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

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where 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. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can 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. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kira Golden Show.

0:44Kara Goldin:Today's guest is someone who has shaken up many industries, 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 founder. He has always been a founder now, a longtime 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 the book and absolutely love it. It is so spot on.

1:33Kara Goldin: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 hundred 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.

2:19Kara Goldin: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 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. Thanks, Kara. Thanks so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of your show, like so many in the industry and around the world. So it's a real honor to be here.

3:01And yeah, in part because, look, you were 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 a model of freedom. So I love the opportunity to be here with you. Thank you.

3:17Kara Goldin: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? 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, A High Hanging Fruit, which helped me sort of process it and understand that. This book came about because I'd say maybe about six or seven years ago, I hit some pretty serious walls in my life and some barriers and some hurdles.

4:04and when I look back, 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, 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 does it look like?

4:47What 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.

5:29We 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.

5:37Kara Goldin:I'd love for you to take people back to those early days when we first met with Zico. 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. When I look back, my background quickly for listeners was I grew up in Pittsburgh, a college in Midwest. Then I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America. 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. I left that corporate job to start Zika.

6:15I was all excited, thought I had this big idea. I knew nothing about beverage, There's nothing about consumer products. And I'd quit my job, moved with my young family, my then wife, Maura, and our two little girls, you remember, and dove into New York to try to build this thing. And the 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. But when we and I knew each other, we were both just first met each other.

7:00We were both just grinding it out. But I certainly was doing my best in some ways to just survive along with grow.

7:08Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. And what would you say was sort of the point? I guess it was mid-2000s. you know, nobody in the U.S. 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 crazy. 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?

8:00Because they happen, the question is how you manage them. But yeah, it was hour by hour, right? And yeah, you're right. I'm very comfortable acknowledging, and the phrase 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 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 to your point, both of us, us and Vitacoco, running around, sampling, battling for shelf space, battling for distributors.

8:41It was additional capital, additional time, additional effort that helped build the category for sure. So as much as I hated Mike Kerbin and Vito was my arch enemy, 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, Zico would not have become what it became in Vitacoco, 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 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.

9:29Kara Goldin:Yeah, 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, was it like, or was it like, oh my gosh, can you explain like that moment that day? 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.

10:15And 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 then. 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 a minority investor in 2009, the race became build at the south, not build at the 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. If they walk away, you know what happens in most industries and And certainly in the food and beverage industry, people are like, well, what's wrong?

10:59What's wrong with Rampolla? 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, 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. 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 no, it was a relief to be done.

11:43It was a relief to be done.

11:44Kara Goldin:And you didn't stay involved with Coke, right? I didn't stay an hour. So I knew I didn't want to work with Coke and I respected them. Good people. I had an internship 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 they bought it on sort of a path where it seemed to make sense. I went to one of the senior most people that I was dealing with and told him, 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.

12:27You'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 a founder. And I said, yeah, that's where you're wrong. Because 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 now they're more invested, more engaged with the brand than ever, which I think helped. And so once the deal was structured, literally the morning I announced to my team, the company is sold.

13:11I say, and by the way, I'm leaving. I had maybe a two-year, I can't remember, kind of no-show consulting agreement. And I was done. I was done. And 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 worked for me at the time. It's what they wanted. And I was happy to move on. Of course, I wanted to see Zico succeed, but I was okay letting it go.

13:40Kara Goldin: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? Sure. Look, I'd say for the first probably year, maybe two, I did in a adolescent way. 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 some of them looked like there 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.

14:29I drank a lot and I had 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 I wound up following all these shiny objects all over the place. And I quickly wound up busy as ever, not really focused. And like I mentioned, had problems with my health because I just wasn't taking care of myself. And I also can see with all the love and compassion in the world for both of us, Maura 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.

15:22And 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 great. People thought we were the couple that was 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 of 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 sell Zico. I hadn't built my next phase plan.

16:00Kara Goldin: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 made tens of millions, hundreds of millions or billions, I often hear the story behind closed doors in private. Oh man, I'm still trying to figure out 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. Yeah. I love how you talk about it in the book. It's great. So years later, you bought Zico back.

16:52Kara Goldin:So how many years later was that first? Boy, let's see. That would have been seven years later. Sevens. It's an interesting number for time and other things. 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. 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?

17:39We 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 an independent spirit. My job is to escort it through the world, into the world. It got into the Harvard of the beverage industry, Coca-Cola, my work is done, right? So I went in peace and allowed Zico 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.

18:18Well, fast forward seven years, we had formed what was first called Power Plant Partners and then became Ground Force Capital. We now have a couple hundred million at the time under management. Now we're 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?

18:57So taking going to 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. 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.

19:44But the decision was clear. It was already a billion plus category growing fast. One competitor with 50 % share. Zico had been a$150 million brand that we could buy for 2 % of the original sale price. Now we had to put a lot of capital in to grow it back, 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 the 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 sweating the day-to-day. Chris Galant, that CEO, is doing a fantastic job of that.

20:24Kara Goldin:That's awesome. But you were still at Geyser a few weeks ago, 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 it? How different is it now? I mean, 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 in many ways. Carrie, you nailed it because look, we, you know, some of your, yeah, most of your listeners that are in operations will get this. We bought the brand, not the business.

21:08So by the time we took over the brand, we closed the deal December 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. but we sold it. We had 25%. Coke had lost share for seven years, but it went from 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.

21:58We'll take it back tomorrow. But in six months, we went back to them and they said, oh yeah, that shelf space has been filled and the category's 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 a, not a massive fund. So we had to go outside and raise money.

22:31So here I am raising money for Zico again, which I did for nine years nonstop, right? That stirred up a lot of insecurities, a lot of, why am I doing this again? But you work through it, 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 endure forever.

23:11Whether we own it, we sell it, somebody buys it, whatever, it's being built to last.

23:16Kara Goldin:And so when you look at, you know, you're coming in to the company. You know the brand and you know what its potential is, but you're the underdog again, right? 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 name of the game and just keep doing it and keep building? Or how do you think about the overall business today? 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 growth, pace, flow.

24:18And I now see it as energy flow. And I go back to my high school physics, which is a body wants in motion, tends to stay in motion. A body wants in motion, tends to stay in 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 big game if we don't get the first customers and the first sales. And so we talked to a lot of customers and focused on a few. And the one that jumped fastest was Trader Joe's.

25:06And they just, they love the brand. It had always been a strong brand there and they can move fast. So boom, we're on the shelf in 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 other people. It's hard to take a brand that's growing 20%, 30 % and get it to grow 50%, 60%, right? If you're growing 50%, 60%, 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.

25:48And I've also learned when I look back across all of our investing, and now we've done research on thousands of brands in dozens of categories of the 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, right now, I don't mind sharing this.