Experts of Experience - Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

You know when a company brags about its “great culture,” but the employees look dead inside? That’s because culture isn’t what leaders say it is — it’s what customers feel. In this episode, Mark Rampolla, founder of ZICO Coconut Water and managing partner at Ground Force Capital, tells us how culture quietly shapes every customer interaction. From Liquid Death’s branding genius to why “culture fit” hiring is a terrible idea, Mark breaks down what it really takes to build a company people actually want to engage with.We also dive into the “need behind the need” (AKA why customers don’t buy what you’re selling but what it does for them). Mark shares how ZICO won over yoga studios by solving problems beyond hydration and why understanding where your customers make their money is the key to selling. If your culture, hiring, or customer experience feels off, this conversation holds the solution you’re looking for. Key Moments: 00:00 Who is Mark Rampolla, founder of ZICO & managing partner at GroundForce Capital?01:02 Building a Movement02:13 Why Company Culture Matters03:35 Culture in Action: Real-World Examples08:27 Hiring a Culture Add & Customer Obsession17:36 Assessing and Evolving Company Culture24:42 Understanding the Need Behind the Need25:06 Real-World Examples of Customer Empathy26:17 Building Relationships with Yoga Studios29:31 Marketing Strategies and ROI31:34 Hypothesis Testing & the Opportunities in Operational Failure38:17 Active Listening and Empathy in Business41:24 Impressive Brand Experiences43:18 Mark’s Key Advice for CX Leaders  –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their strategies with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org

Culture derps. It can last for generations if done right. This is the sort of stuff that becomes legacy for decades, if not longer. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes companies make when it comes to creating a great customer experience? Assuming they have to solve it all up front before they get online. There's just nothing like getting up and learning. Fail fast, iterate constantly, see reality. What's really going on in your business? What's going on in consumers, what's going on in trends.

Be very clear about your intention, what you're trying to build and what the hypothesis is. We go all in for weeks or months until we step back and look, is it working? Is that hypothesis still whole? Is the intention still clear? We can't control the outcome. Dive back in. Do it again. What if it doesn't work? You have to totally shift gears. But if we look at something as an experiment.

Everything I do in my life now is an experiment. Nobody has to figure it out. You don't have to have it figured out. It's all testing. It's all learning. Hello everyone and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, we are going to be talking about how culture isn't just an internal aspect of your organization, but a direct driver of your customer experience. And there is no better person to speak to us about this than Mark Rampolla, the founder of ZECO Coconut Water and now the managing partner at Groundforce Capital.

At Zico, Mark didn't just launch a brand. He built a movement by deeply understanding every layer of the customer journey. From yoga studios to retail partners, he knew that delivering a great product wasn't enough. It was really about solving the need behind the need, which we're going to talk about today. I'm really excited.

And creating a team that was really obsessed with the mission. And so Mark now works with entrepreneurs to scale businesses with the same customer first mindset. So we're going to get into culture, accountability, and trust building and how that all lines up to a great customer experience. Mark, so great to have you on the show.

Great to be here, Lauren. Thanks for inviting me. So I want to dive into company culture, because when we spoke earlier, I just saw you light up about this topic, and it's one of my favorite topics. So, and I host the show, so I get to decide what we talk about.

But you mentioned that company culture really takes shape whether leaders are intentional about it or not. And so in your experience building and leading teams, how do you ensure that the culture that is being created is one that really aligns with the vision of the business and helps to bring that vision to life. It's fascinating for me when I think about culture because generally it's it's just nebulous term everybody use it but what is it what does it really mean? And I think it's one of those things that it shows up in different ways.

And so what I think about I thought a lot about when I was building building Zico what I think about when we're investing lot about when I was building ZECO, what I think about when we're investing in companies is where it shows up in places that you might not always think about it. For us at ZECO, what that meant to me is it wasn't just about the product. Where is it showing up? How is it represented there? What's the experience, the even somatic, emotional, physical experience that a customer and the consumer ultimately have with that product? I'll give you some examples from ZECO and then how this applies in other brands. But what that meant for me is versus talking to a sales rep about the other business and

what they were doing, my approach was show me. I want to go see it in stores and I want to try to see it in location and get a sense of how they are creating that experience. What I would do is go into a store, but particularly where this really came to life for us early on was, like you mentioned, a yoga studio. It's one thing to see, okay, there's product there, but it's another to see that the person behind the counters wearing his Zico shirt, that they know him or her when they come in. Oh, hey, Janica, thanks for, there you are getting good to see how you're doing a class

tonight, right? To see that there's some Zico material there, it becomes an experience, right? That tells me we're building the kind of culture because that person that's a sales rep, it's been on the job for a day or week or somebody they're training with is so obsessed with the culture, so obsessed with the brand that it's coming to life in everything they do, right? And so what I look for when I'm meeting with companies now is, you know, what the CEO says is, founder says is one thing. What I want to see is I'll talk to the junior most person I can meet. Tell me about the company. What are you guys up to? Right. And that tells me so much more than what you see on posters or hear from

them. I want to see, I talk to customers, right? What we do, deep diligence. What's their experience with this company? How do they experience the team? How does it show up in different ways? What does it look like? If I'm walking through a warehouse, I'll talk to the warehouse people. I want to see what somebody in the back room of a store, how they experience a brand or a service. That gives me a sense of what culture is. I think it's really interesting when I look at some of the portfolio companies that you've invested in at Ground Force Capital, Liquid Death being one of them. Where I think anyone who has picked up one of those cans feels the culture.

There's such a strong statement in that brand when you see it on, literally anywhere where you see it or experience it, it's like oozing culture. And I'm curious, if we look at this example, what is the culture like inside of that business? Like when you look inside, where does it start? If you can kind of help to describe a little bit. Yeah, that's a prime example.

That is sort of the textbook, so non-textbook, but yet is textbook example. That starts with Mike Cesaro, the founder. And this is who he is. He is tatted up, he lives sort of an alternative lifestyle, but he's also got kids and he's a funny guy and he loves humor. And so this was his way of just sort of saying,

wait a second, I'm not the only one out there that both likes water, wouldn't be caught dead drinking a Fiji or a Dasani, doesn't represent his lifestyle, but he can poke fun at everything to a certain extent. So that shows up in, certainly they've built a marketing team that's almost Saturday night live skit level writers in teams of creativity, but it also shows up in just the way they go to market

and the way they sell. And now they have formal board meetings and they have formal processes, but everything's got a little edge of humor, all the presentations, all the deck, all the communication, all the swag, everything has this sort of edge to it that represents, represents the brand. And the beauty is, you know, what I, what I saw as well with Zico, uhico when it was acquired by Coke, when you do these things right, it endures.

Culture endures. And it starts early, but it can last for generations if done right. And so what I love about Liquid Death is they're doing that not just for the brand today, but this is the sort of stuff that becomes legacy for decades, if not longer. When I pick up those cans and I read the copywriting, there's like no way that they are not having fun. You can feel those conversations. The office is in LA and they've got a skateboard area and a ping pong table where it's a blast. But that really does orient it from Mike.

And we invited Mike and one of his senior guys on a trip we do as a firm snowboarding. These guys crushed it. I mean, you have people, some of them were skiing, some were snowboarding. These guys are amazing, right? And so that's their lifestyle. They're having a blast.

Yep, completely. And then when it comes to customer centricity, I think there's one thing what I'm hearing you say is that the culture really stems from the top in how the employees are feeling, how they're speaking about the brand, how they're treating the interactions that the brand is having kind of every step of the way.

But when it comes to being obsessed with the customer, that's like another level to it. And I've been a part of companies where the CEO was literally like cut from the same cloth as the customer. Like they are the customer or their parents were the customer and then other companies where it wasn't so. And I think that just because you are not your customer

doesn't mean that you can't be obsessed with your customer, but there is, it still requires tactfulness and intention to really create customer obsession at every layer of the business. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you've done that in the past. Yeah, for sure.

And I'll give you a story around that. So yeah, and I love the way you think about, you talk about this. And it's the way I think about this is, you know, there's multiple customers, right? And in our business, mostly consumer products business tends to be customers, a distributor, a retailer, and then the ultimate end consumer. They're all

extremely relevant in that process. So as a prime example, one of our main customers early on was a big distributor in New York by the name of big guys. Famous, they put a lot of brands on the map, but these are like old school New York, tough distributors. Yeah. And to be very transparent, like it's not my people, right? It's not like I'm not exactly vibing with these guys. Yeah. And so, but I knew how important they were. And so I remember early on trying to get their attention and trying, you know, and by the way, they're selling to yoga studios.

And I was more comfortable in that environment than I was with these two. Like I can help, I can scratch your back than I was with you. I can help. I can scratch your back. You can scratch mine. Yeah, exactly. What was interesting is to be very frank, these guys weren't giving me the time of day and I was having a hard time connecting with them. I saw a young guy, Andy, that was working for a brand, Vitamin Water was taking off

at the time. Andy was Mr. Cool. He walks through the warehouse. Everybody's high five. He's telling jokes. he's having fun. He was super comfortable in that environment and they loved him. And so what I realized is, I need that, so I hired him.

So you gotta know yourself. And what I find great CEOs, great founders, they know themselves, right? It's impossible for everybody to be perfect at all levels of connection with everyone. And so in this situation, what I knew is I needed him high-fiving and engaging with the distributors. I could upset the direction,

but he was gonna do that way better than I could. And what was interesting is as we built our culture that had these different aspects to it, different personalities, different aspects that worked well, but all had this central core to them, what became so interesting is that culture became so strong, it helped me avoid mistakes. One example, I tried to hire a head of marketing and I was in this mindset where I knew better. I don't need any help. And so I sort of did it myself and brought this person in. And within days, she was completely ineffective. The organism of Zico rejected her.

And what I love is our culture was so strong, it wouldn't allow me, founder and CEO, to make a mistake. That's a powerful culture. And what I love is our culture was so strong, it wouldn't allow me, founder and CEO, to make a mistake. That's a powerful culture. Those are those moments where you know you've done something right, even if it's kind of working against you in this moment. You're like, you're course correcting for me.

An AI agent your customers actually enjoy talking to? Salesforce has you covered. Meet Agent Force Service Agent, the AI agent that can resolve cases in conversational language anytime on any channel. To learn more, visit salesforce.com slash agent force. Hey, great. But on the topic of hiring, I can totally relate to this where like some of the best people I've ever hired were the customer or they were coming from, they had been working with that customer for a really

long time. They understood our customer so incredibly deeply better than anyone inside my organization could and bringing them inside was such a add to the strength of our culture because it was like bringing the customer in. And I've also made a mistake where I hired someone just based on skill who didn't understand the customer at all. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But I think it's, when we hire, there is such a, we can be really intentional when we think through the lens of culture, of how is this person adding to the culture that we have and getting us to the place that we want to be. I think that's the key point. That's the key point. So, you know, as an example, and I see a lot of companies that make the other extreme mistakes where they're so focused on culture, they only hire because of that. Yeah. And they miss skills do matter, right?

Particularly at a certain size of company. And at the same time, or they're totally skill-based and don't have any culture, that rarely works as well. But I also find the smartest leaders understand, to exactly your point, how every hire moves the culture, which way do you want to move it, right? And so what I've seen great organizations do is bring in certain hires at certain time that may intentionally shift. I'll give you one prime example, even in our little firm, you know, as Ground Force Capital, we're a small team. We have a really very strong culture. It is

a close culture for finance, especially. We do a lot of communication, a lot of teamwork, and a lot of sort of radical communication. But we probably were leaning a little on the softer side of where we probably need to go as we grow. And so when we were making a recent hire, we were very intentional. We wanna find something that's gonna shift our culture a little bit more numeric, a little bit more results driven,

because we had shifted probably a little bit far that way. And so I think there's a time and place for recognizing, yeah, this person's gonna shift us a little bit that way. Maybe it's more customer, maybe it's more numeric. They can't be a total radical fit, but every person shifts the culture. If you do it with intention, you can get the shifts you want. And I think that's the difference between,

I remember like, what's coming into my mind right now is I had a head of people in culture I was working with who said, we can't, the term culture fit is no longer appropriate because then we're just looking to find someone who fits into our box. And we're then being discriminatory against people who don't fit into the box. So we need to look for culture add,

which I remember at the time being really confused because I was like, I don't know, how do we, I just like didn't get it. And now as I've grown older and as we're having this conversation, it's like, well, if we have an intention of where the culture wants to go, and that's the first step is saying, what do we need here?

Where is there a gap so that we can find someone that will add to what we have and help us get to the place that we want to be. And for a face, right? One of the things that I think great companies do is they recognize you can't plan forever, but you better be thinking 12 to 18 months, right? And so I see, you know, particularly as a fast growing organization, it's going to change. And so I'll give you another example. I've got a company I'm

involved with right now that had a really, we made a major investment in, had a fantastic culture, delivered great quality, delivered great connection with the customer, the man they were not delivered in the financial discipline. And this phase, that company would not survive and achieve its ultimate mission without financial discipline. Right. And so in that case, we are implementing and making some hires that are bringing that they still fit. They respect the culture. They work with the culture that existed, but they're moving that culture more towards great, great, great. How do we deliver amazing? How do we deliver? Right. And there may be a phase where that swings too far and we need to think about it again. And a leader, you know, across a leadership team, if you hire for sort of now and the next 12, 18 months,

you know, 24 months, the rest is you got to set the intention and then be non-attached to the out. Yeah. And we have to give ourselves those time boxes. Cause if we think about infinity, it gets way too confusing. So we can look, look as far as we can see. And just work towards that. Do you have any advice for leaders when it comes to culture and really understanding where are their gaps so that they can fill it. What advice would you give? Look, I think it starts with one's self, know that self. And I think if you're kind of a sole

leader, there's ways to do that. I'm a big fan of personality inventories from Myers-Briggs or disc or Enneagram to understand yourself and own your gaps. Second is with a team. So when you do have an executive team around you, to take some time to really challenge what is our culture? How would you define it? What are the words associated with it? And then test that. There's plenty of tools and techniques out there now to take an interview and understand, what does your team say? What was the three or four words you would use for culture? Unsolicited, forget what's on your board or your mission.

Then when you look at where you are and where you want to go, that's the gap analysis that says, is the culture strong? There's also we actually use once a company gets to a certain size, you can use Gallup has probably the best engagement surveys, those are really powerful, and at least that's a benchmark that you can then check in over time. And what will indicate some of the key aspects of the culture, we absolutely advise all of our companies

are using either coaches or outside advisors that have the art sort of talent and culture experts at least check in and help founders and teams think through how to assess and look at their culture. Those are a few. I think getting that outside perspective is so important. And I'm not just saying that because I am a coach and I work with a lot of teams in this way,

but having experienced it myself, it's really hard to get the bird's eye view when you are in the dirt and you are in it every day and being able to like be guided in pulling out and saying, okay, what does it play here? Also getting those insights from your team. I always will make a KPI for my team, team engagement. And so it's not just a, oh, we do this survey because we're supposed to.

It's, we're measuring this because it is just as important as our customer retention metric. It is just as important as NRR. Because it is. If your team's not engaged, the rest of the organization is just not going to function. And like you said, any of these, I find the great companies, every function they're looking at that way, right?

Get an outside perspective. What's best in class? What are we doing on customer retention? What are we doing on operations and finance? What are we doing in marketing? And what are we doing on people and talent and having that outside perspective? The other thing that came to mind for me What are we doing on operations and finance? What are we doing in marketing? And what are we doing on people and talent and having that outside perspective?

The other thing that came to mind for me as you were sharing that is, you know, one of the things like I've run, you know, run numerous organizations up to 300 people. And to what you said is very true. It's virtually impossible to be in it and look at it at the same time. And, and one of, in addition to outside talent assessments, you know, advisors, one thing I'm a big fan of is

facilitators because it's virtually impossible. There's a lot of research on this in group dynamics to be both the leader and the facilitator of a meeting, even just every meeting, right? So we, as a firm, we spend the money and have professional dedicated facilitators for our big meetings. And it just pays huge dividends to get that. Not every company can afford that at every size, but there's something particularly for big strategy meetings,

for larger groups, to having professional facilitation. Mark, you're bringing a tear to my eye because I trained to be a facilitator for this exact reason. Oh, I love it. Because I was in so many strategy meetings where we'd do these off-sites and spend all this time and end up just fighting with each other, and it was getting us nowhere.

And when I went and, like, learned the art of facilitation and learned how to guide teams through the muck, because sometimes it gets mucky. And you need structures and someone... It's not only the structures, though. You need someone who's going to pull you out when you're just going in a direction that isn't where you intended to go.

And it's not getting you to the place where you're trying to get to. Amazing. Look, in another life, I would be a facilitator. I think it's an incredible skill. And I've had some training in that as well. But what I've learned is, even though I consider myself pretty good at it, I can't be the leader in the room and do that. The mind

doesn't work that way and there's a lot of research around group dynamics that show why it's challenging. So I'm very cool. I love that you did that. Yeah. No, it's super fun. It's one of my favorite things to do. Well, what do you love about that? I have some thoughts, but I'm curious. What do we love about that? I love helping people to see new perspectives and bringing together different points of view. I personally am someone who is quite soft-spoken, actually. I can be quite shy.

And when I'm in a room with like the sales leader and the marketing leader and the CEO and the CFO, and they're all yelling at each other, I'm just like over here with my customer insights that are just not getting the airtime that they really, really need. And when you have a facilitator, and why I love facilitating is you can give everyone a voice

and you can create a really safe space no matter the type of person that is in the room. And it's much more democratic in a way, but it also helps you get to decisions faster. And there's just something I love about the efficiency of you, okay, you go in and you spend maybe a day or two days together. But if you think about the number of meetings you would have had if you were just doing this, like our weekly meeting, you just get nowhere. And I love

the satisfaction of we're going to go deep and we're going to go down this path and on this journey together and we're going to come out the other side. Amazing. Well, look, we're not far away as a firm. We'll have a full time either facilitator slash people talent, like whatever that they're tough, they could be separate in some ways. But even right now we have a dedicated person does all in fact, in fact, we use the same person that does facilitates our big strategy meetings for my partner and I for an annual offsite and ongoing our dynamic. Yeah, great. Also very key for founders and partners to have that type of conversation. I think it's so important. I could talk about this all day, but I

want to shift gears a little bit because when we had had our prep call, you talked about the customer's need behind the need. And I want to shift gears into that because it's something that is so incredibly important for us to not just take what our customers say at face value, but to be endlessly curious about what is behind what they are saying. So can you tell me a little bit about how you've approached getting to the need behind the need in the past? So I'll start with a story. I'll tell you one in Zika that I think is relevant, but just to give you some even more

context on that. When I ran my first business for a multinational in Latin America, I had a guy that I inherited that ran a certain service territory. And particularly his biggest customers were in Panama. And the thing I observed with him is, there's one time when he told me, Mark, I'm gonna be out for a few days. And I said, okay, what are you doing?

They should schedule whatever. He's like, well, I'm gonna be in Miami. Enrique, who's the chairman and CEO, chairman of the board of the customer, our biggest customer, he's going to be having surgery. His wife's going to be having surgery. And I helped to get him into a hospital that he couldn't have got in otherwise. And I'm making sure he's set up, his kids are set up, and everything's set up so they just have a great, you know, as best experience as you can. That to me was the learning. I've talked about the need behind you run a business when you're worried about somebody going through surgery, right?

So that taught me to really think even deeper. So then one example was Zyko. We decided we're going after yoga studios at the time hot yoga was the rage. That's decided we were going after yoga studios. At the time, hot yoga was the rage. That's what we were going after. And I decided to really get to know these studio owners. Who are they? What are they about? What are they struggling with? What are their concerns about their business, right?

Their last beverages were insignificant, coconut water. They loved Zico, but how does that really tie into their business? And so the more time I spent with them, I understand they're all independent business people. At most, they had two or three own two or three or two or three studios. Their lifeblood is getting, you know, versus butts in seats, it's a feed on mats probably. Right. And so I realized that's a constant concern that they had. Right. So I asked them, how do you do that? How do you build your audience? What do you do? And I realized that's a constant concern that they had. So I asked them, how do you do that?

How do you build your audience? What do you do? And I realized that they're all trying to market like anybody else and run the studios and they're not all great marketers themselves. So what I realized is what if we can help them solve their problem of getting more people in the door? And so what we did is as part of our sort of program, we would say, look, we'd like you to

bring in Zico and give you some free product to promote it. But by the way, when we do our demos and events down the street, we're going to be giving out, do you have cards we can give out that are first free visit? Oh, you don't? Well, we'll make some for you. So now we're out giving away. So people come in to the studio with as little as Zico stamped on it, right? Similarly, we realized they had a hard time retaining yoga instructors. And so we put together a program where we would do contests and support yoga teachers getting their training so they would come back. So now it's part of building their business and retaining their talent. Well, of course they're going to sell their coconut water. Our major competitor was the guy, the founder even told me, he's like, for five years,

we did everything we could to get these yoga studios. We could never get it because we had them. They did yoga competitions. We were there because that was their way of sort of expressing their creativity and what they were trying to do. So we're so embedded in that community that there's just no way anybody else was going to take our place. Yeah. So the thing that comes to mind when you're saying this is I'm like, yes, that's amazing. And did you ever struggle with focusing on the right things?

Because it sounds like now you're running a yoga studio business. Right, right, right, right. Instead of just selling coconut water. And of course, in the long run, that paid back by a lot, I assume. But did you question it at the time? And how did you make the decision to say, yes, we're going to now actually like help yoga teachers get their training and help to drive? Tell me about that. My view then, but even more so now is

the best anyone can do is pay attention to reality. What's really going on in your business, what's going on in consumers, what's going on in trends. Be very clear, as clear as possible about your intention, what you're trying to build and what the hypothesis is. And then you check in constantly. So for us, that was, okay, we're trying to build a multi-billion dollar category and a billion dollar brand. We think the link is that we're going to build a multi-billion dollar category and a billion dollar brand. We think the link is that we're going to start in yoga studios and then build the mainstream, start in yoga studios, then build with yogis, then endurance athletes, natural food consumers, and then eventually mainstream.

So that's the hypothesis. We don't know if it's going to be true or not. And the ultimate test was an ROI on any one of these businesses. So at the end of the day, we were able to say, are these yoga studios generating enough sales that it makes sense? And of course, we weren't running the studios. These are relatively small things.

We're going to do demos anyway. Why not add this on, right? We're gonna sponsor someone, why not sponsor yogis? So then they circle back and tell students and they're wearing Zico gear, right? So the sort of a 360 approach to marketing, really in many ways pre-digital age, but everything applies digitally,

with a sense of ROI. And then once that attention is clear, we go all in, right? So for weeks or months, this is all we would do until we step back and look, is it working? Yeah. Does that hypothesis still hold? Is the intention still clear?

We can't control the outcome, dive back in, do it again, again. And so we would do that and then do it in other cities and then do it in other channels until we started to build little by little. But it's always a hypothesis until you test it out. But I think it's so important to set your hypothesis and test it and see, did this hit the mark that we wanted or not? It's something I work with a lot of my clients on facilitating workshops to say, what is the hypothesis? Instead of saying, we should do this,

we're gonna change everything and we're gonna build our business around it. What if it doesn't work? And then you're like, you have to totally shift gears, but if we look at something as an experiment. Everything's an experiment. And we try it and there's a beginning and an end point where we say, okay, did it check it?

Is there more for us to discover? Is it not working? And we should just say it's a loss. Yeah, that single point, Lauren, it's really changed my life in many ways. Like everything I do in my life now is an experiment. This is an experiment. How's it working?

Is it working? Are we gonna do this again? Should we do this differently sometime? I've come to, it's so liberating to realize nobody has it figured out. You don't have to have it figured out. It's all testing. It's all learning. And that is just, to me, so freeing.

So we do that and encourage our companies to do that with everything, right? The hypothesis is we're gonna hire this person and they're gonna work out. The hypothesis is we're gonna have this culture and it's gonna deliver this way. And those things are always gonna be tested and learned over time. And then the simple term for it

is non-attachment to the outcome. You set the intention, you drive towards it, and you take a step back and learn. And I think it is constant curiosity, be aware of one's attachment to being right. Yeah, you know what? I want to be right about this. I want this hypothesis to be right. Let's learn, right?

Maybe I'm wrong and we all get to learn. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes companies make when it comes to creating a great customer experience? The first that comes to mind as we're talking about this is assuming they have to solve it all up front before they get out and learn. This is nothing like getting out and learning. Fail fast, iterate constantly. That's the first thing that comes to mind. I think what you talked about,

the sort of in-depth getting to know customers and the real need behind the need, that's it. There's an art and science to that, right? I just spoke to a candidate for one company we're looking at for a leadership role who's got a background in culture anthropology. I love that background, right? Just conceptually, the way to think really deeply, how does somebody make decisions and why,

what's behind that, and what does that really mean to understand that, and what are those triggers and what are those decision makers they make to really be thoughtful about that? I also think it's amazing how often I see companies that don't really understand where their company, where their customers make money. Where do they make money? And how do you align with that? What are their real values?

I'll give you a prime example. We're dealing now more and more with companies that are not just B2C, but are B2B and the food supply chain. And a lot of them are climate-related ones where they have often very clear data they can show on climate mitigation. The ones that I'm interested in though, anyone's talking about how much carbon they're going to reduce, the effect they're going to have on the environment, if they're not

talking dollars and cents from their customers, we're out. Because the smart ones say, look, I'm going to selling to Target a new material science packaging solution, but it is cost competitive and it saves the money. And oh, by the way, it also has CO2 reduction. Because if they're smart, they've done the research to know the buyer at Target probably absolutely has a profit goal. They probably also have an environmental goal, but that will never chunk the profit goal. So if you're trying to sell them on that, the other thing is, understanding in our industry, right? What do they really care about? And, and it's not just the product that sells on shelf, they've got objectives. What are those objectives?

What are they measured on? Is it inventory losses? Is it efficiency of space? Once you understand those, then you can tailor your offering to, to, to match that or not go, you know, fish somewhere else to where the, you to where the fish are going to bite what you're offering. I think it's such an important point though. It's kind of like, as we're talking about the need behind the need, I think a lot of it is often, are you listening and connecting the dots between what is it that they're saying? What is the reality of their situation? It really requires this empathy muscle. But what you're saying? What is the reality of their situation? Maybe they're, you know, it really requires this empathy muscle. But what you're saying here about the money pieces,

this is actually just a fact. And sometimes we don't want to believe it. I've been in environmental companies in the past where we only talked about the impact and it's so mission cozy and good feeling and all that good stuff. But at the end of the day, like the money is what matters and we have to accept that reality.

And it is actually a factor for pretty much every customer. So how do we make sure that we're considering what is their financial needs or how are they getting paid? And how do we help them boost that? Cause that's always going to be what comes back to us at the end of the day. Same with consumers, right? There's ample data about the gap between what consumers say they'll do and what they'll really do. Oh, totally.

Sustainability and other things. And so I can tell you personally, I've had a massive shift in the last decade. I used to invest in and I wanna be part of companies that had an idea of the way the world should work. I'm done with shucks. I see reality, right? This is the way the world works. That doesn't mean that we don't have these challenges

or opportunities, but how it's the need behind the need, right, so consumers, retailers in a B2B environment, they're making decisions for their self-interest. There's an economic part to that. That doesn't mean it's the only way, but to ignore that, you're missing the point. There's the reasons to believe and emotional and rational. Good companies get behind both of those. The rational reason is, this is going to save money.

It's good for the environment, the emotional one is, I get to go tell people that I just was involved in this cool company, right? I get excited, I can tell my boss that this or that, right? Those things matter, but you gotta understand which ones you're playing on. How do you lead a team to really hear the need behind the need?

Oh boy. That's a great question. That's a great question. I have been thinking about that recently and I don't know the answer today, to be frank, because I realize I had really good training in that. Maybe I have an empathetic inclination, but I also got trained in that in sales training, corporate sales

training early on. I just had a great program that sort of grilled that into my mind. I'm thinking about that more. And I have been spending some time with my team trying to model that, you know, where we sit down. And I'm asking the question, what really is going on here? What are the needs? What's the emotional? What's the functional needs that they have? But you're making me think that I may need to formalize that a little bit more. Something that I find has been very helpful for myself is the art of active listening.

And really practicing and building that muscle because it is so often, and it's a sales tactic too, right? Like I always thought I wasn't good at sales, but then I realized that I'm really good at listening. So it's actually, I can pick out those things maybe better than someone who's just saying, I want you to buy this thing. Well, look, as you say that,

I realize the way we are training our team in that is coaching. So we have an active coaching program, everybody in the team gets coaching. And a big part of that coaching is listening. And we practice putting somebody in, letting them speak and also practicing practice, being aware of what comes up. One of the reasons people get blocked in listening

is they're so focused on what's going on in their own head. There's a techniques and tools to be aware of that and then allow listening. What comes to mind, I don't know if you're an Eric Fromm fan, you know that name, the art of listening? I've heard that book, but I haven't. Client is psychoanalyst. I gotta get it. Okay. 1950s, but incredible book.

That's on the list. Incredible book. I'm obsessed with this topic. And actually my coach training taught me so much about this where I had been in client facing roles my whole career. And I've always been good at listening, but when I went deep into a coaching type of training and then working with people at that level, you get really good. And I actually think it's wonderful education for anyone.

Sure. Because it helps us to really hear and understand what's happening for this person. Because what we say is not so often not what's actually happening. Yes. Oh, my God. Is that true? I know. One simple little book that comes to mind is Say Less, Ask More and Change Are You Elite Forever, the coaching book. It's even that idea like just say less. Just say less. Totally. All right, Mark. I have two last questions for you. These are questions that we ask all of our guests.

And the first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand that left you impressed. What was it? Yeah. So I'll share one. I'm not going to give the name of the brand because it's an investment we're looking at. Great. I've known this brand for a while, met the founder,

and then I visited his office. And it was hard to find. It was in a relatively remote area outside of a sizable city. And it was a nondescript building. And it was around the back. And it was basically this teeny little, not so teeny warehouse. And I loved it right away because I realized it's a sizable business,

quite profitable, and I realized these guys run, they run lean. And I get in there and it is all about the brand. It is not not spent money branding out, but it just represented theirs. They had an indoor golf setup, they had weights, they had kind of a bar set up, which is very fitting with their brand. Everybody I met sort of represented the brand, but they were also hyper-focused on space and dollar efficiency. So they had a little packing machine and the founder, actually the guy that ran this group is talking me through, oh, we can get this many packages through this and this dollars and that, which this many turns out they're doing like 18 million on Amazon in this space that's smaller than my office.

I was just like, okay, I love the discussion with both brand and profitability. Yep. Yep. Perfect. I mean, that's what you need, especially for a consumer business. Absolutely. Yeah. My last question for you is what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear? Get to know yourself even better and do so with love and compassion, not with criticism. Get to know yourself. Really ask the question, oh, curious, interesting. I know the one in me that does that.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Curiosity, self-curiosity. Wow. I could not agree with that more. I'm listening to a book right now called Beyond Anxiety, which is a great book. It's written by a psychologist who studied anxiety for a very long time and she was Oprah's

life coach. And the antidote to anxiety is being curious about ourselves. And I thought that was so poignant because it is true. It's often like, oh, this feeling is happening to me. But if we actually get curious about where it's coming from, we can help to not only quell our anxiety, but also get to understand ourselves better and how we act in different situations and so true. So all of that. And also anxiety is one of the most contagious emotions. So if you're a leader who is running anxious, which sometimes we don't even know when I lived in New York, it was just like level 10 every day.

Right. But we pass it on. And so getting curious is a superpower. The other one I'd add that you're building on, helping me build on is feel all the feelings. Just feelings. Just feelings. And I realized, particularly for guys in business, it's like, don't bring emotion into it. Well, you know what? It's there.

See it? No, there I go again, getting the fears popping up. It's okay. It happens to everyone. Then you can move forward and come back to presence. Totally. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're welcome, Mark. It's been such a pleasure to have you.

Yeah, great to be here.