Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:04
Yeah, I’m obsessed with the Thai coconut. So like, I’m definitely gonna get this. I want you to talk about the packaging for a second. Like, you know, you can see here, I’m sure a lot went into this design and packaging of this. Do you want to talk about how do you come to this and think about packaging?
Obviously, same thing with Liquid Death, like people have, there’s case studies on, okay, you take this product, but the branding and packaging on Liquid Death is just so good. And so talk about your thoughts on how you came to this? Maybe talk about Pure and maybe we’ll talk about Liquid Death or whatever you want to talk about.
Mark Rampolla: 14:42
Maybe I’ll talk first about when we launched in 2004, for a variety of reasons, to keep coconut water in its best state at that time. It was impossible to do it in anything other than this tetrapak blue packaging. And when we launched, that packaging was generally associated with kids drink boxes and soy milk in the back corner of the natural food aisle. Right? And I didn’t want to do that. I did not want it to be associated with kids’ drinks, and I did not want to associate it with, you know, soy milk.
And so but we had no choice but to use this packaging. And so the question became, how do we use what could be a limitation or a, you know, problem and create an opportunity out of it? And so what that package does really well is it’s flat, it’s paper. So you can do beautiful designs.
So when we launched and this was actually my sister, who still lives in Chicago, is an architect, and I did not want to use a typical packaging designer. So she led the process of coming up with the original design. And it was even simpler than this. It just had ZICO right down the front. And it was this beautiful blue. There had been nothing like it on the shelf and it popped. Now we, it popped so much that I’ll never forget the first trade show we did Fancy Food New York, 2004.
We had a beautiful booth unlike anything else in there. Very clean, simple blue background, all white, and this little package that just looked so unique. We had people 5 or 10 deep wanting to figure out what it was. The thing is, they didn’t know if it was a beverage or it was a beauty product. It just had a beautiful look to it. Now that took some time for people to get like coconut water, what is that? You know, but the packaging did a job.
So the packaging’s job, generally speaking, is to convey whatever that brand needs to convey in a visual representation. And the real job is on the shelf. So what I like to do and what we did early on, ZICO, and we do this with all our brands we look at now is I go into a store and I want to see it from 30ft away. Do you see it and can you differentiate it from other products? And then when you’re two feet away is when you make the decision actually based on flavor or something else. So a brand like Liquid Death, for example, they even more than the packaging was the name and that the foundation of that brand is parity, right?
It’s like Liquid Death. Like why would anybody? So the insight there was, you know, know, sometimes a brand breaks through with, you know, flavor or protein or some other value proposition. Sometimes it is the look of the packaging. In this situation, Mike Cessario, the Founder of Liquid Death, his insight was, man, there’s a ton of people in this world like him that he’s tatted up. He listens to heavy, heavy metal music. He plays heavy metal music, but he’s dad and he doesn’t drink barely at all. And so he’s at a party. He wants to drink something other than, you know, alcohol and ideally just water. But Fiji, Dasani, you know. Evian.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:12
It was ruined. His street cred.
Mark Rampolla: 18:14
Do not represent his lifestyle. Right?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:15
Right.
Mark Rampolla: 18:16
And so it was a fun parody, but that became the foundation to then build his marketing machine, you know, behind it. Now, this is extraordinarily rare that a business can manage. And they’ve got some serious scale to them now. Manage this many flavors and this many product lines. In fact, it’s frankly never been done. Now jury’s out. It’s working. Well. Jury’s out. Okay. We still need to see. Can this work at a real scale? Right. But not even Coke with a brand has gotten into this many categories. Think about that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:53
At what point do you discover Liquid Death in their journey and decide to invest with them?
Mark Rampolla: 19:01
So pretty early. Pretty early, I think. I think it was soon after they launched in Whole Foods and 7-Eleven. They were doing their first fundraiser series, a raise. And honestly, I’m trying to even forget how I met Mike.
But what was helpful is, you know, I’m a little bit known in the beverage world, GroundForce is a little bit known in the investment world. So I think we were on his list. Reaching out. And so, you know, he reached out and what was fascinating was I had, you know, we look at about a thousand brands a year or companies come to us one form or fashion. We don’t dive into all of them.
But I had never seen a company or brand that performed equally well in Whole Foods and 7-Eleven at launch. Never seen it. Sometimes you’ll see the Whole Foods. It’s great, but you wonder can it go mainstream? Sometimes you see one retailer, one region. But to see that extreme working really well. We were in. We were in.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:17
Yeah. But like some of the, it’s interesting because you mentioned like some of the things you look for is like a focus and discipline, but you saw other kind of indicators that, okay, I could throw the focus and discipline if they have like seven flavors off the bat, you know? For this.
Mark Rampolla: 20:33
They didn’t off the bat.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:33
Oh, they didn’t off the bat. Okay.
Mark Rampolla: 20:34
I know for at least the first couple years they had still in plain water. That was it. That was it. Now, look, there are exceptions, but they’re rare, right? And so I would say that, you know, the number of times we as an investment firm walk away because a brand is too dispersed at whatever level it is, right?
And there’s a relative level right at 20 million or 100 million. Yeah. You probably start to diversify a little bit more at 100 million. But what I, what we’ve come to learn is the longer you can stay focused, the deeper and more narrow you can be. Scale becomes easier, I would say. Not easy, but easier. The hard thing is to build that initial connection with a passionate group of consumers that adopts something into their lives. And this is consumer products, this is tech. This is anything. Scaling is not easy, but it’s easier than that early stage.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:43
What are some other red flags? So you mentioned, okay, maybe someone comes to you. They’re early on. They have way too many SKUs. They’re not as disciplined. What are some other red flags you look at?
Mark Rampolla: 21:53
Look, I’ll tick through a couple. One is category size. So you know, we look at, you know, so for example, we would not invest in ZICO today if the category hadn’t been built already. We wouldn’t. It’s too risky. Building a new category is really risky.
Early venture investors might take that approach. We don’t. We’re growth investors. So we want to see a category that’s already big, billion plus. And that way we know they can disrupt the category.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:27
That’s because at the time, like, you know, people, they go in now and there’s lots of options. But when you came out with it, there wasn’t at all.
Mark Rampolla: 22:37
And that’s the hardest thing to do. You know, it can work, but it becomes very binary. Works or it doesn’t. So that’s a yellow flag or red flags like the categories $100 million. Like nobody buys this stuff. Nobody cares. Right?
Second is, founders and the leadership team where, you know, the, the, the green green flag is, you know, they’re, they’re, they combine this rare combination of, I would say, passion and discipline. So they’ve got both. But equally important, they see reality as it is, including themselves. They have a level of self-awareness that is abnormal for most people to be able to say and acknowledge where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are, where they need help, at least to be aware that they might not be aware.
As an example, we backed a founder recently. I’m happy sharing it. It’s a brand called Righteous Felon. That’s, that’s a jerky company that’s in there. There it is. So Brendan, the founder, he’s a brilliant, brilliant founder and he’s and he scaled his business quite successfully with very little capital and a very disciplined way. And one of the things I loved about him is out of the gate. When we started talking to him about this, this round of financing, he was very clear, like, look, I’m not sure I’m the guy that’s going to take it all the way, right?
And my response is, maybe, maybe not. But I love the fact that you’re aware and even wondering that dramatically improves the probability that you are. Because it takes a different skill set what gets you from 1 to 10, from 10 to 20, from 20 to 50. From 50 to 1. It’s different. Some people can make that transition, some can’t.
As an example, I was a really good CEO at ZICO. I was very good. But I’ll tell you, there are people better than me. And so the guy running ZICO right now, the CEO, Chris Gallant, he is a better CEO than I am. He can’t do what I do. I’m the right board member. I’m the right founder. My term for it is zone of genius. You got to know and stay in your zone of genius. And that comes from self-reflection, from the willingness to ask for feedback. Because, you know, if I’m the one that’s like day after day in the weeds, looking at all the numbers, I’ll get bored and I’ll go on to other stuff, right? But when I have the right team around me, I can do my best. They can do their best. So founders absolutely. big red flag or big green flag.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:22
What do you see with the founder or the CEO of ZICO now? What makes him a great CEO in your opinion?
Mark Rampolla: 25:29
That’s a great question. You know, first of all, it was interesting to me from his background, which I, you know, matters a lot. There’s a certain skill set that you just need to develop. I tend to like candidates that have had a diverse background. So if somebody has, I’ll talk to a company that says, oh, I’ve got this. I’ve got this amazing Pepsi executive who’s been there. She’s been there for 30 years and she’s going to join my little company. I’m like, I’m out, right? The probability that like, if I had been, I worked for Coke. Had I stayed there and worked 30 years, I wouldn’t know a clue about what I know. I still feel like I’m learning all the time on how to build emerging brands, right? And so that is not applicable.
But at the same time, somebody that’s only done, let’s say early stage beverage. I want somebody that can think about what ZICO looks like at 250 million, even though it’s not there today. Right? And so in this case, Chris had a corporate background. He had worked for Heineken out beverage similar. Not not a little bit different. He had done consulting, but he had been an entrepreneur. He started a beer brand in New York that actually wasn’t a great outcome. And I actually liked that because he’s got some fire in the belly. And then he had been a CEO from a separate company as well. So he had, he had had a variety of experiences.
And, and I’ll tell you, the other thing that was really critical is fit. And that is time and people dependent. And so what I spent a lot of time with are companies looking at the, the, both the skills, but also the mindset, personality type of the leadership team to understand where there’s gaps. And so this is a situation where there’s a very strong head of sales, head of operations, head of marketing. And so they’re all on their toes, especially the head of sales is very on his toes. He is an intuitive guy, always going forward, wants to run through walls.
And Chris is very different than that. Methodical, disciplined, reserved. And so that complementary skill set is powerful. Had the team been in a different place, in a different collective, let’s say, personality type of the team, collective energy, I would have thought differently about the CEO. So it depends. There’s no magic bullet. There’s no simple solution. It’s about the right people at the right time, the right situation?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:15
At what point do you decide? You’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears into this thing and you’re like, I’m ready to sell him.
Mark Rampolla: 28:24
The first time around. Or again?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:26
First time. Yeah.
Mark Rampolla: 28:27
Yeah. So for first time around, you know, for better or worse, I look back and I actually wrote this down before we launched, my goal was to sell to Coke and, and that was, you know, the story I told myself, that’s one of the, the little phrases I use in my book as well is we’re telling ourselves these stories all the time. Nothing right or wrong about it, but it’s helpful to actually see them and write them down. The story I was telling myself was, that’s the impact. How cool would it be to see Coca-Cola making billions selling something healthy across the world? Why not coconut water? Why not ZICO? So that was the.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:10
It is a bit laughable when I watch some of these commercials. Or it could be like an Olympics commercial and someone’s drinking a Coke. I’m like, are these people really drinking coke? Come on. Like they’re drinking something healthy.
Mark Rampolla: 29:20
They’re not.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:21
Yeah. They’re not. Yeah. Maybe a Coke product, but not like Coca-Cola classic. Yeah.
Mark Rampolla: 29:26
And so I had that intention and, and then sure enough, I worked towards that. And it happened. Doesn’t always associate that way, but it happened to happen that way. And, and, but in this particular situation, they made a minority investment in ZICO. And they, as part of that, the intention was that they were going to buy. It wasn’t a guarantee. It wasn’t certain. But from that point forward. So about five years into the nine year journey, the game became build it to work in their system. And we did that. We did that quite successfully.
And so when the time came to sell. I could tell you some stories about that, but basically it became clear, I’ll tell you this story. We were building great, the business was taking off. But Coke needs 24 months to roll something out. We need two months. And so we were gearing up and gearing up and gearing up. And that took working capital and planning and production and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which took a lot of capital. And so what was happening is we were growing, but the machine of Coke needed more ZICO to keep growing. And we as an independent company didn’t have the money to support that.
And so it got to a point where, you know, I had a come to Jesus meeting with Coke and basically said, look, this isn’t sustainable. We’re going to run out of money. And then you may not want to buy it because we’re running out of money or I got to go raise money on the outside, but you’ve got an option. We already pre-negotiated to buy it, which means I take the dilution, my investors and I.
So we’re stuck. So I give you three options. One, you write a $20 million check into the company. No dilution, and you keep your rights to buy in the future. Two, I’ll buy you out. We’ll negotiate a price and I’ll buy you out. Or three, you buy us out. And they chose the third. And I had no clue how I was going to raise the money to buy them out. But it was a nice, nice thing to be able to say. And so the timing, you know, the timing was, was right. This time I’m viewing it very differently. What’s interesting now is we bought this through one of our funds. And so that fund has outside investors, not just my money. It’s not just my partner’s money.
Those investors expect to be repaid and they will be repaid. And typically these funds don’t last forever. And so there is somewhat of a time horizon. But what’s interesting is, you know, so the time may come when we choose to sell, but there also might be a scenario where this fund, our investors in this fund, in this fund exit its position, and ZICO continues on as an independent company, right? So there’s what I know now is so much more than I knew then.
And I see now I’m cautious of assuming there’s only one way to get what, what one wants, right? And so why make any decision until you have to make a decision. So the intention is clear. And this is, you know, there’s, you’ll be familiar with this phraseology. Not a lot of people use this in business, but I do set the intention scale ZICO to be worth $1 billion plus. Work like crazy towards that with non-attachment to the outcome. Because maybe it’s worth 2 billion. I get so caught up on a billion, right? Maybe it’s 500 million. Maybe it’s 5 billion.
So directionally we have the direction non-attachment to the outcome and then focus on the action. Because I can’t control that. You can’t control the outcome. All you can control is your action. Part of that action is what do I do today? You know, focus on the team and literally me, like, where do I spend my time and attention with the team? Where do I encourage the team to spend their time, attention? And then you check up. Are we on the direction? Does anything need to change? And then back to action.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:48
Consumer packaged goods is difficult. I mean, even if you see like a company making $100 million, it’s like so capital intensive, right? I mean, not just the product cost, the packaging, the shipping, the logistics, the marketing, but like, even if they’re success, like you said, if you’re selling $100 million worth of stuff, you need to then buy $150 million of stuff and project inventory. It’s just a tough there’s so many moves. You know.
Mark Rampolla: 34:17
You got it, Jeremy. Look, I’ll give you some stats around that. So beverage is particularly expensive these days. When I launched the, the, the.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:28
Also it’s heavy to ship. It’s like that stuff’s heavy.
Mark Rampolla: 34:31
You can’t do B to C easily. So when I launched, the statistics were that a big strategic would spend 20 plus years ago, $100 million on launching a new brand and have a 50-50 chance of success. But in most beverages that back then probably took 5 to 10 million, at least in capital to scale and grow the number today, 50 to 100 million. When you look at poppy body armor. Any of these brands that have gotten the scale 50 to 100 million.
And you add that with 90% of brands will fail. No one makes money on a brand that generalizes, particularly in beverage that’s under, you know, 20 million in revenue. Like even then you’ve got to get to these days, you’ve got to get to 250 million in revenue for a strategic to be interested. And so it the probabilities are so low, it’s laughable. It’s really laughable.
And what’s interesting for me is I’m part of the myth, right? Because ZICO was a statistical anomaly. There were, I forget, I looked at this math a while ago. I want to say there were 9000 brands launched between the beverage brands, between the time I started and the time Coke bought ZICO and they bought three. ZICO, Honest Tea, and Vitamin Water. That’s it.
Pepsi bought 1 or 2 and pretty much that’s it, you know. And so, so I generally, when I meet with particularly early stage entrepreneurs, almost any business, you know, we look at or any business that they happen to be in. It’s the same, but particularly in food and beverage and particularly in beverage. My comment is, my question is, are you prepared to dedicate 20 years of your life to this, knowing that the probability is you’re not going to make any money?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:39
How is a founder? Do you even sustain yourself? Like, even if a company, when you look at I know founders like their company may be doing $50 million, but they’re pouring it back into the company, is it like basically essential they have to raise money and they, they have to, you know, even just from a salary perspective, you know.
Mark Rampolla: 36:59
Look.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:00
How are founders doing it?
Mark Rampolla: 37:02
Most are barely getting by like, like. And this is the great, the great myth. And one of the reasons I wrote this book is it’s like there’s the first big myth is work really hard, have a great idea, work really hard, make a pile of money, and you’re free. Everything’s great. You’re,you’re in the, you know, life is perfect, right?
My reality, and I know this to be the case of so many other entrepreneurs, whether they’ve made millions, tens, hundreds or billions, billions are not necessarily don’t feel successful and don’t feel free because they’re trapped by this constant, all these unconscious patterns that you build over a lifetime. So we’ll get into that maybe later. But if that’s true with the ones that are super successful, there are certainly the vast majority, quote unquote, fail, don’t achieve an economic or financial goal they set out for, which makes it even harder for one’s identity and one’s lifestyle.
But then there’s the middle. There’s the zombie middle, where there are I know entrepreneurs have been at it for 20 years and God, I look at this and say they’re probably never going to make any money at this. You know, some are delusional. Okay. They’re still believing. They are in terrible health. They’re not taking care of themselves. They’ve mortgaged their lives, their relationships go to hell. But they’re like, it’s all about the dream. All about the dream. If I just stick with it, if I just stick with it. Very few. But they’re out there.
Very few have cracked some code, which is a response. That’s something like, yeah, what else am I going to do? Like, I love this. This is what I do. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe it won’t work out, but I’m living my life. Yeah. And yeah, sure, I could make more money as a lawyer. I could make more money at a corporation. But, you know, I love it. I get to spend time with the community. I like, get to see my kids on the weekend. My kids come out and help with some stuff they’re getting to see. And that was for me, one of the one of the things that helped me was I made a conscious choice early on.
Would I rather be, you know, the corporate guy with a big job? You know, I was on that trajectory, a great income, great stock options, probably, hopefully a ton of money. And and what does that mean for me versus, you know, and for my life with my daughters, for example, and them seeing their dad try to do something with his life, take a risk and maybe works out, maybe it doesn’t, you know, and, and what I’ve decided along the way is freedom is you win either way, either way. As soon as your freedom becomes contingent on money, you haven’t won. When money comes and I came to believe that money comes more as a result of being free than it does as freedom comes, the result is money.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:14
Is that basically what you’re talking about is that’s kind of the no attachment piece of what you were saying?
Mark Rampolla: 40:21
Yeah And this is tricky, right? Because I have goals. I’m trying to build. We’re trying to build a multi-billion dollar asset management firm with ground floors. I want ZICO to be worth a billion plus.
I want our companies to win. I have financial goals. But it’s easy to get lost in the goals. Goals are in the future. Life is in the present. Actions in the present and the only decisions an entrepreneur or anyone frankly can make is right here, right now. And so. And the best probability of getting the outcome you want is making great decisions in the present moment, which requires being present. And so almost by nature, and this was my experience of it, the more I obsessed on it, I wanted this goal, I want that goal, I want that goal, the less I was actually present to do the work that necessitates that’s necessary for the probability of getting the goal.
But the reality is, most people really don’t understand. You can’t control the outcome. Coke bought ZICO. It’s a statistical anomaly. You know, I see now, I wouldn’t have been I would have been trapped had they not. I would have been one of these guys who maybe grinded on maybe whatever this time around. No way. No matter what happens, Ezekiel, I win.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:43
You talk. You know, when I. In the book An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom: Seven Steps to Living Beyond Limits, can you just talk about one of the steps?
Mark Rampolla: 41:53
Sure, sure. I’ll start with the first one, which is, see and accept reality. You’re not as free as you think. What I find is that, you know, most entrepreneurs are, you know, it’s funny because in business, most people get this. There’s a quote, I think it’s Peter Drucker said the team that sees reality best wins in business because you see the marketplace, you understand what’s going on, you understand competitors, and you can make decisions based on the reality of the marketplace, not some hypothetical strategy.
The same is true for an individual. And yet most founders, most people are so caught up in what’s out there, they’re not looking inside. And their inner reality is crowded and chaotic. It’s influenced by all these things we learned as kids competition. Well, I sold for 200 million, but he sold for a billion. I must be a loser. You know, it took. It took me nine years. It took. It took her five. She built to a billion with $5,000. I had to go raise all this money. I only own this one like those. They’re normal. They happen. But they’re traps, right?
And so when we can see that reality. Oh, man. Yeah, I see my thoughts. I see my thoughts, I understand them, I see how I’m denying and avoiding all these emotions. That’s the first step to freedom is, it’s a realization that says, oh shit, I am a lot more trapped than I thought. I’m a lot more influenced by why am I all of a sudden? I’m interested in it.
I’ll tell you a little personal story. I have a little fantasy of a Classic Toyota Land Cruiser. Right? With that car. Beautiful. You know, redone. Cool. Would that be, like, to drive that around? Amazing. And I stop and think, okay, that’s fine. You know, I could buy that if I wanted, but is that really my choice and my choice alone? Like, can I really say I’m not influenced by the fact that those cars are super popular right now? I’m not influenced by the fact that I spend a lot of time in Latin America, where those were kind of the cool cars? That I had only a certain car when guys I knew were driving that car, like, nothing’s right or wrong with that, but that’s reality. We’re influenced by all these things that trap us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:28
Yeah. You know, in the book, Mark, you do talk about and I’ve heard Jesse Itzler talk about ZICO. When does he come in the picture? How does he fit into this equation? Yeah, because we were talking about books and he’s got, you know, Living with a SEAL a great you know, I love that book. And Living with the Monks is another great book. Where does he come into the picture?
Mark Rampolla: 44:50
Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you that story. So I love Jesse and it’s interesting because I do get, I’ve run into people that say, oh, you’re always, I know the founder Jesse. Right. It’s like, well, not really, not really. I love Jesse and I don’t think he doesn’t tell that story, but he tells certain stories that people interpret in a certain way.
So. Jesse, when I was building ZICO. Jesse was in New York building the Marquis Jet. And that was an incredible business and had an incredible group of celebrities and athletes and other people involved in it. And Jesse and I knew each other through a mutual friend, but it wasn’t any real close connection.
When I was in discussions with Coke about making an investment in ZICO and they had approached me at some point, they told me, look, Mark, there’s someone we know who we think could be an interesting partner. You know, part of this, he’s got a you know, he’s got a big, big following. He’s got a lot of influencer. He can bring some brand, some sort of sizzle to what you’re doing on building this whole business. This is five years in. This is 2009, I started 2004. And I said, let me guess, it’s Jesse. Jesse Itzler like, how do you know that?
And I’m like, well, I’m sure he pitched you on the coconut water. He’s trying to start. So it’s a small world. So I knew that he was trying to launch a coconut water. And, you know, I don’t like competition. I’d like to crush all the competition. So I was aware and he’s a serious operator. And so but I said to Coke, so are you telling me, you know, if I don’t want to partner with Jesse, you’re not going to do the deal with me. And they said, no, we’re we’ve chosen you. We’ve chosen ZICO. But man, why not get a competitor on your side? Would you be willing to figure out a way to bring him in? And I said great. So we met, spent some time together. Totally hit it off. And he became an investor. And he brought in some of his network of athletes and celebrities. And so then he became an active investor. I would absolutely call him a partner. I call all my investors partners. Right. But he was more than more than a typical investor.
But that’s how we connected and we’ve been friends, you know, since then. He’s an investor. He and his wife Sarah, an investor, and a couple of our funds. And so he’s effectively also an angel investor back in this what we call ZICO rising, the new iteration. So he’s been a great partner. He’s a great friend. And my view is, you know, success. Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan. And so my lens is if he and anybody’s talking about ZICO. It’s good for me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:45
It’s 100%. I have one last question mark. I know we have a few minutes on that kind of point. Mentors, you know, we don’t get to where we are without help from colleagues, mentors. And this could be distant mentors like.
So I’m curious, any mentors along the business journey that’s been helpful? And, or it could be books that are mentors like, you know, I consider An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom, your book a mentor, right? Like I could buy it on audible. Listen to it. So if there’s any of your favorite resources, it could be actual mentors, personal mentors, and or books too.
Mark Rampolla: 48:22
Yeah. What comes to mind? They’re very, very specific ones to me. One person comes to mind. There was a guy that was a number of levels above me at my corporate job pre pre ZICO was International Paper And there was a guy named Rob Amen was the. At the time he was president of International Paper Europe and I met him. I was in grad school at Duke. He had some connection to Duke. I think one of his kids had gone there. So I kind of met him through that network and met him in Europe when I was on an exchange. And man, he was a mentor for me for years, years until not too many years ago. In fact, I might remind me, I want to reach out to him again.
There’s another guy named Jack Belsito who was the president of Snapple for many, many years. He’s now the president of CEO Voss Water. And when I was getting into the beverage industry, somehow I met Jack and he’s just a straight shooter. And so I asked him to join my board. He was on my board at ZICO for a number of years, and I brought him back. He’s on the board. He’s actually on the board of Humm Kombucha now.
And so you know what I’ve, what I’ve, I’ve got we all stand on the shoulders of giants. There’s. There’s many more than I than that I’m more than I can talk about right now. But those two come to mind as people that were, you know, really key in my key in my life and development.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 49:51
Mark, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey. Everyone, I encourage them to. One you can check out GroundForceCapital.com. If you have an interesting brand that you’re running, they actually have a criteria on the website you can check out. Buy ZICO Coconut Water. It’s fantastic. And also, of course, we talked about Mark’s book as well An Entrepreneur’s Guide toFreedom. Check all those out. Mark. Thanks everyone.
Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you.
Mark Rampolla: 50:17
Thank you Jeremy. Great to be here.
