Why Most Brands Fail and How to Build One That Wins With Mark Rampolla

Mark Rampolla is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of GroundForce Capital, a private equity firm that invests in and supports purpose-driven consumer brands focused on health, wellness, and sustainability. He is a visionary entrepreneur and investor who works closely with founders to scale impactful businesses and build enduring companies. Mark is also the Founder and former CEO of ZICO Coconut Water, having pioneered the global coconut water category and led the company through its acquisition by The Coca-Cola Company. He later reacquired ZICO and continues to play a leadership role in shaping its growth and strategy.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [6:18] Mark Rampolla explains early market testing and discovering product-market fit
• [10:52] Importance of focusing on a core product over expanding flavors
• [14:42] How packaging and branding help products stand out on crowded shelves
• [19:01] What made Liquid Death a standout investment opportunity early on
• [21:53] Key red flags and green flags when evaluating founders and brands
• [28:24] How Mark strategically positioned ZICO for acquisition by Coca-Cola
• [34:17] The harsh realities and low success rates in the beverage industry
• [40:14] Why redefining success beyond money is key to entrepreneurial freedom

In this episode…

Why do so many promising brands fail while a select few break through and dominate their category? Is it luck, timing, or something far more intentional behind the scenes? What separates fleeting trends from enduring, billion-dollar brands?

Mark Rampolla, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor behind multiple high-growth consumer brands, explains that success comes down to disciplined focus and starting with a deeply defined niche. He emphasizes that most companies spread themselves too thin too early, while winning brands double down on what works and build loyal followings before expanding. This approach strengthens product-market fit and creates momentum that fuels scalable growth. He also underscores the importance of self-awareness and adaptability in founders, noting that understanding one’s strengths and limitations is critical to long-term success.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Mark Rampolla, Co-founder and Managing Partner of GroundForce Capital, to discuss why most brands fail and how to build one that wins. They explore the power of niche market entry, the importance of product discipline, and how to identify winning consumer brands. Mark also shares advice on redefining success beyond financial outcomes.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Mark Rampolla Website | LinkedIn
• GroundForce Capital
• ZICO Rising
• High-Hanging Fruit: Build Something Great by Going Where No One Else Will by Mark Rampolla
• An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom: Seven Steps to Living Beyond Limits by Mark Rampolla
• Righteous Felon
• Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet by Jesse Itzler
• Living with the Monks: What Turning Off My Phone Taught Me about Happiness, Gratitude, and Focus by Jesse Itzler

Special mentions:

• Mike Cessario on LinkedIn
• Brendan Cawley on LinkedIn
• Christopher Gallant on LinkedIn
• Jesse Itzler on LinkedIn
• Jack Belsito on LinkedIn
• Robert M. Amen on Wikipedia

Related episodes:

• “[Protein Bar Series] How To Start From Scratch With a Food Product Business with Peter Rahal Founder of RxBar” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Protein Bar Series] Growing a Brain and Body Nutrition Company With Will Nitze” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Beverage Series] Mastering The Ancient Art of Jun Kombucha with Holly Lyman, Founder of Wild Tonic” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet and Snack Show Series] Creating a Positive Impact with Rob Nelson Founder of Big League Chew” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Every business that I could find started with a niche.”
• “The longer you can stay focused, the deeper and more narrow you can be.”
• “Innovation is easy relative to staying disciplined in building what you have.”
• “You can’t control the outcome. All you can control is your action.”
• “As soon as your freedom becomes contingent on money, you haven’t won.”

Action steps:

1. Start with a clearly defined niche market: Focusing on a specific audience helps establish strong product-market fit and early brand loyalty.
2. Limit product variations and stay disciplined: Reducing unnecessary SKUs prevents resource dilution and strengthens brand clarity and operational efficiency.
3. Test your product with real consumers early: Gathering direct feedback allows you to identify what resonates and refine your positioning quickly.
4. Prioritize packaging and branding differentiation: Standing out on the shelf increases visibility and drives initial consumer interest and trial.
5. Develop self-awareness as a founder: Understanding your strengths and limitations improves decision-making and helps build a stronger, more effective team.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Mark Rampolla of GroundForce Capital. You can check him out at GroundForceCapital.com. You can also check out his personal site at MarkRampolla.co, where he has a book and we’re going to talk about.

I mean, I’m going to formally introduce you, Mark, of course, but I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out since Mark, you know, built and sold ZICO coconut water to Coca-Cola, which we’ll get into the details a little bit. I like to have some of my favorite brands on here. I love ZICO and actually underrated ZICO flavor was chocolate for me. Actually, I saw it. I’m like, I gotta try it. It’s actually delicious. One of my favorites. My kids like it too.

The founder of RxBar was a good interview. IQBAR, which I probably eat two a day of those. Wild Tonic Kombucha is one of my favorite kombucha. I had the founder of Big League Chew and Smart Sweets. And you could check those interviews out.

Mark, what are some of your favorite brands? Obviously, ZICO and I know that GroundForce Capital, you have some of my favorite brands on there too. I don’t know if it’s pronounced Owyn. Owyn. Owyn, I have that protein powder. I drink the ready to drink protein. Ripple’s one of my favorites. Also, you know, what are some of your favorite companies and brands maybe that you personally consume out there?

Mark Rampolla: 01:48

Yeah, yeah. So first of all, it’s great to be here, Jeremy. I’m a fan of your show. And I do think you’ve had some great, great interviews. So I’m honored to be here for sure.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:58

And hum. I have to mention I like Humm kombucha.

Mark Rampolla: 02:01

That’s what I was going to mention. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a, that’s a great one. So that’s a company we own, we own as well. And yeah, I mean, I love all of our brands like I love my children. So it’s hard to pick a favorite there.

You know, what comes to mind for me? What we don’t have in our portfolio that I consume every day is matcha. And I, I happen to consume a company. I don’t even think it’s it. We could invest in it because it’s a Japanese company called Ayia. I think it is a y i a something like that, but just a super high quality ceremonial grade matcha that I have every morning, every morning.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:40

I guess you just come up with the ZICO matcha flavor or Humm matcha flavor or something.

Mark Rampolla: 02:44

I’ll get into that. When we talk about chocolate, I’ll get into that. The simple answer is we could. But what I’ve learned is, boy, discipline and focus. And so yes, we could, but it’s probably, you know, what could it be even better if we don’t innovate? And that’s one of the things I’ll talk about that we’ve learned and we see across all of our brands. Innovation is easy relative to staying disciplined in building what you have.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:15

We’re going to get into that. I’m going to formally introduce you and then we’ll just jump into it.

Also, before I do, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect their dream partnerships, relationships. We do that in a couple ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability and the full execution production. We’re also an easy button for a company’s gifting. So if you want to stay top of mind for clients, partners, prospects, it could be for staff from a culture perspective, just send us the addresses, we do everything else. And Mark, we’re not saying like chotchkies, I like to send food. So like some of these brands on there, like we curate different items and we send out food every couple months for years to come. And so everyone at least I like getting food in the mail personally.

So for me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way than to profile the companies I admire in the podcast and sending them sweet treats in the mail. So check out Rise25.com or email [email protected].

Formally, I want to introduce Mark Rampolla. He’s co-founder and managing partner of GroundForce Capital. It’s a $600 million investment firm that backs better-for-you brands. We’re talking Liquid Death, bobbie baby. We’re looking at you know, Humm which I mentioned. ZICO, of course. We’re looking at Owyn, Beyond Meat and Ripple and on and on. These are all brands like I like the better-for-you brands. He previously I mentioned was founder of ZICO Coconut Water, which he sold to Coca-Cola for over $200 million. And then he bought it back and now he’s scaling it to be even bigger.

He’s also the author of two books, High-Hanging Fruit and also An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom, redefining what it truly means to succeed and live. And Mark, whenever I can buy a book for $3 on Audible of someone’s life, experience their trials and tribulations, it’s a steal. So I recommend everyone go to Audible and check out An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom: Seven Steps to Living Beyond Limits. It’s great. So Mark, thanks for joining me.

Mark Rampolla: 05:24

You’re welcome Jeremy. Thank you, I appreciate that. Look, if I could give it away for free, I actually do give quite a.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:29

$3 is practically free. Right? Okay, I agree if you have an Audible subscription.

Mark Rampolla: 05:34

Make a few bucks.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:35

It’s a no brainer. But I want to start, you know, obviously it’s interesting your background was not entrepreneurial. I think your dad was a nuclear, was it a nuclear scientist? Yeah.

And you went on to the Peace Corps, right. And you discovered coconut water through your travels in the Peace Corps. And then, but like you mentioned the discipline and focus. Okay. When I remember talking to our founder and he’s like, they started with a singular channel of like really CrossFit people and went deep.

I’m curious when you went out and I know you did a lot of research of, okay, we’re going to get ZICO out into the universe. What was your initial thought? And as you started to do market research, what did you find was best?

Mark Rampolla: 06:18

Yeah. Great question. And I love the Rx story. And yeah, we predated that a little bit. And I think, but from the research I did prior to launching ZICO, what I concluded is really, every business that I could find started with a niche.

Even Facebook people forget, started at Harvard campus, then the Ivy leagues, then college, right? Uber went really deep in San Francisco. And so you could scale fast when you have proof of concept. And so I took that philosophy into launching ZICO. Before we even launched. We did, first of all, we chose to launch in New York and mainly because my hypothesis was, if I can’t find a couple thousand consumers to love a product like ZICO in New York, then I can’t find them anywhere. And second of all, it is a great place to trial a bunch of different audiences.

So before we even launched, I hired some kids to help on the street, and we went out and sampled and we sampled in natural food stores, in soccer fields, in basketball courts. The general premise was hydration. General premise was taking advantage of the electrolytes coconut water has, but we weren’t sure the right audience. I sort of thought it would resonate more with the Latino or Asian communities. But then we realized for those communities, most of them really didn’t have immediate links to, you know, experience with real coconut water. They thought $0.99 goya in a can was coconut water. But then there were a lot of different consumers that had traveled. Had had some more experience with it.

But the surprising thing was I did not go in with this hypothesis, but I had been doing yoga for a little while. I knew some athletes that were doing yoga, so we tested in the yoga community, particularly hot yoga, and it stuck. Of all the places we tested in communities, we tried in that for one week, maybe three days. The hot yoga studios of New York City were the ones that called back and said immediately, how do we get this? We want to sell it. And so that became our audience. So for the next really five years that we launched, yoga became our ground zero, right? That became our reason to be. And we really focused on that. We went a little bit beyond that, but we made sure that we had that anchor.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:49

I want to talk about, it’s super interesting. I want to talk about the evolution of the product a little bit. The flavor’s okay because if someone’s listening to the audio, we have the website pulled up and we’re looking at pure organic natural chocolate, pineapple, mango. And Mark, when I, my background is actually in chiropractic and I used to own a chiropractic office and I literally had a, this is not a joke. I had a coconut fridge in the waiting room. Okay. And I had ZICO there and I had real like I bought like the young Thai coconuts as well because personally, I would consume them, I’d crack them open and, you know, people could buy them if they want, but it was really just for me to consume while I was there.

And I thought, ZICO, I’m not going to throw any of the brands under the bus was just tasted more natural. There’s nothing like cracking it fresh from the actual coconut, but ZICO definitely tastes more natural than, you know some of the other brands that I was trying out there so obviously started with the natural one. But talk about. You could just stuck with that, but I don’t know if there’s any other chocolate ones. Maybe there are, but I don’t know of them. What was the evolution of that?

Mark Rampolla: 10:02

It’s a great question. I’ll tell you about ZICO, and then I’ll kind of help your listeners understand how we as an investment firm view this. And what I’ve concluded now is every brand, every category has its own story. So the way Bobbie or Rxbar or others build is different, right? But what’s certain is the more loyalty and frequency and the term we use for that in consumer products is velocity. The number of units you can sell in a store, the number of frequency with which consumers buy something, that’s the key driver. Sometimes flavors help, right? So think about a brand like, you know, Monster Energy has hundreds of flavors across all their different offerings, right? Red bull.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:52

Liquid Death.

Mark Rampolla: 10:53

Also to do sugar free. They had only Red Bull for a long time. Which one do you think is going to be more efficient from a supply chain? Yeah, less is more. So. So that being said, you also kind of learn as you go. And so we did when we launched, we had Liquid Death has done a ton of flavors, right. That has worked for them. When we launched, we had three flavors: natural, mango and passion fruit. And for about five years we had three flavors.

I think we trialed a couple other flavors, but that entire time, 85 plus percent of the sales were natural. And so what, you know, I sort of developed this, this little mantra with my team. It’s like, if you can get two skew, two facings on a shelf, the second one should be natural. If you can get three facings on the shelf, the third one should be natural. If you can get for the fourth one, if you can get five. Then you get to put a flavor in. And so that level of discipline worked.

Now what was interesting is when I sold it to Coke, we still had very few flavors. I can’t even remember right now. We had a handful of flavors. They developed a ton of flavors. And so at some point they had 7 or 8 flavors. Still, 85% of the sales were natural. So when we bought it back, we killed everything except natural. And now we rolled out chocolate because I’m a chocoholic. There’s a small group of people that loved it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:26

It’s delicious.

Mark Rampolla: 12:27

It’s delicious. But the reality is we as a company only have so many resources, right? No matter how big our budget is, it is almost always better to focus. So chocolate will probably remain, but it’s not going to be big distribution. We’re not going to market it. We’re not going to support it. Where you pulled up this other one, I don’t know if you’ve had yet what we call pure this, this organic one. It is.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:54

I’ve not tasted that one yet.

Mark Rampolla: 12:56

You got it. I’ll get you some. I’ll send you some. It is like nothing on the market because it is as close as you can get to the pure. And it’s also this particular variety of Thai young coconut.

That’s just amazing. So when we launch something, we are very disciplined. We did launch a couple flavors a few years ago, didn’t click in the market fast enough, we killed them. And so this one, we tested it, we rolled it out, it stuck and it’s taken off, you know?

And so what I learned through this process and we apply this across everything we do is discipline. So even if you have a brand like Liquid Death that’s super successful at innovating. Even there, you got to be disciplined about the perhaps un-pc comment we make for it is you got to be able to kill your young before somebody else does, right? Yeah.

Eat your own lunch before somebody else does. Because if you get too long in the tooth on SKUs, we see businesses that implode because it’s more working capital, it’s more hassle. And you dilute the ultimate message to the consumer.

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