← Help Wanted
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- [00:00]
Nicole Lapin
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- [01:08]
Jason Pfeiffer
You're here for tips on leveling up your career, but here's a bonus tip on leveling up your investments. Check out Public Public is an investing platform where you can invest in stocks, options, bonds, ETFs and crypto all in one place. Public is a modern brokerage and has brought innovation to aspects of investing that were dinosaur y. I'll give you an example. Public is one of the only brokerages to offer self directed investing in bonds, even Treasuries, which have historically been sold primarily through a government website. But with Public you can invest in Treasuries with just a few clicks right from your phone. And Public allows you to make free fractional investments in bonds. So before fractional bonds on Public you had to buy government bonds starting with a $1,000 investment at a minimum. And if you wanted to invest in any more than that, you could only invest in $100 increments. Now you can buy bonds for as little as $100 and for any dollar amount on Public. That's just one example of how Public is making it easier to invest. But there are a ton more and you can explore them for yourself@public.com help wanted to get started with your portfolio today? Go to public.com helpwanted. This is a paid endorsement for public investing. Full disclosure and conditions can be found in the podcast description. This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor in chief of.
- [02:48]
Nicole Lapin
Entrepreneur magazine, and I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.
- [02:56]
Jason Pfeiffer
And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.
- [03:01]
Nicole Lapin
And it starts now.
- [03:04]
Jason Pfeiffer
Do you ever feel like you're just not taken seriously because maybe you don't fit the mold? Because maybe you're just not like the other people who do your job well? With Nicole still on maternity leave, today on Help Wanted, I am talking to a guy who felt a lot like that. His name is John Mackey. He is the co founder and longtime CEO of a little company called Whole Foods. And at the beginning of that journey, back when Whole Foods was just a tiny little grocery store, John was not known as a visionary business leader as he is known today. No, back then he was just known as Wacky Mackie.
- [03:45]
John Mackey
Wacky Mackie, that really, that nickname came from one of the co founders, Mark Skiles, who had been a really close friend of mine.
- [03:52]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is Wacky Mackie himself, John Mackey.
- [03:55]
John Mackey
You know, I wanted to grow the business and we had the first store was so successful and Mark really didn't want to grow. He really just wanted to milk that one store.
- [04:03]
Jason Pfeiffer
But that wasn't the reason that that co founder called him Wacky Mackie. Wacky Mackie was a reference to John Mackie's lifestyle. To his doubters, Mackey seemed like an unserious leader for an increasingly serious business. He started the company when he was 24, having never attended a business class. He meditated. He took psychedelics. He had many spiritual pursuits. He looked like a long haired hippie. And while Mackey liked who he was, the skeptics ate at him. He wondered if he could grow into the fully respected leader he wanted to be while also still being himself. This is something he, of course, prevailed at. He built and ran whole foods for 44 years until his retirement in 2022. And that rude co founder left the business decades earlier. Mackey chronicles all of this and more in his new book. It's called the Whole Story. It's really great. It's just a great retelling of the origin of Whole Foods. But really it's a chronicle of a leader trying to find himself. And that I think is so relatable to everybody, anybody who's in a leadership position. Here's me reading a little bit of the Book back to John to really dig into that point.
- [05:20]
There's this moment in the book where you meet a guy named Chris Hitt and you guys really connect. And you write, in the book it was a relief to meet someone who liked both Wacky Mackie and CEO Mackie and understood how they could be the same person. And when I read that, I started to think about the tension that new leaders often feel. How much of themselves are they bringing to this role? Who are they if they are both themselves, but also this new character that they need to be, this leader that they hadn't been before. And then once I was thinking about that, I just kept seeing that show up again and again. In your book, there's another moment where you say, I'd grown into my role as CEO. You write, I was learning all of these lessons even as I was trying to become more skilled at balancing the inevitable authority of my leadership position with my desire to collaborate and share. I see this tension that you were navigating and that now you are reflecting upon. And I think it would be really useful to hear from you for other entrepreneurs who are feeling that, what that was like and how you started to find who you were as a CEO and leader.
- [06:37]
John Mackey
Jason this was. This is one of the intentions in writing the book. I had many goals in writing the book, but one of the goals was that since I had started this company when I was really young, I was 24, my girlfriend Renee was 20, and I had no background in business. Certainly many other people over the years would told me they thought I was crazy because I didn't behave. I didn't really know how CEOs were supposed to behave. And I never was trapped by that. I never, I always, I was always able to bring myself where. And, and I remember. I'll tell you a story. It's not in the book.
- [07:12]
Jason Pfeiffer
Sure.
- [07:12]
John Mackey
So a woman was leaving Whole Foods Market and she was very persistent because we have an open door policy. She really wanted to tell me I didn't know her, and she really wanted to speak with me on her way out. And she was very persistent. So finally I granted her interview for her to come in. And she came in to my office and she basically told me that you're not like a CEO supposed to be. And I said, well, how's a CEO supposed to be? And he says, well, you know, more serious, you know, more businesslike. You know, you dress like, you know, a hippie. You don't dress like a business person. You're wearing shorts, you have long hair, you know, you're not, you're not. You're just not a good CEO. And I said, well, the company is doing really well, so why do you say I'm not a good CEO? Says, you just don't act like a CEO. And I said, I don't know how a CEO is supposed to act. I just act like I am. I'm an authentic person. I'm not trying to be a CEO and not myself. And I'm sorry you couldn't reconcile that, but if you look at our results, they're really good. And she really had no answer for that, so she went on her way, and I. I never saw her again. But that, I think. I think that kind of sums up kind of what you're trying to get at here. I've always been myself, and I show up as who I am, and I don't. I never, I never wanted to change to. To conform to somebody else's belief of how a CEO should behave and act and be.
- [08:47]
Jason Pfeiffer
This question, this question of what a CEO is and should be and what a leader is and should be and how those two things are not exactly the same, that's at the heart of how John thinks about leadership. And that insight, I think, is really at the heart of understanding what it means to belong somewhere, even if people doubt you, even if you're not the same as everyone else. And that's why I wanted you to hear this conversation. Just zoom out here for a second. I have another podcast. It's called Problem Solvers. I host it for Entrepreneur. And unlike Help Wanted, where I'm generally in conversation with Nicole or other friends as she's on maternity leave, that show is more of an interview show with business leaders. And I wanted to bring in a couple of those voices here as I'm filling in for Nicole and maternity leave because, you know, it's just so valuable to hear from people who have been there, done that, who have. Who have held the most high pressure situations, and see how, you know, it all just comes down to being human and understanding what your value is. Something we talk a lot about on Help Wanted. So this conversation that I had with John when his book came out about a year or so ago was originally for problem solvers, but we are adapting it here for Help Want. Want it. I'm so excited for you to hear what John has to say and to rethink what it means to really be a leader. And we're going to do that right after the break. All right, we're back. I'm talking with John Mackey, co founder and former CEO of Whole Foods, related to his book, the Whole story. And let's just pick up where we left off. John was talking about how he never wanted to conform to someone else's belief of, of how a CEO should behave and act and be.
- [10:33]
You had to figure out how to be a CEO, and I had to.
- [10:36]
John Mackey
Figure out how to be a good leader.
- [10:37]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, to be a good leader. Let me understand that distinction in your, in your mind, because it sounds like you're thinking of a CEO as an archetype in some way that you didn't want to follow. But a leader, A leader is something that every organization needs and you needed to figure out how to grow into that. And I, in that answer that you gave me, I, I heard these two things that maybe just came at different times, but I'd love for you to unpack them for me. Number one was the recognition, a really important one, that you had to grow into the leader that your company needed at any given time. The other was a real comfort in who you are as a person and therefore the kind of leader that you could be. One is a recognition of change, of necessary change. The other is a self confidence that you don't need to change too much. Were those there for you at the same time or did you have to develop that confidence and also that awareness of what needed to change?
- [11:38]
John Mackey
Yeah, I definitely had to develop the confidence. That's a, that's a theme throughout the book. As time passed and I matured more and Whole Foods was more successful, I got more confidence until I became extremely confident, very confident, and from being sort of socially awkward and not confident at all, unsure of myself, not knowing really know what I was doing.
- [12:00]
Jason Pfeiffer
What builds that confidence?
- [12:02]
John Mackey
Excuse me?
- [12:03]
Jason Pfeiffer
What builds that confidence?
- [12:04]
John Mackey
I think success builds that confidence. I think success builds that confidence and making mistakes and learning from them and then, and then navigating situations the next time with wisdom and, and making good decisions. I mean, you're only allowed so many bad decisions before you either fail as a business or you're taken out because you just, you know, seen as not competent enough. So I, I just learn. I'm a good learner. I don't know how else to put it. I, I learn quickly. I will tell you something I left out of the book that I was just thinking about that I should have put in the book. So you're getting a scoop on this one.
- [12:45]
Jason Pfeiffer
Love it.
- [12:45]
John Mackey
And that I ask myself a question all the time, and I think entrepreneurs should ask this question. If you, if you're going to be a builder and not just a serial entrepreneur. I'd always distinguish between two kinds of entrepreneurs. Those who start companies and then sell them and start another company versus those who, who want to build a company. I was clearly a builder and, and I was always asking myself this question, what does the company most need me to do? Now the reason that's an important question for an entrepreneur if you have a growing business. The things that I see happen to other entrepreneurs all the time is that, I mean, you get good at something, there's something you're really good at and there's something you really like to do. So you keep doing it because you enjoy it and because you're, you're good at it. And what I found is I had to let go of doing things that I was good at and I enjoyed doing because the company no longer needed me to do that. I'll give you an example. So in the early days, the most important decisions we could ever make were really, besides hiring good people was the locations. So I spent. I actually headed up the real estate team for several years. I visit every potential site I visited. I toured all the cities, I canvassed the neighborhoods because if we made mistakes there, the capital was going to be sunk. You're going to have this long operating lease and the, and I, I watched other natural food businesses make bad real estate decisions and that really stopped their growth because they didn't, they couldn't raise money after that and they didn't. And they were making less profits so they had less retained earnings. So I paid a lot of attention to real estate and I was good at it and I liked it. But then, and it was something that eventually it was like, that's not what the company needs me to do now. That's not the most important thing it needs me to do now. And it's it, it. And so I be. I had to let it go and I had to have. No, I stayed. I still was part of the team that made the final real estate decisions. But I stopped traveling to the cities, I stopped canvassing the neighborhoods. I didn't spend the same amount of time on it because it wasn't the highest and best use of my time any longer. And that happened again and again and again where and that. And I was always being forced into these new situations where it's what the company needed me to do. Like the company needed me to be more involved in PR right as the face of the company. So I had to. And I made a lot of mistakes in pr. I always like to make a joke that I, I failed media training like five or six times before the.
- [15:23]
Jason Pfeiffer
You're not the only one.
- [15:24]
John Mackey
And the school of hard knocks taught me painfully, you know. Well, I'm not going to say that again. That gets you into a lot of trouble. So. And so there have been many, many times over the years. And so if the CEO, if the entrepreneur will ask him or herself that question, what is the company most? Not what I. What do I like to do? Not what am I really good at, but what is it that that most needs me to do now? And that will change as time passes. Depends on the. It'll be unique to each company in each situation. One of the reasons I was able to grow as a leader is because I kept asking that question and I had the courage to go into unfamiliar, uncomfortable situations that I might not be very competent at and learn how to be good at that particular thing.
- [16:12]
Jason Pfeiffer
That question forces you to let the company lead you, and it forces you to be rigorous about how you, even if you are the leader, even if you are the CEO and co founder of a company, how you are in service of the company.
- [16:28]
John Mackey
Right, Correct. In my other books like Conscious Capitalism, Conscious Leadership, we talk a lot about the servant leader. So from the very beginning of the company, I saw myself in service, in service to the purpose of the business. And then later, as I got the language for stakeholders, I was in service to the stakeholders and in service to Whole Foods flourishing. And what did it need me? What did it need from me to help it to flourish? So I served that. And I just think that's a very useful way to think as a, as a leader, as a CEO. You know, most CEOs, I mean, and I'm making a distinction, by the way, between CEO and leader. All CEOs are not leaders.
- [17:13]
Jason Pfeiffer
I want to talk about that because you've made that. Yeah, you've, you've, you've.
- [17:16]
John Mackey
And all leaders are obviously not CEOs.
- [17:18]
Jason Pfeiffer
Can you, can you explain that distinction before you, you keep. Before you. CEO is.
- [17:23]
John Mackey
A CEO is a position of authority. It's a role. You're, you're, you're the person in charge of the company. If you're CEO, chief Executive officer. Um, but you may not be a good leader. You may have just played a good game and you got promoted and you became the CEO, but you weren't, you were bad, you were a bad choice because you're really not a leader. And leaders are those who ultimately other people want to follow a good leader is somebody that inspires people because it has integrity and that people trust. And we trust people that have integrity. We trust people we know that are in service to the business, that aren't in it just for themselves, that, that aren't in it just to make as much money as possible. One of the things that happens frequently in large corporations is you have people that are playing that game to get up to higher positions in the authority structure with the ultimate goal to become the CEO of either that company or some other company, because they want to be the CEO. They want to be in charge. They can. They want to make the most money possible for themselves. And the problem is most CEOs, they don't get there till they're in their 50s, normally, or even their 60s. So their stint as a CEO of a large public company may not be that long. It may be seven years, five to 10 years, someplace in that range. And oftentimes their goal is they're not thinking long term. They're not thinking about, how do I serve the company best. They're thinking about how do I get that stock price up? So I got a big. I got a big chunk of stock options or RSUs when I got promoted here. How do I get that stock price up so I can, you know, I can make a lot of money? And. Well, that's not how a leader would behave, you might say, but that is how a CEO might behave. So that's another distinction.
- [19:08]
Jason Pfeiffer
So that's.
- [19:09]
I. Now I understand that anecdote that you had shared a little earlier better, because what you were saying to that woman who had said, you're not like a CEO is you didn't care about the qualities of a CEO, but you did care about the qualities of a leader. And you were always interrogating what it took to be a good leader, and you didn't really care about what it looked like from the outside.
- [19:38]
John Mackey
She had certain expectations, but it wasn't my job to live up to her expectations. My job was to serve the company and help it to flourish and be successful. And if she, if she had judgments about that, that was her problem. Wasn't my problem.
- [19:55]
Jason Pfeiffer
Let's talk about this point that you made about how you had the courage to go into different parts of the job, to evolve into different areas of the business, to push yourself as a leader into places that you didn't totally know that maybe you weren't comfortable with. Yeah, I'm. I'm curious if you had some guides for yourself or some way to navigate those moments, because as the business grew. I would imagine you felt an increasing pressure to be the right leader for that moment. And there's a frustration, John, that happens as people grow in some way. It's, it's easy to evolve. At the earliest stages, when you say, I don't know anything. I'm not supposed to know anything. I'm going to learn. I'm new at this. But at some point, you're a more seasoned leader, a more seasoned entrepreneur, and you're still being asked to step into areas where you have less competence and to start in some ways from scratch. That's hard. That almost gets harder as you get older and more experienced. Was there something that you told yourself? Was there something that you understood about yourself? Was there some process by which you entered these new arenas that helped you maintain that, that focus? As we said a moment ago, that you are in service of the company and, and, and that you just needed to do this.
- [21:38]
John Mackey
You mean, how was I able to do that? Or.
- [21:40]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, how. How are you. How are you able to. You talked about the comp. You talked about having the confidence to go into these areas that you didn't necessarily know. But that's not always just built.
- [21:52]
That's.
- [21:52]
That's learned. That's a, That's a thing that you learn. And it's not just about being successful about it one time and then another. It's about having some kind of mental structure that you've built for yourself to say, this is, this is how I learn. This is how I'm going to tackle these subjects. How do you do that?
- [22:07]
John Mackey
Well, there's, I like a few points that come out here. The first one is that, of course, as I point out in my book that the first 16 years of safer Way and Whole Foods existence, I had a mentor, my father, who was a very good, excellent businessman. And I really didn't make major decisions that I didn't clear with him. And I always say that saved me from wrecking the company when I was trying, I was. Use a car metaphor, I was trying to learn how to drive this car. But I always had my dad to take over the wheel, so to speak, when I was getting near a cliff. So I didn't drive it off the cliff. But then, you know, 16 years out of 44 is relatively a short period of time. It's only, you know, about a third of it. And after that, after I fired him from the board, that we. I've always been very, also very team oriented. And I'm. I had a great executive team and I I try to give them a lot of credit. In the book, people like Walter Robb and glinda Flanagan and A.C. gallo and others. I trust the wisdom of that intimate team. We would argue about things, we'd debate things, um, and we'd make better decisions as a group because all the issues we would get talked about. I wouldn't make arbitrary decisions. I didn't have so much self confidence that I thought I was smarter than the whole team. I didn't think I was smarter than the whole team. Quite the, quite the opposite. I thought there was a collective intelligence of which I was part of that collective intelligence had a unique perspective, but together we would make really good decisions. And so I learned from my team and I was dependent on my team. And I mean, I could count on one hand the number of decisions over all those years that I just went against the team and said, you know what, we're going to do it this way. I'm sorry, you have not persuaded me. I really feel like it's important to do this. And I'd say on half of those decisions, I was proven wrong. There were a few that I was smarter than the team, but most of the time. And I didn't do this very often, but, but I remember some of the times when I went against the team and the team was proven right. So that's humbling. Well, it is humbling. And it also makes you grateful to your team for the collective wisdom and that. And you have to have a, A team that has a high degree of trust. Trust, because people need to be able to speak their own mind and opinion without fear that somehow another. It's going to harm them personally in some way or else people think they might be hurt. They keep their mouth shut. So I think that enabled me to have courage because I wasn't doing it alone. I wasn't just this lonely, heroic entrepreneur CEO who had to. I think the media oftentimes portrays people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and some of these heroic CEOs as sort of like supermen or super women. And I promise you, you know, if you read those biographies of those guys. What, what, what? Steve and, and, and Jeff and Elon. One of the things they all have in common is that they're able in their own unique ways to build great teams, inspire people, even though oftentimes they'd be hard on them, inspire people to excel and get the very best out of them for the good of the collective whole. And that's just not talked about enough. I Mean, there, you know, there's the collective intelligence of the team. No matter how brilliant somebody like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs or anybody else is, Bill Gates is, is that they're backed by a brilliant team and that team is, is they're making a lot of these decisions collectively. I just don't think that's well understood because. And I think it's probably the media's fault because it's hard to, to give a face to a whole team and it's a lot easier to take the heroic individual and puff him or her up into sort of, you know, super, a Superman or Superwoman role. And it's. I don't still think it's that accurate most of the time.
- [26:36]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, well, you, you know, you said that's not talked about often enough. So maybe we just spend our last few minutes together talking about it. I'm curious what you found builds the kind of relationships you said a little bit there. Trust people knowing that they're not going to get harmed for having an opposing viewpoint. But you clearly built a great team. You built a team of people that you trusted who were supportive of each other. And what were the most important things that you or the team did to create that environment?
- [27:12]
John Mackey
I mean, it's a word I use a lot in my book. It's definitely one of the themes of the book. It's love, Jason. People on my team knew I cared about them, knew I loved them, and then shared purpose. We were trying to get to the same goals together. We had similar visions about how we wanted the world to be, how we wanted our stores to be. And they knew I cared about them and they knew I'd listened to them and they knew that sometimes I'd, I'd back down and they were right and I didn't care who got the credit. You build that team and that collaboration through purpose and love, those are the two most important things. And not having a massive ego that takes all the air out of the room so nobody else ever gets any credit.
- [28:00]
Jason Pfeiffer
I'll ask you one final thing. Building off of that, I think that what you just gave is a wonderful answer. It's also an answer you don't hear much about in business. I don't hear the word love a lot in business, which isn't to say that people who I talk to are cold hearted. I think it's just that they don't think of the word love as associated with business. It's a, it's a squishy word, but it's also a very personal word. And sometimes business is business. And people will sometimes say you gotta leave emotions outside. You have to make sure that the things that a company needs trump maybe personal feelings. So can you make the argument for using the word love in business?
- [28:47]
John Mackey
I can make the argument. And I. And I understand what you just said, and it's a misunderstanding of what love is. Love is not. Love means you just care about people and you care about what happens to them and you care how they feel. But you still have. Remember, you're in service to the business. You still have to make the hard decisions. Your first responsibility is to the collective good of the whole business. And that may mean somebody's been outgrown in the business and they need to actually move on. You can still love them. You can still do that in such a way that's caring to them. And then. And do all you can to help them land in another good spot. But you still your primary responsibilities for the good of the whole. But that doesn't mean you have to be heartless. In fact, you will not inspire people. You will not create the same degree of loyalty and commitment. If, if people do not feel that you care about them, that you're just using them, then they're going to use you. They're just, you're. You're just a step along their resume for them. And there's no loyalty, no commitment. And so I think, I think that's the answer. That's the answer to your riddle. You still have to be a servant, leader, the good of the whole. But that doesn't mean you don't have to close. You don't have to shut your heart down. You just. You'll be more effective if you do it, if you have both.
- [30:08]
Jason Pfeiffer
Well said, John. I really appreciate your time and your insights and your great work.
- [30:13]
John Mackey
Thanks, Jason. It's a pleasure talking with you today. Best wishes and always for you and your magazine, your family and your life.
- [30:22]
Jason Pfeiffer
Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason.
- [30:27]
Nicole Lapin
Pfeiffer and me, Nicole Lapin. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. You want some help? Email our helpline@helpwantedoneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on Instagramoneynews and TikTok MoneyNewsNetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance?
- [30:48]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, I didn't sign up for that.
- [30:49]
Nicole Lapin
All right, well, talk to you soon.
- [30:55]
Jason Pfeiffer
It.