#358 I had dinner with John Mackey, Founder of Whole Foods
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To make this episode, I got to spend about seven hours with john mackey over two days, and I read his great automotive phy choice. And IT was during one of our conversations that john told me one of the crazy things anyone has ever said about the podcast. He had listened to over one hundred episodes before we met, and he told me that the founders existed when he was Younger.

Whole foods would still be an independent company. It's in the podcast. And all of history s greatest treaters constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses. He won't put more of a priority on IT, especially during good times, during boom times. It's very natural for a company.

And I think for humans in general, I think just part of nature to not watch our costs as closely because everything is going so well. In fact, this is something that Andrew carney talked about a lot in. One of his biography says Andrew carnegy would repeat the mantra time and time again, profits and Prices were cyclical, object to any number of transient forces of the marketplace.

Costs, however, could be strictly controlled and increasing. His view, any savings achieved in cost or permanent Andrew carney's idea IT was something that I was talking about with my friend eric, whose the cofounder in CEO of rap. Rap is now a partner of this podcast and a sponsor of this episode.

I've gone to know all the confounders of rampant has spent a ton of time with them over the last year or two. They all listen to the bike cast, and they've all picked up on the fact that the main theme from the history of entrepreneurship is on the importance of watching your cost and controlling your spend, and how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage. That is the main theme for ramp.

That is the reason that ramp exists. The reason rap exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend. Rap gives you everything you need to control your cost.

Those last towards cost control, but pull another line adventure. Phy cost control became nearly an obsession in this episode, or about to hear. There is a shocking idea that john mckee told me about, about the role that walmart played in whole food success.

And IT has to do with how impossible was for other people to compete with sam walton and warmer. Now give you a little hint. This is what sam said in his automotive phy.

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, ramps everything you need to control spend and optimize finance Operations, all on a single platform.

Make history s great internews proud by going to ramp up com to learn how they can help your business control cost, that is rampant. Com also leave a link down below, I hope you enjoy. So I put a lot of time, energy and love into making IT, and am very thankful to job for john magi or two, john mckee, for sharing so much of history.

I truly believe when entrepreneurs do that, IT is an act of service for the next generation. Enjoy the episode. By the end of the first trading afternoon, whole foods market was valued at one hundred million dollars.

Even though my shares had been deluded over the years, my own network was now over seven million dollars. I was rich. How did that happen? IT seemed to me like a crazy amount.

IT was exciting, even shocking, to suddenly be worth so much after so many years of having no money. That evening, after the markets closed, I slowly drove home, still in something of an altered state. I opened my first beer in several weeks and sit to slowly in the porch, breathing in a sense of gratitude and wonder for how far we had come.

I thought back to that little Victorian house were safer way. That was the original name of the business that eventually turns into all foods. I thought back to that little Victorian house where safer way had in the modest dreams of success there were.

And I had shared, as we woke up each morning on the top floor, took our showers in the dishwasher and converted our bedroom to its daytime form. As the stores office, I thought about crag and mark taking the leap of faith to merge with us and build an entirely new store bigger than any natural food store in the state. I thought about the hundred year flood in a near death experience.

I called my father just to hear the pride in his voice and to share our mutual excitement at the success of the company he so wisely helped me build. I thought about my mother and wondered red if he might finally be proud of her son. I thought about the many people who are celebrating tonight, enjoying their well deserve reward for their belief in those crazy hippies and the strange new notions about how to eat.

All of those expectations, all of that collect hope for a future I had Carried for fourteen years now. I felt at lifting from my shoulders. I knew there would be new bird in the shoulder as we began our life as a public company.

But just for a moment, I set down my beer, close my eyes and let the joy and relief overwhelming. That was an exit from the book and talked about today, which is the whole story, adventures in love, life in capitalism, and is writing by john magi, founder and former C. E.

O. Of whole foods. So a few months ago, I received a very nice email from jahn. I didn't even know this, but he was a big fan of the podcast, and he listened to well over one hundred episodes. And he offered, he ask if I wanted to, an advanced copy of his new autobiography.

And so after reading the book, which I love so much, I detail them, and we decided to meet. So I actually spent seven, about seven hours with john and his friend David over two days. We had dinner for about three hours.

And then the next day I actually went to john's new company, and tour is called love life, and spent about three, four hours with john again. And so what i'm going to do is combine the notes and highlights I have from reading john automotive phy choice with the notes that I took, spending so much time with him. And before we get into his life story, I think there's two really important things to understand about him.

Number one, he loves entrepreneurs. And number two, he is very hard to classify soap. I love this part and actually took notes on IT before I met him, and then he was obvious to spending a time in person with them. And this is what he says about his love for his fellow entrepreneurs. That's definite.

How we classify himself when I meet other entrepreneurs is always a Spark, an instantaneous recognition that were wired the same way I can sit down with a Young entrepreneur who's just launch their first startdb are an older run with a series of successful exits, a fellow grocery store founder or the creator of a tech company. And I just know that we're gonna acres of common ground, and that was definitely my experience with john. We had a three hour dinner that went by.

I could not was shocked when I looked at the time when dinner was over. There was, as he said, acres of common ground. And the reason I wanted to start with that quote, because I really feel not only with john did with the autobots phy, but I think every entrepreneur autobots phy that i've read, I really do feels it's an active service to the next generation of entrepreneurs, specially how open they are with their warnings, other explanations, or even just sharing that the dark side and the the the downsides of entrepreneurship.

And in the second final thing, I just want to go over before we jump into his early life. Is this this very difficult? You just can't put him in a box.

He's very hard to classify, hard to put into a neat little box, and he knows that he's very self wear, but he says it's hard for people to fit me into their narrow political and ideological boxes. I sold natural foods, I practice meditation, I spouse veganism, and I wore hiking shorts to work. I believe business should be informed by love, serve a higher purpose and benefit all stay callers.

And yet I back against compulsive unitization. I defended capitalism and free markets. I argued for freedom of thought in personal responsibility. I resisted anything. They resulted in more governmental controls and subsidies and moved this away from the natural discipline and innovation of free markets towards to certifying inefficiencies of socialism.

People had thought I was in one tribal box, and now they were determined to put me into a different one, which I also didn't fit into. And another trade I would add to this, I guess another few trades that I would add to this spend. It's obviously you the book and also spend time with them.

He is also extremely, extremely competitive. And a main theme that will reoccur as he's building whole foods at the very beginning is this idea, you know, most of the people, as you can imagine, that most of the people that have chosen to build and create natural food stores, most of his peer group, most of his friends, they were socialists. He is undeniably and unequipped and unapologetically capitalist.

In fact, he said he, he thinks that capitalism is the greatest thing that humanity has ever done. Okay, so the books starts and he's talking about the fact that he is a shirtless, long hair hit, hiking happy. He's in Austin, texas.

He's twenty two years old and he's just going. He's having this existent al angst about what am I doing with my life. And so it's picked up book i'd recently dropped out of school again.

My college years have been characterized by a series of starts and stops, multiple transfers, regine universities, an improved to breaks. The hit hike around the country is funny. Not that thinking about IT, there's motor times, I don't know, covered later in the box so I tell you get but even after he's running whole foods, he's trying to expand.

They don't have know the very capital constrained at the very beginning until the IPO. Um and so he trying to expand into other markets and he wants to go scouting locations for other venture, al whole foods in other area taxes. And the way he gets there is do hitting I just love that thought of a Young founders.

I I do whatever have to do then I guess that is a former resourceful. Us, right? right? So he says, I am property breaks her around the country.

But this time I thought might be done for good. Mean, never going back to college. This is going to be a and something we also talked about is the fact apt.

Uh, he's the two most important relationships that he he ever had in his entire life. Was the relationship they has with his wife. They have been married for thirty four years of their bets, and then the relationship with his dad.

He says the relationship with his dad is the second most important relationship that he had in his life. His dad, a major character in this book, major influence on building, uh, whole foods. Fact, I ask john about that when we had dinner, says he still thinks about his dad every day, even though his death's been gone for over a decade.

But there's a devastating story later in the book where is entire his mom dies disappointed in her son SHE did not want him to be a college drop out SHE didn't want him to be a gross SHE know one of the last conversations they have is the fact that please stop this ridiculous whole foods, you know business journey and go back in and get a respectable job. And you know, john's he's a he's a troublemaker, he's a misfit, he's a rebel. It's very obvious that he's got the same personality type that you and I have.

So he says by this time I thought I might be done for good. The academic life, with its prescribe programs and predictable outcomes, just felt too constraining to me. I was no longer willing to read books. Someone else decided I should read, that life was not for me. Now my only curricular was my own curiosity, and the university library was my classroom.

He done, just like he drops, drops at the school, and then just drops in the classes, not for credits, not for degree, but because of his own curiosity, the key to do great work, I always quote the my, one of my favor, essays, programs. I say how to do great work. He says, if this holding boils down to one word, curiosity, your own curiosity.

And so this is something that, uh, mean, john, talk about, and I think we really bonded over, is the fact that we both don't think you should read books before to read books that you hate. And the note I drop IT down after our dinner was, doesn't think you should read books hate rebel in college because other people were choosing what he should read, the entrepreneur behavior, I wanna choose what I do. And so fast for to now, john and seventy, he's read thousands of books, his M.

O. The entire time to out the entire book. If you get curious about something, you need to learn about something. He'll just devour entire shelves.

But if you put him on a, at a desk, can you tell you a professor or teachers? You have to read this, even if you don't like IT. He's gna rebel, and he talks about this.

I wasn't trying to be a rebel. IT just said I couldn't conform not to the conventional track, not to my parents hops and expectations, not to the path my friends were taking. I was getting older, and I understood from the concern questions of my friends and family that was supposed to be getting serious about my future.

So this is some of the some of the things you would hear open over again. John, what are you going to do with your life? John, what are you going to finish school?

John, what kind of future do you think you get your finding this library? John, when you're going to a haircut? That's alliance.

I didn't have good answers to any other questions. I had stepped off the mark path on which everyone I knew was still marking forward. One friend was becoming a lawyer.

Another was going to medical school. In my mind's eye, I could see their future status, security, income. I knew the beats of that tune.

I just couldn't move my feet to IT. I wanted something different, something real, something adventurous. But I didn't quite know what I was yet.

And even more disturbing, I didn't have people around me who share that feeling. I felt misplaced, caught between a life I couldn't live and a life I couldn't yet see. So this is the nineteen seventies in Austin, texas.

He's definitely happy. So he winds up living, he finds out from a friend. He winds up living in this cop, kind of my work.

I will guess, a commute, everybody. There's in the same house to share everything, and it's called the pro a house and the pro house. To live in the prony house, you have to be a vegetarian.

And while living in the prony house, he also meets this woman name. Ray may is going to be his girlfriend for many years. She's also a cofounder of what turns into whole food.

So one of the responsibility lies in the jobs that that john has uh, as a member of pronouns, he actually is the food buyer for the entire community. And he also gets a job at this place called the good food company, which is a chain, a very small chain. There's five small vegetarian natural food stores.

And so as a byproduct of working there, he, he realized himself as a great, I could do this. I could run a natural foods ore. And then something happens.

It's really important that changes action of his life. Is that real? Believed in his ideas.

So he goes and tells us, why don't we start our own natural foods ore? And SHE didn't laugh. SHE didn't think was ridiculous.

And and so stop doing that. He says, that sounds fantastic. Let's do IT. And almost fifty years later in the future, right? He's looking back at the time he's writing these words, almost fifty years after they happen.

And he says that those three words, let's do IT, were some of the most important moments in his life. And what he's going to describe here in the book is this idea that we appears over, over again. The begin something.

New ideas are fragile, and new ideas need friends. I am forever in her debt for the way he responded. When I first gave voice to my dream, I was inspired and excited, but also full of hesitation and self doubt.

If he had been cautious or dismissive, I might never have entertained the idea again. And so what, I was able to talk to john about this dinner, and he just said he, like, I had a drive to create something, to build something, to make a mark. He was an inner drive.

Nobody was telling him that he should do that. In fact, in many cases, as you know, most people around you tell you not to do that. Don't be different.

Take the safer around you, get a job. Don't be this weird entrepreneur, bel. But that inner voice will not be silence by anything else but action.

And so even though is only twenty three years all the time, he's never run a business. He takes this very seriously. This is a, this was a mission term, he says.

I took IT seriously. I really did believe that the foods and supplements we'd be selling would offer our customers a Better chance of staying safe and healthy. Passion was calling us, and he was demanding every bit of energy that we had to give.

I just recently reread my highlights from the autobiography, the founder, four seasons, easy, sharp, and it's funny. This is also something that john does mean. And john talk about this a dinner, the fact that he read s highlights of books after he reads them.

And this idea is very obvious when you get to this chapter. In john's life, he feels at work as play. He had a passion about IT, but he was deadly serious about doing his best and doing his best for himself for zone standers, but also best for customers.

And I think this idea can be applied to whether you're building mcDonald's to building one of the world's greatest collections of high end luxury hotels. And that's exactly what easy sharp said in his auto bug. Her he was talking about the fact that he really felt that one of the differentiated aspects of four seasons was gonna be there, complete dedication to service.

And so he was talking, he would tells people here, we need to pay attention to what mcDonald's does. And people on his team thought he was crazy. As he was explaining this, he goes to compete, we would have to feel about service the way way crock head Donald felt about hamburger, why his company, LED competitors around the world.

Crock had said, we take the hamburger more seriously than they do. Changing the way that people eat is an idea that john mckee took more seriously than anybody else's entire industry. So to start the first store, which is called safer way, the time there is no whole food yet.

This i'll turn to foot a little bit. He raises, he has his ideas like, I want to raise forty five thousand dollars from friends and family. Another thing you to know about john is, uh, he describes self as an evenor adventure.

Rather not is dangerous and can be very charismatic and convincing. And so one of the wonderful byproducts of him beginning the entrepreneur journeys, the fact it's going to eventually the business of whole foods, actually going to bring he and his father together, because he was very, very different. He just grew up completely different from both of his parents.

So I want to give you a little background, enhance your understanding the story. My father had grown up during the great depression, and when paul harbor was bomb by the nineteen forty one, he was just twenty years old. He wasted no time joining the military and marrying my mom.

His generation had to grow fast. They had no time to indulge. Useful dreams are planned, the meaning of life.

They had to rebuild a country devastated by the depression and war he had not. My father had not followed his own passions in. That simply wasn't what people did in that era.

And he was hard for my mom to get on board with my life choices. Shi couldn't get over the fact that I dropped out of college. SHE never gave up hope that i'd wake up from my strange in practical obsession with being a grocer.

And he wanted me to go back to school. And so his mom doesn't like the fact that he's doing this now. He never likes IT, but his IT changes the relationship that his father has with them.

Listen to this in my father's eyes, however, i'd shifted from being an aim with hippy drop out to a youth punch for neural with conviction and energy for the first time of my adult life, my father's life skills and my own passions seemed to come into alignment. He was in a student businessman. He taught accounting, a raised university, and then became the very successful CEO of a health care company.

And so his dad is going to play a large role, guiding his son and trying to help and build a business. There is a benefit to this should like youthful nativity that a lot of entrepreneurs have. When they start, they don't know how difficult is going to be.

And john hates burek rats. This is something that pops up over over again in the book. But even at the beginning, this external bureaucracy.

The city inspectors almost kill the idea before it's even born. So even back in the one thousand nine seventy in Austin, there's all these. He doesn't know that all the building permits and all the inspections that you need to do.

And so they would drop in. What do you guys doing? You don't have the right permit.

You can do this. So is actually they shut this down. You got to wait months and months until we go through everything and prove everything.

And his point was like you, we can't wait along. We don't have any money, your work, the business is gna die before born, and he causes impending death by bureaucracy. And so he is advised on a way around this problem from an older, wise treatment.

Ur, the the his landlord is in his seventies member, john, I think twenty four at this time. And you know he just say, I don't know what to do. We are going to run out of money before they let us.

They're not letting us build out the store. He is like, what time did the city spectators work? What you mean like city inspector's work during the day, they leave for work no later than five pm, and they sleep at night.

And so he points his finger at johns chess. He says, then that means you build the store at night. And john points out, like, you know, the Normal people that are not on purity might be a guest at, you know, doing something like this.

And he and he says, any entrepreneurs ws that regulatory structures often do not match the on the ground reality, and they tend to favor, well capitalize established institutions over innovators and newcomer's. And so slowly but surely, he obtained all the permits and everything that he needed. But he did the work first.

He asked for forgiveness, not permission. And if he didn't do this, whole foods that never exist because they had no money, they they're living in the store. So the first stores, this Victorian three story of Victorian house.

Okay, so the first levels is going to be the whole foods natural are the natural foods market. Uh, the second is this cafe, and the third is the office, which they have to sleep in. This is what I mentioned at the beginning.

They're sleeping in the office and they're taking showers using the water from the dishwasher. And so eventually this realizing, is the key. I need help. And he has a great writing here.

He says, we had built our business on a dream fuel by ambition, desire, enthusiasm, a sense of adventure, hard work and a lot of help from our friends. But to be truly successful, he is going to take something more. We needed business experience and intelligence. I knew where to turn.

And then he, what is? He turned. He turns to his father, and so his dad helps him build his own personal curriculum.

And this is reading and rereading. This is professional research. So he gave them some Peter drukker ooks. He says, my dad also gave me outfit slows member about his years with general motor. So there's A A quote in portal, dominic, that says there's ideas with billions in a thirty or history book that is literally true with offered songs, memories.

This was the most popular book maybe half a century go, maybe forty years ago that with all the top founders as eos, i've come across this in america, were reading alva zones book. One of those was handy single ten of who I found out because charly monger said heat, that single time was the smart est person ever met and warm about ve said the fact that business schools don't study single ten is a crime. But anyways, Henry singleton talks about reading of its songs book and taking an idea from there.

And IT helped. That single idea helped him build, televise. So now we have john's dad giving him the same book.

And so john says, could a car manufacturer really teach me anything about running a natural fit store? And regardless of a skeeter tics? M, he's gona read this.

This is johns. And he, he, he still doing this to this day. He's just a very racist reader. Various ious consumer information.

He says, I filled my backpack until could Carry no more books, added more titles from the local library bookstores. If I had anything to say about business, I read IT. In fact, I and I learned by night, I read about business.

By day, I worked in the store. John is still doing this. This why he's going to over one hundred pisos of founders, in fact, meaning he talked about he he john completely gets IT.

He's like the amount of books I have found because of your pocket. We have talked about the books that he read that he no existed until he listen to the pocket first and then read the books. That's exactly how you should be using founders by day.

You're working on your business by night. Your obviously listened to the whole listing to the pakistan reading the books and I learned by night. I read about business by day.

Working a few days, I called my father and talked him about what I was reading. I began to see the chAllenges or small business was facing from a more holistic perspective. I now understood the competitive disadvantages the marketplace, said we were working against that, were working against us and giving our arrivals a Better chance of success.

He gets an example. Take my former employer, the good food company. They only had five stores right? There wasn't a business, but is bigger than his one. And I gives him a take my former employer, they had five stories compared to our one little store. And as a result, they were able to negotiate Better Prices than we from the whole sellers, and therefore Price their products more competitively, while still making a profit.

That gave me the idea, what if we teamed up with other small stores and pulled are buying the importance of relationships in secret allies? Secret allies is this idea I got from this very obscure rockfeller graphs is still the best pogram y on rockpile er i've ever read. In fact, I found IT because the second time I red tighten, which is the bike phy, every on rock feller, everybody knows.

I go through the big biography of all the books I read, and I find a ton of other books, and I found that book in there. I think the book is about forty. Fifty years ago, bargrave y rock filer talks about rockfeller idea of secret allies, of making secret allies with other entrepreneurs and business owners in the early oil industry.

John is going to do the exactly that in the natural food industry. It's one of my favorite of the entire book. He learns from his relationships, and he once up buying the entire network, it's insane.

It's one of my favorite of the book will get there. So what he does, he has all these other people who he goes and build, goes and seek out and build relationships with people as industry. They are technically competitors and is like what we turn into allies.

And so he promises two guys that are running another natural grocery store. These guys, mark and crag, are going to wind up being cofounder. So the third and fourth cofounder ers, of what eventually be halfway.

Ds, any pitches? These ideas? Okay, we're separate companies. Let's act as one and buy from whole sellers as one unit that will we get Better Prices. And so he says, technically, they were competitors.

But once we created the distribution company, we became Alice. And so john starts building this relationship. We have long conversations about our stores, about the products we're selling, about retAiling and about business and general rock filler is this exact same thing. And rockfeller want to dominating his network, just like john's going to want to dominating his.

I I guess if you go back before I move on that the the demography that references episode two fifty four, the name of the book, which I believe to be the best rock philology phy have read so far, it's called john d. The founding fathers of the rock fellers all eventually reread that that's a book I should probably ad every like, you know, two or three years. I think it's excelled.

But the idea that both rock fellow and john mackey share this idea is like a we're to build relationship every in this. We going to map out there building a map of their industry. They're both in the at the very early stages rockery in the early stage, the oil industry. John mac is the the very early stage of the natural food industry, and it's important to all these ideas are related to each other.

Think about he realizes omai giant petito vantage disadventure ge other because he's doing all this reading, then you realize, okay, how do I if if saw this prom, then you realize or I should build relationships with the peers and competitors and some of them are going to turn to allies and he's going acquire, but these companies in my industry, and that he continues to get ideas, because it's all tied to the fact that he's a vacuous reader and a vacuities learner. So he gets an idea from an industry trade journal that actually helps them expand his mission. So there is a trade magazine called natural food merchandizing, and he reads a story about a company in los Angeles is a natural food store named mrs.

gucci. I won't bury the lead. All these people, he's about the name.

He's going to build a new ork them. He went up, acquiring almost every single one he was. There was not another john maki in his industry.

There was only one. He was much more ambitious and organized than then. He was just a conquer. He had a conquer spirit as funny as was reading the book the first time. I also gave out A A copy to front mine, and he read the book and loves IT as well. And I like how how many times i'm going to have to learn how am I still making the same mistake over over again.

And so we are having this conversation, just like this guy gets involved the very beginning of his industry, right then he's going to build the company that is the industry leader, almost like categories IT defined, the category Operator. Why was I surprised going into the book? And then my surprise is obviously alleviated by the end of the book.

Why was the surprise? And of course, he was A R. Every single person is going to start at, at, at the beginning ministry and then build the category, the industry defining companies the same way they all have this ruthless competitive drive that is not matched by their other appears in industry.

So back to where we are in the story. He's reading this industry trade journal, industry magazine, and he hears about mrs. mrs.

Gucci, which she's eventually going to to acquire many years in the future. And he says, I read the story so many times that the pages were tattered. And so this is what he learned from the story.

Unlike most natural food stores at the time, it's sold meat. And so when you first started safer way, he wasn't selling meat. He was all vegetarian.

Unlike most natural food stores of time, it's sold meat, poultry and seafood alongside the kind of products we saw a safeway. The idealist in me was proud of our strictly vegetarian ethos, but the entrepreneur in me saw a massive opportunity. Imagine if customers were able to do their entire grocery shopping for the week without having to set foot in a conventional supermarket.

mrs. Gucci was doing a staging, a hundred thousand dollars a week, and sales in contrast to, or eight to ten thousand dollars a week. So he had attacked this tiny part of the market because what's happened? You gonna shop a safer way.

But then you have to go to a Normal grocery store to finish everything, to round out. Everything is eat by following. This is gooch's examples.

Like all way I am, I am under performing ten x and because of all the experience getting all the reading he's doing like I can't stay in little tiny segment of market. why? Because our conclusion seemed unescapable size mattered in the retail business.

And so this is when he switching. Is mine like one? Only one thing is on my mind.

Now expansion is going to echo what jeff bazo said in the early days. Amazon, if you really shareholder, somehow jeff understood very early that the internet destroys the middle. So he's like on the internet, you have to be either really, really small are giant.

So amazon has to get big. John mackey arrives at a summer conclusion in the natural foods market, says the natural foods market is growing. If we don't expand now, we'll miss our shot in two years and might be too late.

The business environment is tilted against us, and we need to change that. We have to change that. Location and size matter a lot. And so a john does the nexus really smart? And again, IT just feeds back to the fact that he's this very aci's learner, vacuous reader.

And so he's like OK, i'm gonna jump out of the magazine and industry trade magazines and i'm going to actually go and fly and and do these store visits, which helps obviously build relationships to the people running the store. I wanted to see for myself some of the new natural fit stores i've been reading about in natural foods merchandise. So that's the trade magazine I mentioned earlier, and meet the folks behind them.

I planned a pilgrim mage, so he's gonna go coast to coast, he says a pilgrim mage and market research trip. Each visit gave me new ideas when I came to store layouts, displays, creative signage, product mix and more. What I gained from those whose visits with confidence, my vision of a larger format natural food store was not crazy.

And so he takes what he's learning and he acts on that and he has the thesis. He's like this thing. I don't think we're serving the entire market here.

I think if we make as we make the store bigger, the revenue will grow as well. And so he says we have to take a risk. We have to get a lease on another bigger location.

There is hilarious stories in the book because again, there's no you know you want open a whole foods market now like you're going to have a line of the door people that want you to put your whole foods in on their commercial. By the time he's only Operating a texas, he's like this there, much more conservative environment, and he keeps up his music. You going to put in this damn happy store, you know, it's a natural food supermarket.

Is like this a happy store? And so this guy, actually they are gonna to be doing a deal because he actually like you're like a Younger me, just like a Younger, weirder hippy version but it's just a arise, the conversation they're having and just maybe a life. He's like we're opening a natural food supermarket, I said, and bend the guy talking to them.

Stop, son, you to build a happy food store. No, sir, it's factual food supermarket. That's what I said.

A happy foot art earth. We're selling natural foods. He looked even more, more confused. Natural food boot. What is a natural food? And he starts describing, and he then banning goes, he goes, he in coming, goes some, there are not enough hippies in the whole game world for you to sell off groceries to make that kind of story success.

But one thing john did does have is he caught his eveline enthusiasm that, you know, he considers that one of the superpowers, especially because he believes in IT, you know, he can, enthusiasm and passions is infectious. You can literally transfer the belief that you have in what you're doing to other people of your passion enough. And IT works on band, so he goes, john, he said, is slow texas draw? I like you, you remind me myself.

Phone, I was just so damn idealistic and optimistic you think you could take on the world? Life is gna teach you a few things before it's done with you that I can say for sure he then, paul, what the health son, let's do your game. Hippy fu star, I love that that that sorry so much ah it's this story now ten thousand, five hundred square feet.

And so again, john's this is is not unique in the retail and the city. Again, he was discovering this independently. But this idea, larger stories going to equal more revenue.

Sam water and discovered this as well. We discovered a few weeks ago that obscure m ln mode phy. And every time sam increased the square footage of store, the revenue wind up as well.

And so this is the time our whole foods born, he talks to the two partners that they started the distribution business with now is like, okay, let's not just buy or you know use our size to buy to get a Better Price from our host, uh, Better host of Price that actually combine the two and into one company. And so there's four cofounder ers of whole foods. This can be crag, mark and and john and john's glory end renay.

And so john convinces them to do a merger. And like OK, when we need, we're going to use safer way and they're not going to use their cards fill like what's the name? And they actually came over the name because they took IT. There was an industry magazine called whole foods magazine.

And then like one we just call the whole foods market, and one of the best things about autobiography, es like this, that talks about the fact that at the very beginning, you're not never going have enough money, you're never going to have enough time. You're never gonna ready to launch, and you have to do so anyway. They just can they're not ready launched a larger store.

And there's some funny things have to do to to make IT appear like they have more inventory than actually do, but they can't afford to wait. So what you going to do like you have to go forward, you have to get creative. By the time construction was complete, we're running low on money.

We simply weren't onna be able to meet payroll and must be open right away. But we weren't ready. We didn't have or beer and wine license.

We didn't have a butcher, and we had a significant lack of inventory, which just a few days left before opening, the shells were half empty. The solution was found in juice. Apple juice.

IT was a popular product in those days, and we were able to get a help of a deal on a full tractor trailer load. We could fill up to the empty shells with ganglia drugs of apple juice. This is a when the truck pulled up outside the store, the driver said, hey, man, where's your loading dock? Loading dock.

We don't have one. All we had with a couple of dollars and a lot of people. And so they make this like one big, long, like human chain and unload A M.

I truck full of apple juice. We featured IT on every open shelf and sold IT at the special opening week Price of ninety nine percent per gon. Customers felt like they were getting a really good deal and created convincing illusion that the store was filled to the brim.

On september twenty, nineteen, eighty and nine A M, we opened. You're going to see right from the very beginning, this is the right place, the right time with the right person, with the right set of skills. How long did IT take until whole foods market first became profitable? I would answer, only have jokingly, until about two o'clock in the afternoon.

On the first day, our sales far exceeded expectations, and they never slowed down. We became the highest volume natural foods during the united states during over two hundred thousand dollars per week. IT was the right place, the right timing and the right type of store.

Imagine the euphoria that you would feel if you were in Jones shoes, the amount of time, effort, energy, love and risk that you took. And IT was an unbelievable success from day one. But you know that entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs, motion world caster, is euphoria and terror they opened up in.

Less than a year later, Austin, texas, gets hit by toronto downpours that cause what they call a once in a hundred year flood. A hundred year flood hits them in their first year of existence. The water broke through the windows like a title wave delusion.

The store IT was the worst flood that Austin had seen in seven decades. Thirteen people died. The store had been a feet underwater all over equipment and inventory we need to replace.

We estimated the inventory a long was worth about four hundred thousand dollars, and virtually all of IT was financed by our suppliers. I started feel much older than my twenty seven years before the flood. I really felt as if this was why I was on earth.

This is what I was here to do. This is what I was meant to do. But now I think I can think that all I want, but the nature delivers eight feet of Walker.

The nature puts my store and eight feet of water, and it's not just at its water when there's floods, that means the sores overflowed and mix with the flood waters. And so his entire stores full matter. So what do you do? He's got no, he has no idea he's going to get out this.

But I, okay, what when you do not gonna sit here? So he just starts getting to work. Eventually the waters recede, and they grab a bucket and starts mopping. And here's the the same thing.

And the idea that what you've made is, you know, love about the people and he noticed is a guy that's doing the same thing that's that's on another eye of the store mopping and you know, he's like, I thought and you have really work here so you go, hey, i'm sorry, I don't remember your name. I'm john and he was, say, i'm Larry. I live down the street.

I'm off work today. So I thought IT come by and help clean up. I love this store.

I shopping all the time, and I want to make sure that you guys come through this. And Larry wasn't alone. As the day were on, more and more volunteers showed up.

They came uninvited and unpaid for no reason other than they love the store and didn't want to see IT fail. And this is just the first in a series of people that help john and lind dom a hand. And if they didn't, whole foods probably would exist because they didn't have flood insurance.

So the first thing he does, even though he's old suppliers, a bunch of money got a business pay. Can you front a similar? They agree.

Then he goes down to his local bank, city national, and he explains, IT to his local banker is scanning markman role. And markman role agrees to give you one hundred thousand alone. Now there's a crazy story.

Years later, when alone was long paid off, I learned the reason the application process has been so easy. A stranger approach me the conference to check my hand. John, you won't remember me, but I used to work at city national bank.

That was quite a thing. The marketing rodier for you. After that big flood, the bank didn't approve that one.

The bank turned IT down markman rope. Personally guarantee that loan for you. That's the reason you ve got the money.

I was stunned. Mark had never said a work. Only four weeks after the flood, we reopened. And so a large part of the book was about the very beginning of hopeful, just like figuring out and opening news stores conc, revising what they wanted build and how they're gona build that, and then expanding until the territories will go to.

But one of the things was very interesting that that john, I talked about dinner is he said that the years go by fast and a lot gets lost to memory. I want to come back to this because at this point, the book is twenty eight years old. This body says, I look back, member, he's writing these words almost half a century into the future.

I look back on those days as some of the happiest of my life, I was in love with our store. There is a possible sense that we were doing something new, something important. And so when I talk to john about this, he said, the years go by fast.

A lock is lost to memory that you should write IT down. He actually thinks they're writing a man more and interviewing people from your life and pass is actually helpful, even if you don't publish the book. Because he had an idea.

He certainly fast, he says, the beginning of whole foods and the end of whole foods is like very fresh in his mind. And there's a lot in the middle. You'll tend to forget, you know, a lot will get lost in memory.

And so about the process of writing a memory, you're also interviewing and doing research of people they were that you knew back then, and that could tell you their perspective on these events. But when I heard john talk about this in person, and also when I read the back in the book, I thought of something. This is the advice the film night gave to to Young entrepreneurs that he neglected to do himselve because at the end of his autographed shoe dog, he said this I struggle to remember.

I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. That's exact. Same experience, a john magi head number with conversations, brethren, ughs, fits, declarations, revelations, confidences.

They're all fAllen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always set up half the night catalogue in the past, mapping out the future. I remember we took turns describing what a little company was and what IT might be, and what IT must never be how I wish.

On just one of those nights, I had a tape recorders or kept a journal. And one of the most entertaining informing reports of the book is how much go found are conflict that he has, how many? There's multiple cool attempts.

But this is one of an unusual, uh, COO found conflict is nothing new. But an unusual one is when you're a romantic relationship on your cofounder, ers and member, they are their hips by their own admission. And so, john, guess this ideas, like we should have no free love. And so he goes and talks to renney, which is this girl at the time is like, we should have an open relationship. And the problem was this, this backfired.

And so there's a story in the book where he tells her a OK, let's, you know, see other people even know he was in love with there and he comes home late he's like all i'm working late i'm just onna sleep at the store and he sides, oh, you know, no, I I I can't get you sleep. I'm going to go home, and as you could really know, what i'm going goes home. And he know his found girlfriend has engaged in an activity that was previously reserved just for them to.

And he has a great line in new. He goes, I was hard, broken and mad of myself. What kind of idiot tells the woman he loves to start seeing other people? And so in addition that he also has traditional cofounder conflict in at the the root of their problem, that he has one of cofounder ers.

I told you fortuna is a conquer. He says I was never going to be satisfied to stay small. I was never going to be satisfied stay small.

And so there is a tension between human go on a mark because they opened a new store, its sales go a little slower, their capabilities ing sales to some of the other stores. John has a very long term patient view and his cofounder doesn't is like you're ruining we had we had one great store. Why can't you be satisfied with one great store? He is why I was never going to be satisfied by staying small.

And over time, only one of the four confounders is going to remain, and that's gonna join magi. And is during these these conversations, these these philosophical disagreements, we realized that we have a commitment mismatch. I wonder if he was truly committed to the natural food mission.

I knew he personally believe in eating healthy, but was he interested in trying to change how other people ate for me? IT was becoming a calling, something I felt I had to do. What we were doing was more than a business I knew I could be successful.

IT had to be. We just needed to get through the slow start and start working on the next store as well. And one of the ways that he was going to expand and to change how the rest of the country eight was do this thing I mentioned earlier, this is the network.

This is very summer to what the secret allies idea, the joy rocker full ahead. And they're just a network of fellow entrepreneurs that owned the country's best natural food stores. And so at this point, there is no such thing as a national chain of natural food stores and mostly be a chain of stores like a handful stores in one year location.

And they kind of just they never expanded outside of those boundaries. And so they were constantly traveling together. And so they were all at, hey, we're all going to meet up and I are going to toward john.

Stores are all going to meet up an ally and told this store we're going wherever they're located in tour, he says. I learned so much from these visits coming home to Austin, dreaming with ideas for new product lines, marketing strategies, management approaches, store design and more. The network quickly felt like more than a business association.

These were friends, fellow travellers who were walking the same row that I was on was also allowed him to drastically expand the regions because he was gonna a all of these people in network. But I could not possible back then was that over the course of the coming two decades, whole foods market, the lean, hungry, upset of the bunch, would not only surpass each of those of the businesses, but would end up buying pretty much all of them one by one. The era of the original stores would soon come to an end, and we will begin our journey to become a national brand.

And so as you can imagine, and doing this over multiple decades and associated at the beginning when he's completely under finance is very stressful. So one of things he told me in person was that one of the things he's most proud of is all the he calls the inner work, all the inner work that he that he did to deal with, you know, outlook, the stressed you have the guilt, the anger, all these negative and somewhat you know can be debating, uh, emotions and like trauma that you're gonna has you build your company and so he the book talks a lot about this inner work. And so for his inner work he believes that m dma and Sullivan and then breath work was was very instrumental to making him a Better person and managing all of, you know, the complicated messiness of being a human being.

I didn't tell them. We talk about this. He, he said, h, you should try M, D, M, A. I was like, john, i'm not doing N D, M, A. Uh, you just now I don't want to do any kind of psychiatric y anything like that.

H it's after what I don't you know, judge of the people you like doing that and it's helpful about our means. Do IT. And he definitely talks about how hopeful wasn't this book, but he did say that you could do breath work, and he found very helpful.

And before I read this book, and he noted that i'm just going to have him to find what breath work is in the book. Breath work, in broad terms, is a technique involving a facilitated session of guided breathing that puts one in an alter state of consciousness, alarming, deeper spiritual inside in opening up a pathway toward clearing mental and emotional baggage. And john credit with his main thing, like he, he's got this interesting combination of traits that some people like would feel are.

And when I was in talking to one person, I realized that the two strongest ones, and this is his friend David, that was what the saw to like, loving discipline. And so he talks about like that. His main theme is love.

And he says, this is a result of all the inner work that he's done. Love was an enormous part of what got a started on the journey together. Love field or creation the store and turn IT is something we can never imagine.

And love had kept alive even through the most difficult moments. And this goes back to the importance of, I think, having the rate, basically the philosophical match for the confounders. Because john goes through of the therapy and this inner work, and he comes back and he tells his code, he is okay.

I want to aim to build the happiest workplace in america, workplace based on love. And is cofer mark that he is just like, what the hell are you talking about? He literally says the book based on love.

What the hell does that mean? I knew that mark privately referred to me as wai mckee and thought that my spiritual pursuits were not just crazy, but detrimental to the business. And so as time passes, you have this growing rift.

And in frustration between code is march growing frustration between all our war for control over the direction of the company. The first real chAllenge to my leadership, the first is not last is amazing how many times his border or other people in the in the company want to kick him out. And so this is reMarks.

Think you're terrible. C. E. O, john, look at what you've done. We've built this beautiful storm to incredible success, and then you had to go and completely screw up. So obviously you keep expanding.

You're onna lose money for a little bit like a short time of time. John was fine with that. John thought, you know, the expansion is is what I we have to do if we want to change the way the the country eats.

S his go under did not agree with them. You're gonna run this company into the ground. But the new stores warn a mistake.

I was still sure we just needed to give them time to grow into successful stores. Mark did not have that patients to me. Our mission was much larger than one store.

And in building a bigger company, mistakes and setbacks s are inevitable. This was the most painful part of the conflict, marcin. I had been really good friends until mark demands to leave.

John in the rest of the, uh, shareholder had to buy out. He walked away with about three hundred thousand dollars for his ten percent of the business in one thousand eighty five. That seemed like a lot of money, but history would prove that to be a very poor financial decision on his part.

And so this is just one of many examples on the book where the people around him are telling him he's wrong, telling him to quick, telling him strategies. Just doubt. Dt, doubt.

And so we talked about this in persons like, why did you persist? And he has a very simple answer. He says, I just had faith that I could figure IT out. And I think he was motivated by the chAllenge, like, can actually do this like this a line in the book where he says, you know, once they got to the point of being in multiple stores, they're defining the market leader in texas.

But he wanted to find out, like IT is whole foods, is IT just going to be a texas company? Or can we do we actually have the potential to be and the skill set in, the talent and the drive actually be a national company? And I think one of the things that you know was obviously, you spend time with them and mission is like just super competitive, he says.

I was also acutely aware of how being an entrepreneurship channel, my own competitive instincts. I thrive on competition, and I love to excel in both sports and business. I was driven to our due, our competitors to win in the marketplace. This competitive drive was critical to our success.

I was amazed at how a good idea could become a store and a successful store could become several turning into a real business, and a real business could grow to become a large company, and that chain of success could potentially change in entire industry. And so he makes the job. He starts expanding the california.

But as he does, he goes home to visit his mom, who's in very, very poor health. And so this is the last conversation that they ever have. And even up until the very end, SHE was not proud of her son.

She's only sixty four, but he looks so much older, literally wasting away before her eyes. John SHE said, I wanted to make me a promise. I want you to promise me that you go back to school and finally get your degree.

You could be so much more in life, if you will just apply yourself to IT. I hate to see you wasting your life. SHE still didn't understand that I found a career that both fulfilled my soul and was bringing financial rewards as well.

Mom, i'm never going back to school. I told her i'm doing what I love, and whole foods market is going to be a great company. I'm more than just a grocer.

I'm a successful entrepreneur. SHE just shook her head. I didn't know then that this conversation would be the last one I would ever had with my mother.

SHE died a few days later. I'll always regret that her last moment with me was one of disappointment. So by this time in history of whole foods, he realized he, we're gonna grow through acquisition.

That was the one of most shocking things from reading the book, because in shopping in the forever, I never thought about how the the company came to be. And it's just he grew whole foods. He was very aggressive, more agressive than he he will century and grew whole foods.

The acquisition to buying up, set all these different chains of these regional natural food stores and so they can do that without capital. And one thing that's very, very obvious, if you read the book, is john's this taste for venture capitalist. He does not hide IT at all.

This is something mean him talk about as well, which I get to in a minute. And so this is the eighties. And so his father's conversation, like we need more capital, will be going to get this.

And his father says, uh, his father was A A ways of caution. He says, make no mistake on, you cannot trust vcs. You may need them, but you can trust them. You're gonna their money back. And to do that, they need an x strategy.

And so human, his dad going back and forth about the process coins, like, do we take this money? Do we not? He says, what would you mean for me as A C. E.

O to have vcs and eventually public shareholders to answer to? I'd like running the company the way I did with my supportive board and a small group of patient investors who am new personnel interested. I didn't know how I felt about bringing in outside investors with their own interest and agendas.

And so the conclusion that he arrived that was if i'm going to grow through acquisition and I want to to grow faster, he says there were no other available options if we wanted to expand faster. And so he flies to california and he goes to stand here, road where entrepreneurs, remember, this is the eighties people. Still today, most of the VS did not see any opportunity from affect one of them.

The road said, this is never going to be a very large market, which is funny, because when john leaves whole foods that you, they are doing twenty two building in a year and sales, so they don't have any success. They go back and they pitch some local texas VC, one of which is very well known and prestigious inside a texas. And this is, they were hugging over like they want to do the deal, but the valuations little lower.

And this is what the VC tells him, john, he said, were top tear. V, C, from just having us on board is going to raise the valuation of the company when you want to go public. All money is not the same color.

IT would be some time before I understood the truth in jersey words. At that moment, all money looked exactly the same to me. Later, I would understand how being funded by prestigious VC from act like a magnet, two other V, C.

Firms, the next time you need to raise money. So this is september one thousand and eighty eight. Whole foods is doing fifty million years and sales in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight.

okay? They agreed to raise four point five million. And the venture capital firm gets a total of thirty four percent of the business.

And he understands that now once he takes the money, he's on the clock. And so this is how he thinks about taking venture capital. I began to think of our V C.

Partners as hitchhikers with credit cards. They were along for the ride and benefiting from our forward progress. And as long as they felt we were going where they wanted to go, they'll pay for gas.

But they did not have the same level of commitment to stay in the car for the entire journey. If we got lost or diverted from the road we promise to take, they might try to grab the wheel. I knew we couldn't afford to let them drive, nor did I put a past them to hijack the car, hire a new driver and leave me standing on the side of the road.

Eventually, they themselves, we need to exit. And I needed to ensure they didn't push me out first. John has a lot more to say about vcs in his perspective on them in the book, which are getting in one second because they are about the IPO.

This is something we talked about in person because one of the benefits of doing this, you know, I had dinner with episodes for people that are there. So he's got five decades of experiences on a clear in is a way to their lessons, almost like send warnings out to Young entrepreneurs that, you know don't have all the experiences of judd's. So we talk about this and it's obvious, like I had read the book before I set down to have dinner with you.

And I talked about this when we toward his new business, which he had also took funding for for. And he, he makes, he tells, he explains why. And so we had the conversation.

And again, I didn't record any the conversation. I would, john. So every you know, what I read was just when I got done, I just roll down and periphrase lessons that I was learning for the conversation having with them.

And so this is what I roll down. Be very careful who you take money from. Short term portfolio approach that most investors have is at odds with an entrepreneurs life's work.

I can tell you right now, it's very obvious when you read the book and you spent time, a john whole foods was his life's work. He was not just doing IT for money. He loved that.

He still loves IT to this day and though he's not involved anymore and so says john understands the capital of service that entrepreneurs may likely need, but cautious to partner with people with the same long term view you have. And so we talked about the fact that for his new venture, love life, he took some outside money for love life. But he took money from my long term friend, who is an investor.

But that investor has a proven track record of supporting founders and being patient. John is also funding the majority of the business himself so far out of his own pocket. So I think that at the context of my time with john and also what i'm been reading to from his book, will give you a sense of how he how he thinks on this subject.

So they get to the point where they raise money, nineteen eighty eight, and then they have an I P. O. A few short years later, nineteen ninety one. And this is his description that he says he was the second uh, happiest of his life.

First happy day was marrying his wife Deborah, which happened, you know a few months before and an initial public offering for whole foods because he says he was a relief of the thought that the hitchhikers would soon be the whole foods car over the past few years. I can understand all too well when my father had caught about VC. Their investment has been a central, but IT came at a high Price.

IT almost caused me everything I had built. I on the hard way that this have strong opinions about where the car should be going and how quickly should get there. As we fell behind on some of our projections, our hit hikers had started to exert some pressure that kept reminding me that none of our team had actual supermarket experience, never mind the fact that we've been running whole foods market for more than a decade.

By this point, they felt we needed people who would work in the real world. They believe we needed professional management. And one of the most interesting parts of the stories that john and his father were the ones that pushed for the IPO more than his investors did.

And this is why I raise ed the prospect of an IPO on the next board meeting. And the hitch kers weren't very enthusiastic. It's too soon, they said.

You're not ready to go public. Let's do another around the venture financing and grow the company few years before you. I P.

O. After the meeting, my father followed me into the office fuming, and he let IT rip. We've got to get those fuckers out of the company before they take over.

Since the V C is only only thirty four percent of the company, they weren't able to block or collected decision to go forward with an IPO. And so we began the process. So now there are public company.

He drastically accelerate his drive to buy up as many of these other a competitor is possible and grow to acquisition. But there is there a tone of detail, the book, and I really hope you read the book. Every single person that i've given the book to has enjoyed IT.

There's so much detail, but I do want to pull up, uh, one of these acquisitions because I think is there's a counter lesson. In fact, one of the things that me and john bonded over when we we're speaking is the fact that he thought the pocket was a good discovery mechanism to find books and entrepreneurs that he never knew about. You know, if he liked the episode, he would buy the book and and read IT.

And one of his favorite discovery to the podcast was sama murray from the book official and ate the whale, the life in times of america's anything red by rich Colin. And there's a story in the book that is something that sams a muri would do. So there they're buying a bunch of their competitors.

And one of the ones that that first inspired him was this company, southern california, called mrs. Gucci IT, I think he thought was like the best natural fit store on the west coast. And so he goes to the board is like, we have to do this and he is always in a defauts aggressive and they're always try to real in, says this is our moment if we don't take IT now will lose IT forever.

John, this is ridiculous. My father shouted, you're being recast. It's too much, too soon.

We're growing too fast. We're deluding our stock. We need to integrate all the other previous acquisitions first.

You won't able to manage the company of the size. But dad, this isn't just any acquisition. This is mrs.

gooch's. I know the timing isn't perfect. We're not ready to buy them, but they're ready to sell. The opportunity is there now, and I won't come around again.

And so when I got to that part and john perspective on that acquisition, yes, we're not ready for IT, but that doesn't matter. We still have to do IT. There's a line in same bike phy.

Seems murray officially the world that says there are times and this is assumed in his career sometimes there are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available, that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in a biometric pressure. A great businessman is double to act on them, even when he cannot afford to.

Now this is a devastating, devastating part of the book. When I was reading the book, one of the first things I wrote down, and I know I did john, the first one I was tell me that there was this conflict between image dads practice, his best friend, his advisors on the board. He's about to ask his dad to step down.

And he didn't understand the fights they were having because his dad's going to have all timers. But they didn't know IT then can now, despite the third of four time i've read these words, and he just hits so much harder now that I know the outcome of the story, and then how you know, this still affects john to the state. John, please don't do this.

My father looks suddenly frail, his air of authority and confidence, he drained from his face as I other the words, dad, I like you to resign from the board. My father had never begged me for anything in my life, but now he was begging me to change my mind. I was forty years old.

He was seventy two. He'd been my mentor, advisor, investor and ally for every step of the journey. For sixteen years now he'd put his trust in his college, drop out hippy sun and hold me grow into a mature leader of a two hundred million dollar public company.

And yet, in recent years, he'd also increasingly been my adversary. Again and again, he tried to put the brakes on when we needed to see these opportunities to move forward, please, he repeated, this is the last thing i'm doing my life that's actually relevant. Look dead.

I said you're always going to be my most trusted advisor. I'm still won to talk about everything. This will not change, but you're increasingly risk averse, and I want to to grow the company.

Asking my father to leave the board was difficult. IT was an important step in my personal growth. I was coming into my own as a leader and as a man, and IT was devastating. I had to be confusing for john because it's almost it's a little under three years later, they figure out something had been happening in the whole time. And so his dad calls them means, like, I have something I need to tell you, I have all timers.

And so the diagnosis comes in in one thousand and ninety six is dead, is in two thousand four in the next ten years, also coincides with some of the most difficult times that john's gonna have in his career. And imagine put yourself in john shoes, he's going to the most difficult time of his life. And his trusted advisor, the person knows, without a doubt, has his best interest that loves him conditionally, is slowly whittling away.

At the same time, this part is devastating, is so difficult to read. I went to another significant transition in my personal life. My father, who had lived with altima for years and was now barely recognizable as the wise mentor I saw, greatly loved and he depended on so much in early days, died in november two thousand and four.

IT had been more than a decade since his wisdom had Graced our board meetings, and many years since i'd been able to call on him for advice about strategy. Sadly, his personality had long since to come to this horrible disease. I was fifty one years old, and both my parents were gone.

My father had been in a central part of shaping not only who I was as a man, but also who I was as a business leader and entrepreneur. His death was a disconcerting experience that plunge me into a deeper reflection on my own life and mortality. I had a strange sense that a miro was being held up.

They've reflected my own time on this earth. Who was I and what was the truth about my own life? Was a good, was a beautiful? Was IT enough? Was I enough? Four years after his father's death, he gives his commencement address. And I think this device is very powerful and something i've try to do in my own life. And the advice of his commencement addresses honor your parents and forgive them from their mistakes.

He had a lot of resemble towards his mother and the fact his mother up to her danger in approve of you know her his choices in life and yeah you know he's done that inner work that gone to all the therapy. And when I talk him now, it's like, I don't sense that he's still harbor ill will towards his mother. And so this is the advice that he gave during his commencement address.

I think this is really good. Honor and appreciate your parents. No one will ever love you quite like your parents do.

And although they have no doubt made plenty of mistakes and helping you grow up, they've also done their very best job that they knew how to do. They've made far more Prices on your behalf. Then you will ever really know. Please forgive them for their mistakes and imperfections and fully love them and ask them why you can, because the simple truth is that you won't always have them with you as you move further along on your life journey. So I want a transition into the second half, or maybe that even the later half of the whole food history, I do want to wrap up just this expansion.

Is this how he worked himself in his company to the most dominant position in their industry? And so there's a paragraphs want to read you that is writing and summarized this because I think these principles are time, listen and applicable to almost every single one of us. I think that's why whole foods market emerged out of that first generation as the only dominant national company buying up all those other brands.

IT wasn't because we had the best stores. IT was because that such an important part. IT wasn't because we had the best stores.

IT was because we were more ambitious and not strategically about the long term. We ran our business frugally and our stores to be highly profitable, and we warn ambivalent about either money or growth. So we didn't win because we are the best stores.

The best stores are the best products. And you think about the stores and actual product, right? What's crazy about the centuries? The best products were actually losing money. They had the highest quality stores, but they weren't running good businesses the way.

Think about that we want because we were more ambitious, we were more strategic, we were more focus on the long term, we were more frugal and we were more more focus on profit. Now these two things, john said when we were together, that blew my mind. One, he says that walmart was one of the keys to success for whole foods.

And this was like, crazy to think about why, because the supercenters that they started opening Operate, they caused grocery stores. And so now one more goes from a Normal retailer. You can buy every single thing that you want, including groceries in our supercenter.

So their supercenters caused grocery stores to keep going down market over Price, which means when the warm t supercenters first a period and costco the way first appeared on the scene, the grocery stores, their initial reaction was wrong. Their initial reaction was we're going to try to compete with walmart on Price. They didn't know the scope of the threat they were dealing with, he said.

Whole food ds, we went up market. We would sell higher quality and higher Prices. That was fascinating to me. The second thing he said is probably the crazy st like in a minute, in a great way, like the crazier thing anybody's ever told me about the impact of this podcast could have.

He said that if my podcast had existing when he was Younger, whole words would still be an independent company, because the podcast over over again all of history, gray sunshiney s constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses. The podcast would served as a reminder, and he would have put more of a priority on IT. As as whole foods grew in expand, he let expenses get too high in the boom in the mid two thousands over time is very natural.

So more successful, you let expense pense rise. But what his his Grace founders know is that cost and expenses are constant in revenue is cyclical. So in a boom, in a good time, you're letting your cost structure creep up because your revenge creeps up.

This is in human nature, and then you're gna have some kind of slow down or maybe increased competition. So the revenue pulls back, but the expenses stay the same. That then open opportunity for an activist investor to buy a large book of shares and influence the board.

This leads to john looking for a White night, which winds up being amazon. So I want to focus on the time from the furniture questions in two thousand and time in two thousand eight, all the way until when john gets the idea to to try to solve the company to jeff via. So stock is down ninety percent from the p this is late two thousand eight.

This left is deeply vulnerable to shareholder activists. Opportunity is going to find that opportunistic investors, to my, by a large swath of the company, impose their own agendas. We needed to take action fast, but how? And so a friend of his, in a fellow entrepreneur, recommends this private equity firm firm called lander Green.

And he says, you should take money from them so you can shore up your baLance sheet. And so in november two thousand and eight, nine or Green, the privately ity firm, invested four hundred and twenty five million dollars into whole foods in return for a seventeen percent stake in the company. They also agreed to always vote with management for the first eighteen months.

This deal will turn to be one of the best lender red Green ever did by the time they sold their shares in two thousand and eleven, just three years after investing our stocks to regain all the previous value and much more. And they made about four billion dollars on the transaction. This is where things get really complicated and Frankly, just really bizarre.

So a few years later, he decides to share. He really, this is going to be, remember what you and I just talked about, sault sam walton had a really time executive, but that executive was so talented that he's like, you know, I want to be C O. What, you know, willing wait a little bit, but if you're not to make me C, O, just let me nor leave.

So sam, even though he's not ready to retire and relinquish his control, he is lose a to executive. He minds up making him see a warmer and in like eighteen months later, this a drive mistake and he goes back to the see opposition so john has a very talented chief Operating officer and and president named water rob and he says, I knew water was ungry for more and that sooner later someone's gonna make him an offer to be CEO. I don't want to lose water and so the only way I can keepon was for modem, but I wasn't yet ready to give up the C.

E. O. role. So is I. K. Walter, will you be coco with me? And so keep down the back your mind when you get this email from the founder, starbucks, which is friends with water, rob, in one second.

But what's happening now is the reversal of a trend that in the beginning helped member, I just said warmer was one of the keys to our success at the beginning. Eventually, that trend reverses why other supermarket chains had discovered red, that IT was easier to focus on the higher quality end of the market, then try and tried to appeal to whole foods customers while undercutting our Prices. Then IT was to focus on the lower quality end and try to compete with warmer and costco on Price.

This encourage them to encourage on our market chair. But I had known to be true for many years that we were competing not just with other natural food stores but with conventional grocery stores, was now clearly evident. We hadn't been alone in a nich.

We've just been ahead of the cultural curve now. We had company, a lot of company, in fact, and that increased competition from conventional grocers was not great for our business. And so surely after this, he gets an email from how our shells, the founder of starbucks, IT, sent to john in one member of the board.

And john summarises the email here, absent t patent, disruptive under my disconnected from reality, a problem for the company in the leadership team. That is how our shows describing john Maggie but Howard not on the board, Howards not involved in in the company all he's just close friends with the coco walter rob so says, uh, shalts had sent me this unprompted personal performance review. Schulz made his true intention clear.

He believed that I was time for me to step down and make water. The soul C. E, O, now get some even more intricate.

The only other person on the email was one of the board members is scanning john socket off, who was part who worked with at lander Green, the P. E. Firm that bought seventeen percent of the company for four hundred and twenty five million dollars.

So john market is talking to john sokol ff. About the Howard show email. And in that conversation, socket off, like, hey, you know, john, we should sider taking whole foods private. The public markets are not the easiest place to execute turnaround, he said. Whole foods has a baLance sheet, would easily support IT, and I promise we could work out the financing.

And john's response was, I worried that putting too much dead on our books would endanger the company, not to mention the private equity firms will control the company and their purpose would not be well with hours. For now, I think we're okay as a public company, he told soco ff. And john mckee talks about the director of running a public company.

Know and and what happens is in good times, you kind of let things slip a little, he says, with the company had loud ourselves become complacent over the years when our stock Price was flying high and through the experience of running a public company realizes that what warn buffs would repeat the lesson from the gram about mister market. How accurate was after decades of experiencing these high and lows for myself? I understood what then gram and warm buffet love the parable of mister market.

A kind of manic depressive business partner, comes running in with a new place of the company every day. One day, mr. Market saw is a visionary.

The next day he saw me as the village idiot. And so when he reports another disappointing quarter, he suffered another cool attempt to try to remove him as C. O.

Of his, a company. He laugh. That was his soul. He he used he he was in his baby. He's still shows her to day.

And so one of the ring leaders of this cow is socker off. And he says, I wasn't in. This is what john's response. This, I wasn't really step side, whole foods. We still very much my entrepreneur child and no code, and wants to abandon their child and made the storm my seas.

I wasn't gonna so premature because the board member already made a fortune of its investment in the company under my leadership, had no patients for a transition that would naturally take some time. They want him to step down and make water. Rob, the C.

E. O. Now, over and over again, all he's getting always like back channels of like, uh, I guess gossip as we would, I guess, classify this.

And every time walter robs, hey, I didn't tell how children to write that email. I don't know. We're sock loves getting this idea.

I'm i'm loyal to you. I don't want you to step down if you want, I would resign to prove this. And you know john's like, okay, well, like, no, if you I don't want you resign either.

But this went on for so long that john needed to find a solution, and he winds up finding a solution. But while because while this all was going on, he's reading a biography of everything. Link can actually read the spot to its incredible, the book that captured my attention in those days with team of rivals by doors, corn's goodwin.

It's the enduring wing historical account of how lincoln manage, lead a team of strong, diverse and often competing peronists do an era of national crisis vision. So as he is reading the book, he asked, okay, if what would lincoln do? If he was in my position, what would lincoln tell me to do right now? Boom, IT suddenly hit me.

I would ask what to resign as he y'd already offered to do. On at least two occasions I thought about salmon chase. This is literally from the bike.

Py, got the idea from the bike. Py, it's incredible. I thought about salmon chase. Linton, ambitious rival for the presidency in eighteen fifty four, and the secretary of treasury, who had offered his resignation many times until one day link and surprised him and accepted IT. IT was time for media accept waters offer.

And I had the confidence that he would follow through and be amount of his word. I spoke to water in exactly those terms, and reluctantly, he accepted my request. Socket love was not happy with this turn of events.

That is not the end of this. So that is not the end of this. There is more shareholder activists, and this is the one that leads directly to the sale to amazon. So says, like most public company CEO, I feared few things. This is to those some way.

I fear few things more than shareholder activists, those calculating speculators who buy up shares in the company with the sole intention of engineering short term increases in the dark Price so they can cash out at a quick profit as a purpose driven leader with a long term vision, I felt threatened at an x central level by the notion that some person who might never have set of foot whole foods could show up, buy a bunch of stock and then start dictating strategies with little regard for the long term costs of the company. And so on that spring day in two thousand seventeen, I learned that genre partners had just announced its purchase of eight point eight percent of our stock. They had given us no warning.

I had known for a while that whole foods is vvd nerve to exactly this kind of attack, and he describes the reasons why the shift in our competitive landscape are consequence slowdown in sales growth and are flagging stock Price, all made us a target. And genome's with maki in the executives and says, essentially their message resists, we're going to take over whole foods market. We're going to take control board.

I'm we're onna replace management and i'm we're going to sell this company to the highest bitter. And so his response was we created a plan to cut costs and improve Operations. We also announced changes to the board.

This backed off Janet temporarily, but I knew IT wasn't enough. And so he speaks with another investor, whole foods, that knows what jana partner Normally does. The scanning Michael sharing, he says he pointed out the jana partners had on the vast majority of their activist battles by quickly and easily take control the board.

I know you think your new board is a friendly when he explained, but I suspect they're still going to vote you out and quickly. And so this is when john n realized this. He needs a White night.

He needs a buyer to evade this hostel will take over that is gonna end up with his expulsion from the C. E. Opposition may be even the board and IT was initial thought was worn n.

Buffett, if the sale was inevitable, shouldn't be proactively seeking a buyer that we thought would take Better care of the company, warn buffer s name came up and perhaps he would recognize the the long term value in our company and be interested in helping to protect IT and grow IT, right? We reached out time, but he replied that he wasn't a good fit. Day after day, I walked, meditated and debated.

Night after night, I tossed and turned, trying to come up with the the solution that didn't mean losing the company that I love. I knew the solution had to be out there, a creative out of the box idea. I just couldn't see IT yet.

My frustration grew as the day is past. And then one morning, immediately after I woke up, a question popped into my head. They changed everything.

What about amazon? And so they reach out, they set up a meeting which have bases in his team. And amazing things actually had basis boat house, and they wind up having this incredible multi hour meeting. And IT looks like almost immediately they're going to want to working something out. And he talks about his inner monogue.

At this time, I had nurtured whole foods, my child, my baby, from her infant Y, I watched her take her, her steps, hold her hand as SHE entered the the world and look down with pride as SHE slowly grew his mature, thriving business. Was I now ready to let her go to marry her off the richest man in the world? IT just took two days to get amazon's answer.

So amazon buys whole foods in two thousand seventeen. By two thousand twenty two, john mckee is out. He worked on whole foods for forty four years.

IT was the summer of two thousand and twenty two. And I was getting ready to make the biggest transition of my life, leaving whole foods market after forty four years as a leader. And he talks about needing to do a bunch of inner work and therapy to get over this anger and resentment that he felt.

And this is a rehiring ing theme. When entrepreneurs sell their baby, when they sell their company, the person that gives you the money is now in charge. And so this is part of the service that I think john mackey doing to future generations of entrepreneurs are for future generations entrepreneurs by writing about this.

So honestly, this layer needed to be experienced the way in which I felt disrespected and disempowered since the sale of whole foods to amazon five years earlier. IT surprised me with a sinensis how anger he was. And beneath the anger was a more thought and cross ve emotion, guilt.

Had I done the right thing in selling amazon, should I fought harder to keep whole foods independent? There wasn't an easy answer to those questions, but they needed to be asked. The first question everyone always asked me is, do you regret selling to amazon?

The most honest answer I can give is that I regret the circumstances is that made IT the best option I still believe is the best strategic choice available at the time. And while not every hope and dream I had for this marriage of companies has come true, there were several wonderful positives that came out of IT. At the same time, there were a few disappointments and frustration.

So he talks about this over few pages or summarize the prose, lower Prices for his customers, higher wages for his employees, more stores, Better technology, and then way Better online ordering and delivering the technology that amazon by brought whole foods was just way Better than what he could build himself. The cons. There is more centralization of management, more bureaucracy, more same's in the stores, and then a series of professional managers that were not aligned with his culture.

And what happened is slowly, over time, his influence essentially receded and disappeared. He thought he would still be able to run the company, be the sea of all foods inside amazon. My thoughts and strategic suggestions were not welcome by the leaders in charge.

I was simply cut from the team with no further explanation. This disrespect her. My aspiration for whole food having greater cultural influence at amazon was largely unrealized. And he understands this perspective because he said, surely the thinking goes, that their culture must be superior, or the acquisition would have been the other way around. We had ourselves struggle with the same type of superiority trap in many acquisitions that we had done over the years.

The tipping point occurred in a video conference meeting I had in february twenty, twenty, twenty one with dave Clark, amazon seo, consumer businesses and my direct supervisor. And so they're having a back and forth about this idea. And john keeps pushing and says, David, john, I told you we're not doing IT.

What do you not understand about that statement? You always want to argue about every fucking thing. Sometimes you just need to be a team player and do what you're told to do.

I try to put things in the perspective day. I don't think that's accurate. I don't argue about everything.

Can you give me another example of one? I've argue with you, john. I don't have to give you a fucking sample.

I work with you. I know it's true and it's not just me. Everyone at amazon knows its too.

If you didn't want to a give up control of whole fit, then you shouldn't sold the company to amazon. And then listened to john's surprising reaction. Dave was right.

I had given up control when the company was sold to amazon. I knew IT was now time for me to go. And so that's when he start doing more therapy. He goes back with breath work and N, D, M, A.

And he says, a surprise me, how much anger I felt about the disrespect amazon had shown towards me and how much killed i'd harbor over the decision to sell the therapy helped him get rid of these like the feeling resemble and anger, he says, I was able to confront a deeply health fear that i'm not truly worthy of love due to my many false and lack of perfection. The str p also reminded me of slogan, someone, uh, some friends of shared previously holy shit on alive waves of bliss flooded my body and were released. I felt incredibly joy.

I felt incredibly joy to be here in human flesh, breathing, moving, living and loving. What a gift. Holy shit, i'm alive.

And so obviously ve read this before I met john. And I ask also, like you have any resentment towards G, F. bases? He's like now. And he says the two smarter entrepreneurs that he has ever met are elon mosen, jeff bassus.

And in fact, he considers both of them one thing that me, john bond, over the fact that we had a lot of the same entrepreneur heroes. So his entrepreneurs eroes are like buffet, elon, jeff basis, Steve jobs, rockfalls. But he reiterated to me, like, now I have no ill will towards jews at all, and you think that he's uteri brilliant.

And so then he ends the book the only way. And entrepreneurs at, and he is a great framing about what what IT is that we're actually doing. We're actually playing an infinite game.

And so that was key in the book, key the conversation, have a job, the whole food. Food wasn't work. IT was play anything that's key to endurance and building a company for the long term.

You love you. You love your work. It's fun.

IT feels like play. And so he starts another companies called love. Life is a holistic health and wellness cause. I got to tour the entire facility. And so he talks about this.

He says, I became aware of a familiar feeling like an older friend, but one that has been too often absent in recent years. I'm really excited to get to work. IT reminds me the feeling I used to get as a kid when I waited impatiently on the sidelines for a game.

Pick up basketball to begin the eager anticipation of play, play. That's what this words to me. I am a god of play. The primary field in which I love to play and to be creative is business. I don't believe life is simply about our happiness or pleasure.

IT is also about discovering and following our higher purpose and contributing our unique gifts and talents in the brief time that we have on this planet. When I first came up with the idea for safeway, and renee said, let's do IT, Michael, man. We thought IT would be fun.

That was the initial impulse. If you told us then that the little venture that we started in a house we were, by the time I retired, grow to be a company with five hundred forty stores, a hundred and five thousand members and twenty two billion in annual sales. That changed the way amErica eats.

We would have found over laughing, but then we would have gotten right back to work building the company. We laugh. And IT was because we loved and enjoyed IT so much that he became all those things we could have never imagined.

Whole food was and is a magnificent expression of my own higher purpose. I'm enlistment proud of IT, but what I understand now is that my higher purpose did not begin to end with whole foods market. That's another reason I love business at its best.

It's a wonderful creative ever, evolving in game, the best kind of game, because the deeper you get into IT, the more you must learn in order to keep playing IT at a high level. And the most important aspect of the game is that IT keeps moving and changing and developing even as we play IT. In fact, because we play IT business is an infinite game.

Infinite games are open ended. They're played for the purpose of continuing the game itself. The creation and growth of whole foods was the delighted to be a part of others will continue moving that ball down the field.

But i'm not done with business. I'm not done pursuing my own higher purpose. I'm not done with this wonderful, infinite game. I'm on a new adventure now. I love being back in start of mode again, free from the shackles of bureaucracy.

IT what makes me feel alive, exuberant and Young spirit, another wonderful game to play, another beautiful vision to bring into reality, new worlds to create out of nothing. Let us love, let us create, and let us play again and again and again forever. And that is, well, leave IT for the full story.

Highly, highly, highly, highly recommend picking up and buying a copy the book. If you buy the book using link in the shower notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is three hundred and fifty eight books down one thousand ago.

And i'll talked again soon. There's two things that john I talked about that fsd loved. One of them was explicitly stated in the podcast, that is the fact that john also shares my same habit.

No is a vacuous reader. But he also has to reread his highlights on the books that he's read previously. The second thing I loved that was implied, but I think obvious as that he was completely obsessed with building all foods in in believing in his mission to change the way that people eat.

And one of my obsession has been obviously making this podcast so then I can collect, and is still the knowledge of history, greatest entrepreneurs, and then spread that foreign wide, because I do think these are really is an active service to take the live story of entrepreneur, take the lessons out of them, and then spread them as far as possible to so other people can benefit from that. You five, four decade, five decades, near long career. And so this subsection sion of, hey, i'm going to collect in the slender gy opie's entrepreneurs is what the part like IT IT comes in the form of the park cast.

But i've made a tool to make sure I never forget the lessons, and I can pull them up on demand when I need them. In that tool is founders notes, which you can now get access to that tall. So founder notes let you tap into the collective knowledge entrepreneurs demand in a very simple ways.

For the last six years, i've been putting all of my notes and highlights for everything that I read for the podcast into this giant seul database that you can tap into. And even if you didn't know what you've heard me use IT over over again every time the someone i'm referencing past ideas, from past episodes, from past books like jeff bases, like what disney, sing walton, mongo buffs, all of this that is me searching through founders notes and police up those ideas. And that is a really important point to get across what you see, if you describe to find suits.

That's the two I use. You see the exact same thing that I use. IT is a tool that I made for myself that you can now get access to subscribers to founders notes, are using founders notes to help them think through issues are having in their company from anything from hiring to recruiting to marketing to leadership, to preparing for board meetings to preparing for sales presentations.

If you are already running a successful company and they get a no brainer to invest in this tool. And now i've added new feature that's also gonna you, how I use founders notes. And it's going to push ideas from histories, gay entrepreneur tly into your brain quickly.

That is this private podcast feed that comes with every single subscription to founders notes, which I have called sage advice. And so let me give an example the episode just made. I read two, two autobots phones of James license that has prior fifty, sixty, seventy hours of reading, countless hours of inputting the notes and highlights and the founders notes.

And so what I did is I went in, read every note in highlight, and then there's also an AI assistant that lives inside founders notes called sage. And I when you ask a question, you resolve the new highlights and transcription website. And I would ask questions about James, the lessons from jim's license books. So give me you like, give, for example, give me a list of jim's license, best ideas.

How did James doesn't think about marketing? What did James they essay about persistence, things like that? And then what I did is I compose all that into a single document, and is still that down to what I think are the most powerful ideas from James license, fifty year career, where he's built this multiple, multiple billion other company that he wants one hundred percent of. And so you take fifty year career sixty hours of reading, and is stealing that down into an episode that you can listen to, and twelve minutes. And so the idea with these many episodes, as I want to, to create a tour, that if I can condense the ideas from somebody's entire career, multiple books into something that is ten minutes, and that means you're going to be able to listen to that over and over again, is going to give a concert reminder and easy way for you to download ideas into your brain so that you can use them in your career. So if you want access to the tool that give you a superpower to access the collective technology of history, when you need to make sure you go and subscribe, have founders notes stock com, that is founders within, just like the podcast founders notes 点 com。