Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast: Building a $600M World-Class Investment Firm

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Emotions have no place in deal making, well, that used to be the case before Mark Rampolla proved them all wrong. See, what if I told you that your feelings are actually the most powerful due diligence tool in your toolbox? In the next 60 minutes, I'll reveal how top tier investors like Mark are transforming billions by understanding the psychology behind every investment and how you can do the same. 

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[THE GUEST]: Mark Rampolla is a visionary entrepreneur and the founder of ZICO Coconut Water, a brand that helped create the now $8 billion global coconut water category.

[THE HOST]: Ryan Miller is an Angel investor, former VP of Finance, CFO of an insurance company, and the founder of Fund Raise Capital,  https://www.fundraisecapital.co where his strategies helped emerging fund managers and deal syndicators to report raising over $1B following his strategies.

Transcript

Ryan Miller  

My name is Ryan Miller, and for the past 15 years, I've helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of Making Billions. Let's get into it. 

Ryan Miller  

Emotions have no place in deal making, well, that used to be the case before Mark Rampolla proved them all wrong. See, what if I told you that your feelings are actually the most powerful due diligence tool in your toolbox? In the next 60 minutes, I'll reveal how top tier investors like Mark are transforming billions by understanding the psychology behind every investment and how you can do the same. All this and more coming right now, here we go. 

Ryan Miller  

Mark, welcome to the show, man. 

Mark Rampolla  

Ryan, thank you so much for having, having me. I'm a super fan of you and the podcast and the community. I feel like I'm talking to my people, so, uh, thanks for having me.

Ryan Miller  

Oh, man, you are talking to your people. This is a this is, it's a treat to have you, man, you've pioneered the coconut water industry, you've done deals with Coke, and you've built a $600 million fund. This is absolutely phenomenal, we're in for a treat. So let's jump right into it man, having built ZICO and then transitioned into running a fund, what operating instincts from the Founder World actually scale an institutional fund management and which ones must be unlearned immediately?

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, great question, oh, boy, let me think about that for a second. What I would say that translates well is, as a founder, as an operator, I was good and able to see and I think most founders and operators are understanding what's a fad and what becomes a trend, and to be able to catch that at the right time, really think about that timing of a marketplace or a consumer development or whatever it is, and get that timing right. I think pattern recognition. Investors have that in certain ways, but I think good operators and entrepreneurs really understand how to look at a marketplace and understand the patterns that lead to successful brand building. I would say team, you know, investors obviously understand how important that is, but there's nothing like being an operator to know and be able to assess someone quickly, not just the leader, but the entire executive team. And the last thing I'd say is, look, we're used to having skin in the game, we put it all on the line, and there's nothing like knowing that when you go in, you go all in, right? At the same time, some of those things definitely were challenges for me, and I'll own that, and I see that they're challenges for other entrepreneurs. 

Mark Rampolla  

And I'll start with the last one, in some ways, because I'm so used to going all in, right, committed myself for, you know, a decade to build Tea Cup. I have the blind spot of, you know, proverbially drinking my own cooling, right, I'm in it. I believe it, I'm going to stick with it. Where investors tend to be very rational about knowing when to step back, knowing to walk away, that took me some learning. I also have one of the biggest challenges I had, it's, I tended to see any situation as an opportunity and to think that I could fix it, or at least it was fixable, right, because entrepreneurs solve problems, we dive in, we figure it out. I've learned smart investors have a very different view on that, right, they assume things are gonna get worse. They assume that problems don't get fixed, right, and I think that's a very healthy level of skepticism. I'd also say that, you know, entrepreneurs tend to act very quickly. You gotta move you got to act, you got to make decisions, even investors that claim the move quickly, they do their diligence. So when we do our diligence, do our diligence, that took me some time to understand that's usually at the size of checks we're writing, that's months, right? And we will not go forward until that diligence is done, where entrepreneurs tend to move quickly. So it's taken me some time, and I think it's been a humbling realization that the reason why professional investors exist and why not a lot of entrepreneurs make that leap successfully.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, it's definitely, definitely a coliseum man. So respect to anybody who's been able to do it, and you're one of the best brother, I really appreciate that. 

Mark Rampolla  

I'm still learning every day. So let's talk in a couple years.

Ryan Miller  

I love it, man, and we certainly will. You know, a lot of running funds as well as entrepreneurship, but now you're in the fun game where you've moved from operator to owner somewhat. So when it comes to both of those, there's always this big R word called risk. And when we're managing risk, this is an important part of asset management. And so you with your early days of doing deals with ZICO and Coke and rebuilding the brand, a lot of this has to do with risk. And when you're in as an asset manager, a lot of them is you're actually a risk manager. A lot of people would see that, and I find raising capital and running assets tends to go a lot better when you come from the place or the identity as a risk manager, more than an asset manager. And I understand it is a very subtle new nuance, but it's also quite important. So how do you underwrite risk when returns are measured not just in IRR but in systemic health and planetary impact, like I guess what I'm asking is, what trade offs have you learned to accept, and where do you refuse to compromise?

Mark Rampolla  

You know, first I'd say, Ryan, look, you nail it again this is something it took me some time as an entrepreneur to realize how critical risk management is, and so fortunately, I have a partner that comes out of finance world. I've built a team around me to complement, and I've learned a lot about assessing risk and minimizing it at every turn. Now we do take a dual focus. We are interested in impact, and we are focused on planetary health and personal health and wellness, like you mentioned, but they we will not compromise returns and so those are secondary meaning, meaning the impact metrics. Absolutely, our primary focus is, is this a well risk adjusted investment? Can we generate the returns? Do we understand the risk profile? Now, that being said, what we found is very interesting is often when we go into diligence and look at both lenses, you know, we'll do the business diligence, and then we do an impact assessment. It's a very structured process with very clear processes and guidelines, very much like any other element of the due diligence process. But what we realize is very often, the risks that we identify on the impact side are also business risks, because they're they're the same often today's particularly in the spaces  we play, food and beverage, right? So you think about, you know, we go to a depth of supply chain, way deeper than we would if we were only looking at the financial risks, because we're looking at secondary and tertiary impacts to understand what's the supply chain look like in a few years. What are climate risks to the supply chain? Is this business mitigating its carbon, its carbon emissions, primary or secondary, and through that, that's cost reduction, right, and so it's gotten us, it's helped us to get smarter and deeper in the businesses that we invest in. 

Mark Rampolla  

Now, when it comes to the impact side, we clearly understand that there's complexity around these measures, right? The measurements are not ideal. Then get a little sloppy track, being emissions, figuring out supply chain, certifications, all that. My view is we are, we are where accounting was in the Mid ages, right, it's beginning to learn to account for these things. But it's not going to take us 400 years when, in the next decade, we're going to get so much smarter on how to measure and communicate these and I'll share with your audience. You may have experienced this as well. 

Ryan Miller  

Yep. 

Mark Rampolla  

Whatever's happening the political landscape is somewhat irrelevant. Institutional grade investors want to know what they're investing so the impact tracking we do isn't so much, yes or no, it's transparency, right? So we share impact reports, we measure so the investors understand the underlying assets and what impact they have. There's certain things we don't compromise on. You know, the business has a, has a a demonstrable negative impact on health and wellness. We're not going to make the investment. It's got a demonstrable negative impact on on the health planet and climatery, climate impact. We're not going to make investment. We want to back leaders that are at least open and aware to question their impact. Yeah so for one of the one of the early diligence questions we'll ask is tell us about your supply chain, right, and you know the leader or entrepreneur that says, oh, well, look, we co pack, you know, with this person, co manufactured. So we rely on them for everything. We're out, right, we're out. We're gonna go way deeper, but what we want to hear is somebody that says, look, we've got some challenges in our supply chain. One of the things we do, we understand where it sources. We've been to those locations, we look back into that. And just so you know, what you're going to see is we've got some questions about the impact in the employment practices that our third party provider is using in this country, right, oh, my God, amazing. They're thoughtful about it. That doesn't mean it's a no for us, it just means we have a partner that at the leadership level is aligned with how we operate. And the final is transparency. We want to work with companies that are open. We require certain reporting of impact measures, exactly like we do quarterly financials and other measures of the business. But we have those relationships, then we feel like we're managing the risk and also, you know, back to margin reach out.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. So I love that you pay attention to the externalities that exist both on the upside and the downside, or positive and negative effects, and that it tends to set the bar of what is above the bar and below the bar, or above the line, below the line. And what we're talking about, in this particular case, is really an in depth discussion on impact investing. I would say, you didn't say that, but I would say that is to say, here's how we look at the world. If you want to be someone who has purpose and profit that invests in people, plan and prosperity, there are certain things that you have to be okay with, and certain things that you absolutely are not, which is otherwise called a business. It's so you could say, here's how we like to do business, the way that we like to do business. And part of that is we are established in a particular way that we will deploy our assets that make things better in the following areas, and then that defines culture, that defines trade offs, that defines what you find valuable or not valuable, what you find acceptable and not acceptable. And so impact investing, that was my first love, guilty as charged and I love this industry in the ability to say, how can I use my connections, my resource, my attorneys who structure my funds and and the great capital markets of America and around the world to really drive change, right? I recall, I recall his story in the oh wait, recession. It was from Tony Robbins, and this, this thing happened, and recession, he said, how can I help? He was telling the story about his new book, and he said, you know, what I realized is the greatest asset I had as was access. I had access. I had the ability to bring people together and to do something positive to counterbalance something that I didn't like to see, which was a big recession and people losing their homes, not fun. And so the impact investing and setting the bar can also start to define the your own industry. Anything you can add to that? 

Mark Rampolla  

Sure. Look, I think it's been a fascinating journey for us, and I take what I would say is we do walk a fine line, because impact is in the eye of the investor, right? How they measure it, what they care about, and we've learned that what we thought was important is not as important to all investors. European investors tend to care very differently about things from US investors and Canadian investors, right? And so what we learned is, be who we are, know who we are, be where we are, who we are, have a clear strategy. And the beauty is that our impact is baked into what we did, and so it's not we, for many investors, we don't fit in their impact bucket, right? This is one thing, you know, but I think for people raising funds support and understand, institutional investors have buckets that they think about portfolio allocation, right? Impact is often a bucket. We've found that that is interesting. It can open up a lot of pools of capital, but at the same time, it can be limiting the execution and so we consider ourselves return focused investment firm. We focus on better few Food Beverage brands in the supply chain that supports that. That ladders up to a very positive impact, but it also allows us to capitalize on certain opportunities that might not take every single box on it, right? And so you know that, but, but, but where it where it aligns is it allows us to attract companies, to attract talent, to attract partners that value this in addition to the investor. So like you said, this is just the way we're choosing to do business. There's enough investors out there, as long as we have literal returns that we're confident we'll continue to back us.

Ryan Miller  

I love it, man, just reminds me this good old saying that your vibe attracts your tribe. So it's really cool that you shoot that flare in the sky and say, hey, like, if this is what you're into, and we're into and if you appreciate health and improving things a little bit for people and planet, might be something here for you.

Mark Rampolla  

Exactly. My catchphrase for it is, do good work, the rest will take care of itself.

Ryan Miller  

Ooh, I love that. All right, I might steal that, brother. So we mentioned earlier that not only were you pioneer in the coconut water space, and you launched the ZICO, and then you did a reacquisition of you ZICO. So this is cool. I love talking deals, man, because there's so many cool lessons that are found in it walk us through the reacquisition of ZICO. So if a fund manager wanted to pull off a similar buyback from big food type of transaction, what structuring tactics and negotiation levers would they need to master?

Mark Rampolla  

Wow, great question. Well, look, I think the first thing I'd say is, what's unique about this is they're all they're all unique. Of course, every deal has got a certain level of uniqueness, but I think I can identify a few things that would be common, because actually, we've already applied that. We have another investment in our latest fund where we acquired three brands, including one from Nestle and three that were PE back, and are putting them together as a rollup platform. So we're already learning these lessons. These lessons and, and I think, I think picking up a little bit of a playbook that, you know, look, I'll share this with you, Ryan, you know, you become a friend and like the community. But this is, I think we're going to build this into quite a, quite a playbook, but, and it's not fully flushed out, but the first thing is, you know, recognizing that there are a lot of orphan brands and big strategics, right? They go through wave, they acquire, they build, they do best, right, and so we're at a time where, at least, certainly in our space, you know, food beverage, food service, food tech, this whole arena. We're a place where the big guys have been growing through pricing, not through volume, and they're going to get to a point where they've got to start to rethink that. So that's what Coke was, ahead of the curve, and that way they made a decision to sell off or shut down 200 brands global, 200. ZICO just happened to be one. 

Mark Rampolla  

So the first thing I'd say is learn to spot the orphans and I actually do know some firms that specialize in this. They. Identify brands within corporations and go specifically after so knowing what you're looking for, and it's got to be, you know, maybe I would say there's a there's you know, worthwhile, orphans there's orphans that you know might be left better alone, right, so be good at spotting. The second thing I'd say is you got to build really good. I mean, I'm not going to say, let's take, let's call it inside or not. Try like some knowledge that is unique to you and your strategy at Brantley, even the team running the sale process might not know, because my experience at Coke, our experience at Nestle, the groups that were selling these brands, they're the M&A group, they don't have a clue about the business, right? Maybe not a clue, but they have some clue, but they're not the actual operators and so you got to go deep. You got to learn everything you can around that. And frankly, if they're orphan brands, they're probably not the peak M&A professionals either, probably been delegated to someone that's a good professional, but probably younger in their career. And so the ability to know what's really going on is powerful. So for ZICO, even though I had been involved, uninvolved with a brand for six years, I knew nothing of the details. Obviously, I had some, some, quite a bit of knowledge, but it was outdated. We very quickly got up to speed. Everything's going on the market, what the supply chain is. Our diligence was we knew more about the supply chain in Asia, 10x than the people that were selling the branding that gave us so much leverage, not leverage to necessarily get a better deal, but leverages to understand, is it worth it? Where might there be pain points? How do we negotiate this , and I'll get into what that means structurally for you know as well. 

Mark Rampolla  

The third point, I'd say, is figure out what matters to the seller and and you'll figure out what matters to you, but spend the time to really pro what matters and what matters behind what matters. What's the need behind the need? Because it's easy to say it's dollar amount, but it's probably not right for Coke. Whether this was, you know, they got to get the best price they can. But whether it was, you know, 50 million or five millions are relevant in the scheme of things, but, but what mattered to them, what we really probed was three things, certainty of close was a big deal, they wanted to know that you get this done, it's done. And the other one was, this was very intricate. In this situation, it turned out, and there's always situations like this, it turned out that they had some exposure in Thailand because this business entity actually owned some assets that the business in Thailand didn't have to deal with. So without getting into the weeds of it, we were able to create a structure that met their concerns in Thailand, allowed them to check a box that we you know, they limited their liability, and that allowed us to put in an offer. That we do is just the kind of the minimum we needed to be and get it done. And along with that process, I'd say, like we said, we sell on it, we say on the selling side, on the sell side, people buy brands, not companies, always about the people. It's the same on the selling side. So we got to know, I got to know, you know, head of M&A the old team that was involved in this legal team, the deal team, finance team, I got to know, and I spent time with them, that sort of Jim and the human connection was so helpful to really understand what their objectives are, which in this case was, frankly, get it off their plate, because they got other big things to go deal right? So make their life easy, make it simple for them allowed us to get a better deal than we might have otherwise. 

Mark Rampolla  

The other thing I'd say is this isn't so much in the structuring, but it is in the execution, right team, day one, day one. So before we months, before we closed, we identified the team that was going to run this business. If you're pulling this out, it's probably not going to come with anyone. And so that team was side by side with us in diligence and execution of the deal. So they knew what they were inherited down to the, you know, AR the AP, the you know, what was viable, what was it? All the transfer agreements that were going to happen date so they could own it day one and all. On the flip side, we didn't do quite as good a job on on another acquisition we did, and that was a challenge, right? Took us some time to correct that mistake. So I'd say know on day one, you know what you're what you're doing, and the last thing I'd say is less is more. You know, ZICO had, at some point, I don't know, probably had, when I sold it, it probably had five SKUs, when, when, before we bought it, they probably had 20. Once we bought it and we bought only the brand. So we had to actually rebuild the whole supply chain we simplified. We had one SKU, that's it, one product line coming out. Made production, manufacturing, logistics, selling, everything super simple. So that's what I would say, is public.

Ryan Miller  

Wow. So we got people, we've got products. We got brands as I like to say, people work is more important than paperwork, and so you hit it spot on brother, I really appreciate you bringing that up. So when it comes to let's say. The operational side of things, where just capital can by itself may not be as effective. What signals told you that just capital wasn't enough, and maybe what interventions needed to happen to move the needle?

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, great question. I'll kind of talk in general for a second and then give you a specific example, but I would say back to kind of knowing who you are and being clear about what that is. We pride ourselves and position ourselves as basically bringing best in class private equity capabilities to growth stage investors that don't want to lose control. And so what that means is we have the ability ourselves, but also through operating advisors, through our extraordinary network, we have to help companies in almost any area of their business, organizational development, go to market, strategy, branding, supply chain, people, finance, et cetera. And so it depends on the needs of the business and the businesses we're backing., they're growing. They're successful already, they more often not have great leaders. So it starts with a real, honest conversation about where they think their challenges and needs are, and we do our own work to see if we agree or not, and to see if we're alive. And yeah, more often than not, I think, having been in that seat, and my partner as well was was a founder, we can, we can have real conversations like, look, hey, you think your sales team is really strong. We're not so sure, right, so, can we introduce you to somebody that we think is world class to see if we're aligned that maybe this is the kind of team and structure you might need, right, and somebody says, oh, my god, yeah well, look, I thought I knew in world class, now I see something different, right? So, so we'll typically align in advance on where the areas are that we see opportunities where we see need to address, and then we build a plan. Have a plan out of the gate, right? 

Mark Rampolla  

And so it varies by company, but I'll give you one example was, there's a company in our second fund called Vive Organic, little health shot two ounces. They sort of pioneer this new category of, you know, these sort of fresh health shots. And, you know, when I met the founders, they were three young guys, you know, sampling in Venice Beach and, and I, even before I invested, I'll spend time with founders and, you know, give them, give them a little advice and listen and see how they're operating. Yeah, my period with these guys, like they were, they're considering rolling out nationwide and Whole Foods. They'd never been in a business like this before, and they're all late 20s, I think they had an opportunity to roll out the whole foods nationwide. And I said, why not, like your business is tiny. I think they did half a million the previous year. If you can't, if you can't figure out how to be a $5 million business in Southern California, something's wrong. If you can, you may have the tiger by the 10 right? They came back in six months, I said, inch wide, mile deep, like focus furniture. They came back six months later, and they were showing me a chart on velocity. That's our term for units per store per week, the rate of sale in a store. And we, typically, the industry, typically measure that's in units per store per week. I looked at the chart they had, and at the bottom, and they would say around 6, 7, 8, units per store per week, which is okay, no one's felt laying the world on fire. I looked at the bottom and it was per day. So I said, look, we should have a conversation. Get out of the meeting, called my partner and said, we're going in like we're doing. That being said, they had a skeleton team, young, a lot of passion, and so we played a role, over time, in helping them high, build out their whole organization structure. Basically the board started with a board we helped recommend and bring on in our board members, hire CFO, CMO, Head of Sales and a couple other roles, I think. Help them think about, under each of those functions, what the what this, the structure would look like. Help them think about route the market are they going through? Rich distribution network brought in advisors that could help them look at their product line, innovation roadmap. What else? Comp structure, incentive plans, you know, annual OKRs and routines, and that, like I mentioned, some branding work a couple of times, as they were growing need to rebrand, and then we played an intimate role, hand in hand with that, one of the co-founders was the CEO, and helping to chart an exit plan. When do you exit? Do you wait for something big? They got approached, we had some conversations with bankers, supported that process, and at the end of the day, they got an unsolicited, oh, help them structure an agreement Pepsi was minority investor. How do they have rights? Where they not have rights? Hopefully it was an investor. So we helped with all that process, and then ultimately, I was sort of side by side with the founder in negotiating with a private equity backed roll up platform that wanted to acquire them. How much stock, how much equity, what valuation? How do we do reverse diligence on them so we understand what we're getting. I think we, or decided to proceed with that. And then, you know, we've played a role in supporting the founders afterwards, being advisors, getting different roles, consulting with us on some companies. You know, in their own journeys, and they're still part of our ecosystem. We, that's the way we like to operate. We've got founders have become board members, board members have backed them in other businesses. So we try to create this ecosystem that ultimately helps all of us benefit and yeah, the benefit is we get the we get the capture the returns and benefit our investors along the way. 

Ryan Miller  

Wow, brilliant man. So you really dove into Vive Organics that they're lucky to have you. So you can see that, and myself included, that doing a lot of these things, it's not just cutting in check and high fives in a year at the board meeting. So you really got to roll up your sleeves. And this is how the best of the best do it. In my opinion, roll up your sleeves, really push your hands into the soil, and get to know this thing from the roots, and then you become that savage servant and just say, how can I serve you? How can I help you? We all want this thing to succeed, I'm now, technically you're one of your partners. If I cut you a check, let's, let's really get this thing over the line. And you can see, now, when you do these deals, and you have a more hands on approach, the odds of that succeeding goes way up. And by the way, that's what our investors expect. Anything else you can add to that? 

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, I would add one thing would be to know when to get out of the way, right? What you don't know as an example, as deep as we are in five, that's not the case with all the vessels we make. As an example, we're early masters, Liquid Death thing we can help them with on marketing, not a thing. You know, they're geniuses. They're crushing it now when it comes to transferring the supply chain and thinking about the logistics of that, which co packers to work with. And yeah, we could be helpful on that, but, but it does vary. But I think the approach is, I love that. What's your term for? What kind of servant, the savage servant, savage servant, right? And part of that is knowing when to get out of the way, when other people can helpful. And for me, that starts with asking questions, not assuming, you know, having the humility to really, really ask and probe and time and place to lean in there's time and place to get out of the way.

Ryan Miller  

And that's right. And, you know, being really clear on that, I imagine strategy comes into a big part of that, where everyone's aligned on the strategy or approach to whatever it is, marketing strategy, revenue growth strategy, cost cutting strategy, whatever and you know, that's not just companies. Many funds also struggle with strategy drift. So I'm curious, we could talk about how you decide to broaden ground forces mandate into ag tech supply chain decarbonization and how do you prevent the dilution of thesis? 

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, it's a great question, Ryan, and for us, this is very, has been very pertinent over the last few years, because we started the firm as power plant partners, we were only focused on plant based, food and beverage only, predominantly consumer facing and relatively small, first two finds at around 42 million, then 160 million and that was our strategy, and it worked. We were early and Beyond Meat, Apeel Sciences, Ripple foods, we had some really good early investments, and it seemed like we were geniuses, kind of ahead of the curve. We cut that time right, but fairly quickly, we started to realize, okay, this space is getting very competitive. There's a lot of expectations this is going to be a trillion dollar market, massive amounts of capital pulling in from sovereign wealth funds, most major venture funds in the US, somebody looking at plant based, started getting competitive, and there were also some signs that the consumer base was not quite as responsive and adaptive as the projections were earlier on. So we started to think that we might need to both pivot, but we also saw it as an opportunity to expand. And one of the things we realized is that while plant based was really was our strategy early on, we came to see it as a tech, meaning that the real strategy was health and wellness and sustainability. And so those two, we could achieve them through plant based, but also achieve them through other other initiatives, right? So we started to expand our scope and think about non plant based, but still health and wellness and sustainability focus. 

Mark Rampolla  

We also expanded our scope to allow for beauty and some other consumer products that were very similar, say, similar trends, similar challenges. And we gave ourselves, or requested from our from our investors, our LPs, the ability to start to do some supply chain investing. And the theory there was, we are so deep with these companies that, you know, serving on the boards, getting involved in the operations. We know what they're struggling with, and we see the movement in the nearing supply chain. So we did consider for a while, how would we do ag tech? Would we do kind of further in the food supply chain? But our conclusion was, we don't have the expertise, we don't really have the right to win. It doesn't sit with our core DNA. Our core DNA is deep operations and deep knowledge of consumer facing brands that does support one degree separated in the supply chain. So when we're looking at ingredient companies, co packing technologies, packaging alternatives, those are areas where we can understand quite well. And so our criteria was, is still growth stage, they still have the same challenges and then we had a sort of simplistic way of evaluating this. Can we speed dial 10 to 20 people instantly that can help us diligence this company? It could be customers. If we can answer that, then it's, it's fair game for us. So it was, it was an expansion in scope, but irrational and equally, as, as you know, LPs get very concerned about scope Creek, and also dollar Creek. It's easy to go say, oh, I'm going to go from 300 million to 150 million. Was our second fund, to a billion dollar fund to big gap. How you underwrite, the kind of businesses you want to write, how you're best at? So, you know, we were very rational and saying, look, the same strategy, we could take it up, we know, to about 300 million or so, and we understood what the portfolio distribution would look like and all that. And so we went from 150 million art fund to a $330 fund, and we're doing that same work now thinking, okay, where do we go? How far do we want to expand, or not? We don't feel we need to expand much at all to get maybe a slightly larger fund to allow us to do slightly bigger investments, where typically we thought we're going to be writing sort of 15 to 20 million our checks. Now we're fighting to lead and control certain deals. We've got to be able to write 30 million our checks. And so yeah, the math may necessitate a slightly larger fund, but still, we're very, very clear on what our strategy is, and believe that's helpful for us to win. But also, LP, and truly, really want to know that as well.

Ryan Miller  

I love that. You know, it's almost like you can't, like you said, you can't, just stop at products, and it's building that infrastructure beneath it. So you can see how it's actually not diluting your thesis. It's expanding on it is to say, sure, there's supply chains and they need the right materials and avoid the wrong materials and have the right inputs, right? I come from oil and gas, so we call it throughputs, right? So there's a lot of materials that go in, and they do, they go through their industrial process, and they create something quite useful that people need and they want. Now, in your case, and I hate to put you in the same place as very different industries, we're just talking about industrial processes, thinking all the way through, from the natural source to the finished product, instead of just finished product. So it's almost like building the proper supply chains and the proper supplies to fund that regenerative food, climate or a lot of this health and that impact that you're looking to make.

Mark Rampolla  

You're just helping them out. Well, right, yeah. So like, like, like, our the brands we're working with, they're all I'll give you one example. One area we're interested in is testing, and the reason is because every one of our brands has to spend quite a bit of money on regulatory testing, compliance testing of their products, right? So they use these services constantly. We know who the players are, we know they're slow, outdated and not always reliable, and if you're down, if you have a problem, you're out of production, right? So it's an area we know well, we've spent a lot of time in it, it's a pain point for these companies. So that's an area where we think, look, we can find the right investment. We think we can diligence in properly, add value to it, and then also help them sell immediately because we can open a rolodex. I will add, though, we also brought a partner dedicated space. So in addition to doing our own work, doing two years of research before we did our first B to B deal, we brought in somebody that's an expert. They've done only B to B supply chain deals in this space for 15 right? So it's equivalent to almost a separate manager, and that's the investment we were willing to make on our side, to expand the charity.

Ryan Miller  

Oh, man, that incredible work. Man, you really thought that through. You know, I'm reminded of the first time you and I met, and we really hit it off, where we talked about our appreciation for meditation, talk about your vibe attracts a tribe. So I was like, I told my wife, I was like, man, I think I found my new best friend and but in all seriousness, one of the things as we really got into the importance and the benefits of that and personal and in business and a lot of great people in this space, Ray Dalio is a big one in meditation as well. Now, one of the things I learned from you is that you said motions are data, and that is something which is not, I don't know if I want to use popular, but it's maybe not as appreciated. My impression is it's not as appreciated in a very quantitative field like high finance that we operate in. But yeah, you bring that in. So these are one of the cool things that you bring in your firm, and to this industry, is that emotions are data. So my question is, you can talk about how you operationalize emotions being data. How do you operationalize that into diligence, and maybe talk about any frameworks that you use to evaluate founder psychology or, you know, and really, would you, would you ever pass on a deal where maybe the numbers work but their psyche didn't. I'd love to hear the emotions as data framework that you have.

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, great, great, great question. I love that you pick, you picked up on that. So look, and that's actually the reason I wrote this. This book is to help, first of all, founders, but it's very applicable for investors at all. Understand how, in many ways, basic psychology, I've had good friends read this that said, oh, this is, this is psychology or therapy for entrepreneurs. I will never go to it. And so one of the things I came to learn is from the time I first went in the business world, I heard, like everyone, no place for emotions, you know, it's numbers only rational. And I've struggled with that for years, until I finally did some research on this, both neuroscience, psychology and in a variety of other fields, and I came to see what, when did motion skip this bad rap like they're just they're just energy moving through the body. They're just the way the human body experiences the world. Think bad about them, there's also nothing necessarily great about them, like anything when they're not understood and properly managed or contained absolutely, they can sway us. But you're telling me, rational investors have never made dumb decisions, not like you can look at the numbers and interpret a lot of different ways. And so what I've learned, and this is particularly dealing with founders, with operating businesses, is the reality is, it's an emotional experience. It's a full on experience, so emotions occur, right? So let's just call it what it is we have and they're there. Now the question is, what do you do with it?

Mark Rampolla  

And what I've come to learn is, and I do walk through this quite, quite some detail on the book, the first recommendation I have is feel all the feeling. Just feel them, get used to them. I recognize early in my career, it's almost like I consciously cut my head from my body. You know, I'm going to live only in my head. I'm going to analyze, I'm going to think I have no body, I have no room for emotion. Meanwhile, I'm making tough decisions, I'm dealing with partners, I'm dealing with people, so I have these emotions going on. So the first step for me is just acknowledge they're there and that there's nothing wrong with them, and then potentially there's data, there's this incredible thing called intuition, that when well honed and well respected is probably only right about 100% of the time right, would you look back and say, oh, I had a feeling something was off there. Why wouldn't a rational, Intelligent Investor want to get all the data they can. So I'll come to what we do with founders, but let me start with what we do internally, which I think is in some ways even more interesting. 

Mark Rampolla  

So in our investment committee, we what we might be if we're getting serious in a deal and close to closing on a deal. We might have done three months of diligence. We might have 100 page memo, we might have spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars of our money to do the work on diligence. And so we're looking at the data, right, we're looking at the data 75 different ways. But at the same time, you know, it's a long process. There's a lot that goes through it, and there's other people on our team that hadn't necessarily been in every step along the way. And so what we do is, as a matter of course, is we take a step that we just call a check in. Does anybody have any unsaids or any unfelts about this deal? But and it just creates a little bit of space, because even as even the brightest you know, professionals, tend to get attached to something, right? They feel emotional about they've done a lot of work, they get to know the founder, they get to know the team. They want to get a deal done, right? This just creates a little bit of space for everybody to say, anybody who said, You know what, I'm not at a deal team. But I did meet that I did meet that founder a couple of times. It, I don't know, I just, I just got, I just asked some questions, right, about this, that or the other thing. Doesn't mean we don't do the deal, but at least I want to know if somebody's got some intuition. They're a professional, been working in our firm for a while. They've met with a lot of people. If they've got now, got it just I really wonder about that consumer thing. I really wonder about this person, I really wonder. We want to know, and then it's a chance for the deal team to say, yeah, look, it's a great question. Here's why we concluded what we concluded, and look at the hard data and see if there's a gap with that, maybe that bridges the gap, maybe not. Now, again, it's just additional information. It's not swaying the process, but it's there. so why ignore it? 

Mark Rampolla  

How does it apply with evaluating fabrics? So we spend a lot of time going really deep on evaluating the leader, Founder, CEO, whatever the leader is, and usually the executive team of the company we're going to we're going to invest behind, because it's a big deal, particularly in the growth stage. You're not backing, you know, scaled super profitable business where you could effectively replace a leadership at any time, right? These are growing, living companies that require that attention, usually about leader for some period of time and so we have a series of very rigorous process we go through. We have a CEO assessment process we go through some of its quantitative, some it's qualitative, and it's short series of interviews that we do in conversations. And then, typically before, if we're writing a larger check into our major for sizable portion and a position in a company, we will ask the founder, and it's pretty much required, to go through a personality assessment and this isn't only a Myers Briggs or something like that. I'll share name, it's yeah, not our own company, but it's, it is a, it is a, I think, an extraordinary resource, it's called Honeit. It's a world class assessment organization used by Fortune 50 companies on assessing their talent. It's expensive. It's 1000s of dollars, it could be probably 10,000 are up to do a real assessment. But the learning we get is incredible, and we share it with the person as well. It's an outside world class research, and it's not good, bad, right, wrong, it's what kind of leader is this? Where might they challenge? Where do they excel? Because for us, it's, it's as important to understand, does this person have the self awareness and the interest to learn where they have their limits, where their where their challenges are, where their strengths are, what we call their zone of genius. And how can we help them spend more time in their zone of genius? We also have a world class operating advisor that's an ex chief per chief talent officer at Nike and Mars, and ran a 40 person performance and development team. So we came on our dime to work, to assess and work with a leader, helps us learn, helps them learn, and then very often, gets involved, maybe get involved to help coaching along the way. 

Mark Rampolla  

We recommend, we require that most of our CEOs coaches along the way to help their own development and that. And we do really deep reference checks, one leader for one company that we were considering. I personally did 13 reference calls, 13, and I'll tell you, they weren't all perfect at all. In fact, one of them was negative enough, I got worried, but then through other calls, I realized it was a good negative that pissed off someone because they'd held firm on something that was rational to hold firm on, and we were to validate that, right? And so and to have the simple answer, if we're not feeling great about the person, we're out, we're out. It's a marriage, right, this is a long term commitment. So we want to know who we're getting involved in. And for us, it's way better to pass on a potentially great deal than it is to do a battle.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant now. So understanding that psychology not just with the people that you invest in, but the partners that you take on, as well as inside of your firm, that is absolutely brilliant. So as you can see, this is a very important part of operationalizing emotions as data. Would you agree?

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, absolutely. And it's not only the emotions like we have, and I do walk through this in my book, we use a very thorough process on this for communication, taking 100% responsibility, no blame or shame. We have meetings. We communicate that way, brutal, but brutal, but constructive. You know, Ray Dalio is amazing. I've talked to a lot of people that worked in that worked in that organization, not exactly the most high performing place, in a lot of ways, for attracting great talent that wants to grow and develop. We spent a lot of time with our team on how they are developing their skill sets. We and I get as much feedback at as I more than I get, we ask for constant feedback. What can we do about it? How can I be even more powerful to you? And so we create this culture that, just like it's fast, it's clear, it's dynamic, but it's two way, not only down.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, and I believe I could be wrong. I think Peter Drucker said culture eats strategy for breakfast, or something like that, yeah.

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah. So I will swear by that. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah. Well, you would know for sure. You know from your two decades of building Zico coconut water, that brand, which lessons are most directly transferable, to running a fund, and how do you bake those into GP, LP, alignment, folder, management, exits, all of it.

Mark Rampolla  

Oh boy. Great question. Great question, Ryan, I'll give you, I'll give you a few that come to mind. One is, you got to play in big, big enough markets, right? I think it's, it's easy to forget how important it is to have a big enough market that you can play in both to grow your businesses and for an acquiring a great business, because it's not just your period of time. You got to think for long term. The second thing I'd say is, you know, as an founder, I certainly understood this and as an investor, is this business solving a real problem? It's easy to claim it is. It's easy to perceive it is, but is this something? When you take it away from somebody, they're like, oh, God, I can't, I can't live without this, right? Is it? Is it? Is it real? Can you use ways to actually measure that in terms of engagement and, you know, repetition of the customers. The only I'd say is I learned as a founder and an operator, not every person is right for every role over the period of time, right? My VPS sales early on was not the guy that was going to the VP of Sales eventually, right? I had to learn and grow in my role and expand so right talent, right fit, right time, right time, and so is this leadership team right to get from here to the next scale of growth, 24, 18 to 24 months, not necessarily forever, really, I'd say this, this again, I think probably plays particularly to the growth stage investing and maybe early stage investing. Reconsider everything always. That's where you can rebuild the business, every piece of the business, all the time. But when I look back over my time at ZICO, I'd say every year we had one major initiative around some functions, either sales, marketing, finance, operation, and therefore every probably four years or so, we touched everything, right? By the time we got back to look, you know, growing from, you know, 0-10 million, 10 million to 50 million, your operations might need to be completely retold, right? So we go into our investments knowing that and anticipate. But the last thing I might tell you is, there's something about starting with the end in mind, knowing, as an entrepreneur, where do you want to go with this? How big you want to take this, where do you want to exit? As an investor, it's critical who buys this, why? What's your exit scenario? How do you return capital? But what's the optionality of that? At the same time, we do a lot of work on that. Once that work is done, build a great business. You can't control the you can't control the outcome, build a great business, and the rest will take care of itself. 

Ryan Miller  

And brilliant. Build a great business and the rest will take care of itself. That I could have said it better myself, man, and that's absolutely brilliant. So when you see founders who are clinging to a vision, and I'd love to get your take on this, when you're working with founders. You're an investor, and you're being that savage servant. How can I help you? Is helping you backing away what's going on? You're also watching these guys, and so when you see them holding clinging to a vision in the face of market sickness, right? So they're right. It's the classic pivot or persevere. How do you as an investor decide when to fund that pivot or cut the cord? Like, do you have any frameworks that help you to guide that decision of saying we're going to support you on this pivot, or, I think we need to cut this loose out of our portfolio.

Mark Rampolla  

Boy, once again. Ryan, great, great questions. You're making me realize we've got a lot of playbooks and a lot of frameworks, I don't think we have a frame, I know, not a framework exactly for this a lot of pattern recognition. We've been through quite a bit. What I would say is, first of all, right, this is one of the biggest questions and places where people get stuck. What I would say is that the positive signs for me are when a leader and the team are curious, of course they're going to have a bias. Of course they're going to want to be right. Of course they're going to have strong opinions. But are they re, are they open? Are they open to arguing an opposite view? Are they open that the opposite of what they view could be as or more true? And are they willing to do the work? What I mean by that is like when I see a founder team say, look, I think we might need to make a major pivot right the consumer we're serving, or the product line we're serving, just not sure it's right. Here's where I think we need to go. Right. What I want to see is, you know, how do they reach that conclusion? What kind of data are they relying on, and how attached are they to that? Because it's really easy to get attached to shiny objects. It's really easy, as a founder, particularly, to move on to the next innovation and so and so when a team, a founder, you know, can lay out for a board and say, look, here are the options we're considering, this is the way we're going to evaluate them, and we're going to reach the best conclusion. We fake the hypothesis is here. This is how we're going to test and it could be as simple as asking, you know, are you open to being wrong, right? And if it's, if it's simple as absolutely like we're going to do the work. Help us think about this process, then worry, right? We're, of course, we want to see it, we want to do the work. We're not necessarily going to write the check. But when we, when we see someone is overly attached, when we see writings on the wall or not on the wall, we're not, they're not sure. Look, we will pull the cord, we will pull the cord now there's, there's no reason to follow good money after bad. And I will tell you this is, this is challenging for any investor, myself included. But fortunately, we have some world class LPS our investors, and some of them have run multi billion dollar funds, and the feedback I get constantly from them is, focus on your greater winners. Don't spend all your time saving your challenge companies. Put your best people and your best time and attention on your biggest opportunities and that's, I think, one of the, one of the secret success in this business.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, sound advice. So, so really circle the wagons around some of the best ones that you've got. But also judging back to almost that's that psyche, that feeling, that vibe, is like, what's going on, as I like to say, and I think you and I exchanged notes when we first met is I believe success is an inside job, and that's not just for investors, it's entrepreneurs. Those are people leading your portfolio company. You gotta understand what's going on inside of their head, too. And I think what I'm hearing from you is to say, yeah, as long as they're open, that's usually a good. Find that they'll be open to pivot or persevere, whatever we think to do. They're more willing to work, but sometimes in that moment when you get a gut punch, maybe the market shifted, interest rates went up. You're highly leveraged. Whatever it is you gotta know. And as a as the saying goes, in the face of adversity, a man is introduced to himself, 

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, of course. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah. So we gotta know what's going on, and typically, I think what I'm hearing, and I'm going to steal that and try to institutionalize that as well is just saying, hey, as long as you're open, we can work with that. Doesn't mean I'm going to keep your company alive, we might roll you off or whatever, but I think we're on to something. And I think you never forget that there's a lot of people who blew it. They had investors, they invested in their money, I think Adam Newman was one, and they come back and they get funded again. And there's a reason for that, because it tells me there's something other than the capital that investors value. That's what that tells me. And I think understanding what's going on under the surface is precisely that thing that's to say, do you have the chops and the emotional fortitude or the emotional meta to pull this off.

Mark Rampolla  

And there's times you've got to have those tough conversations and you know, nobody is, sir, staying in a role where or or we're continuing on that's just just there. You're fighting uphill forever, right? Yeah, you can. And so, yeah, sometimes you got to make the tough calls and we had to make some really tough calls and have some tough conversations with founders that I, I love, I consider dear friends and and more often than not, later, after they've, you know, we've disagreed with them, and sometimes they they were removed, they came to understand it and see it right and we've built incredible relationships. They've gone on to be great investors, great operators in other in other ways, but, but by and large, you know, we like to back our leaders. We're going to give them the benefit of doubt. We're giving them support. We're getting coaching, we're giving them tough love, because founder led companies outperformed, made us clear.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, agreed. You know, I'd love to peel that back even deeper, but more from the you with the LP example. You know, early in the days, when in, I don't know, early in the days, but in recent time, let's say within the last five years or so, sustainability and ESG, and there's a lot of these things that were popping up. And it was like this, this natural iteration of this, this style of investing. You don't really hear it too much anymore, but there was a thing where there was what was called green washing, right? So these are people that just, oh, we're amazing, but again, peel it back. You're like, you're not, you just putting lipstick on, on us out, you know? And so I'd love to get your opinion, because many LPs, they demand measurable outcomes and sustainability impact. They want to know, not just profit, of course, they want to know profit. They also want to know, are you reducing greenhouse gasses? Are you making a world a better place? So just checking in to say, are you doing what you said you do? But a lot of times, Mark the data can be quite noisy, and you mentioned this earlier, saying we're still figuring out how to measure that, we got a lot of things right, but still room to grow. So how do you structure impact measurements so that it's credible, comparable, investable, all of those good things without falling into those vanity metrics like the early folks did.

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, great question. Look, this has taken us years to work on and improve. We've worked with some world class consultants. We've talked to, you know, institutional investors across the world about this, and we came to a structure that it's constantly improving. But right now it's, it's fairly straightforward in that we have two pillars that we focus on. It is improving the health and wellness, promoting healthy, healthy and sustainable lifestyles, and moving towards a lower carbon, regenerative production system. That's it. And so those are guiding principles. So they're not the buzzword, right? They're a little bit awkward in a way, but they capture very clearly what we're about. And those keep us from chasing different ESG words, or, you know, whatever our and they're very clear with our LPs, what we're what we're mentioning. And then we have standardization with some flexibility, so every one of our portfolio companies reports on a quarterly basis, along with their financials three to five, sort of institutionally aligned KPIs. So so they can vary from company to company that they stay consistent within that company. Some might be focused on, you know, car emissions, some might be focused on health and wellness. Some might be focused on employment, whatever that's and then we use that data to then track the data. We're tracking that on a on a regular basis. And those allow us to then customize the KPIs per company, but keep it within a standard. And so we have a regular format that we're reporting on. So it's just not the vamping steps. You know, all that is validated by by third party. So we have a couple outside consulting firms specialized in these different areas that can help us both before we you know, even close a deal, we actually have a part time impact Advisor that works with us, and then some third party groups that help us validate the metrics. Is, what's the latest, best in class standard that's being used by, you know, major LPS or major funds. And we apply this and we'll take transparency over perfection. So we want to know, we want to see it, and we'll report it as it's and because what we've, what we have found, is, to your point, I think for a lot of these institutional LPs, they want to know, and they're beginning to understand and get more and more sophisticated, kind of like early in accounting standards, right? And over time, we've become more and more standardized. So let's start gathering the data. Let's continually report, and then we'll talk about ways to improve over time. 

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant, holly smokes. So, so really, getting those in place and making sure that the those numbers aren't noisy. You also bring in other people. So you have a standard internally. You have a culture around that. And then you also have, you reinforce that with people who specialize in that, any, anyone, any names that come to mind for those who are maybe starting their impact funds and who could help them measure that? 

Mark Rampolla  

Plant. What is it called? It's Planet Forward. I think it is FWD. I think it might be short forward that does the emission analysis. And there's a group called How Good that does sustainability metrics, particularly around consumer brands. Those are the two that I've mentioned.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. Okay, so How Good for sustainability metrics? Planet Forward for missions and mission analysis. You know, one of the big things is pitching investors and competing for that cap. And a lot of times you hear this, and I'd love to just get out of kind of the nuances and the jargon and really open this up, and you've been absolutely brilliant when you pitch family offices or pensions against maybe mega funds, what's the ground force edge? Like, how do you position ground force as the smarter bet for sophisticated allocators who are likely seeking that uncorrelated Alpha? 

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, I would say there's, there's two things, but are very related. We're sharp shooter with deep sector expertise, and so we take as a given, or we talk people through why they should be interested in, in the consumer facing and B to B, overall global food system, right? So, so, yeah, multi trillion dollar market, glowing blah, blah, blah, blah. So if they're not interested in that, and some are, then we don't waste our time, right, they have no interest. If they do have an interest or curiosity about that space, then we talk about exposure. Look, you can get exposure that I've seen public markets, in the private markets, there are some big firms that have exposure to this space. So you're getting some exposure through major tech firms to certain aspects of this, right, but they're not sharp shooters. And so I will put ourselves against the best venture capital firms in the world, and, frankly, the best PE shops in the world when it comes to growth, stage, food, beverage resurfaced, meat, tech, mainly in the US and that are looking for minority investment, not for full buy up. I'll put us, I'll put us up against the best in the world in that space. And so that's a sharp shooter, that's deep expertise, and we can demonstrate that crystal clear. Does that guarantee results? No, but it means that in this space, in the sector, you know, to your point, uncorrelated, right? Some people hate consumers, some people love consumers, but it is what it is, right? So we've hit some times that are great, sometimes that are not great, that we can't control, but we can control, and where to get into the right companies, and we're going to dive in deep to help them win, no matter what tips. 

Ryan Miller  

I love it. So would you say then, the Sharpshooter with deep sector expertise is a really great way to raise that institutional capital. 

Mark Rampolla  

It is, if you have it, if you can, 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, it's not BS, for sure.

Mark Rampolla  

If, that's what you work. I know, I know plenty of fund managers that take a very different approach, right? And their view is, look, we're not the sector experts, but we specialize in we got an unbelievable network, so we're gonna coattail funds, right? Like, you know, I know Mark, I can I'm on Mark's short list. I'm on ground force capital short list, I'm gonna get, you know, five to $10 million on a couple of their best deals, because I'm gonna work my ass off to get that, and I've got that across 20 different funds. Interesting strategy, right, there's a lot of to show you. What I came to realize is I'll learn, and I care a lot, and will pay attention to what other fund managers are doing, but that 's like, how can we just be the absolute best at what we're doing? Let let the LPS diversify where we want to be the experts.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. You know, looking back as we got to know each other the first time we met, I really learned a lot about the things that you've done, and over your career, you've done some really cool stuff. You've raised over a billion dollars, I think you sat on over 20 boards or something like that. 

Mark Rampolla  

Yeah, more.

Ryan Miller  

But what advice? Yeah, probably more. I'd love for you to talk about some of the advice that you can give to managers who are trying to institutionalize value while also scaling AUM as well as delivering those institutional grade returns. 

Mark Rampolla  

Well, look, the first thing I say is with all humility, you know, we're still early in our game, right? I feel like my my partner Dan and I talk about building 100 year farm. And so we're just getting warmed up, so we still have a lot to figure out, but I'll share what I can based on what I know right now. And what I would say, most importantly, is it's got to be true for you. It's got to be true for you. It's got to be I talk about one of the things I talk about my book is alignment, head of heart and gut. And there's this is actually neuroscience, it's not just, you know, women, neuroscience is very clear on coherence, that when you are aligned a goal with an emotionally charged connection to that goal, and it's aligned with who you are and what you believe, your probability of getting a great outcomes way high, way out, right? So make it true to you and I'll give you an example. 

Mark Rampolla  

Early on, and we still hold these key values of health and wellness and sustainability, for sure, those will always be with us in some form or fashion. But what's interesting is, in the last couple years, we developed a third that's becoming almost even more more of a key value for the firm, and that's culture, and I'll tell you what that means for us and how we came about that I'll never forget my partner and I, you know, world class advisor, helping us do some strategy work. And I was just, I was wanted to be right, health and wellness, sustainability. Health and wellness, sustainability. And my partner, dad's an ex, you know, man who's a billion dollar, dollar hedge fund. He's been a successful entrepreneur as well as a very rational, smart, disciplined guy. And he said, look, I love all that Mark, but I'll tell you, I just want to be in a culture where everybody wants to be their best, and everybody has the opportunity to be their best, and we're supporting everybody on their journey to be their best. And at first I was like, oh, what does that mean? How do we car fire, what is that going to lead to investors? And when I realized, oh my God, that's absolutely what I want to and so we went through a process to actually get very clear on what that means to us. And what that means to us is pretty much what, what, you know, Dan had kind of articulated that means. What if we could create a culture that not only attracts the best talent, but this is a place where you can come and realize your full potential, and where we each are committed to helping the other realize our full potential, by and through investing in great companies and delivering great retail. That's the way we're going to do it and so yes, the sustainability matter shows yes to health and wellness, but the thing that's becoming core to our DNA. We want to build the best culture in finance, not best, and that's going to be zero compromise on performance. Today it's going to be driven to the core. But the way we're going to do that is radical communication, constant clearing, helping each other, playing our zones of genius, feeling all the feelings like we have all these tools we use, and this is everything I've codified in this, in this book I wrote again here towards entrepreneurs. We use it internally as an investment firm and I'll tell you, Ryan, I have never felt more energized, like our team is so engaged. Because it's like, this is our sport, you know, this is our passion, so this is path so make it about you figure out what's true to you, true to you. Build your culture around that. Don't compromise on who you bring into the team, and then, you know, do the work to find the LPs, but you'll find the match.

Ryan Miller  

Man, that is brilliant. This has been an extraordinary conversation. So before we wrap things up, my final question, a lot of this in investing is a long term game, and also one of those things that comes by playing a long term game, and some I believe, Simon Sinek calls it the infinite game in business, one of those things that also come from such a long game strategy, like a lot of close end phones are 10 year people are surprised to say, what 10 year fund, yeah, took longer. One of the things that come with that is someone's legacy. That's both for the investor as well as it's true for the entrepreneur. So if legacy is that true, scorecard, what capital allocation principles should fund managers adopt immediately to ensure they're not just producing returns but shaping industries for the next century?

Mark Rampolla  

Wow, I like to think that, I think big Ryan, but you're, you're pushing my you're pushing here. I mean, I do have a 50 year plan myself, and now you challenge me to think infinitely, but, but I'll have some fun with you on this one. You know, we I do think about that personally, and we think about that as a firm as well. And the way I think about that is, particularly with our firm, is, you know, the we play in the food system, by and large, and that system, when I've spent a lot of time to look back on the history of it, it fruits we have today was predominantly built post World War Two, so us, but around the world, you know, massive disruption in World War Two. All of a sudden you need a ton of people moving around back to their countries, population takes off. You need calories and you need them cheap, you need them clean and you need them distributed properly, right? So that's how we built our food system. Get cheap calories distributed as widely as possible. And I'm convinced, as are many else, that's one of the reasons why we've got a lot of the health problems  we have today. So that's okay. It is what it is. Very smart people caring, I believe, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. You know, people built this system, and they built it with, you know, those sort of intentions, and it worked, right? It got us where we are. 

Mark Rampolla  

But that's, you know, looking now, in many ways, you can take it back even, even pre World War, you know, two and say that this was in the 1800s so it's been, it's been well over 100 years that, really the food system has been, has been built. Look at the major food brands, a lot of them are getting towards 100 years, right, if not, not longer. So we like to think what is a system going to look like in 100 years, right? Hopefully, you know, next generation down from somebody on our team is running this firm someday, and they can look back and say, wow, we have played a part in rebuilding this food system. So with that, the way we like to think about that is, first and foremost, we're not around if we don't generate retailers, right? So that's going to be fun, 35 for us, or whatever, it's going to be right? So we've got to develop a flywheel that generates constant returns. In addition to that, we play our part. We don't try to fix any everything. So I'm not worried about new seating systems, I'm not worried about robotic technology to improve seed distribution. I'm not worried about, you know, the health care system. I'm worried about the food system within the grounds we play consumer facing brands in the supply chain. That's nearing to that. That's our role. We fix that part of the problem. Somebody else is going to fix other parts right. 

Mark Rampolla  

Earn the right to expand is the second thing I'd say. So I would I'd like to think 20-30 years from now, we might have a full seed to mouth system, you know, investment platform. We may have multiple funds, we may expand in a variety of ways. I would love to do that. We got to earn that right, earn the right to expand from plant based to broader we've earned the right to expand from consumer facing to just inside the supply chain. So you got to earn that right. I'd also say, be comfortable with the incrementality right. One painful lesson we learned is we did make some early investments in some of our earlier funds, and these change the moon, change the world type investments, you know, in our space, it would be precision fermentation that, or lab grown meat. It's going to take, you know, the cost is $5,000 per pound to get it down to be equivalent. It's going to take 20 years and $100 million you know, $200 million of capital in one company, right? Forget about it, right, we're comfortable with mentality. So we're comfortable with companies that are just making a small shift. Some other investors have a very different view. They want to change the world, right? That's okay, that's not our game. We know, we know the game we play. Then I'd say, think in systems, but act in stages, systems, it's almost impossible to grasp the complexity of the global food system, let alone the global oil and gas system, right? But you can think about the whole systems, and think about the whole supply chain, but focus on one stage, one area, one incremental shift. Well, those little shifts add up over time to massive, massive changes.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. I love that man, thinking systems, acting stages. So before we wrap things up, final thoughts, is there anything you would like our listeners around the world to know ways to contact you where they can get your book when it comes out, all of it. 

Mark Rampolla  

LinkedIn, good, best for me, I'm not big on other social media platforms, groundforcecapital.com is our firm website. I do have a personal website with the book and some of the tour I'm doing markrampolla.co and, yeah, the book will be out October, releases on October 7. It's available now for pre order on Amazon, and I would love to have some of your listeners. You know order, I know it's immediately applicable in firms, I know that I chose to focus on entrepreneurs for reasons that make sense, that's an audience that's important to us. But I'm equally passionate about bringing this to aspect firms, because when I think about the impact I want to make, I want to help build more centered, present free leaders that that bring their gifts to the world and help others bring their gifts to the world in that way change the world and and I, there's no better place. I'd rather do that than investors, because the input we have across companies is famous. So hope everyone would read, love to talk to people about it because I want to, I want to, want to help break down this barrier that there's no place for emotion in investing. Let us work as humans, let us be free. Let us be free, Ryan.

Ryan Miller  

I love it, man bringing that elevated consciousness. So just to summarize everything that Mark and I spoke about, remember people's work is greater than paperwork that the other. Thing is you gotta, you gotta make sure that you are investor and team ready on day one. Remember that culture eats strategy for breakfast. The other thing we talked about is never forget that success is an inside job. One of the things I loved is think in systems and act in stages, and finally, just remember seek to be consistently reliable, rather than occasionally exceptional. You do these things, and you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of Making Billions.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better, and make sure to come back for our next episode, where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends, stay hungry, focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.