Mike Fata - From Personal Health to a $419M Exit

The Story of a Brand Show

Ramon Vela

Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 145 Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of The Story of a Brand Show, my co-host Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures, sits down with Mike Fata, Founder and past Chairman & CEO of Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods.

Mike’s story is one of personal transformation fueling a movement. What began with his own health journey, losing weight, regaining strength, and discovering hemp seeds, evolved into co-founding a company that pioneered an entire food category and scaled it all the way to a $419 million strategic exit.

Mike shares how belief, discipline, and governance shaped his entrepreneurial path. From facing stigma around hemp in the early days, to building a trusted brand on quality and education, to evolving his own leadership from founder to CEO to chairman, Mike gives us a masterclass in resilience and scaling with integrity.

Today, he’s paying it forward as a mentor, investor, and author of “Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur.”

Here are some of the key moments from the episode:

* How personal health struggles inspired Mike to co-found Manitoba Harvest

* The power of storytelling and education in building belief in a new category

* Why governance, values, and discipline were non-negotiable guardrails for scaling

* The mindset shift required to evolve from founder to CEO to chairman

* Why mentorship and continuous improvement remain at the core of his legacy

Join us in listening to the episode and hear how Mike Fata transformed passion into purpose, purpose into a category-defining brand, and now, wisdom into mentorship for the next generation of founders.

For more on Mike Fata, visit: https://www.mikefata.ca/

To buy Mike Fata’s book, “Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur,” visit Bookshop.org, Amazon, or wherever you purchase books and audiobooks.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave The Story of a Brand Show a rating and review.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	At the, we have to control the controllables that we can control, right? And so you can control going to
0:05.4	bed, getting good night's sleep, get up in the morning, work out, and eat some, eat some healthy food, and you're going to feel better. And I believe when you're feeling better, when you're feeling good about yourself, and with, especially with optimistic philosophy, you think something is good is going to happen to you, more good things happen to you, right? And I like to reframe it nowadays, too. It's more of the
0:25.0	treasure. you think something as good is going to happen to you, more good things happen to you, right? And I like to
0:22.3	reframe it nowadays, too. It's more of the treasure hunt mentality in life, you know, what,
0:27.2	what's around the next corner, what conversation, what's going to be presented or pitched to me?
0:31.2	What am I going to stumble into? And those are the exciting things in life, even if they're
0:35.4	riddles or challenges that we have to solve, right? Like that mindset will, that growth mindset will take us very, very far. But it's
0:44.1	hard to do that if you just physically don't feel your best. That's why I always circle back to the
0:48.5	things you can control, which is like control your health habits, right? Dial in your health habits.
0:53.9	Before we can do our best work or build our best community,
0:57.5	we have to work on becoming our best self.
1:09.8	This is Rose Hamilton, your host for The Story of a Brand Show.
1:13.7	For over two decades, I've served as a hands-on executive in growing consumer companies,
1:18.5	including the Vitamin Shop, PetSmart, and Nutrafall.
1:22.0	And I'm the founder of Compass Rose Ventures, a consultancy to emerging CPG brands.
1:27.1	On this show, I'll bring you simple brand growth
1:29.4	strategies based on practical experience, inspiring expert interviews, and my own insights from my time
1:35.5	on the front lines in the fascinating world of health and wellness, beauty, food and beverage, and
1:40.3	pets. Now, let's get started with today's episode. Welcome to the story of a brand. I'm Rose
1:46.1	Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures, where we turn consumer brands into category leaders. We don't
1:51.7	just chase growth here. We build brands that attract customers, capital, and strategic outcomes.
1:57.4	Today, I'm super excited because I'm going to be sitting down with someone who proves that point in real time.
	...

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