John Mackey, Whole Foods Market

Summary

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Podcast Summary: David Senra with John Mackey, Whole Foods Market Founder

Podcast: [David Senra – Conversations with the Greatest Living Founders]
Host: David Senra (Scicomm Media)
Guest: John Mackey, Co-Founder of Whole Foods Market
Date: January 4, 2026
Episode: A Deep-Dive on Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship, Growth, and Inner Work

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Episode Overview

This episode features a vibrant, introspective discussion between David Senra and John Mackey, exploring Mackey’s journey from idealistic co-op “hippie” to pioneering founder of Whole Foods Market. The conversation dives deep into themes of founder psychology, obsessive drive, co-founder conflict, scaling a mission-driven business, learning from failure, personal philosophy, and spiritual growth.

It’s a candid, often philosophical reflection on entrepreneurship—anchored in stories from Whole Foods’ history, vivid lessons from other top founders, and Mackey’s personal experiences with ambition, resilience, and self-discovery.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Founders as Fanatics: The Mission-Driven Obsessive

• Entrepreneurs as fanatics: Mackey and Senra discuss how successful founders like Michael Dell, Todd Graves, and Mackey himself are “all in,” often erasing boundaries between work and play.
  • Quote: “They just are into their businesses…they are 100% in. That's where their time goes.” – John Mackey [00:02]
• Being a missionary vs. mercenary: Mackey always wanted to change how America eats—not just run a profitable local store. This “missionary” drive created friction with early co-founders.
  • Quote: “We’re going to change the way that the country eats.” – David Senra [01:17]
  • Quote: “The missionary part was, as we began to grow, I began to realize nobody's really doing quite what Whole Foods is doing...” – John Mackey [02:20]

2. Early Co-Founder Conflicts and Outgrowing Partners

• Misaligned ambitions and patience: Early co-founder Mark just wanted to cash in on the first profitable store; Mackey wanted decades of compounding impact.
  • Quote: “It's like you plant a seed, you can't be digging...you gotta let it grow.” – John Mackey [02:20]
• Parallel to Rockefeller: Both Senra and Mackey note that true founders often have to “buy out” less ambitious partners to pursue expansive visions.
  • Quote: “He looks back as one of the smartest and best decisions of his life.” – David Senra [05:57]

3. Founder Mindset: Obsessive Problem-Solvers

• Learning through iteration and risk: Both Mackey and Dell see entrepreneurship as solving endless puzzles; confidence grows through constant adaptation.
  • Quote: “You've got to make mistakes. That's how you learn. That's how you iterate.” – Reference to Michael Dell by Mackey [06:42]
  • Quote: “Failure wasn’t an option.” – John Mackey [07:06]

4. Scaling Whole Foods: Differentiation and Timing

• Growing or dying: Mackey understood the need to scale—Whole Foods had no patents or moat, and grocery giants could copy them at any time.
  • Quote: “Anybody could see what we're doing. Anybody could copy what we were doing.” – John Mackey [08:17]
• Media and industry ignored them…until they couldn’t: For over 20 years, legacy supermarkets and media dismissed Whole Foods as a niche. Their attention finally came after opening the flagship Columbus Circle store in NYC.
  • Quote: “The supermarkets never took us seriously for decades.” – John Mackey [08:17]

5. The Role of Competitors, Walmart, and Venture Capitalists

• Walmart as a ‘giant distraction’: Walmart’s entry into groceries forced traditional grocery chains to become obsessed with prices—leaving an “open field” for Whole Foods to differentiate on quality, service, and ambiance.
  • Quote: “Walmart was like this giant distraction and we were running downfield wide open for the touchdown pass.” – John Mackey [22:01]
• Tensions with VCs: Mackey is critical of venture capital, likening them to “hitchhikers with credit cards,” overly focused on blitzscaling and risking founder control.
  • Quote: “Be careful with the VCs because the first thing they're thinking is they want to scale your business…and they're not fundamentally aligned with you.” – John Mackey [10:52, 12:50]

6. Acquisition as Expansion Strategy

• Acquisition for platforms: Whole Foods grew via selective acquisitions—buying small regional chains to establish new footholds and then scaling.
  • Quote: “The acquisitions were key because they created a platform, a geographical platform…” – John Mackey [27:34]

7. Secret Networks and “Conqueror” Mindset

• Building an industry network: Like Rockefeller, Mackey befriended other natural foods retailers across the country—sharing financials, visiting stores, even adventuring together.
  • Quote: “We would get together and we'd bring our financial statements and we'd trade them. We didn't see ourselves as competitors.” – John Mackey [33:22]
• Outgrowing the network: Mackey’s ambition outstripped his peers’. He later acquired many friends’ companies, but always tried to minimize directly hurting them.
  • Quote: “I did have an ambition to grow the business. Most of them wanted to stay…When I went to Northern California, that was the first rupture in the Natural Foods Network.” – John Mackey [37:16]

8. The Evangelist Effect: Customer and Founder Passion

• Cult brands start with founder obsession: Early Whole Foods’ differentiation and passionate evangelism created a fanatical customer base.
  • Quote: “Most brands are ultimately built by the evangelist enthusiast of their users, their customers.” – John Mackey [56:02]
• Infectious passion: Mackey’s unbridled enthusiasm helped him raise early capital despite having no experience.
  • Quote: “I was so excited. I more or less said, I know this is going to work, trust me. And they did.” – John Mackey [58:12]

9. Inner Work, Spiritual Growth, and Resilience

• Entrepreneurship as a spiritual journey: For Mackey, growing a company was inseparable from deep inner work, periodically using psychedelics, therapy, and breathwork to explore and release unconscious blocks.
  • Quote: “Rightly seen, the entrepreneurial journey is also a spiritual journey. It's also a hero's journey.” – John Mackey [98:57]
• Coping with failure, trauma, and family estrangement: The episode closes with moving reflections on parental expectations, regret, forgiveness, and the emotional cost of pursuing an unconventional path.
  • Quote: “My mom, she died a very disappointed person…But my mother had it, secretly inculcated in me, and then didn't like it…” – John Mackey [88:06, 92:52]

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Notable Quotes and Moments (with Timestamps)

• On founder obsession:
  “Michael doesn't make a distinction, I don't think, between work and play. Neither do I… you're loving every minute of it.” – John Mackey [00:02]

• On VC relationships:
  “The VCs are playing a different kind of game...they're going to tell you don't worry about your burn rate…but what often happens down that road is…the entrepreneurs share is diluted way down…” – John Mackey [12:50]

• On scaling to avoid copycats:
  “Whole Foods had no patents. We were just a grocery store retailer. Anybody could see what we're doing. Anybody could copy what we were doing.” – John Mackey [08:17]

• On seizing opportunity while others were distracted:
  “Walmart was like this giant distraction and we were running downfield wide open for the touchdown pass.” – John Mackey [22:01]

• On building the “Natural Foods Network”:
  “We would get together and we'd bring our financial statements and we'd trade them…we were helping each other…we didn't see ourselves as competitors.” – John Mackey [33:22]

• On the unique drive of top founders:
  “You're just this, this, that sign. I was like, I don't give a shit about the car you have or the watch you have. I care about what you build, not consume.” – David Senra [14:46]

• On passion and belief:
  “Belief is irresistible…And that was like this fuel.” – Reference to Phil Knight by Senra [67:41]

• On resilience and setbacks:
  “Entrepreneurs have to be very resilient. This is a quality that's underestimated because they do fail a lot...so many times that failure is always accompanying you. Entrepreneurs…are constantly learning from their near death experiences.” – John Mackey [62:56]

• On forgiveness and personal growth:
  “Do some type of ceremony of forgiveness with your mother…I'm so grateful for you. Thank you so much. And I didn't tell you that…the way I needed to tell you that while you're alive. So I'm telling you now…” – John Mackey [95:12]

• On the entrepreneurial journey as a hero’s journey:
  “Most people do not go on their own hero's journey…Entrepreneurs are following this inner voice. They're following this passion…That is the hero's journey.” – John Mackey [98:57]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Founder fanaticism and missionary vs. mercenary drive: [00:02 – 02:20]
• Early co-founder conflict and vision: [02:20 – 06:42]
• Venture capital philosophies and warnings: [10:21 – 14:02]
• How Walmart and traditional grocers missed Whole Foods’ rise: [20:46 – 25:42]
• Acquisition as geographic growth strategy: [27:22 – 36:47]
• Building and breaking natural foods alliances: [33:00 – 41:22]
• Evangelism, cult brands, and startup passion: [54:02 – 62:56]
• Personal growth, inner work, and the hero’s journey: [96:14 – 100:44]

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Tone and Language

The episode is deeply personal and philosophical, alternating between business strategy and spiritual reflection, with Mackey’s tone oscillating from analytical to heartfelt, and Senra’s from admiration to camaraderie. Both stress learning by doing, growing through adversity, and seeking meaning and impact over mere profit.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode is essential listening for entrepreneurs or anyone fascinated by the lives and minds of category-defining founders. It goes far beyond Whole Foods’ business case, serving as a raw, detailed meditation on founder mindset, growth, resilience, and legacy in work and life.

Transcript

[John Mackey]

One of your themes that comes out and listening to a lot of your is you admire entrepreneurs and you find one of the common threads for the successful entrepreneurs be those who are basically fanatics. They just are into their businesses. I just listened to Michael Dell. I mean, Michael, you know, it's. It's like he says, and even started off the episode by quoting him. He says, well, how much time did you work? And he said, all the time. All of the time. And that's a theme for oftentimes for entrepreneurs that they are. So it's not like they're even think about working. Michael doesn't make a distinction, I don't think, between work and play. Neither do I. Because when you're really enjoying it, is it work? I mean, it's. You're doing what you want to do and it's playful. So it takes a lot of time, but you're not thinking about it because you're loving every minute of it. You're enjoying it. That comes through with the Todd Graves one as well. You know, I mean, he just loved his business so much. And so all these entrepreneurs, they're 100% in and that's where their time goes. They're not. You asked Michael if he was kind of like a Renaissance man or if he was doing a lot of different things. And it's like, no, no, not really. I think that's also true for most entrepreneurs. They're pretty focused on a few things and mostly they're focused on their business.

[David Senra]

Yeah. With the conversation we're just having before we started recording was, you know, I'm essentially seeking your counsel because I think I'm just like these kind of people. Like, you wouldn't spend 10 years making this podcast reading 400 of these books. Your book is excellent, by the way, which we'll talk a lot about today. I wasn't expecting to start here if you didn't think that you were similar or there was something about them that was attractive. And I feel like essentially my entire life is my work now. I think one thing that we share together, and we spent several hours together too, it's very obvious in your book, but also with you, you viewed yourself, I don't know if you use this word, but to me you're definitely a missionary. And one of the things I want to talk to you about, I talked to a lot of founders about this, so there's a lot of co founder conflict. And it's very obvious that especially when you're a missionary, you weren't like, oh, I just Want to, like, start, you know, one grocery store so people eat healthier and better food. You're like, we're going to change the way that the country eats. And that was a very distinct philosophical mismatch from some of your early co founders. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[John Mackey]

I mean, the first one, we started it up, it was kind of like, thought it'd be fun. We weren't trying to change the way America eats. We just wanted to open up a small natural food store the safer way. And actually, the good part of the book is dedicated to the early days, because I think many entrepreneurs, they remember the early startup part of the business very well, and then they remember the last few years, and then there's the period in between they don't think about. One of the good things about writing a memoir is like, I got to rethink it all, relive it all. And, yeah, my original founders, co founders, particularly one Mark, he just wanted to make a lot of money. And the very first store, the very first Whole Foods Market, was very profitable. And even though the flood knocked it back, we got back on our feet and it was just very profitable. And he said, we don't really need to do anything else. We've got it made. Let's just not screw it up. It's like, well, I don't want to do just one store. I want to open up more stores. And he went along with that. But those new stores started slow, had to grow into it. And so there even came a time where we're losing money again. And he was very angry about it. He says, you've. You've. You've blown it. And I said, no, these stores are going to be fine. They're going to grow. Wait and see. But he didn't have the patience to do that. It's like you plant a seed, you can't be digging or you gotta let it grow. You gotta give it time to seed, to germinate and turn into something. So you have to be patient. It's sort of like investing. You have to let it compound over many years. Well, you have to let a business compound over many years as well. So the missionary part was, as we began to grow, I began to realize nobody's really doing quite what Whole Foods is doing. Nobody quite has the vision that we have, that I had to be a national company to maybe change our agricultural system, maybe be able to help people to eat healthier. I could see what was happening simultaneously with Whole Foods growth. America was getting sicker and sicker. That's the paradox. It almost tracks perfectly where we see. I mean, David, 74% of Americans are overweight and 43% are obese. And that has not peaked. It is still going up. And it's, it's this. You can see now with Make America Healthy Again that people are beginning to respond to the fact that we are literally killing ourselves through what we're eating.

[David Senra]

The co founder that had the philosophical, philosophical mismatch. One of them. Was that the same one that you guys bought out? Was it Mark that you bought out early in.

[John Mackey]

Yes, Mark, that's right. Mark, the other co founder was with me. I mean, I mean, he, he, he was Mark's partner originally, Craig. But Craig really had a larger vision. Craig really wanted to grow the business. You really. I remember I, I don't know if I told it in the book or not, but I think, I think I might have mentioned it. But one day early on, we were, we were starting to grow. We were starting. Went to California and Craig said, john, we're going to be everywhere. We're going to be everywhere in America. Can you believe this? We're going to have Whole Foods Markets everywhere. He says, I'll bet someday, I'll bet someday we have a store in Kansas City. For, for, for Craig, Kansas City, it was like the last place we'd have a store. But he thought, we'll get there someday. And I remember, I think Craig had retired by the time we, we finally got to Kansas City. But I remember calling him up and saying, craig, we've done it. We're in Kansas City. Dude, we made it.

[David Senra]

There's a lot of things that I mentioned this in the Founders episode I made about you I was not expecting because you're hilarious in the book, by the way, where it starts where, like, you know, I'm like this shirtless, hitchhiking hippie.

[John Mackey]

Like, I just dropped out of college.

[David Senra]

I'm looking for like my life's mission, like what I want to do for work. And so you wouldn't think like a shirtless, you know, hitchhiking hippie. There'd be a lot of parallels between you and Johnny Rockefeller, but there definitely is. And specifically in the early days of his career where there was a commitment mismatch between him and his original co founders. True wind up. He bought them out. He said that day that he got rid of those partners was. He looks back as one of the smartest and best decisions of his life. You were constantly wanting to expand, expand, expand. I wanted to ask you. That's the next question I ask you, from the very first. From the very early days of Safer Way and then returns into Whole Foods, and your partners were kind of like, trying to put. Trying to put the reins and, like, pull you back, right? Can you, like, talk us through that time of your life?

[John Mackey]

I just had a lot of confidence. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, not that we weren't making mistakes. I just. I think entrepreneurs believe. Okay, I. I got this from listening to the Michael Dell one on. On the drive out here, in fact, is that Michael said, well, you. You gotta make mistakes. That's how you learn. That's how you. You iterate. Entrepreneurs have confidence that they will solve the problems. Michael likes to figure out puzzles.

[David Senra]

Right?

[John Mackey]

Well, business, in some ways, a puzzle, it's like. And I'm doing it again with Love life. It's like, okay, what does the market really want here? And, okay, this isn't working. We got to do less of that. This is working. Let's do more of that. And then you're constantly trying to think about how to create more value for your customers in ways that they don't necessarily even know they need it. So the entrepreneur has confidence that he or she will figure it out, crack the code, solve the puzzle. And so they're willing to go ahead even though they don't know for certain. Because what they do believe is they're figuring it out. They're going to figure it out. And people that, I think my co founders, they weren't sure we would be able to figure it out, and they didn't want to blow it. They want to play it safe. They didn't want to lose what they had, I think. And I was like, failure wasn't an option. I mean, I just think entrepreneurs have great confidence in their ability to solve the problems, and they will figure it out and win. And I think I fell into that category looking backwards.

[David Senra]

Why did you understand, though, that you had to expand or you weren't going to succeed where they thought, okay, we can just stay with this, like, nice old store.

[John Mackey]

It's because the world constantly. Whole Foods had no patents. We were just a grocery store retailer. Anybody could see what we're doing. Anybody could copy what we were doing. I was amazed. I always like to make the joke that Whole Foods flew under the radar. The supermarkets never took us seriously for decades. It wasn't until we opened up in Columbus Circle in New York City. The media never paid any attention to us either. We opened up in Times, you know, not Times Square. We opened up in Columbus Circle and the biggest supermarket in New York. And it just, and it was in a basement. I mean, I think I talk in the book about how difficult a decision that was because of the capital investment. No parking and in a basement. It's like we're bound to fail. But we took the risk. And that store was still the highest line store at Whole Foods, even though it's got some challengers now. It's, it's ever since we opened, it just took off. And then the supermarkets discovered us. They started to take us more seriously as a competitor because of all the publicity we received. And they ready to go see that store. And then the media started to pay attention to us as well. And as the media gave us more attention, more people began to buy the stock. And so we had this upward spiral of success. And one of the things is that we can't patent anything. We don't have any. Anybody can see what you're doing and it's easy to get your intellectual capital. You just hire away some key employees. And we were. Whole Foods was fortunate because we never were taken seriously by the supermarkets until we really develop scale on our own. I think I tell the story of a venture capitalist who didn't invest. And his basic argument was, well, I don't think it's a big market. You're just a bunch of hippies selling food to other hippies. But then if I'm wrong, these other big supermarket chains will put you out of business. You can't compete with Safeway or Heb or those guys. And he might have been right, except that they didn't pay any attention to us. So we kept doing what they were. They were hypnotized by Walmart. They were so scared about Walmart that they ignored us.

[David Senra]

This is one of the most surprising things. I want to go back to the venture capitalist. I'm going to handle the venture capitalist first and then I want to go to Walmart. Because we talked about this when we had dinner. But in the book that was one of the most shocking things. You're like, actually Walmart played a huge role in our success. And I didn't even put it together before that. You call venture capitalists hitchhikers with credit cards. In the book, you do not hide your disdain for them in general. Can you explain why? Like you call them hitchhikers or credit cards and like recount some of the experiences that you had with them in the early days?

[John Mackey]

I mean, first of all, I'm glad we got venture capital money. They, I don't know if we could have grown without it, we didn't get very much, but it was enough to get us into Northern California. And after that we, we, four years after we got the money from them, we were public. So they, they were important for us to get to where we got to once we had the public money, we didn't need those hitchhikers any longer. And they got out of the car. And I tell entrepreneurs this all the time. The VCs are playing a different kind of game. The game VCs are playing is, is that it's kind of a blockbuster model. They're looking for exponential growth. And when they hit, when you get an Apple or you get a Nvidia or an intuitive surgical or you get one of these companies that just compounds and compounds and compounds, you can get 100x your venture capital money. And that's what they're looking for. And so what ends up happening is they oftentimes take good businesses and try to scale them too rapidly because they're trying to get that exponential payoff. Remember, they've usually got these funds where the money is only going to be in that seven years they got to start paying back. So the entrepreneurs, they're not evergreen funds where you can keep the money in for decades. They're pressuring the entrepreneur to try to scale rapidly. And that works for some businesses and those are happy endings. But a lot of times you take a perfectly good business that's not going to be a multi billion dollar business that's going to change the world, but it's still a good business and they wreck it. But they can afford a lot of failures because of the blockbusters make so much money. And so it's like a batting average. They don't have to hit a thousand, they just need to hit good enough. And the blockbusters are home runs. And so they make a lot of money on that. So I'm often telling entrepreneurs that be careful with the VCs because the first thing they're thinking is they want to scale your business and they're going to tell you don't worry about your burn rate, we'll do another round of financing at a higher level and a higher level and a higher level. But what often happens down that road is that the business doesn't scale as well as they want it to. And then you get the round where it's kind of a cram down round, where it's a down round and the entrepreneurs share is diluted way down in those down rounds or they get rid of the entrepreneur and bring professional management in and they throw them out on the side of the road. I always tell the young entrepreneurs, don't give up control of your business to the VCs. They may talk a good game, but they're not fundamentally aligned with you. I think for most entrepreneurs, you really want to build a business and you probably want to be here a decade now or 15 or 20 years from now, still growing your business. And if that's the case, you have to be very careful about the VCs, because that's not what they want. They have seven years. They want 100x return if they can get it. And they're prepared to crash your business prematurely if that's what it, it takes. So be careful. That's my main, main thing I tell them.

[David Senra]

How do the younger entrepreneurs that you're advising usually respond to that advice?

[John Mackey]

Well, for one thing, most of them don't care because I think you're a builder. Michael Dell's a lot of these entrepreneurs. You're talking about these iconic entrepreneurs, they're builder entrepreneurs. But that's not the most common entrepreneur. Those are the ones you get the biographies about. But the most common entrepreneur is a serial entrepreneur. They just start businesses and they do them for five years and flip them. They're like somebody remodeling a house and then flipping it. Except these cases, they're really creative. They're good at germinating things. They don't want to operate them. They don't want to really build them over the long run. And so they're okay with that trying to scale it because they're not going to be around anyway. They want a rich exit. That's more common than you realize.

[David Senra]

I think I now am realizing that, and I have for several years, actually. It's funny, I just thought about this story this morning and I think this is actually a really important point that I remember a few years ago having dinner with a founder. And the weird thing is I had never met him. He was a fan of the podcast and. But I'm like, I don't know if this guy's actually listening to the podcast because he wanted to talk about, like, the watch he has and the car he's driving. And I found out he was selling a ton of, like, secondary before his company was successful at all. And it just came out yesterday, the day before that, this company that had a $2 billion valuation in like, 2022 or 2021, whenever I was having dinner with them last year, they did 7 million in revenue and they had $47 million of expenses. And I'm like, oh, you're just this, this, that sign. I was like, I don't give a shit about the car you have or the watch you have. I care about what you build, not consume. You should be proud of what you have built, not that you bought that you have money to buy somebody else's product. Like, that doesn't impress me. And I obviously, I left the dinner and I kind of forgot about him until yesterday. I'm like, oh, this I spent. And I was like, you idiot. David, you have like one of the benefits of reading a book like yours or any of these biographies. Like, you get to the end of the story and you just, you're reminded that you know our life. You come to the end of the book, our life. We have limited time here. And you should be ruthless with how you're spending your time. And I just gave two hours to this guy that was not even a B player. He's f. You've done nothing, you fucking joker. Like, this is useless for me to spend any time with you. And this is why people think I'm a little crazy where I spend almost all my time with people that have. I said in the episode people like you, where Michael Dell, Todd Graves. I'm obsessed with people that do things for a long time because time is the only filter that I trust. I have no idea, no predictive ability that this entrepreneur that started a company today is going to be successful. We're going to see and it's going to be up to them and the decisions that they make. And so I am kind of drawn to these, like more missionary founders because you just make better, longer term decisions.

[John Mackey]

So I'm not sure he was a typical serial entrepreneur because a lot of serial entrepreneurs that I know, I know a bunch of them and they do care about their businesses. And for them it's more. They have a certain skill set of creating businesses and then getting them to a certain level. And there's not primarily about the money for them. The fun part is creating the business and then as you start to staff it up and you build a bureaucracy and they feel trapped by their own creations in a way. They're not wired to fit within that kind of corporate structure that they're creating. And all businesses eventually evolve to, or almost all businesses eventually evolve to, if they get any scale, they just don't like that. So they start over again. But I think those people are very interesting people. I think many serial entrepreneurs are not simply shallow people in it just for the money. I have some good, close friends who've made a lot of money creating different businesses, but only like one of my good friends in Austin, a guy named Brett Hurt. He was the. He. He co founded three public companies. His most famous one was Bizarre Voice, which does all. Did all the. If you do a review on an online business, you're probably using Bizarre Voice technology. And Brett is just, he said, well, I just love creating businesses and, and, but after, after I've done it for, I don't know, five or six years, I just get bored with it and I want to create something new.

[David Senra]

Yeah, I don't have any problem with that. Like, I mean, the whole point of being an entrepreneur is you get to decide where you work on who's around you. Like, that's one of the biggest choices.

[John Mackey]

Brett would never be bragging about any of his cars he drives or, you know, his wealth. It was just not. He just wouldn't do that.

[Podcast Narrator]

Before having this conversation with John Mackey, I got to spend seven hours with him over two days. And it was during one of our conversations that John Mackey told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about founders podcast. He had listened to over 100 episodes before we met, and he told me that if Founders podcasts existed when he was younger, that Whole Foods would still be an independent company. That since the podcast and all of history's greatest entrepreneurs constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses, he would have put a much higher priority on it. Especially during good times, during boom times. It is very natural for a company and for human nature to not watch your costs as closely as. Because everything is going so well. Andrew Carnegie would repeat this mantra time and time again. Profits and prices are cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled. And in Carnegie's view, any savings achieved in the cost of goods were permanent. This is something I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast. I've gotten to know all the co founders of Ramp and have spent a ton of time with them on over the last two years. They all listen to the podcast and they've picked up on the fact that the main theme is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how doing so can give you a massive competitive advantage. That is a main theme for Ramp. The reason that Ramp exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your costs. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting and cost control. In this episode you're currently listening to, there's a shocking idea that John Mackey told me about and it has to do with the role that Walmart played in Whole Foods success. And it has to do with how impossible it was for other people to compete with Sam Walton and Walmart. In his autobiography, Sam Walton wrote this. Our money was made by controlling expenses. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient. RAMP helps you run an efficient organization. RAMP gives you everything you need to control your spend and optimize all of your financial operations on all on a single platform. RAMP's website is incredible. Make sure you go to ramp.com today to learn how they can help your business save time and money. That is ramp.com let's go back to.

[David Senra]

The role that Walmart played in Whole Foods success, which is a very interesting part of your book.

[John Mackey]

Well, it was, it was sort of, if I was using a metaphor, it's kind of like we were using a football metaphor. It's kind of like Walmart was such a massive force. They created everybody, all the supermarkets. Remember Walmart started out, they didn't sell food. They were, they were, you know, Sam Walton, you read his book probably ten times and, and Sam, you know, he started out kind of in the five and dime store and that was kind of his initial model. I remember he had his big idea to do the bigger general merchandise store and he couldn't sell it to where?

[David Senra]

To the Ben Franklin.

[John Mackey]

To Ben Franklin. So he just went out and did it on his own. And it was only later, after they'd succeed Wal, Walmart was very successful, growing. And they were competing with Gibsons and companies like that, Kmart, that they started thinking about food. But when they put groceries in, it so disrupted the conventional supermarket industry that all they wanted to do was figure out how to compete with Walmart.

[David Senra]

So the existing grocery stores saw the competition from Walmart and they made the drastic mistake of trying to compete on price.

[John Mackey]

Yes.

[David Senra]

With the low cost provider.

[John Mackey]

Correct. And so they, they tried to cut their cost. They, and they spent less money in building out their boxes. They looked more like warehouses. They were more sterile. They went with cheap lighting, everything, you know, everything to cut their capital investments down. Then they cut their labor to the bone. They had a lot of them had Unions. So they had, but so they cut by cut service back and they still couldn't compete with Walmart. They were playing Walmart's game. When Whole Foods, we just were going this different direction. We'd like to, well, we can't compete with Walmart in price. We're not even going to try to. We're going to compete on quality, we're going to compete on service, we're going to have differentiated product mix. And so that's what we did is that one venture capital said you're a bunch of hippies selling food to other hippies. That's true. It was true at one point. We were definitely food for a younger generation of more health conscious people. But what ended up happening is that as those supermarkets made their stores less attractive, we'll say to middle class, upper middle class women who do most of the food shopping, they wanted to come into a store that was pretty, it was beautiful. That with people that gave them good service, that took their groceries to the car, that was nice to them, that answered their questions and they didn't get the products that Whole Foods sold. But what they got was our produce was beautiful and it tasted good. And these people were really nice to us. Even though they had piercings and tattoos and they didn't look like, but they looked like their children actually. So they were more sympathetic to it than you might think. And so we cracked that. We kind of cracked that upper middle class next that bought our food for the quality and the service. And then as that happened, we began to grow faster, our comps went up. We were not just in our own little sort of hippie hippieville any longer and the supermarkets didn't pick it up and again until we got to really didn't pick it up. So they were ignoring you, they were ignoring us. It was like using our football metaphor coming back. Walmart was like this giant distraction and we were running downfield wide open for the touchdown pass. They were so obsessed with stopping Walmart that it allowed Whole Foods to compete on a different, different framework, a different, different competitive strategy. The supermarkets only competed for the longest time. They only competed on price. Really. They just, you know, they had nice stores with Muzak in it and they never, but they were all trying to compete on price. And then Walmart was the killer app, so to speak. And they were trying to, that's all they knew how to do is compete on that. So Whole Foods created a different business model. Once they figured it out, it became a lot tougher competition for us. They started copying Us, they started making nicer stores, putting a bigger emphasis on their perishable foods, like produce, competing with us on price instead of Walmart.

[David Senra]

How many years did they give you the run of the field?

[John Mackey]

That's the great question. I'd say we got the run of the field. We opened up the first Whole Foods was 1980, say, for 1978. And we didn't open up. It was 2004. We opened up Columbus Circle. So think about that. We had, you know, 20, 20 to 25 years where nobody paid any attention to us. And that allowed us to scale and compound. And they just dismissed us. They just thought, who cares about whole food? They don't hurt us. We never hurt any one supermarket that much. In fact, we'd come into a new market and they'd be all. They'd compete initially. They'd try to lower prices, get some of our products, but then their sales didn't drop very much because Whole Foods would take a little bit from a lot of different groceries. We wouldn't take much from any particular one. So as a result, they just thought, they're not. We don't have any problem competing with Whole Foods. They ignored us.

[David Senra]

What was going on there? I don't understand how you would take a little bit from, you know, let's say, five of the other grocery stores in the areas.

[John Mackey]

Well, because we weren't. We were so differentiated. We'd take only a few of their customers. Not. Not most of their customers didn't switch over. Just some of them did. A few did, but a few switched over from a lot of different places. And in the early days, when we were the only natural food Supermarket maybe for 50 miles around, we had a lot of people that would drive in on the weekends and stock up, and they'd buy, you know, 300, $400 worth of groceries.

[David Senra]

How far were they driving to get to you?

[John Mackey]

Oh, I mean, sometimes 100 miles. When we only had one store in a market area, people might come in. They wouldn't. I mean, it's not their everyday shop, right? They'd come in, they couldn't get this food anywhere else. They didn't have what Whole Foods was selling at typical supermarkets in the day. In the day. We were so unique. I always say, David, the first 20 years we existed, when people would first walk into Whole Foods Market, you could see. I'd see it. I'd see it again and again and again. Their jaw would drop. It was like, I've never been in a store like this. This. This. I've never Seen a store like this. Now, people don't have that feeling because it's more common, and supermarkets have upped their game. But for a long time, at least 20 years, people, we just were blown away. The first time they came into Whole Foods Market, they'd never seen a store like that. It was so different than any other supermarket they'd ever been in. So we were very well differentiated. We were in a niche, and people did not compete with us in that niche, and so we sort of owned it. But as I said, retailers don't have patents. We couldn't patent a natural food supermarket. We couldn't patent our product mix. We couldn't patent our marketing. We couldn't patent our service levels.

[David Senra]

And so scale was your solution to that?

[John Mackey]

Well, as we scaled, we could get. We could get better pricing as well.

[David Senra]

So that was one of the craziest stories in the book. That again, I've been shopping at Whole Foods forever. I never, for some reason, never thought about, like, the creation. I just figured, oh, he started the first Whole Foods and the second, and so doing it for 40 years. And that's how it happened. I had no idea that how much you grew by acquisition.

[John Mackey]

The acquisitions were key because they created a platform, a geographical platform. For us to go into a new geography and create a team of people is very expensive. We did it a few times. We did it. We started in Texas, we did it in Northern California, we did it in Chicago, we did it in Northern California. But most of the other regions like Los angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C. florida, North Carolina, we got our platform by an acquisition. We bought out an existing company. That didn't mean we didn't get many stores. We might have gotten. I think we got six stores in Boston and seven in LA and two in Florida. But that was still enough to create the platform. And from there, with that platform in place, with already support there and good intellectual capital, people that knew what they were doing, we were able to grow faster. But if you look at Whole Foods, let's say Whole Foods has 550 stores right now, probably of those that were stores that were acquired that still exist and weren't relocated, maybe 25.

[David Senra]

So the acquisitions were happening earlier in the company history.

[John Mackey]

Yes, earlier. And they created a platform, a geographical platform that allowed us to expand out from that platform, in a sense, open new stores in that area.

[David Senra]

This is again, one of my favorite parts of the book, and I think I want to spend some time here, if you don't mind. Again, Rockefeller did this exact same thing. I mentioned it in the Founders episode I did on you, where he had this thing called Secret Allies that I think is one of my favorite ideas I've ever come across in any of these books. He's at the very beginning of the refining industry. You're at the very beginning of the natural foods industry. Doesn't really exist. You are by far the most ambitious. And I called you in the episode like, oh, I should have known this. Anybody that's going to start in a new industry and come out at built the category defining company in that industry. Of course they have this huge ambition. They're essentially a conqueror is the way I think about you. Even though I think a lot of people would not come away with that same conclusion because of how like, you know, the hippie nature that you started with. So you, what you do is very smart. You did exactly what Rockefeller did. He's like, you looked around. It's like, well, I'm doing this thing. Who else? Let me look around, not just in my area, who else is doing the same thing? And in some cases you find out about these in like trade journals. And then you don't just like, oh, that's interesting. No, you get on a plane and you go there and you start building a relationship. You built a network, right? Was it an official network? Was this unofficial?

[John Mackey]

No, we had a name for it. It's called the Natural Foods. Natural Foods Network.

[David Senra]

Talk about this. This is phenomenal.

[John Mackey]

In some ways, the natural foods industry. Natural organic foods industry came out of the health food industry. The health food industry started earlier, but it's mostly selling. It's mostly what we call pill shops. They're mostly selling supplements and some packaged whole grains and whole grain flours and things like that. But mostly most of their sales came from supplements. But that's kind of where the industry grew out of. Think about Jack lalanne. He was back in the health food day and he was a health food champion.

[David Senra]

It's like 70s.

[John Mackey]

What's under. We're talking the early health food industry was probably after World War II and it didn't until you. Until my generation kind of came of age. In the late 60s and early 70s, you begin to see certain natural food stores start to pop up that were primarily food rather than supplements. And there came a point where we realized we're not really health food stores in the old traditional sense. We're different, we're natural food stores. Then the next iteration was what if we did a store that was a complete one stop shop for people living this lifestyle so that we were A supermarket. A natural food supermarket. When Whole Foods started, there are only like, three or four other natural food supermarkets in the United States. There was, like, Bread and Circus in Boston. There was Mrs. Gooch's in LA. There was Fraser Farms in San Diego. That's about it. I mean, there were some smaller stores, but they weren't. You got to be at least 10,000 square feet to be a natural food supermarket, in my mind. And so we opened up. I heard about those in the natural foods merchandiser and went and studied them and thought. I remember it was pivotal. It's like I could go and tell the investors, hey, I didn't invent this. There are other people doing it. It's working in la. It's working in Boston, it's working in San Diego. Why won't it work in Austin? It'll work in Austin. Let's try it. Otherwise, I may not have been able to get the money if I didn't have at least a few prototypes already working. Went and studied them, became friends with them, and ultimately acquired all of them. And you jumped where it was going. But there were others that were opening up about the same time, like Alfalfa's in Boulder, Whole Food Company in New Orleans, Unicorn Village in Miami. There were. There were others that were forming about the same time. That was an idea whose time had come.

[David Senra]

But what was the initial instinct? The initial instinct is, these people are doing what I'm doing. Let me go build relationships with them. And then you realize, oh, there's a mismatch of ambition here. And I can actually acquire them because they didn't want to expand.

[John Mackey]

You're giving me too much credit there.

[David Senra]

Okay, but Mrs. Gooch's, I remember that one because that was instrumental at the time. I think you guys were only selling, like, you weren't selling, like there wasn't a butcher. There was some kind of. That you were doing like eight to $10,000 a week.

[John Mackey]

And that was a safer way.

[David Senra]

Okay, it's Safer Way. Each $10,000 a week or something like that. Yeah, they were doing like 100,000. And you're like, oh, that kind of opened your eyes that you add the other product category. Correct.

[John Mackey]

Bingo.

[David Senra]

Okay.

[John Mackey]

Mrs. Gooch's was a huge influence early on because it's like, wow, they're doing 10 times as much sales as we're doing. And their stores are a little bit bigger, but they're not that much bigger. But they're selling. They're selling fresh meat, and they've got big produce departments and. And so it's like that's what we need to do too. We can't do it a safer way. It's too small. We need a bigger location. What ended up happening, I think of it this way. We were all, we were all missionaries in a way. We really believe naturally we saw what was happening with the processed food industry that it was basically poisoning people. People were eating this terrible food, eating junk food diets. And we thought we need to. So we were sort of like puritans in a way. We wanted to create this really natural, organic revolution. It could change the world. That's what we. And other people that were our colleagues, they were missionaries too. They were doing it because they really believed in it. And so initially we created this Natural Foods Network because we were helping each other. We would get together and we'd bring our financial statements and we trade them. We didn't see ourselves as competitors. We each had our own geographical niche. And by exchanging information and financial information, this was making us all better, better retailers. It was sort of like it was a club. And then we used to do trips together too. We did some people that were in the industry, not just retailers, but we had a wild man's group. We did some adventures together in Alaska, in Yosemite.

[David Senra]

Not work related. This is just friendships.

[John Mackey]

Yes, building friendships, building relationships and having adventures together.

[David Senra]

You would also, wouldn't you guys also travel to other stores together and do store visits as a group?

[John Mackey]

What we do is we'd come together in a city, there'd be a host company hosting, usually around a new store. We've opened up a new store. You gotta see it. And so like when we hosted in Houston, we opened up our first natural food in Houston. In 1984, we hosted the Natural Foods Network meeting in Houston that became one of the highest volume stores in the natural foods world. And within a couple of years, was.

[David Senra]

This like a collective or do you felt you were like kind of the leader of this organization?

[John Mackey]

The guy that organized the Natural Foods Network, and I credit him in the book, is a man named Peter Roy, who was a natural networker. And Peter, he started a whole food company in New Orleans, which we bought out, acquired that in 1988. And then Peter came on and helped start Northern California. He eventually became president of whole foods for five years. And he left us back in 1998. I'll do some detail on that in the book. And so he was instrumental. He worked for us for 10 years. And Peter brought the network together and he helped one of the first acquisitions we did After Peter was we. And it was key, before we went public, we acquired Wellspring Grocery in North Carolina. Lex, Salvador and Peter were like best friends. So Peter said, john's a good guy. We're going to take good care of the business. We're going to grow it. You're going to get a big paycheck. Because we needed to go public because I didn't want the VCs to get control of the business. I needed to.

[David Senra]

You said they were trying to grab the steering wheel sometimes.

[John Mackey]

Founding investors still had a majority of the stock. The VCs own 34%. But if we'd done another round, they would have gotten control of the business and they had different agendas.

[David Senra]

There's a great story in the book because your dad, which we'll get to, plays a huge role in your life and in the company. And there's like, you guys have this knockdown, drag out fight and then he pulls you into a room with the VCs. After he pulls you into a room, like, we need to get rid of these guys as soon as possible.

[John Mackey]

Yeah, he just said, they want to take over the company. Let's get them out. Let's get them out of the car.

[David Senra]

Let's get him out of the car.

[John Mackey]

He used more choice language about it than that.

[David Senra]

Let's go back to this network, though. So you're, you're, you guys.

[John Mackey]

So we're developing all these relationships with these guys. What ended up happening is I did have an ambition to grow the business. Most of them wanted to stay. And when I went to Northern California, that, that was the first rupture in the Natural Foods Network because we'd gone out of our state. And Mrs. Gucci has felt like California was theirs. I think I said, guys, LA is yours, you're there. But nobody's in northern California. That's 400 years, that's 400 miles away. It's like, you know, you never said you even want, had any ambition there. And they said, well, we don't. But we didn't think, you know, we would get there eventually. And now you've gone there. So that kind of was beginning to break up the Natural Foods Network. We stopped sharing financial information. There was, we Whole Foods sort of created some fear in some of these other entrepreneurs that we were maybe going to come into their territories. I kept saying, no, guys, we're not going to compete with you head on. No, I mean, I. No, seriously, what do you mean you're.

[David Senra]

Not going to compete with them head on?

[John Mackey]

There were markets that we stayed out of for years.

[David Senra]

And then what happened?

[John Mackey]

Well, then we bought them. But, you see, that's a different thing.

[David Senra]

John, John, you have.

[John Mackey]

Come on, you have this.

[David Senra]

You are unbelievably humble, and I don't think that's an act. But you also are this ruthlessly competitive conqueror. You admit to how competitive you are in the book.

[John Mackey]

Yes. However. But the point is that these were my friends, and I did not want to hurt my friends, so I never hurt Mrs. Gooch's. Didn't have to hurt them. I mean, maybe it lessened their upward potential someday if they'd gotten there in 10 years, or if somebody else would have gotten there before them, slow as they were going. But I didn't compete directly with anybody else's stores ever. I never did it. I didn't go to Portland for that reason, because Nature's was there. I didn't go to Boulder until Alfalfa's and. And Wild Oats had sort of partnered up. And so the people that I developed those relationships with, we could pick where we went. And now they were scared we were going to come.

[David Senra]

But why would they be scared of you? What are they seeing in you?

[John Mackey]

Well, Whole Foods got out ahead. We raised the VC money, and once we went public in 92, that was a big event because now we had this currency and we could. The entrepreneurs could cash out and make millions and millions of dollars.

[David Senra]

The entrepreneurs? You mean the VCs could cash out?

[John Mackey]

Okay. No, I'm talking about.

[David Senra]

Oh, the people.

[John Mackey]

Entrepreneurs. And they all did. What ended up happening is they had no. How could they get liquidity? I mean, the reality for most businesses is they're never going to be big enough. They either have to sell the. To get liquidity, they have to sell the business because most of them can't go public. And how else can you get liquidity? Either you're going to either have an ipo, you're going to have a sale. So most of them saw the writing on the wall. Whole Foods was expanding, and they should. They should. You know, they should cash out. Most of them came to us and said, would you be interested in buying us? They, like, once we bought Wellspring and then particularly once we bought Bread and Circus, and that was, you know, what we paid was public. And they thought, my God. We ended up paying. I think Anthony, we paid him 28 million, but he ended up getting 30 million because he had to. There was a lag period between before we could cash the stock out for him, and it was worth more after we did it, when we did our secondary offering, and so they were like, wow, I didn't realize my business was worth this much money. And so they came to us. The guy, Terry Dalton in Florida, said, buy me. Why don't you come to Florida? We were great. And so we did buy him. And so that's kind of how it happened. They trusted me. They knew we were going to take care of their business, too. We weren't going to. You know, we love. We were going to love their business and make it better. Actually, most of them saw what Whole Foods was doing, and they admired us. They envied us partly, but they also admired us, and they knew if they sold out that we were going to take care of their team members and. And that we were going to maintain our standards of we weren't going to turn into a regular supermarket, and. And that they felt good about that. Win, win, win.

[David Senra]

I'm going to go back to your competitor Drive, because I do want to talk about that, because I think it surprised a lot of people. My question, though, I want to know from your perspective and, like, your mind. Okay. Because I do the exact same thing now. Where I go around and podcasting is not. It's like, very positive song. There's no, like, there's really no competition. It's, like, a lot more collaborative. But I am very curious, and I run the same idea that you did, the same idea that Rockefeller does. It's like, I will fly across the country just to have, like, lunch or dinner with another podcast. Like, I want a download of your thoughts on how you think about your business and, like, what you're doing. What did. Did you notice as you're building this network and you're meeting all these other people and all these different regions, did you think you were different from them?

[John Mackey]

Sure. I mean, but one of the things I liked about your. I just listened to on the drive here with your Michael Dell, which was impressed. I know. I know Michael. Of course, we both live in Austin for a long time. We were the two big entrepreneurs in Austin before it became kind of an entrepreneurial hub in the last decade or so. And so I followed his career closely, and I know him, and he's a really good guy. Michael talked a lot about continuous learning. Remember how he talked about. You asked him, I said, well, you had to reinvent yourself, like, three or four times. He said, no, more like seven or eight times. Yes. Because every time there was a new revolution, he had to adapt his business. Right. So I continued to learn.

[David Senra]

And you Thought they were complacent.

[John Mackey]

They just. The world is constantly evolving. It's constantly changing. And if you sit still. Michael said it, he said it in his talk with you. If you stay the same, you get passed up, you're going to fail. You have to continue to evolve, new things emerge and you have to change with it. Whole Foods was changing rapidly. We're opening up bigger stores. Most of these guys didn't have the capital to try to match that. They didn't have the ambition to do it.

[David Senra]

Let me back up. I'm not trying to say this to be, for somebody to be like an arrogant person, like, oh, I'm different from all my competitors. No, it's like a really great way to spot opportunity. The fact that you see this over and over again is. One of my favorite lines in Steve Jobs biography was that if you actually look at one of his main skill sets was that he was able to identify markets with second rate products, products that he thought he could just make better or think about in a different way. Like he didn't invent. And you just go through all of them, from personal computing to the phone to just everything that he's done. I was like, damn, I didn't even realize that until probably the 10th time I read that book too, or the 10th biography of his that I read. I see that a lot in what you were doing too. So I'm not trying to be like you to say, oh, I was like better than these people. It's just like, no, I'm fundamentally looking at this industry different than they are. And I was wondering if that was obvious at the beginning when you started going around and building this network.

[John Mackey]

I think about Steve, I mean, maybe he took products that were very early. I mean for, I mean, he didn't maybe invent the personal computer, but they weren't, they weren't very good.

[David Senra]

No, he made it easier to use.

[John Mackey]

Yes. And he, he transformed it with a much better, you know, Apple II in particular was a huge step. Or he didn't, he didn't do the MP3 player initially, but the ipod was massively better. No, he didn't do the phone. You could say he invented the smartphone though. Was there a smartphone?

[David Senra]

Nobody was using cell phones. And so.

[John Mackey]

But the smartphone is not just a phone. It is completely new category. You could always almost say nobody hardly invents anything because they're always taking some other ideas and putting them together in interesting new combinations.

[David Senra]

But from your perspective, yeah, obviously you felt different at that time.

[John Mackey]

Or no, you know, it's hard to say, David, because I don't really know how other people are thinking. I only know how I'm thinking. I just see how they act. And I just know most of these people are older than me, for one thing, and they had families. They were more security oriented. They wanted the financial security. I just was always, always kind of all in. So was I more ambitious. I was having a good time. I really like growing the business. I think that's one thing entrepreneurs have in common. They like to grow their. You like to see. It's like, it's, it's. Michael called it a puzzle he's figuring out. But also growing a business is immensely satisfying because all the stakeholders are benefiting. Your customers are benefiting, your employees are benefiting. They're getting new opportunities, new promotions. You're watching them flourish. One of the greatest, most satisfying things, particularly as Whole Foods was a public company before Amazon bought us for public for 25 years. Independent. So many of our team members became millionaires through our stock option program. If you're on a winning team that grows, you can make a lot of money, even if you're not the most senior executives. We gave stock options to everybody that worked there. And so. So I remember going to an annual gathering. We had hundreds and hundreds of people. And I got this. People got. They had this standing ovation for me because they were telling me we bought a house. I didn't think we'd ever be able to buy a house. My kids, they can go to college now. I can retire. This is so great. I never thought. These are grocery people, right? They're just, you know, people that work meat cutters and just ordinary team members who never thought they would really have any prosperity in the world. That is so deeply satisfying. That's one of the things I liked about the Todd Graves talk, by the way, was he was so much into his employees flourishing. That is a tremendously good feeling.

[David Senra]

This is one of the reasons, like, I've resisted for years. Very close friends of mine were like, you should, you know, all this history of the stuff in your head from, you know, the history of entrepreneurship, maybe better than. Maybe better than anybody else in the world. You need to start recording some of the conversations you're already having. And I was very resistant to that idea until I realized the gap in the market was like a lot of business and tech press. And I don't consider myself a journalist. I'm sure as hell not a journalist. I'm an enthusiast. I'm obsessed with this stuff. Look what the books look like when I'm done with them. Where's the camera? Like this. What does that look like? That is. Looks like obsession.

[John Mackey]

Looks like you need a new book.

[David Senra]

That's obsession. And what I realized, like, most of the business and tech press hate business and tech. And I think a lot of this has to do with, you know, they're not actually.

[John Mackey]

They're just journalists. That's where they got channeled into.

[David Senra]

And so the opening was exactly. I said, well, I think, you know, as a son of a Cuban immigrant, like, I think capitalism is awesome. You have this great thing where you said capitalism was the greatest thing that humans have ever invented, which mean you've bonded over. And I'm like, no, I'm gonna. I wanna start hosting conversations to celebrate these kind of people where you had this idea as this shirtless, hitchhiking hippie that I wanna start my own little natural food store. And I'm gonna continuously learn. I'm gonna grow it. And as I grow it, I'm creating products that people love, which I'll get to in one second. And then I'm creating wealth for myself and others, for normal people to work at Whole Foods and be able to send their kids to college as a result of the wealth that the company. The company was able to create to buy a house. These are things that should be celebrated, not denigrated.

[John Mackey]

And they're not seen because we live in a zero sum world. We don't. We live in a win, win, win world, but people don't. People don't realize it. People think about the history of humanity, David. For tens of thousands of years, there was really no progress in the world. It's been, first the Enlightenment science, and then the birth of capitalism. That's lifted humanity, particularly capitalism, that's lifted humanity out of the dirt. People have no reference points. 250 years ago, 94% of everyone alive, 94% lived on less than $2 a day. 94%. And that's in today's dollars. 88% of the people alive were illiterate. 88%. The average lifespan was 30. So many women died in childbirth. There was. There was no modern dentistry. There was no antibiotics, no vaccines. It was horrible. People do not understand where we came from. And capitalism created the possibility of the win, win, win. It used to be a zero sum game where somebody won, somebody else lost. And the biggest mistake people make, intellectuals in particular, they still think we're in a zero sum world. They're obsessed with some billionaires because Bernie Sanders thinks that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk somehow stole the money from the people. They don't understand that it's this prosperity machine that's creating more, not just for those billionaires, but for everything that they're touching. They're creating value for their customers, they're creating value for their employees. Their suppliers are flourishing. Their investors are seeing their capital go up. It can be reinvested and compounded. We're seeing governments. Where do all the or all philanthropy ultimately comes from? Business. That's where the profits are. Where's the money come from, where does all the taxes come from? And ultimately comes from business as well. Whether you're taxing the employees who are flourishing, this is the engine that's lifting humanity out. And the entrepreneurs are the drivers of that engine. And somebody like Elon Musk, he gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world. I mean, he's created, he and people like Rockefeller, they're lambasted as the villains when they are the greatest heroes that have ever lived in terms of creating value and helping people.

[Podcast Narrator]

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[David Senra]

You just mentioned Bezos, and he's got a phenomenal idea.

[John Mackey]

One of my heroes.

[David Senra]

One of my heroes. I just got to spend time with him one on one. It was incredible. He's amazing. One of my favorite ideas that he has is the fact that he's like, the idea that we have like a Forbes 400 and we have like a list of like, these are the richest people. He's like, this is. He's like, there's a better idea. Why do we have a list for how much wealth that these people have created for others? And I think he used the example of like, you know, I don't remember the market cap of Amazon is it might be $2 trillion today. Whatever it is, he's like, out of that 2 trillion, you know, I might own 150 billion of that.

[John Mackey]

You see Jeff again, When you see Jeff again, you should say, hey, Jeff, I thought about your idea. Why don't we create a Bezos 1000 and there's an organization with AI in particular that can be calculated.

[David Senra]

Yeah, it's a good point. Why we shouldn't have other people.

[John Mackey]

That would be so great if people could begin to see how much the multiplicity of value that comes out of those entrepreneurs and how it compounds over time. It's so enormous. And the intellectuals do not see it. The average person doesn't see it. They're still stuck. And they think it's a zero sum game that somebody's rich, somebody else is poor. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poor. That is not true. In fact, new book for you to read just came out. One of my good friends, Alexander Green, has written a book called the American Dream. And he shows in that book how the American dream is alive and well. And it's never been better. In fact, the dream is not only not dead, it's much better than it's ever been before. Only the intellectuals and the media cannot see it. They refuse to see it. Instead, they focus on all the things that aren't perfect yet in the society. And they're doom and gloomers. They think it's all going downhill. So that's a book you might want to take a look at.

[David Senra]

I'll definitely check it out. I have a recommendation for you after this. Listen to the episode I just did with James Dyson. Because I kept thinking about, you know.

[John Mackey]

I'm going to listen to that. Because in the, in the episode I was just listening to on the drive, you Said that's your favorite all time autobiography number one. Yeah. So I thought, okay, that's the next one I'm going to listen to.

[David Senra]

It's. I told him when I saw him too, because it's out of print and they own the rights as I go. Please, just like name for money. You don't need more money. Just this book is so important to get an entrepreneur's hands because of the struggle, which is I think what most people identify with. But the reason I brought him up is because one of the things I love about him and what I'm trying to apply to every single thing that I work on is like, he demands differentiation. He will not. If somebody else has already made the product he wants. You like, oh, I can do that, you know, a little better. He's like, I have to have, I have to invent a completely different spin on it. And the reason I think differentiation is really important because there's two things where you kind of knew at the very beginning that you were onto something very powerful. You just told an example, if somebody's driving an hour or two hours to shop at your store, that should tell you something. The other thing you. Have you mentioned how, you know, you reinvested in growth and as you reinvest in growth, obviously sometimes you know, you, you're going to lose the money for a little bit. But the first store was like profitable for like 2pm of the first day. And then like a year later there's like 100 year flood in Austin.

[John Mackey]

Nine months later.

[David Senra]

Yeah, nine months later, 100 year flood. Flood in Austin. Okay. Eight feet of water. When there's a flood, it's not just water, it's the stuff from the sewers comes up. So it goes, it floods your store and you have shit water everywhere. And then the next day or the days after, whatever you guys are mopping up and taking and trying to clean up the store.

[John Mackey]

Tetanus shots, Getting tetanus shots.

[David Senra]

And then you go into this aisle and you're like, I thought I knew everybody that worked here. Who's this person you go over? Hey, I'm John. I'm sorry, I guess I didn't know who you were. He's like, oh, I don't work here. But I'm such a huge fan of what you're doing. I shop here several times a week. I had a day off. It's very important to me that you guys get through this. So I wanted to help in any possible way. No one does that. If your product is not one valuable to them and differentiated.

[John Mackey]

Right. That was. I didn't have the language, but that's when I began to discover stakeholders, the people that care about your business. In that case, he was a customer and a neighbor, and he loved Whole Foods. It made a big difference in his life. I think you will find that most brands that are really popular, particularly in their early days, they were kind of cults. They were cult cults, meaning they had a following. Because I think most brands are ultimately built by the evangelist enthusiast of their users, their customers. Apple's a great example of that. Right? I mean, people would line up to get that next iPhone, you know, camp out to get the next iteration of iPhone in the day. Tesla. I mean, before I own a Tesla and I remember my friends talking, you got to drive this car. If you drive this car, you want to buy this car. And I said, I don't want a Tesla. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's pretentious. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. As soon as one of them finally talked me into driving, I went on, bought it from its bay. Right. So because. And I became a Tesla fan. Super fan. Right. So I do think that happened with Whole Foods. People loved our stores, particularly in the early days when we were so unique, so differentiated. And I remember those people would drive in a lot of times, they would tell me, why are you coming in? He says, oh, I want to make sure my little boy never doesn't eat this poisonous food. They're just going to eat healthy food. My child's going to be nourished. I'm going to make sure my children grow up really healthy. And it was oftentimes those parents that were doing it for the next generation, so to speak. So I do think Whole foods was benefited by that type of cult like following.

[David Senra]

But the evangelism that you see present in customers, I would say that is a byproduct of the fact that those cult brands, which I completely agree with you, are started by an evangelist. You use that word multiple times in the book. Steve Jobs, obviously an evangelist for Apple. Elon Musk, one of the greatest evangelists that we've ever seen. You knew that you had that very special skill of evangelizing. The way I think about this is like, passion is infectious.

[John Mackey]

I didn't know I had it until it worked. I mean, okay, so I discovered it.

[David Senra]

At what age did you discover it is right at the beginning, when you're starting this in your 20s?

[John Mackey]

Yeah. I mean, I mean, even raising money the first time, I mean, think about this for a Second, I'm out raising money. Even with my friends and family, I'm raising money. I have six months of experience working in a natural food store. I have absolutely no business background. I'd worked jobs and stuff, but I'd never really been a management. I didn't take any business classes when I was at the university. I didn't know much about business. And these people were willing to trust their money to this young kid and his girlfriend simply on my enthusiasm. Really. At the end of the day, I was so excited. I more or less said, I know this is going to work, trust me. And they did. And it did work. I think Jobs called it the reality. Somebody said about Steve, he had a reality distortion field. Yes, I think I identified with that. I think most persuasive entrepreneurs, charismatic entrepreneurs, have a reality distortion field. They're able to get people to spend their normal skepticism and for a moment they let them into their vision and they catch a little bit. Maybe they don't get the vision, but they see the passion. I think you've talked about how passion is infectious. I think entrepreneurs are generally passionate and they sell others on their dream. I would say that. I think I said in the book that entrepreneurs are a little bit like panhandlers out there begging for money. But what they're doing is they're selling dreams. They're selling dreams to people and they make the dreams come alive. And people in the reality distortion field, they catch a glimpse of what's possible and then they want to get into it.

[David Senra]

Was there anything you were working on before Whole Foods? What other jobs did you have?

[John Mackey]

I make this joke you look at. If I did a resume, it would say busboy, cargo restaurant, dishwasher at some other restaurant, boys camp counselor, assistant manager at the Good Food Store. CEO, Whole Foods Market.

[David Senra]

Were you passionate in the assistant manager of the Good Foods.

[John Mackey]

Good Food, Good Food Store? Yeah. Yeah. That's when I remember I loved working at that Strongly worth their six months. And I loved it though. It was like I'd never worked in a retail store before. I like that because A, I like the customers. I talked to the customers and they were similar lifestyle that I had. They were. They were like me, counterculture types. The people I was working with, I liked them as well. We shared it. We were taking care of the customers. It was fun. I liked it. And I remember coming home back to the co op, back to Piranha House and I. I had thought that day I could. I remember the day while I was working, I was looking around, loving It. And I said, I could do this. I could do this the rest of my life. I could open up my own store. It'd be fun. And I went back the co op full of this enthusiasm. I guess Renee's the first person I sold on it because I was so excited about it. And I said, renee, what if we do our own store? And she looked me in the eyes and grabbed my hands and said, oh, Mac Oman, I think that'd be really cool. Let's do it. And I always say that if Renee had pooh paed the idea, maybe that would have been it. But she got excited, so my spark lit her spark. And together we created Safer Way. And that led to Whole Foods Market. So that entrepreneurial enthusiasm is very important. And also entrepreneurs have to be very resilient. This is a quality that's underestimated because they do fail a lot. They do make a lot of mistakes. I mean, Safer Way. I could have quit if I wasn't resilient. I remember going back and doubling down saying, we need to do this. We're. As I read all these books, I realized, my God, we opened this safe small store in this residential neighborhood. And it's an old house. It's cute. This terrible place to have a store. It's no, no cars go by here. This is terrible. We got to relocate it. And that was a terrible mistake. And fortunately I still had enough enthusiasm that I was able to sell people on this big store is going to work. So we raised more capital and that did work. And so I think you have to be able to overcome your setbacks. And the flood could have knocked us out as well. There's so many times that failure is always accompanying you. Entrepreneurs in some ways are constantly learning from their near death experiences and then determined to learn and get better.

[David Senra]

You're going to like the Dyson episode because that's his whole point. Like success isn't that interesting. Like failure is like where all the learning actually happens and success is interesting.

[John Mackey]

I think he's exaggerating there, but you learn more. You do learn from success as well, but you learn more from failure for sure, because you have to learn or die. I was always working like most entrepreneurs, but I was always taking odd jobs and stuff. I worked for AstroWorld for a while. Even before I legally worked. My parents did something that was pretty smart. I was going to tell people they should do this with their kids. They didn't give us an allowance. They assigned prices for things they wanted to get done for dishes, washed lawns, mowed leaves raked. They assigned a price for all those things. And if you wanted any money, you go did the jobs. So I, at a very early age, you know, we're talking 10 years old, I. I thought, well, I'd like to have money so I could go buy comic books, and then later as I got older, so I could buy records or I can save up and buy a car. And so I eagerly worked. And then as soon as I could legally work, I went and took jobs because I wanted to earn money. Because to me, money meant freedom. I could do what I wanted to do with that money.

[David Senra]

I felt exact same way. It's exactly what it's like. I so deeply desired control over my life. And I was actually just talking to a really close friend about this yesterday that I saw just relentless work ethic and started working when I was 15. I remember my dad coming into my room and telling me, because at the time I really wanted a car. And when I turned 16, and he's just like, you don't have to pay rent, but I don't have any money for a car, so whatever, like, you have to find a job and essentially, like, you're on your own. And so since I was 15, like, I never got a dollar from my family, and then they kicked me out at 18, which is a whole other thing. But I felt, I think there's a lot of people like this.

[John Mackey]

Most entrepreneurs are like, the connection is.

[David Senra]

Just like some kind of, you know, default unhappiness with your life that realize that you're in charge of it. And I'm going to channel this intense work ethic into having achieved success. And mainly the success is not because it's monetary. It gives me control over what I'm doing now. The next stage of that, and I think the ideal stage is like, you're actually working on something you're passionate about. You believe in the reason I asked you what other jobs you had, because there's multiple times when I'm reading this book, I thought of Phil Knight's book Shoe Dog, which is to me, one of the greatest.

[John Mackey]

This, this book that was my benchmark, Shoe Dog.

[David Senra]

It's one of the greatest entrepreneur autobiographies ever. I love that it's in chronological order. I love the fact that every chapter is the year that's taking place. It's just remarkable to reread it again and make another episode of Founders. But the reason I. There's two things that you say in this book that I think are important for next generation of entrepreneurs to Understand one. He realized that he's. He's another evangelist. Right. But he didn't have the evangelism until he found something he was passionate about. He, like, sold mutual funds. He sold, like, encyclopedias. And he failed left and right. And he's like, but I'm obsessed with running. When running. Just like you. Running was like something weirdos did. You don't just go out for a run at the time. He's doing that just like. It's the funny part in one of your books. It's. You're trying to get the store. It's the. I think it's the first store out of Austin. So maybe it's like in Houston or something.

[John Mackey]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And you meet with the landlord, and the landlord's like, listen here, hippie guy.

[John Mackey]

He's like, there's not enough store.

[David Senra]

There's not enough other hippies. Are. You eat your hippie food and you're.

[John Mackey]

Like, we're not opening.

[David Senra]

This is not hippie food. And he explained to what it is. He goes, this is hippie food. But he. He bought into your enthusiasm.

[John Mackey]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And he said that you reminded him of like, a younger you.

[John Mackey]

Slight correction on the narrative. You got the essence of it right. But that was actually our very first whole fish market.

[David Senra]

Oh, there you go.

[John Mackey]

When we were jumping up from Safer Way, because Ben Pal, he was. He would have been in. He was a lawyer from Houston. He'd been in LBJ's administration, and he owned the property, so I had to sell him. I mean, entrepreneurs have to sell people on things. And he just thought it was a crazy idea. You're doing a hippie food store. How can that possibly work, son? I said, it's gonna work. It's gonna work. And he says, there's not enough hippies in the whole world to fill up the store. And I said something like, there's more than you think. And then I kept going on, and he started laughing, started laughing at me. And he said, son, you so much remind me when I was young, you're so full of your enthusiasm and you're so sure you're going to be successful. And. And he says, let's do your damn hippie store, you know? But one thing I can tell you, son, is life's going to teach you a thing or two before it's through with you. He was great, and he was very helpful.

[David Senra]

I love these people, the people that are older, further down the path, and they reach back and they give you words of encouragement or they help you. The guy that helped you at the bank they didn't even tell you after the flood loaned you money and didn't he didn't even tell you till years later he went to bat for you. Which that's a funny story because it happens in these books over and over again. I want to go back and close the loop on Phil Knight though and I think it's important is what he realized is belief is irresistible. And he's like I couldn't sell the stuff because I didn't believe in the product. Now I'm selling Japanese running shoes out of the trunk of my car long before Nike's even a thing and I can't stay in stock and he's living at his parents house, you know, not in the situation that he wants to be in. He's like what the hell is going on here? And that's when he realized, oh belief, I believe in my product. Belief is irresistible. And that was like this fuel. The second thing that you said in the book and I think you mentioned it, I don't remember if this is before we were talking or when we started recording was Entrepreneurs tend to remember the beginning like the early years and then maybe the later years but there's huge, maybe like two decades in here. And Phil Knight advised because he's writing that book for the benefit of future generation entrepreneurs, he's like man, there's so many times in the early days we were talking about what we wanted Nike to be. We were having incredible conversations. We were such a close knit group and those conversations have a loss to history. I wish I either had a tape recorder or I wrote it down in a journal. So when I meet younger entrepreneurs I'm like, you need to write down what you're experiencing. You think it's such an intense feeling. You think you're going to remember, you're going to forget all of this and you're doing an active service for the future. You for two, three, four gener four.

[John Mackey]

Decades down the line since I used shoe dog as a benchmark. One thing I did differently than Phil did in his book, I did document, I kept track of time and you don't really know the. Do you know almost all a shoe dog takes place in like a five year period.

[David Senra]

It's, it's, I think it's a little bit more than that. It ends at the, with the ipo.

[John Mackey]

Yeah, he got his early years but he didn't, you know the Nike became this phenomenon that changed the sports apparel business, changed marketing. It was huge benefit for athletes. There's a lot of things about Nike in the story that, that he doesn't go into that book. He should have written my opinion he should have written a follow up book because I think so much of the Nike story takes place after that occurred. One of the things I did in this book is I talked about how old I was at this time. And the book is written chronologically in a way and it spans a 40, 44 year period.

[David Senra]

Actually I do that all the time. Even if it's not stated where I am in a book. I will go and be like, okay, well we're in 1969 and this guy was, when was he born? And I'd write down on the page, okay, he's 24, this is happening. Or I'll go and be like, hey, what was he doing when he was my age? How is he thinking?

[John Mackey]

Absolutely. And I'm thinking because I'm trying to understand that entrepreneur. And so by saying, well, how was I thinking and feeling at that age? I can understand them a little bit better. I really like the idea of, you know, by the way, you said I was, you know, like Rockefeller. You did draw some analogies there. But there are so many major differences there. I mean, Rockefeller is the am I still? And maybe Elon Musk and Steve Jobs can challenge him, but he's probably the greatest entrepreneur that ever lived. And I would argue he's probably done more. Even though he's hated as this robber baron, he's probably done more good in the world than maybe anybody but some religious leader, Christ or something. But it's unfortunate that he goes down in history as one of the great villains. But the intellectuals that put him there.

[David Senra]

Not in the episodes I make about him, no.

[John Mackey]

But the reality is Rockefeller was invented the modern corporation oil has fueled the entire rise of the prosperity in the world. And he's totally misunderstood. Was he perfect? No. But still the greatest philanthropist that ever lived.

[David Senra]

So you, did you take issue with.

[John Mackey]

Me comparing you to Rockefeller? I was deeply flattered.

[David Senra]

Okay. The way you started, I was like.

[John Mackey]

Wait a minute, okay.

[David Senra]

I didn't know if you were took offense. I was like, no. And when I say, when I compare people to other historical people, it's always like this one thing they did is very similar to this act that you did. One thing people are, you know, dynamic.

[John Mackey]

One thing Rockefeller did that I never did. And it was a different era. He continued to vertically integrate and he was trying to bring order to his industry because of the boom and bust of oil discoveries. And he was a much more disciplined thinker. Than I am in terms of thinking through the whole structure and the whole system and trying to control it. And I never tried to control my suppliers or I never. He was a totally ruthless competitor in the sense that he would do things that today would be illegal, but they were legal at that time. People don't understand what he was doing was considered sharp business practices, but they weren't considered to be illegal. And what he would do. He threatened a lot of his competitors. He should sell out and you should take the stock because you're going to get a lot wealthier. But if they didn't sell out, then he basically undercut them in price and lose money until they were out. You can't do that today.

[David Senra]

One of the best quotes I ever heard from him. He was trying to buy a competitor and the competitor says, I'm not afraid of you. And he's like, well, if I cut off your hand, your body will suffer. That's a very crazy thing to say, but I think you nailed the fact that he, his. He was probably one of the greatest strategists.

[John Mackey]

Yes.

[David Senra]

I had the thought, you know, I reread things over and over again. I know you have that same habit that you'll read a book and then you'll reread it, either read the entire book again a few years later, but you also read your highlights from them. Yes, we talked about this at dinner when we had dinner.

[John Mackey]

Read Wise, too.

[David Senra]

Yeah, they're excellent.

[John Mackey]

The.

[David Senra]

When I write, I think I was rereading Jeff Bezos Shareholders for the third time, which I think are very. I think I should read them almost every year because there's just. First of all, you can read them in a weekend and they're just so many insights per minute. And in my opinion, I think the two best strategists that I've ever come across in all the reading I've done has been Rockefeller and Bezos kind of describe what they want to do and then they go out and do it, and it's very, very similar.

[John Mackey]

Yeah, I think you got to put Musk in that category as well. People don't understand what a master strategist, Elon, is and think about the way SpaceX has evolved. In a way, he's so many steps ahead of where people realize he is in terms of thinking it through.

[David Senra]

No, that's a good point. I mean, he has that document, I think, called Master Strategy that He wrote you 15, 20 years ago. Whenever it was at the beginning of Tesla, it's like we're going to do this, then we're going to do this, and then we're going to do this. And you go back, and it looks very similar to what actually occurred. I want to go back to your competitive drive, though, because we touched on it, but I think there's, like, a little bit more there.

[John Mackey]

Well, you know, I'm a very competitive person. I always have been. I mean, from an early age. Competition, I think, helps me focus. One of the things I got that I think in the Todd Graves that I just listened to recently is he talked a lot about people are always telling an entrepreneur it's not going to work. And Todd would use that as fuel. He'd say, I'm going to prove you wrong. I'm going to show you. I still feel that way from time to time. People tell me the idea is not going to work, and it's like, no, it is going to work, and I'll show you. And you climb this wall of skepticism. A lot of people, they get discouraged when people criticize them. It's like, maybe they're right, maybe it's not going to work. The entrepreneur, I think, says, no, you're wrong. It's going to work. And it causes them to focus even deeper. And part of it's an ego thing to prove the other person is mistaken. And I remember when that guy told me that, you know, you're never going to be able to compete with those guys. You're just a bunch of hippies. It's never going to work. And, you know, I, I, I make the joke in the book. It's like the guy had just turned us down. Why is he telling us why he's not going to invest? And I say, it's like getting turned down on a date. And then the girl tells you, well, here's why I'm not going out with you. It's like, hell, who wants to be told on here? I'm not going out with me. In this case, though, I remember having a slow burn in me which said, you're wrong, you're wrong. I'm going to prove you wrong. So a good entrepreneur uses that criticism, uses that skepticism, uses that wall of doubt that people are throwing at his or her as a fuel. It's like, no, it's going to work. I'm going to prove it. And they're, they're, they double down on their vision, you might say, and they're not. And they, and sort of. Many people would quit. It's for the entrepreneur. No, no, it just makes me more determined to succeed.

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[David Senra]

His point was that you get paid.

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[David Senra]

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[David Senra]

Make sure you get yours at eight sleep.com forward/senra that exact same stories in Michael Dell's autobiography. I went picked it up off the shelf the other day and I wanted to because he said something that I think is very fascinating that I reference in conversations and other episodes that I make where, you know, he's like, I'm 19 years old, I have a thousand dollars. I'm in a dorm room at University of Texas, and I'm going to compete with the largest company in the world in IBM.

[John Mackey]

You expressed some skepticism in your interview with him about it.

[David Senra]

I never doubt my. I never doubt Michael Dell. He's one of my heroes and I get to spend a lot of time with him, which I'm very, very thankful for. But on that page, he's like, you know, was I a little fool myself at 19? He's like, Sure, I was. And he's like, I think you have to be to, you know, do anything great. And you talk to him now, it's like, the guy's so impressive, but he's so low ego and he's just very calm. It really is like, just looks at things like a puzzle. And I think a lot of the work he does comes from a very positive and like, healthy place. And that's why, like, he is one of my heroes and somebody I'm trying to emulate.

[John Mackey]

Fire still burns in Michael, even though if you don't see it, it's still there.

[David Senra]

Yeah, but it's a positive. I think the positive source. But later down, I reread that entire page and he's talking about this other guy at the time that was older than him, that was living in his city, that was doing the exact same business. And it sounds very similar to when you viewed some of your friends and then eventually competitors and some of the people you actually acquired where Michael's like, yeah, but I have ideas about where I could take this that this guy can't even contemplate. And he was not saying that in an arrogant way. He was just saying like, you don't have any limits. Did you listen to the Daniel Ek episode?

[John Mackey]

Yes.

[David Senra]

Okay. So Daniel, this is one of the most important things about that episode and about spending any time with him. You get around him and you realize he has no ceilings. He does. There's no self. I think a lot of people. It sounds like I want to go back to the people you acquired. This is one of my favorite. I'm doing this for selfish reasons. This is why I'm having these conversations, because I had the opportunity to learn from you. One of the things that's so incredible is I think a lot of people, and I've done this myself, they put these fake ceilings, they put self limiting beliefs in, but it literally like, I can't go any further than here.

[John Mackey]

Right.

[David Senra]

And when you spend time with Daniel, he's just like, oh, like get that shit out of here. Like that doesn't exist. And he does that not in a direct way. He does that in a way of an example that it's like, well, I remember one of the first times I talked to him, Spotify is obviously incredible. And I was like, but he's doing incredible, like investing in business incubation. And I know that team very well. I spent a lot of time with them. And I was like, how the hell did you build this, like incredible business? That was so difficult. And then now you have this other thing where you're like, he's more like a co founder than investor.

[John Mackey]

But it would talk about Necco, Necco.

[David Senra]

Helsing everything he's doing with premium material. And I was like, did you. Were you always interested in investing? And he goes, no, I didn't even think about it until 2018. And I go, how did you learn how to invest? He goes, I listened to Patrick's podcast and that's like the best. And then he's like, I would listen to what the guy says. I'm like, oh, let me try that idea. I don't like that idea. I would read the book he recommended and he just essentially consumed all this information and then said, I like that. That fits me. That doesn't apply to me. I don't like this. And then created his cohesive philosophy and then he actually applied it to a grand scale. And I'm like, oh, he's got no limits. This is one of the most valuable things that you could possibly. If you can instill something in yourself, it's just like, stop believing that you have a limit. You're at a plateau, but you don't. Just like Bruce Lee said, you don't stay at plateaus.

[John Mackey]

I totally agree with that. Human creativity is fundamentally limitless. There is no limit to the mind except what we self impose on it. And once you realize that, see most people self censor themselves, they don't let these ideas come through because it's like, well, that's not possible. That's crazy. That's nuts. I think entrepreneur lets a little bit more through in terms of that flow from that emerges up through their minds.

[David Senra]

But not all entrepreneurs, because we're seeing this in the story, in the book where you have that, you have that slow burn, which I want to ask you a question about the slow burn in a minute. And then you're meeting other people in your industry and realizing that they're not like you.

[John Mackey]

They just had different this, had different ambitions. That's all they I just had a. I just wanted to grow a bigger company. They wanted. They just didn't have that vision.

[David Senra]

Do you think your father played the role in your expansive ideas and your ambition, or do you think that was completely like an inner drive?

[John Mackey]

I credit many, many good things to my father. I actually think he played a counter force on that. And my dad, for example, he was a Depression kid in World War II.

[David Senra]

He was 20 when Pearl harbor happened.

[John Mackey]

Yeah. So one of the things that. One of the mistakes that I made was after Whole Foods went public, my dad was. He got me to sell stock in the ipo. Just Todd Graves would hate this stock in the ipo. And he urged me to continue to sell it off. He said, john, I mean, we don't know when the next depression. My dad said he'd have made a lot more money. He was always thinking there was going to be another Great Depression. So he was always trying to protect himself from that because it was such a traumatic experience for him as a child, watching growing up in that depression with his family. They lived through it, and it was the biggest thing that impacted him in his life. And so in some sense, that spread to me. So you might say that's more limited. I sold it because he advised me to do it. And I trusted my dad. But in retrospect, that was a mistake. And I really believed. And I should have compounded it. It and compounded it and compounded it. Still made. Still me. I'm still really a wealthy guy, but I could have been a lot wealthier if I had just probably followed my own instincts instead of his advice in that regard.

[David Senra]

You're right about that, because I forgot in the book, you ask him to step down from the board because you have this expansive conquering nature, which you're going to use the word expansive. I'll use conquering nature. And he was kind of like, pulling you back constantly, and you guys were having a series of fights. Am I remembering that correctly?

[John Mackey]

That's correct. But I think in that case, my dad, he. He was in. He was already being impacted by the Alzheimer's that was diagnosed a couple of years later.

[David Senra]

But you didn't know that.

[John Mackey]

It was unknown. Did not know that. I just didn't understand why he'd gotten so conservative because he'd been very supportive of my expansive mode. And at the time, I just thought, you know what? Now we're worth so much money. And a lot of my father's wealth was created by Whole Foods. He had his own. He has his own business. But I think he made more money from Whole Foods than he did in his other business. I thought, he just doesn't want to lose what he has. He's in a different era in his. He can't rebuild. So for him, he wants to be more conservative. And I just said, he's getting super conservative. That's why I said, dad, sell half your stock. Cash it out. Keep the other half. Let me compound it, but let me go. We're going to grow this thing. It's going to be an incredible company. Just let me do it.

[David Senra]

Do you remember how old you were when you were 40 and he was, what, 70?

[John Mackey]

My dad was 72.

[David Senra]

72.

[John Mackey]

Same as I am right now.

[David Senra]

Okay. And so he had been around for the ride for 15 years up until that point.

[John Mackey]

Oh, no. Yeah, 15 years. That's right.

[David Senra]

Fifteen years.

[John Mackey]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

So that had to be one of the most difficult conversations you had in your life.

[John Mackey]

That was the most difficult conversation. The most difficult thing I ever did was fire my dad from that board. Took all the courage I had. I love my dad so much, and it hurt him so badly. So hard to do. But it was. It was also a pivotal event in my own evolution, because that was. That was when my mentorship was over. He still advised me, but from that point onward, I really, you know, I. I was on my own. I was not going to follow him any longer. Before then, I pretty much did whatever my dad suggested. I didn't buck him. I argued with him, but I often caved in because I had so much love and respect for him and I and his own. And that was a good thing. My dad made so many good decisions that helped Whole Foods. But at that point, I was just. Basically, I'd grown up. I remember saying, dad, I'm 40 years old. I'm going to make these decisions now. I'm not going to just do what you want to do. And that's why I want you to get off the board, because I don't want us to be fighting. It's turning our relationship apart. I remember he said, son, you think 40 is pretty old, don't you? And I said, yeah, 40 years old. He said, it's nothing. You think. You think you know some things. You know a little bit more than you did when you were 25 and started the business. But frankly, son, you still don't. He said, you've barely got your nose under the tent. There's so much you don't know. And I said, well, that may be true, but I'm going to find out on my own. I'm not going to do what you tell me to do any longer, particularly when it comes to growth. We're going to grow this business and you should sell half your stock. You've got all the financial security you need and watch what happens to the other half. And I tell this story in the book that a year later, the half that he'd sold was worth as much because we doubled the stock price in a year. The half, the stock that he owned was more valuable than it was prior to selling half of it. So he'd already made it all back. And a few years later, even though the Alzheimer started to grip him, my dad told me that I had made the right decision and that he was proud of me and we were back on really good terms.

[David Senra]

That's incredible. There is a very negative and has to be heartbreaking story in the book, your mother's view of Whole Foods. Yeah, I don't know if you want to talk about this or not.

[John Mackey]

Yeah. You know, my mom again, another depression child. And I was named after her father who was a doctor. And what My mother growing up in Bastrop, Texas, kind of in a poor, you know, I guess almost white trash type of thing back in that rural, you know, a little tiny town, very small town, ways Baptist community. My mother, the most important thing for her was she really wanted to be respectable. She wanted, she wanted her children to rise in society and be seen as respectable citizens. And my sister, the eldest sister, you know, she went on and got a master's in French literature, went to Wellesley, got a master's in French literature and a PhD in psychology and went on to teach. Here I am scoring really high on IQ tests, great aptitude. Age when I was interested in something, maybe not so good when I wasn't. And I kept dropping out of college and I start this grocery store business. My mother could never get over the idea really that I was not respectable. That she'd go to her bridge parties and talk to the other mothers and their sons were going on and their daughters were going on and becoming doctors and lawyers and they were, they were engineers, college teachers, professors. They were, they were. She saw them as respectable people in society. She thought a grocer was, you know, really a second class citizen. And so her son, in her mind, I wasn't an entrepreneur. She didn't even know what an entrepreneur meant, I don't think. I wasn't a successful businessman. I was a grocer. And I had squandered. I didn't finish college I'd squandered all the money and love they'd invested in me, and she thought I was a failure. And I remember, and I tell the story in the book, the very last time I ever saw my mother in my life was back in 1987. She'd had a stroke a couple of years later, and she was basically partly paralyzed and bedridden. And I went to see her, and it turned out the last time I'd ever see her because she died a couple of weeks after I saw her. And she. So I say on her deathbed, she begged me. She said, john, will you do this for me? Will you make this promise to me? I'm your mother. I've nurtured you. I've borne you. I've given you so much. Please, please, please, please promise me you will go back to school and get your degree and make something of your life. You have so much potential. You know, you scored so well on all these IQ tests and aptitude tests, and you're just nothing but a grocer. I said, mom, I'm not a grocer. I'm a businessman. I'm building this business. Whole Foods are going to be this great company. She's. John, it's just grocery, hippie stores, you know, nobody's. You know, you're not doing. You're wasting your life. And I. And she said, please promise me. Please promise me. It's the only request I have. Please promise me. Now I look back and I, you know, I. I kind of wish I. I'd lied and just did a white lie to make my dying mother happy. But I was. You know, it's 1987, I guess now when I'm. I'm 34 years old, and I just. Mom, I'm never going back to school. I'm not going to go back. I'm building Whole Foods, and it's going to be this amazing company. Already is an amazing company. It's going to be even amazing. I said, maybe I will get a. An honorary degree someday because I'm going to make a lot of money and I'm a university is going to give me a honorary PhD, which actually did happen. And. And she died a very disappointed person. And you know, that. That her son, who she had so much hope in, had. Had. Had wasted his life. So she died. We were alienated when she died.

[David Senra]

That was your last conversation you ever had with her?

[John Mackey]

Ever. Last conversation. She died a couple weeks later. You know, the funny thing is my mom has been dead. I think about my parents My dad died in 2004. My mom died in 1987. And I still have conversations with them. I mean. I mean, in my mind. And, you know, I ask for forgiveness for them, and I give them forgiveness. And what I wouldn't do to have. You know, I'd probably pay all my entire fortune to have one more night with my parents. That'd be so great, to be able to tell them how much I appreciate all the things they did to me and how much I love them. And also, hey, Mom, I turned out okay. And so we'll call that a minor regret in my life that I couldn't make my mother happy on her deathbed.

[David Senra]

Give me one minute. That's. That's heavy.

[John Mackey]

Sorry to take the energy down.

[David Senra]

No, don't apologize. That was absolutely incredible. I think it's very important.

[John Mackey]

You know, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Somebody helped me see this. I was doing a podcast, and they'd read the book, and they had an interpretation, my mother, that I'd never heard before, which was, you know, and I realized they were right. I'd always thought that I was much closer to my father than I was to my mother, but my mother had grown up in this again, this small bass drop town. Here's the ironical thing. My mother was a total rebel. She rebelled against that. You know, she left that town. She went to Houston, went to Rice University, got a girl. I went to school and got a degree. She was in a Baptist town. My mother, she started to smoke in rebellion against their. You know, she started to gamble. She started to drink, she started to dance. She was total rebel against the small town of Bastrop, Texas. And the guy I was talking to about it said, you know, John, you probably got your rebel side not from your father, but from your mother. I'd never thought about it before, and I thought, you know what? Think. I think he's right. I'd always credited my own rebellious nature to my father, but I realized my mother had it secretly inculcated in me and then didn't like it there. You know how we oftentimes project out onto other people the things that about ourselves that we don't like. My mother wanted to be respectable, partly because she had rebelled against all of her things that her parents had taught her and went her own path, and she inculcated that in me unconsciously. The other children were more obedient. I was this rebel, and I never credited her for it. But then I. Then I had on my own little ceremony. I thanked Your mom, you know, thanks for helping me become a rebel because it's really helped me be successful in life. Thank you. I owe you so much for that.

[David Senra]

The reason that just impacted me and the reason I want to talk to you about because, like, when my mom died, I was around that same age and we were estranged. Like, the saddest thing is she died like a just horrific death. Metastatic breast cancer spread everywhere. And the last two years of her life, like, that's not life. That was not living. That was suffering. And what I'm like.

[John Mackey]

That'S my advice for you. I would recommend that you do in your own way, if you haven't already done it, do some type of ceremony of forgiveness with your mother. Just where you actually ask for her forgiveness and you forgive her and it's like. And tell her just, I love you so much, Mom. Thank you for everything you did for me. I wouldn't be the person I am today without you. You nurtured me in the womb. You went through labor and pain for me to be born. You wiped my butt. You breastfed me, you took care of me. You kept me alive. You nurtured me. You helped me get educated. I owe so much to you. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you so much. And I didn't tell you that the way I needed to tell you that while you're alive. So I'm telling you now, please forgive me and, and then forgive her. I've done that and I feel like I'm. I'm at peace about it.

[David Senra]

That actually is a. A good, like, lead into, I think one of the most important things that are in the book. And you also talked about this when we had dinner. You recommended MDMA therapy for me.

[John Mackey]

Yeah. You said, no way I'm ever going.

[David Senra]

To do that, which I still haven't. Talk about the inner work that you did.

[John Mackey]

But you know what? What I can recommend that you could do, and it'd be just as powerful. Don't take a drug, but do some serious breath work. Because I always tell my friends that particularly don't want to do any type of, like MDMA or psilocybin psychedelic. You can have a transcendent experience just through breath work. You can, you can access deeper parts of your unconscious mind that you've repressed and you can relive those experiences in a safer environment. Because what's safer than just doing deep breath? Do it with a guide. And, you know, you need to do at least an hour to hour and a half or two hours and you have to do the deep breathing. But what happens, the breath activates parts of your more deeper self. It's mostly hidden from you, and it lets it come into your consciousness in a way that you can see it and not be overwhelmed by it. It's a way to practice letting go of some of the stuff that we feel guilty about that we suppressed. That actually drives a lot of our behavior. Not even conscious of it. You can have a transcendent spiritual experience through breath work, and it's completely safe. And hey, if it gets too scary, you just stop breathing. So you're always in control.

[David Senra]

When did you start realizing you needed to fix something that was inside your mind as you're building the company? Was it early when you were starting the company?

[John Mackey]

Remember, I started. I did psychedelics before I even started the company.

[David Senra]

So I tell this crazy story about doing lsd, and I think you were.

[John Mackey]

That's how the book starts out in prologue. So I'd already done. I mean, wasn't doing it therapeutically. I was doing it. I was doing it spiritually. I was trying to access deeper parts of the spiritual being that we don't normally do that. Think of psychedelics as opening a doorway to going into parts of our mind and our greater. There's an interior self that's every bit as the extra. Bigger as the external universe may be bigger that we don't. Because we're so focused on living in the material world, we're not conscious of this deeper part of our being. Psychedelics open a door to it. But there are other ways. Meditation does, if pursued, breath work does. There's different types of modalities that help us access deeper parts of our consciousness. And I think to grow as a human being, we need to. To go deeper so we can begin to release fears, guilt judgments that kind of hold us back. And I think every one of us can access that.

[David Senra]

Were you doing this the entire time you were building Whole Foods?

[John Mackey]

Yes. I mean, sometimes more seriously than other times, but yes, it was a it. That's why, as you read the book, you know, I'm telling the narrative, but I'm also telling my own narrative, my own spiritual evolution all the way to the very end of the book. And it's still happening now. I'm still evolving. So I think, rightly seen, the entrepreneurial journey is also a spiritual journey. It's also a hero's journey. I talk about the hero's journey in the book. Most people do not go on their own hero's journey. We have a voice deeper Part of our being is whispering to us, telling us, urging us on to follow this. Entrepreneurs are following this inner voice. They're following this passion that they're that. That they unleash and they create in the world. You have that voice whispering to you, too, and that's why you're doing what you're doing, because you're so passionate about it. That is the hero's journey. In my experience, most people do not answer that call because they're too scared. They're too scared to do it. They want to fear of failure, a fear of people ridiculing them, feel, a fear of rejection. Remember how we talked a little earlier about how the entrepreneurs are like Todd Graves, People are telling you you're going to fail, or I was saying that would just make me more determined to succeed. When you're on the hero's journey, you are determined to succeed, and you're going to have a lot of setbacks and failures. But that's all part of the path. That's how you're learning. That's how you're growing. Rightly seen, the entrepreneurial journey is a hero's journey. And a hero's journey is a spiritual journey. It's a journey of discovery. It's the journey of going deeper into yourself, knowing who you are and what really matters in life.

[David Senra]

John, that's a beautiful place to close. Thank you very much for writing the book. Thank you very much for taking the time to have a conversation.

[John Mackey]

Thanks for talking to me again, David. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

[David Senra]

Thank you.

[Sponsor/Host Voice]

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I have obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.