Latin America. So I left that corporate job to start Zika and and I was all excited, you know, thought I had this big idea. I knew nothing about beverage nothing about consumer products. And I’d quit my job, moved with my young family that my then wife more and our two little girls, you remember, and and, and dove in the New York and try to build this thing. And the reality hit. Reality hit hard. Hit hard. Within six months, we were out of money, and I had no idea how I was going to stay in business, and so we spent the next five years on the verge of bankruptcy, month to month, quarter to quarter, raising money, growing, struggling, learning and but that, that was, you know, when we unite, knew each other. We were both just first met each other. We were both just grinding it out, but I certainly was doing my best, in some ways, to just survive, along with Kara,

Kara Goldin 7:09
yeah, definitely. And what would you say was sort of the point, I guess it was mid 2000s nobody in the us really knew what coconut water was. You had some competition that came up and you guys were like, duking it out out there. I mean, it wasn’t just about you. It was also just about but in some ways, I mean, you also had competition that sort of allowed everyone to know that this was a category and it was relevant, and all of those things, like, do you remember that time that, I mean, did you feel like the highs and the lows were daily? I mean, it was, it was crazy,

Mark Rampolla 7:52
minute by minute. And I’ll come back later, we’ll come back to how I’ve learned to manage those ups and downs, right? Because, because they happen. The question is, how you men manage them? But yeah, it was, it was hour by hour, right? And yeah, you’re right, like, I’m very comfortable acknowledging and the phrase we use, I use as an investor right now, is competition builds categories. It’d be nice to think we can own a whole industry ourselves, right? Have a monopoly, but, but the reality is that in this situation, particularly in the beverage industry, if you look at the history of it, Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade, monster, the categories generally build almost like spiders on a mirror right and and to your point, both of us, us invited cocoa, running around, sampling, battling For shelf space, battling for distributors. It was additional capital, additional time, additional effort, that helped build the category for sure. So as much as I hated Mike Kerbin and Vita was my archenemy, and I used to joke to my team, his kids are going to college, or my kids are going to college and my kids are going to college, right? Just as a fun, motivational way. But I also can look back and say Zika would not have become what it became invited cocoa, which is even bigger now, would not have become what it is without Zika. And that’s the beauty of our marketplace, when you could be in the right position. It’s not five, seven brands, it’s not five, it’s usually two to three brands in a category that capture 85% of the economic value in a category in an industry.

Kara Goldin 9:28
Yeah, that’s, it’s, it’s crazy to think about it like that. So you scaled the brand and eventually sold Zico to Coca Cola. What was that like? I mean, were you was it like, ah, or was it like, Oh my gosh. Can you explain, like, that moment, that day?

Mark Rampolla 9:48
Absolutely, it was a ah. And I’ll tell you why. I think, for better or worse, my dream from the beginning was to sell to Coca Cola. From the beginning. The moment we came up with a brand and the concept. And the reason was, I didn’t think I wanted to run a beverage business forever. And I thought that, hey, how cool would that be sell a brand to them and let them go scale it globally. And I actually thought, How amazing would it be to make an impact on them and let them sell something healthy, right? So that was the naivete I had that. But I think the nine years running Zico, I don’t love admitting this, but I can look back and say, as soon as coke came in as minority investor, 2009 the race became build it to sell, not build it to last. And I’ll tell you what that means next time around. But it became, get them to buy it, because the fear I had as well is the proverbial bride being left at the altar, like, if they walk away. You know what happens in most industries, and certainly in the food and beverage industry, people like, well, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with Rand Paula, what’s wrong with ZICO? So that became the must, and I was so maniacally focused on that, and working so hard at that. And frankly, also, I can look back and realize I was so in fear. I was so denying all my emotions, you know, fear, anger, disappointment, all those things. It took a toll. And so I was so relieved to be done in many ways. And so unfortunately, I guess I can look back with kind of laugh at it now, I swung the other way, right? It was such a relief. I sort of went to some extremes. I’ll just say that. We can get into that if you want. But, uh, but, no, it was a relief to be to be done. It was a relief to be done.

Kara Goldin 11:44
And, and you didn’t stay involved with Coke, right?

Mark Rampolla 11:49
I didn’t stay an hour. So I knew I didn’t want to work with coke and, and I respected them good people. I had an internship that when I was there in grad school, but I had them on the board, but I didn’t want to work for them, and so I structured it about a year before we they bought it on sort of a path where it seemed to make sense. I went to one of the senior most people that was, you know, I was dealing with, and told them, Look, why don’t we bring in a very senior person to work for me for a year, they get to know the brand, and that way, if you choose to buy it, they’re ready. You’ve got your person in place. And I remember he told me, Mark, no one worth their salt is going to come work for you a little, with all due respect, a little brand, and work for you as as as a founder. And I said, Yeah, that’s where you’re wrong. Because I would have, I would have jumped at that opportunity within a company like Coca Cola. So sure enough, we did find someone. He came and worked for me for a year, and part of my goal was convince them that they’ve got their guy right. So so now they’re more invested, more engaged with the brand than ever, which I think helped. And so once we the deal was structured, literally the morning I announced to my team, the company is sold, I say, and by the way, I’m leaving. I had a maybe a two year I can remember, kind of no show consulting agreement and and I was done. I was done. And, yeah, I could look back and wonder if that’s the best or worst thing, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that. It’s what what worked for me at the time. It’s what they wanted. And I was happy to happen to move on. I of course I wanted to see because succeed, but I was okay, letting it, letting it go.

Kara Goldin 13:40
So you talk about in the book that after selling you didn’t feel as free as you expected. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Mark Rampolla 13:50
Sure. Look, I’d say for the first, probably year maybe two, I did in a adolescent way. Okay, like I mentioned, I had became a I think I assumed, since I was a successful operator, in ways, it translated to being a good investor. So I quickly wound up with about 40 angel investments all over the place, not a lot of strategy, not a lot of discipline, but I some of them looked like they were going to be big winners. So I thought I was a genius, and I took a lot of time off, and we traveled and we built our house, but I also drank a lot. I drank a lot, and I time on my hands. It felt like that’s what I should do. I felt like I should go to cool kid events like summit at sea, right? That I should be an advisor and work with founders and and I wound up following all these shiny objects all over the place, and I and I quickly wound up busy as ever, not really focused and and, and, like I mentioned, had problems with me. My my health, because I just wasn’t taking care of myself and and I also can see with with all the love and compassion in the world for both of us more and I, my ex wife and my partner, during that time, we buried so much along the way. There was so much we didn’t talk about, we didn’t process. And I think to a certain extent, it was like, Yeah, ignore that, bury that. We’ll deal with that later. Of course, we were happy and loving, and our kids were were great. People thought we were the couple is going to last forever. But there was a lot we denied and avoided and buried. And so all that started to come back. All that started to come back. And so a couple years later, I realized, God, I hadn’t prepared for this. I hadn’t really done the work on myself, and frankly, I didn’t have a vision beyond I was so focused on build and sells eco, I hadn’t built my next phase plan, right? So for a lot of those reasons, I sort of felt like I’m trapped. And I’ve heard this story again and again. When I talk to successful entrepreneurs, some that, have you know, made 10s of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions, I often hear the story behind closed stores, in private. Oh, man. Like, like, I’m still trying to figure out what i How much is enough, where I’m going, what you haven’t dealt with, what you haven’t resolved. Money doesn’t solve. Money doesn’t solve. And I had a lot I hadn’t resolved or figured out about myself in my life yet.

Kara Goldin 16:40
Yeah, yeah. It’s, I love how you talk about it in the book. It’s, it’s great. So years later you bought Zico back, you know, was so how many years later was that first

Mark Rampolla 16:55
boy? Let’s see, that would have been seven years later, sevens. It’s an interesting, you know, number for time and other things

Kara Goldin 17:05
so and why did you decide to do that? I mean, what was the moment you were watching Coca Cola manage the brand, and I would imagine all different people on the brand as well, but then you had an opportunity to actually buy the company that you founded back. So take us through that point.

Mark Rampolla 17:29
Yeah, sure, it’s a great, great question. Oh, my God, so fascinating to go back to that time. So look, I think one good thing I did that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with is identity, right? We identify with our business so strongly, which is beautiful. It’s wonderful, but that does make it hard sometimes to separate. So I had done quite a bit of work to say, look, ZICO is not mine. It’s like a child, right? It’s a, it’s a, it’s an independent spirit. My job is to escort it through the world, into the world. It got into the to the Harvard of the beverage industry, Coca Cola, my work is done, right? So I went in peace and allowed jico to go on its way. I had people ask me. I remember people asking me, soon after we sold, would you ever buy it back? And my response then was, never, that chapter is done. I’ll never go back to that. Well, fast forward seven years. We had formed what was first called Power Plant partners, and then became ground forest capital. We now have, you know, a couple 100 million at the time under management. Now we’re, you know, 600 million, and we’re actively looking for investments, right? And so we’re looking predominantly growth stage food and beverage companies. And so when I learned that Coca Cola was selling down or shutting off 200 brands globally as part of their restructuring around covid Going back to their core, I realized, okay, there might be an opportunity here. So I got in touch with my partner, Dan, and we said, look, is this worth taking a look at it? So taking a look at so we looked at it with the rigorous eyes of an investment firm, right? Is the market, right? Is there an opportunity here? Can we buy it at the right price, and can we rebuild it back and so, so much so that, of course, I had not, of course I did have some passion for it then, because I did see what they were doing. I didn’t think they were managing it well. I knew they didn’t. My the term I love for it is they were not creating the conditions that allowed Zico to achieve its full realization of its potential. So that excited me, but I also knew I have a bias. I had no economic interest, but I actually recused myself from the final investment committee process to make sure I wasn’t bringing that bias into the decision, but the decision was clear. It was already a billion plus category growing fast. One competitor with 50% share, Zico, had been $150 million brand that we could buy for one 2% of the original sale price. So. Now we had to put a lot of capital in to grow it back, but, but we did that. Now we’ll clarify one thing. I’m not CEO. I’m an active chairman of the board. We’ve had two CEOs recently, put in some of it, two fantastic CEOs at the right growth stage. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds. I get to stay involved, be active, but I’m not. I’m not sweating the day to day. Chris Galant, that CEO, is doing a fantastic job of that.

Kara Goldin 20:24
That’s awesome. But you were still at geyser a few weeks ago when you were a few months ago, I guess when you were texting me, you were doing some time there, and so that’s great. You can still kind of pop in and get a bit involved in the stuff that you remember back in the old days. So how is How different is it now? I mean, it’s, it’s a totally different situation, because in some ways, it’s a turnaround. I mean, it’s not a turn, it is a turnaround. And you’re right.

Mark Rampolla 20:56
Anyways, Kara, you nailed it. Because look, we you know some of your Yeah, most your listeners that are in operations will get this. We bought the brand, not the business so. So by the time we took over the brand, we closed the deal December, like 30th, or something, of 2020, by the time we were able to get the brand realign the distribution system, get back on shelf. It took six months. During that period of time, Coke had zero interest in doing anything with it. Retailers, obviously, nature abhors a vacuum, right? Every shelf space was filled. The brand went to zero market share. We sold it. We had 25% coke had lost share for seven years, but it went from to zero. So you’re right. We were a startup, and this is one I own. We underestimated the amount of capital and time it would take to build back, because every retailer in the country said, Oh, we love Zika. We’ll take it back tomorrow, but in six months we went back to them, they said, Oh, yeah, that shelf space has been filled, and the category has grown by 20% why do we need you, right? So we’ve had to tell that story again. So it’s been a grind. It’s been a grind easier than the first time around, although I’ll tell you back to like reliving. There’s a beautiful times in life where you get to relive certain things, raising money. We can’t, haven’t been able to fund the entire amount, because this is out of our second Fund, which is not, not a massive fund, so we had to go outside and raise money. So here I am raising money for Zico again, which I did for nine years, non stop, right? That stirred up a lot of insecurities, a lot of why am I doing this again? But you work through it, right? You do what you need to do to work through it, and next year, we should be bigger than we were when I sold it the first time. And there’s one big difference, too. This time, it’s being built to last forever, forever. I’ve got a better team running it better than I was, and there’s no humility in that. It’s just fact and a strong team across every function building in a rational way. And it’s being built to deter forever. Whether we own it, we sell it, somebody buys it, whatever it’s being built to last

Kara Goldin 23:16
and and so when you look at you know you’re coming in to to the company, you know the brand, and you know what its potential is, but it’s, you’re the underdog again, right? You’ve got to, you’ve got to come back in and there’s a player who you know that is so far ahead. I mean, do you have to go fast? Or you talked about going that you want to build it to last. Do you actually think slow and steady is the is the name of the game, and just keep doing it and keep building. Or how, how do you think about the overall business today?

Mark Rampolla 24:00
Yeah, yeah. Kara, look, that is a great, great question, and that, I think, is one of the key questions across not just buying a brand, growing a brand, but life is, is growth pace flow, and I now see it as energy flow. And, you know, the I like the, you know, I go back to my, you know, high school physics, which is, a body wants in motion, stand tends to stay in motion. A body wants in motion to sustain motion. A body at rest tends to stay at rest, inertia. So I knew, Okay, this thing’s at rest, right? So there’s going to be a certain amount of effort, dollars, time just to get it moving. What’s the quickest and fastest path to do that? Forget the big game. There’s no end big game if we don’t get the first customers and the first sales and so. So we talked to a lot of customers and focused on a few, and the one that jumped fastest was Trader Joe’s. And they just, they love the brand. It always been a strong brand there, and they can move fast. So boom, we’re on the shelf on Trader Joe’s immediately, right? Other retailers took time, and so would I have loved it to move a lot faster, for sure, but part of this was also understanding the natural, I’d say, flow of a brand, of a category. And I’m sure you’ve seen this countless times, as has other people. You can’t it’s hard to take a brand that’s growing 20, 30% and get it to grow 50, 60% right? If you’re growing 5060, 100% boy, you want to do everything you can to keep that right. And so for us, it was finding what’s the right cadence. And I’ve also learned, when I look back across all of our investing and now we’ve done research on, you know, 1000s of brands in dozens of categories of last 20 or 30 years, it takes time seven to 20 years, right? And so we had to set our expectations that this is going to take time. This is going to take time. We did hope it would be faster. We did hope it would, it would, it would take less money. And that my term for that now is intention with non attachment to the outcome. You got to sometimes watch the flow, right, figure out how to get in the flow. And so, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, right now, I don’t mind sharing this. The brand’s growing by probably about 40 plus percent per year? Yeah, we’re hovering like 35 to 50% that feels about rate or not, right? Would I love it to double? Yeah, but the bigger you get, that’s hard. How much capital would that take? More capital? Is it the right growth? I think a lot about quality of growth that allows the next phase of growth, allows the next phase of growth, right? And you’re absolutely right. The market has changed a ton, so I knew we had to step back and learn. I had to assume I’m not right. You know, surround myself with a lot of people that can challenge me. Because, you know, you step away from a category for a little while, it changes fast.

Kara Goldin 27:17
Yeah, definitely. How do you think about growth and profitability, especially since you’ve had so much experience on the investor side of things and and you you’ve sort of worn multiple hats. How do you think about that as as you start to rebuild this company?

Mark Rampolla 27:36
Yeah, it’s so fascinating to think about Kara, because you know, you and I were launching at a time where it just didn’t seem you didn’t have to make money for at least the early, early years, right? So I don’t love admitting this, but Zico never made money for nine years, and I ran it. I ran, I ran seven businesses before I started Zico, they all made money come hell or high water. We had to make money at the end of the year, paid dividends and pay back investor so, so I had to actually learn to make the trade off of, you know, growth versus profitability. The world changed post covid changed completely. So now we, as a firm, we, we don’t we, we won’t invest in anything that’s not either profitable or with our money has an absolute clear path to profitability. And so that being said, it’s virtually impossible to start from zero and be profitable day one in a in a beverage business distributed this way, right? If you have an 80% margin Ecom Business, maybe. But so we knew there were going to be some losses. And so we have, we have lost money and and, but my, my mantra to the team is we got to stand our own two feet, and so we won’t hit it quite this year. We’ll, we’ll have a next year. We will next year on a run rate basis. We will be profitable, and the business will be profitable from there forward. And that’s that’s tough, but great. What’s been amazing to see is how many, how quickly operators learn. Great operators. I have seen businesses that I’ve seen more profitable businesses in the last year than I’ve ever seen in my life, because people figured it out, or they or, you know, often they die if they don’t,

Kara Goldin 29:24
yeah, definitely. And, and I think it is a trade off too. I see some companies choosing to grow slower, right? I mean, you can go out there and grow, you know, much quicker, but it costs you, right? And then you get further from the profitability and sort of creating that trade off, or, I should say, taking that trade off is such a it’s a big decision. It’s a stressful decision, right? It’s a very stressful decision, and especially when you’re dealing with with investors and and as you’ve. Dealt with in the past wearing your founder hat. I think it’s, you know, it’s, it’s extremely stressful.

Mark Rampolla 30:08
It is. No look, it is. And I have so much compassion for entrepreneurs that are going through this. And at the same time, you know, with my investor hat on, what, what, to me is, the most important thing is alignment, that we, everybody’s looking at this the same way, understands the hypothesis and understands where there’s trade offs right? So, so, for example, I think that, you know, sometimes there’s a window of opportunity where it is worth investing to grow, but more often than not, I think most people, under underestimate the power of time and compounding, right? 20, 25% per year. You know you are tripling, every doubling, every three years, right? So, so that adds up really fast. And so if you can do that efficiently, and then the beauty is, when you start to get the profitability, you get access to this amazing thing called debt, called financing, that all of a sudden is non dilutive ways to grow, right? So, so there’s a lot of it, more available, I think, to founders, than there was in the past. And I think it’s just holding ourselves, yeah, holding everybody to a new standard at the same time, there are businesses that just say, Look, we’re going for it. And if a founder understands the risks and understands that, look, unless you control the company yourself, if you’ve got investors, you know you got to deliver, right? Doesn’t mean you have to deliver to the to the decimal of the growth rate you expected, but yeah, you got to be, you got to be growing if you’re going to invest or there’s going to be consequences.

Kara Goldin 31:46
Yeah, definitely. So I want to get back to your book, so an entrepreneur’s guide to freedom, you talk about the seven steps to living beyond the limits, which I think is, is so spot on. But I’d love for you to either talk about the steps, or what is your favorite

Mark Rampolla 32:06
step? Yeah. Oh, great question. Great question. Oh, boy, that’s all not gonna make me

Kara Goldin 32:12
choose Kara. I know, I know.

Mark Rampolla 32:15
Look, I’ll start or start at the beginning and maybe bounce around a little bit the first step I have some fun with which is, which is called, see and accept reality. You’re not as free as you think, right? There’s this myth like, oh, entrepreneurs, you must be free. You look at them, they’re living their lives, right? She’s got her podcast. He’s doing this. And yet, the reality is, we’re human. We have our struggles, we have our issues. We don’t often even want to share it with each other, ourselves, but we’re held back by limiting beliefs, conditioning, comparison, expectation, seeing and accepting that is the first step to freedom. You got to recognize, you know what? Yeah, I didn’t realize how influenced I was by trying to be him, trying to be her. You know, for me, I realized, yeah, I loved my father, but I can see man in many ways. I was trying to fulfill some of his wife dreams. Right, nothing wrong, nothing nothing to complain about. But can I see it right? The second step is, know own and celebrate yourself. What I find is, by and large, you know, entrepreneurs, investors, people, sort of, it’s as if we have this perfect profile of an entrepreneur, you know, okay, you got to be, you got to be driven, like, compassion. You got to be, you know, really able to get out there, get out there. But also, know, your numbers, right? Like, it’s like, it’s like, tick, tick, tick, tick. You gotta be, you gotta be this perfect model. And I’ve come to see that we talk about internally in ground force as our team and with our companies, a finding and staying in your zone of genius, right? Knowing that, look, if you are, you get energized, you feel fulfilled. You bring value to the company by being out and facing customers and consumers. Let’s get you doing that, right, and let’s figure out how to backfill the other functions. You don’t like that. That’s not your jam. You like to be internal and tinker and do operations. Great. Let’s figure that out, right? Can you know and accept and love that we tend to be so hard on ourselves, right? I didn’t do that. I should have done that. I’m not great at that. If we can learn to celebrate ourselves and know ourselves better, I find that both liberating and a massive unlock for value creation. Yeah, so I’ll I think those are probably my two of my favorite ones, just because they’re so foundational place to start. And then I do get into the third I like as well, which is break free of what’s holding you back. This is sort of recognized, and one of my, one of the little exercises I put people through, is limiting beliefs, right? Oh, my God. I had a million of these, and I still do. I’ll give you one. I still struggle with some. Times? Well, I did okay as an operator, but I didn’t exit like, fill in the blank micro bowl, a, you know, Lance Collins, whatever, in our industry and, and I’m not really a professional investor. I didn’t, I wasn’t an investment banker or a private equity so, so can I really be that great at this job? Right? And I can see that’s a story I’m telling myself. How do I unwind that and reprogram myself in a way that tells a different story, right? And what, what kind of outcome could that lead to? So those are, those are a couple of steps that I, that I that I love, I

Kara Goldin 35:37
love it. Do you so do you have to have sold a company to follow these seven steps, or can you be in the middle of being an entrepreneur and follow the the wisdom that that you’ve shared in this book?

Mark Rampolla 35:55
Thanks for asking that. Kara, that’s a great question. The simple edge is absolutely, if anything, it’s written for the person that’s in the midst of it, in the muck, right? Because that’s the place where we get so trapped on is it right? Is it wrong? Am I doing this? Am I not doing that? That’s where I find that people get most stuck. I think it’s, it’s it is also relevant for the exit. It’s also, I think, relevant for people that are considering and are still in the fantasy and romance side of starting a business. I also wrote it with the intention of helping partners and romantic partners, business partners, people that are trying to understand the entrepreneurial journey. And I certainly think it has applications even outside of entrepreneurs. But but it’s mainly written because I see this all the time with entrepreneurs, but the reality is, we’re all. We all tell ourselves these stories. We all get trapped by our conditioning. And I think we all could benefit from a fresh look at who are we? How do we want to live this one beautiful, amazing life as our life

Kara Goldin 36:58
definitely so you lost your house in the LA fires. I’m so sorry you and I were actually going to do a podcast, I think the morning of I mean, it was, remember that crazy, right? And so how do you feel that that has changed your outlook. And I’ll ask it this way too, because I think all of us go through some point in our lives that maybe we don’t choose, right? We they just feel like, boom, and it’s negative, negative energy. It’s, yeah, right? I mean, you had a lot of stuff destroy. How do you pick yourself back up? And, you know, I mean, that’s freedom, right, being able to not be stuck, not be angry. I mean, you had to deal with some sugar insurance adjusters and, you know, and all this loss and memories and all of these things like, what do you do? How do you do it at that point, to sort of keep moving forward and kind of get out of the negative energy and into the positive. Is there any tricks that you’ve learned?

Mark Rampolla 38:12
Yep, I’ll give you a couple hacks. And you know, it’s interesting, Kara, as you were saying that it I noticed it stirred some things up in me, right? And I’ll talk about, talk about that, because it’s a, it’s a powerful question, and, and I think the, I think the the context I’d give is that, you know, you’re right. We all go through these things in life, and, and so this model of freedom, like make a ton of money, sell your business, have all the time in the world, and then you have freedom that’s worthless to me, because I live in the real world, right? Like, yes, I got some money in the bike, but I still have relationship challenges and kids that I’m worried about, and business and and I lost my house, right? So it was a beautiful opportunity for me to actually eat my own cooking and apply some of you know the the lessons that I, that I’ve written about, because I’d written most of the book by then, not the final chapter, interestingly, but for me, what I what I learned was, I think in the past, I know my tendency, which a lot of entrepreneurs had, put your head down and plow forward, do, do, do, do, don’t feel just just mental processing to get, get get shit done. I know that tendency in me, and I’ve trained myself to feel all the feelings, to actually reconnect with my emotions. And you know what? It stunk. You’re right. I had to feel anger and sadness and fear and blame and shame and and it was, it was tough, but I but I think in the past, not feeling those emotions, they go somewhere. They’re there. They’re there. I’ve learned to process them, and I’ve learned they’re just feeling they pass. May take a day, may take a month, may take a year, but they pass. Yeah. So I didn’t I didn’t ignore them, and I saw it all as an opportunity to learn what is it like to feel loneliness, sadness, anger, and really feel it. So that was one that wound up being surprisingly liberating. Is the just allow the experience to happen. Another was I write about this, and we actually use this a lot in our investment firm, and I use this all the time during that period, and I still do, can I tell what’s the story I’m telling myself? Am I certain it’s true? What if the opposite were true? And in this case, the story was, oh, this is terrible. This is one of the worst things ever happened for me, to me, and this is going to be, I don’t know where I’m going to live, and then, right? And I’m on the I’m in drama, I mean, complete trauma. Am I 100% certain this is the worst thing that’s ever happened for me? Can I be 100% certain now I can’t be. I can’t that. Even that little possibility allows for me to say, what if this is happening for me, not to me. How might that be possible? Hmm. And it started to allow me to say, Huh. You know, I thought I loved the Palisades, and I thought I loved this house, and I did. Could it be that there’s something even better? Could it be that I need to turn I was putting a lot of time and attention to building out that house and making it beautiful and plants and artwork? Could it be I need to put that time and attention in ground force, in my companies, on this book, in my relationships? And I started to open up to that possibility, and just that little possibility changed. Everything changed. Everything didn’t mean I didn’t feel sadness. Didn’t mean it’s a pain in the ass to deal with insurance, it’s a pain. I moved six times in three months, right? Didn’t mean I have to deal with getting, like, I clothing. I’m borrowing clothing from people. I’m go, like, do I order? Like, it’s all pain in the ass, but I could go through it and with a perspective of feel all the feelings. I also developed a rigorous process of meditate, no drinking, good health, workout, you know, work, coaching, therapy, but also this process of, huh, how might this be happening for me,

Kara Goldin 42:22
that’s no that’s such a it’s such a great way to look at it so well. Thank you so much Mark for sharing this. Everyone needs to pick up a copy of the an entrepreneur’s guide to freedom. So, so good. So thank you for doing this and for writing it. It’s really, really great. I can’t wait to see all you’re going to do next with Zico and with ground force capital, and also just with the book. I think there is a lot of people that are going to be helped by your journey, right? I think you being so honest about it, I think is a really good thing.

Mark Rampolla 43:03
Thank you so much. That means the world to me. If it can be helpful to any one person on this journey, then it’s it’s worthwhile to me. So thank you.

Kara Goldin 43:11
That’s awesome. Well, thank you again, and thanks everyone for listening. A goodbye for now. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

Click to subscribe:

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen OnApple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Listen OnSpotify
Listen on Overcast
Listen OnOvercast
Listen on PlayerFM
Listen OnPlayerFM

People Also Liked

751

Deborah Pagani: Founder of Deborah Pagani Beauty

750

Angela Caglia: Founder & CEO of Angela Caglia Skincare

749

Doss Cunningham: Chairman & CEO of Nutrabolt

748

Cheree Ashley: Founder & CEO of Osier

747

Lauren Gropper, Founder and CEO of Repurpose