Founding Cohort — Applications Open

The Backable CEO™

90 days to become the CEO your business needs next.

Your company can only grow as far as you do. The Backable CEO is a 90-day transformation for founders ready to lead at the next level. Through the Seven Shifts, practical AI-powered tools, weekly live sessions, and personal coaching with Mark Rampolla, you’ll become the leader your business—and your life—require next.

Built for founders navigating the critical stretch between early traction and sustainable scale.

Apply for the Founding Cohort → Watch the free masterclass first

Cohort 1 starts August 4, 2026. Applications close July 31.

90 Days

7 Shifts

17+ Live Hours with Mark

5X+ ROI Guarantee*

What It Is

A learning lab with Mark. Not a course. Not a mastermind.

Courses deliver content. Masterminds provide peer learning. The Backable CEO combines both—plus something far more valuable: a proven framework for transforming how you lead.

Over twelve weeks, Mark personally guides a small cohort of founders through the same principles he used to build ZICO into a $200M+ exit, lead companies through transformational growth, and evaluate hundreds of founders every year as an investor at GroundForce Capital.

Everything is designed for implementation—not information.

You’ll begin seeing yourself, your business, and your leadership through the same lens sophisticated investors use. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

“You can have the best deck and strongest P&L, but if you’re unclear on who you are, where you’re going, or how you’re showing up, everyone picks up on it—including investors. You are your greatest asset.”

The goal isn’t simply to build a bigger company. It’s to become the kind of leader capable of building one without sacrificing yourself in the process.

PRE

Before Week One

Build the foundation.

Before the cohort begins, Mark gets to know you, your business, and your leadership style. More importantly, you’ll begin seeing yourself more clearly.

Onboarding Assessment

A comprehensive assessment of your strengths, blind spots, leadership style, habits, business, and personal objectives. This becomes the baseline for everything that follows.

One-Hour Strategy Session with Mark

Together you’ll review your assessment and define exactly what success looks like over the next ninety days and beyond. Whether that’s revenue, enterprise value, time reclaimed, better leadership, stronger systems, or a combination of all of them, you’ll establish clear metrics before the work begins.

Direct Access Opens

Your private WhatsApp channel with Mark opens before Week One and remains active throughout the entire program.

WK
1–12

The 90 Days

One concept. One tool. One shift.

Each week follows the same rhythm. Learn one powerful concept. Apply one practical tool. Take one meaningful action. Repeat. Transformation happens through implementation—not inspiration.

Weekly Live Sessions

Ninety minutes live with Mark and a carefully selected group of founders navigating similar challenges. Every session combines teaching, discussion, coaching, and application.

The Backable CEO Operating System™

Each week’s lesson comes with practical tools from Mark’s AI-powered operating system. Run them against your calendar. Your leadership. Your team. Your financials. Your real business.

Weekly Implementation

The work is simple. Have the difficult conversation. Delegate the responsibility. Redesign your calendar. Clarify the vision. Make the decision you’ve been avoiding. This is where the shift happens.

Bi-Weekly Coaching

Every other week you’ll meet privately with Mark to review your progress, work through challenges, and stay accountable to the outcomes you’ve defined.

DAY
90

Day 90—and Beyond

Measure what changed.

The program concludes exactly where it began—with you and Mark reviewing your progress together. Not just your business. You.

Final Strategy Session

Review the measurable results. Celebrate the wins. Identify what’s next. Build the roadmap for your next stage of growth.

Keep the Operating System

Your assessments, dashboards, frameworks, recordings, and AI tools remain yours. The work doesn’t stop after ninety days. Neither does your growth.

Weekly Live Coaching

Direct teaching and coaching from Mark every week.

Private 1:1 Coaching

Bi-weekly strategy sessions tailored to your business and leadership.

Direct WhatsApp Access

Questions don’t wait until next Tuesday. Neither should coaching.

Founder Community

A carefully selected group of founders committed to becoming better CEOs together.

Peer Accountability

The conversations between sessions become as valuable as the sessions themselves.

Your Personal Dashboard

Every assessment, framework, exercise, recording, and tool in one place—and yours to keep long after the program ends.

Altogether, you’ll spend more than 17 hours live with Mark during the program. At executive coaching rates alone, that’s worth more than twice the investment before considering the tools, community, and long-term operating system you’ll continue using.

The 5X+ ROI Guarantee

This is an investment. Mark treats it like one. Before the program begins, you’ll define exactly what success looks like—for your business and for yourself. Revenue generated. Deals closed. Enterprise value created. Time reclaimed. Freedom experienced. Leadership capacity expanded. Those outcomes become your scorecard throughout the ninety days.

If you fully participate, implement the work, and don’t achieve at least a 5X return on your investment, Mark will continue working with you until you do—or refund your investment in full. Your call.

Apply for the Founding Cohort →

The Outcome

The bottleneck was never the business.

When founders first join The Backable CEO, they usually believe they need better strategy. Or better fundraising. Or better execution.

Most discover something much more important. Their business wasn’t the bottleneck. They were.

By the end of ninety days, you’ll have more than a stronger company. You’ll have become the kind of leader capable of building extraordinary businesses without sacrificing yourself in the process.

Because the greatest investment you’ll ever make isn’t in your company. It’s in the person leading it.

The Framework

The Seven Shifts™

The operating system behind every Backable CEO.

The Backable CEO is built on The Seven Shifts—the core framework from Mark’s best-selling book, An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom. These aren’t seven lessons. They’re seven transformations every founder must make to build a company that scales—and a life worth building it for. Each shift includes practical tools, AI-powered frameworks, and implementation exercises you’ll immediately apply to your business, leadership, and life.

Shift One

See and Accept Reality

From avoiding reality to using it as your greatest advantage.

Every breakthrough begins with seeing clearly. Your business. Your leadership. Your blind spots. Your opportunities. This is the hardest mirror every founder looks into—and the one that unlocks everything that follows.

Tools: Blind Spot Mapping · 360° Leadership Feedback

Shift Two

Know and Lead Yourself First

From Chief Everything Officer to CEO.

Most founders don’t need to do more. They need to lead differently. You’ll discover your Zone of Genius, redesign your role, and begin building a company that depends less on your constant involvement.

Tools: Energy Audit · Working With Me Guide™

Shift Three

Break Free From What’s Running You

From unconscious patterns to conscious leadership.

Every founder has default reactions, inherited stories, limiting beliefs, and habits that quietly shape every decision. Once you can see them, you can choose differently. That’s where real leadership begins.

Tools: The Freedom Key™

Shift Four

Free to Dream

From surviving today to creating tomorrow.

Most founders eventually become trapped inside the businesses they created. This shift reconnects you with your original ambition—and expands it. Not simply “What business do I want to build?” But “What’s my deepest, biggest dream for myself and what I bring to the world?”

Tools: Vision Architecture · The Upper Limit Framework

Shift Five

Success Takes Discipline

From reacting to intentionally leading.

Freedom isn’t created by working more. It’s created by building systems that allow you to focus on the work only you can do. This shift establishes the habits and operating rhythm that compound for years.

Tools: Priority Bubble Mapping · Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly ORK process

Shift Six

You Are Free to Change

From needing to be right to becoming adaptable.

Great CEOs don’t cling to certainty. They learn faster than everyone else. You’ll develop the ability to hold strong convictions while remaining flexible enough to change your mind when reality changes.

Tools: Hypothesis-Driven Leadership · Test-and-Learn Rituals

Shift Seven

Build a New Tribe

From doing it alone to building an extraordinary team.

No founder builds an enduring company alone. You’ll intentionally design the relationships, leadership team, advisors, board, and peer network that will support your next stage of growth. Because your company rarely outgrows the people surrounding it.

Tools: Team Assessment and Gap Analysis · Advisory & Board Calibration

Meet Mark

Your Coach

Mark Rampolla built ZICO Coconut Water from a van and a crazy idea — sparked during his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America — into a global brand acquired by Coca-Cola for over $200 million. Then he bought it back — and now he's doing it again, this time building ZICO to $1B+.

After ZICO, Mark co-founded GroundForce Capital, a $600M investment firm, where he's sat across the table from thousands of founders as an institutional investor. He's raised over $1B, created $5B+ in economic value, backed nearly 100 companies, sat on 40+ boards, and written two bestselling books — High-Hanging Fruit and An Entrepreneur's Guide to Freedom.

He's been through the founder-to-CEO transition three times himself. He's watched thousands of other founders go through it from the investor's chair. The Backable CEO is the program he wishes someone had built for him while he was running ZICO.

ZICO: $200M+ Exit to Coca-Cola

Co-Founder, GroundForce Capital ($600M investment firm)

Invested in 100+ Companies

40+ Board Positions

2x Bestselling Author

Forbes 30 Under 30 Mentor

When does the program run?

The founding cohort begins in early August 2026 and runs for twelve weeks through October, with light onboarding beforehand. Weekly sessions are scheduled around the cohort to accommodate founders across different time zones.

What’s the time commitment?

Plan on approximately three hours per week. That includes the weekly live session plus the implementation work. The work isn’t added on top of your business. It happens inside your business. Most founders recover more time than they invest simply by implementing the Energy Audit and leadership systems.

Can my co-founder participate?

Absolutely—and we encourage it. Each founder completes their own assessments while also working together to align values, leadership styles, communication preferences, and decision-making. For many co-founder teams, this becomes one of the most valuable parts of the experience.

What do I keep after the program?

Everything. Your assessments. Frameworks. Operating dashboards. AI-powered tools. Recordings. Templates. The operating system you’ve built becomes yours for life. If you’d like to continue working with Mark after the program, ongoing coaching options are available.

How much does it cost?

Investment details are shared during your conversation with the team, along with flexible payment options. Every seat is backed by the 5X+ ROI Guarantee.

Does completing the program guarantee an investment from GroundForce Capital?

No. The Backable CEO is Mark’s personal leadership program. It teaches founders to think and operate through the same lens Mark uses as an investor, but participation is completely separate from GroundForce Capital’s investment process. The objective isn’t to raise money. It’s to become the kind of founder investors, employees, customers, partners—and your future self—want to bet on. That’s what it means to become Backable.