2450 - Building Entrepreneurial Freedom Through Strategic Leadership with Mark Rampolla

0:03Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you're committed to growing your business by serving audiences with generosity and real expertise, you're in the right place. This is a daily 15-minute show featuring leaders who believe real impact comes from generosity, not hype, which means as a listener, you're going to get the good stuff. In fact, we created podverified.com to give thoughtful leaders like you free tools to show up better on podcast stages like this one. That includes your free podverified score, free podverified guest training, a free media kit builder, and so much more. It's the first ecosystem of its kind built by podcasters who genuinely want to help guests thrive and grow in podcasting.

0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it.

1:20of Freedom. And you are found on the web at both groundforcecapital.com and markrampolla.co, which to our friend that's listening, we've got everything all linked up in the show notes so you could follow along. Mark, it's so great to have you. Thank you, Josh. It's great to be here. I'm a fan of your show. I really love your material and your mission. And so it's an honor to be here. I'm a fan of your product. I'm a fan of the work that you're doing. And I'm a fan of a lot of the of a lot of the causes that you support. And before we talk about that, I always love hearing from leaders what they're doing for fun when they're not at work or kind of what they're geeking out on or into.

2:01And so what have you been doing when you're not toiling away? Oh, boy. You know, I've got a lot of outside interests, but the one that really comes to mind for me right now is I'm heading to France in a couple of weeks and I am diving back into French. and so I speak Spanish and and I studied French a while ago but I just I felt I felt the urge you having that reason to go there what's fun now is I'm reading I'm watching TV shows and I'm using AI so I'm having AI talk to me in French and I'm able to kind of now I know how I learn and I can use how I learn I used to try to you know take courses and do all this you know even Duolingo but I need multiple ways of learning and absorbing.

2:46So I'm kind of geeking out on, on, on learning the language again. So, so that it doesn't get boring. And so you and I were just talking briefly about this. I committed to, cause I wanted to see, you know, you know, what one solid 365 days of Duolingo Espanol would do for me. It was okay. But it felt like, you know, even as like as good as they are at provoking you to maintain your streak, it did start feeling like a grind. And I'm not sure that I really progressed as well as maybe if I were doing maybe a little more of a multi-pronged approach. Do you mind maybe sharing just a little bit more about when you say that you're using AI, what do you do?

3:34Yeah, wow. Well, look, this for me is not just outside of work, but it is in work. I have finally begun to really know and accept myself, how I learn, how I operate versus trying to be someone I'm not. So when I, years ago, when I first learned Spanish, I thought, well, I took three years of high school Spanish. I thought I was an idiot because I learned nothing. And then I realized that, oh, I don't learn that way. Right. And honestly, it's the same in business is the more I find that I myself can understand how I learn. So one of the things I've geeked out on as well is I've been really deep into Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Strength Finders, all these personality assessments for years.

4:20Well, now I am geeking out in AI, plugging all of that in and actually developing a tool that eventually I'm going to roll out and bring to entrepreneurs and leaders I work with. that basically helps me remember how I learn, how I operate. Because to your point, Josh, we all beat up on ourselves. Oh, I didn't do this. Maybe if I did that, maybe Josh just needs to learn in a different way. So for me, what I know is I'm watching some French TV show, right? It's on in the background. I'm listening to music. I'll get news in French. and then I will have I will just all day long sort of ask AI some questions and have it respond to me in French and why do I say this again and is this right so I need multiple inputs to learn and here's the other thing I'll tell you as well is I got over the fear I know I have the fear a lot of us do of sounding like idiots I've learned to deal with the fear because what do I really want.

5:22I want to learn. So when I go there, I talk, I ask questions and I'm comfortable sounding like an idiot. Yeah. Because that's true in business and life, right? We're all learning. We're taking the pressure off. I got to get somewhere. It's got to be perfect. I'm going to mess up. I'm going to make a mistake. I'll laugh. Hopefully people will laugh and I'll get a little bit better, a little bit better. That's really interesting. I love that concept because I've heard this, you know, that a lot of times, you know, we make our biggest moves forward in learning and a lot of things when we're in that band of discomfort or slight discomfort pushes us just slightly beyond what we're competent at.

6:05But I think what I like about what you just said there is that doesn't mean that you have to be uncomfortable there. You can be comfortable in that discomfort because you recognize that that's where growth is happening. And I think you're right. I think a lot of us, you know, you know, the biggest reason we're uncomfortable is because we feel, you know, we feel like a dummy. And one of the things I think there's two words to that. The first one is feel. And one of the one of the things I came to realize is I like I think a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders bought into this age old mindset, that there's no place for emotion in business, right?

6:47I run, you know, I'm invested in companies that are 50 to 200 million in revenue, right? Serious boards of director. We're investing 20 to$50 million. You know what I do in our investment committee every week? What I do in board meetings? I talk about feelings because they're there. We're human. You can't deny them. It doesn't mean you make decisions on them, but you ignore them at our own peril. So I encourage entrepreneurs, leaders I work with, feel them learn to feel all the feelings and if you feel like an idiot okay interesting how do you just accept that that's just reality right we all have it this is the other thing i spend a lot of time with the leaders i work with is oh you think you're alone oh yeah right let me tell you that's so adorable everybody thinks that every great leader imposter syndrome doesn't exist if you're not successful.

7:40And it's a part of the course. What I find though, is that it's like you mentioned, when growth gets hard, we, we, we don't know when it is, right? It's at 30, it's at 40, it's at 50. It's when the company's at 5 million, 10 million, 20 million, 5 million, five people, 20 people. At some point in time, everybody goes through a journey when growth gets hard. My term for it is in the, in the, in the business world is founder puberty. And I don't care if you're 20 or 50, I've gone through it at least three times. Zico 1.0, Ground Force, and we bought Zico back. In my late 40s, I wound up in Founder Puberty again, where I got to grow up and learn that.

8:21Oh, yeah, I learned the way I learn. I have the tendencies. I have the habits. What served me in the past may not serve me going forward. How do I learn how to learn? How do I get comfortable with discomfort? And there are actually ways to do that. Well, it's like looking at the tape of a sport that you're in or you were playing and you're like, listen, when it was crunch time, that's when I made the biggest moves forward. Because I did that, I was able to experience that. So again, it's kind of the same thing. It's like, what did I do during the discomfort period? Did I keep on trudging forward?

9:00Well, yeah, those are the moments. You know, and so I think one thing that I've done is I said, well, you know, this part sucks right now. You know, the messy middle, you know, I think, which might be a term that related to a little bit of what you're talking about. Messy middle sucks in business. It just really does. And I'll let you maybe illustrate like how you describe there, how you see that. But what I had to remind, because, you know, again, just like you, like, you know, with launching PodVerified, you know, our product here, man, right back in it. And, you know, what I had to remind myself is I said, listen, future Josh is going to be really proud of today, Josh, right now.

9:39And, yeah, it does suck right now. And you're worried and you're not sure if this thing's going to work out. But, you know, if you'll just stay the course, you will look back at the pressure and the pain, the sacrifice, some of the sacrifices of relationships and stuff that happened along the way. That was hard stuff. But that's part of the story. And I'm certain that that's part of your Zico story. Oh, absolutely. Look, it was, there was, you know, it's easy to look back and tell the story. Oh, you know, I started, built it over nine years, sold it to Coca-Cola for a big, for a big number. Isn't that amazing, right?

10:15But the reality is that there was a five-year journey, five years, where we were virtually bankrupt the entire time. We were running out of money, where I wasn't sure if we're going to pay our credit card bills, you know, afford our lifestyle. And it was a constant drain. It was. And what I, what I, looking back, I realized absolutely those were some of the most critical decisions I made at that time. The difference is though, what I, what I see now is like, I'm back in it, right? We bought Zico again. I'm still in the grind. I'm still deep with working with a lot of companies. the difference now is and this is what i help myself and help other leaders look at is be aware of it ah that's just the phase right and we tend to say this is good this is bad right it's bad that i'm running out of business out of money right you know i certainly understand that logic i understand that i'm struggling and working so hard what i encourage people to ask is just what's the story, write down, what's the story I'm telling myself?

11:22This is bad. Okay, then ask yourself, are you 100 % certain? How could the opposite be true? Now, you jumped ahead and got there, which is, how could it be true that this is the best thing for you? Not only the results, but the learning, the struggles, how could those actually be the way to unlock something in you that you've been avoiding for years, something that you've been afraid of confronting for years. In Zico, I saw my fear of failure was actually holding me back from making a lot of decisions that could have resulted in an even better result. They held me back from allowing people on my team to play a role.

12:07And instead, I was trying to control everything. Now I see, my God, I actually get better outcome many times when I stay out of the way. It's painful to realize that. That stirs up its own feelings. But by playing and testing and learning, you get to learn these things. I suspect that this is a significant part, Mark, of your book, An Entrepreneur's Guide to Freedom. And this is on your website, markrampola.com. The subtext here is, or the subtitle, Seven Steps to Living Beyond Limits. Would you mind, you don't have to go through all seven if you don't want to, or if there's any aspect of that you want to address, I guess, just a quick executive summary of the book and who this is for.

12:53Look, it says it's for entrepreneurs, which is true, but it's really for anybody in leadership at all. The reason I wrote the book and the big realization that I had is I bought into a myth as an entrepreneur, have a big idea, work really hard, do whatever it takes, you know, five years, 10 years, whatever, make a pile of money, and then I'll be free. Then I won. Like, life is good. I'm off to the race. You know, the rest of life, I'm going to coach. It's perfect. Well, I did that, right? I built the business, grew it, grinded away, sold it to Coca-Cola, had millions in the bank, beautiful beach house, never had to work again.

13:30And I found myself not really feeling free, feeling trapped by the same things that held me back all along the way. The fears, the insecurities, the stories, the comparison. And I decided, man, there's got to be a different way. And when I started to talk to more and more entrepreneurs, I would tell them things like, oh yeah, I pretty much buried all my emotion for nine years. What I'd hear them say is, oh God, me too. And I started to went, does it have to be that way? Is there another way? So I went on about a seven-year journey rediscovering how do i build again i want more success i want more money i want more impact how do i do that without compromising freedom how do i work really hard do what needs to be done but do it from a place of freedom is that even possible so this is about that journey for me and what i do is share this these steps for other other leaders because it It turns out there's quite a bit of skills and tools one can use to reshape one's mindset, right?

14:38It's easy to say, well, like, you know, be curious, have an open mindset. But how? When you're grinding away and stuck in the weeds and you've been doing this for 10 years, like how? So what I, this book is about is the how. How to build the mindset, build the tools and the skills that allow one to go for your big ambition and feel freedom, which is a big part of the underlying goal for most entrepreneurs all along the way, not just waiting till the end. Yeah. You know, Mark, I, you know, I know we touched on this a little bit about your background with Zico. I'd just love to hear, you know, how the acquiring the brand back.

15:21I think my suspicion is that, you know, Coca-Cola largely just saw this is kind of just part of their portfolio. And, you know, what little I do know about the story is, you know, that, you know, again, sometimes large corporations kind of, I don't want to say water things down because I don't want to imply that they did that literally. But I'd love your take on, you know, kind of the story. Yeah, so we, you know, Zico was at one point the fastest growing beverage in the country and we were doubling every year for years. And it was clear that this was going to become a big category. Borisso. Coca-Cola took an interest.

15:58That was actually my dream from the beginning was to sell to them. So I was thrilled. I thought, hey, let them go build something healthy. Talk about making an impact. Imagine if Coca-Cola is selling something healthy around the world. Let them make billions on that. I made money. My investors made money. That journey was done for me.

16:22So I Strategics have to focus on their core. Coke, to your point, it's part of the portfolio. They weren't giving it the attention it needed. It grew, but it didn't grow to be as big as it could have been. So they basically decided to shut down or sell off every brand under a billion globally. They sold off 200 brands. Zika was going out in the trench. By this point, I have an investment firm, Ground Force Capital. I've got my own money. I've got partners' monies in that. and we decided to look at it and see okay does it make sense to buy this back so we bought it um and and you know we bought it for a fraction of what i sold it for oh my gosh and we're now we're now building it back because the coconut water is the the fastest growing beverage category in the u.s today zico did have a 30 share that 30 share would be a you know five four to five hundred million dollar business today and and so that's our that's what we're shooting for but what's interesting now is i'm doing it very differently i'm doing it much more consciously much more aware and i'm not waiting for that feeling of success and freedom and and so we are building it to last forever while also I personally figuring out how do I do what I need to do to build the brand but also have the life I want and that doesn't it isn't just about balance and free time it's about the I love the entrepreneurial journey right I do but I'm not going to wait to feel that sense of satisfaction, success, and freedom that after dealing with, we talked to a thousand entrepreneurs a year.

18:15They're all in some form or fashion trapped in this, like wanting to have this big success, but being trapped by the very business that they built to deliver freedom. That makes sense. Yeah. Mark, at your website, markrampola.co, you are, and I'm not sure if this is still open by the time this episode publishes, but it's called the founder to CEO sprint to our friend that's listening right now. I would just go to mark rampola.com and or.co and see if it's available. Do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about this? And, and I know you've got some other resources here as well. I love this.

18:53You've got this it's called a freedom toolkit, seven videos, seven tools you can use today. It's all accessible. You can click and you can start watching these right now. You teaching in a studio. It's great stuff. But I'm sorry, share just a little bit about the sprint that you're running. Yeah, sure. You know, what I've realized in the last number of years is, again, talking about 1 ,000 entrepreneurs a year, we only invest in about two to three. But I see the same pattern, whether it's, you know, they're 25 or 55, whether they have multiple-time founders and successful exits or not, businesses that are a couple million up to, you know, even a couple hundred million.

19:34Same pattern shows up. What got an entrepreneur where they are, a founder where they are, is very unlikely to be the things that get them where they want to go. And at the end of the day, what we invest in is a great business. We love the back of founder, but we also need the back of CEO. And although a lot of people might have the title founder, CEO, it's a very different mindset, skill set, tool set that mostly starts inside. It's easy to point at the business, the market, the margin, the team, all that's known, all that's well studied. What most people don't do is look inward. And so I found that my greatest success and joy in learning has come from going inward.

20:20And I spent a lot of time with the founders, leaders, CEOs I work with doing that, I wanted to bring that to others because I see people suffering. And I think there's some really simple ways to take life a little bit lighter, get to know ourselves a little bit better, approach our lives with compassion and joy and love, not just grind. It doesn't mean that you got to grind when you got to grind, but there's a way. And so that's what I'm trying to do is provide these leaders that feel alone, right? It's lonely at the top. They don't have a lot of people they can talk to. So I'm taking 20 people, only 20 people, because I want to go deep with them that are ready to break through.

21:00And it's got to be probably minimum 5 million revenue companies, real companies, real leaders that are stuck and want to break through. And I'm going to take them over 90 days through deep, deep inner learning tools, techniques with the goal of helping them break through to get the results they want, make the impact they want, but also have the lives they want. One last thing I just want to mention here, because you and I both love our library system in the United States here and throughout the world, our libraries. growing up, you know, poor working class, you know, Midwest. And, you know, we didn't have money to do anything other than, you know, just, you know, kind of get by and have enough food to eat.

21:50But boy, did we use the library. And, you know, on a weekly basis, you know, my mom would take us, I would just get a stack of books, and, you know, became a lifelong learner, because it was just so normalized and we had those resources mark today there's so much else that that competes uh for the for the minds of of americans young and old or you know folks young and old uh and not all of that information is necessarily healthy or helpful uh you know a lot of social media does carry quite a drag on our young people in particular. And so I'm just so grateful, you know, that I got to learn as much as I did through books.

22:38You mind maybe just sharing a little bit about your partnership with Worthy Books? And by the way, to our friend that's listening, worthybooks.org. Please go check them out. Mark, I'd love your take on that. Well, look, Josh, I love hearing that. I had the same experience. You know, I spent a lot of time in libraries as a kid and loved it and my entire my entire life in fact i'll tell you the vast majority of what became zico along the entire way and both books i wrote a high-hanging fruit around zico and then off course guide for freedom i wrote in libraries because it's just a beautiful space it's wonderfully around i could do the research and read i would turn off my phone no computer books paper and pen and so I you know in a digital age I wrote a physical book because I think there's something special about that and I've partnered with Worthy and I've given away thousands of books that go to libraries and and it's just because I do believe in that and I think about you know most of the audience that I'm going to reach people that can afford to take this course people that are listening to their show, you know, they're fortunate and they can buy books, they can listen to podcasts, they can do all that.

23:53How many people can't? And out there, there are thousands of budding entrepreneurs or one-apreneurs or people that don't even know that that might be. And I don't care if it's business or social impact or whatever it is. If I can play role in one kid's life, oh my God, I'll have served my purpose because I stand on the shoulders of giants. I get a list of thousand books that have changed my life. I love it. Mark, your website, markrampolla.co. And of course we've mentioned groundforcecapital.com, but to our friend that's listening, where are their next steps if they want to take advantage of some of the resources that put together i would say go to mark rampola.co it's a great place to start there's an ebook there so i turned although i love the physical books i also turned a lot of what i've written into a very simple downloadable ebook start there that that's easy it's free it's available then there are these videos that you mentioned josh for some of these tools poke around learn a little bit start with the ebook look at some of the tools if that course is interesting i welcome application.

25:03It is going to be application only, but that you could, you could basically get everything you want free online in that website, just for me to spend my time on it. I'm going to ask people to pay for that, but the rest of the material is all there for free. Poke around, learn, test. And I'd love to hear from people as well. What works, what doesn't work, what's your experience in your own journey towards freedom. Mark Rampolla, co-founder and managing partner at Ground Force Capital. Your book is An Entrepreneur's Guide to Freedom. That plus the free ebook that you mentioned is called The Founder to CEO Playbook.

25:43Seven shifts that take you from scrappy founder to strategic CEO plus other resources are all available at markrampolla.co. Mark, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Josh.

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