Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Love as a Leadership Strategy: Insights from Whole Foods Co-Founder, John Mackey

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Can profitable businesses change the world for good?John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, has proven the answer is a resounding YES… for the last four decades. John grew a single ‘hippy grocery store’ in Austin, Texas, into a global chain with $22 billion in annual sales and 540 locations worldwide.And he did it all with an unwavering commitment to sustainability and ethical practices, showing us all what’s possible when entrepreneurs embrace positive values and transformative leadership.His pioneering and widely influential books, Conscious Capitalism and Conscious Leadership, serve as blueprints for integrating ethical values into successful businesses.And his most recent book, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism, gives us an intimate look inside the personal and spiritual journeys that fueled his groundbreaking approach.In this conversation, John shares insights from his personal transformation—from spirituality to psychedelics – along with the milestones of his experience with Whole Foods. We dig into the ethos that drove the company’s growth while he was at its helm, and his ongoing passionate advocacy for a corporate model that benefits both people and the planet.Get ready to be inspired by a visionary who continues to help us all think differently about our responsibility towards each other and the world._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Love, play, creation. That sums it all up for me in a way. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Have you ever wondered if profitable businesses can really change the world for good? John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, has proven the answer is a resounding yes. So John grew a single hippie grocery store in Austin, Texas into a global chain with 22 billion in annual sales and 540 locations worldwide. And he did it all with an unwavering commitment to sustainability and ethical practices.

He's showing us all what is possible when entrepreneurs embrace positive values and transformative leadership. And then he committed to put it in writing. He's got three books I want to mention, Conscious Capitalism and Conscious Leadership. And both of those serve as blueprints for integrating ethical values into successful businesses. And then his most recent book, The Whole Story, Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism, it gives us an intimate look inside his adventure, his journey, the way that he fueled this groundbreaking approach. So in this conversation, John shares insights from his personal transformation.

We dig into the ethos that drove the company's growth while he was at the helm. Get ready. Get ready to be inspired by a true visionary, by somebody who continues to challenge us, to help us think differently about our responsibility towards each other and to the world. So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation with John Mackey. John, I've been looking forward to this conversation

for a long time. You're a flat-out titan in the industries. And I just want to start by humbly saying, how are you? Actually, I'm fantastic. Best day of my life. Oh, I feel like you've said that before. Because every day is a great day if you have the right attitude about it. All right. This is going to be a great conversation because you do not suffer fools by any stretch of the imagination. You're a deep thinker. I've suffered myself for a long time. Oh my God, that's great. Let me just start. Okay, so congrats on your new book, The Whole Story, Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism. It's an awesome

subtitle there. But I want to start with two things of the book, which I loved, by the way. You opened the book up with a dedication. And that dedication, I love reading dedications. It's really cool. But this is yours. To all Whole Foods market team, members, past, present, and future, we did this together and I will always love you. All right. So you've got love here in the subtitle. You've got love in your acknowledgements. Is it fair to say that your culture at Whole Foods rested on love?

Purpose and love. That was the foundation of the culture. And to me, in my book, Conscious Leadership, I put those as like two most important things for business. Purpose is what – if you provide purpose and love in your culture, people don't want to leave. They'll work with you forever because people want to feel like they're contributing in some way, that their work matters. And if you can help people to see the bigger picture of how their work, in Whole Foods' case, how the healthy food we're selling and making the customers feel better, their guests in our stores every day, that they're serving them, people feel good about that. They want to feel good about themselves, that their work matters.

And secondly, people want to feel like people care about them, that somebody cares about them. I mean, in other words, people want to care about something that they're doing and they want to work with people that care about them and that they care about. If you put those two things into a culture and get it really at the essence of it, your culture is going to flourish and your business is going to flourish too. Those things are just so very important. And I found those to be the most important things. Love is, in my opinion, is the most important thing in life. And I've realized that multiple times. It's been something that my deeper, higher self communicates with to me. And I actually think

that's why we're here, to go deeper into love. That's the purpose of existence. When you say it, I believe it. Just listening to the way that you contour your words and the shape and the feel of them. And then you're also an incredible business person. And so you're a systems thinker. You are, I think you're an extroverted thinker as well, but I just, in my research of you, but I want to understand how do you, how do you bring love forward in a culture? Like, how do you uniquely do it where it's felt it's part of the DNA? People understand that the love that you're hoping they'll feel like, how do you bring that forward?

You've got to fire people. You've got to hold people to standards. You've got to make sure that, you know, markets are happy or shareholders are happy, even though I know that that's not your primary purpose. I do understand that, but there's a, I call it the invisible handshake in business. Those are very important. Yeah. So how do you do it? There's an assumption in that question. And that assumption is, is that somehow or another,

these things are like polarities, that they're opposites, that you can't be loving and fire people. You can't be loving and hold standards. And I think that's because people have, I would say that I have a different perspective of what love is, that love is not just being soft and caring. Love is just fundamentally caring about somebody as an individual, but then you have responsibilities to the whole organization. You have to do the things that are best. I always talk about looking for win-win-win strategy, something that's going to be the best thing for you, the best thing for me, and the best thing for all of us. And sometimes that means, as much as I care about you, this is no longer the best fit for you to work for this organization. That your path is going to be somewhere outside of this organization.

And you can do that in a caring way, where you generally care about the person. Not in a mean, mean-spirited way or a caring way where you generally care about the person, not in a mean, mean-spirited way or a power way. You're just looking for what's best for the organization and what's best for the individual. And you have to do both of those things. But if you ask how to bring love into an organization, the first thing is you have to lead by example. You can talk about it all you want, but people pay a lot more attention, 10 times as much attention to what you do than what you say. So if you model caring in the way that you lead, that will become, and you're the CEO or the founder, that will become

part of the culture. And also if you hire and promote people that are caring and also get results, you're looking for people that combine both of those qualities. You need them both. You need excellence, you need high performance, and you need caring. So you build your culture first by leading by example and then also in your hiring and promotions. But one other thing we did at Whole Foods that really enhanced the caring aspects that I always tell people, if you just did this one thing in your organization, you would change your culture fundamentally and you would have a lot more love being expressed. And that is simply end all your meetings with appreciations. Set aside 10 minutes or so for people to voluntarily

appreciate each other and make sure you're the main appreciator. You're always leading by example by doing the appreciating. I have found that in meetings, for example, there's a tendency you get bored. People say things you don't agree with. So there can be a lot of judgments that go on in a meeting, right? So if you end the meeting with appreciations and they're authentic, people completely can shift. I mean, if you just say things, people know the difference between being flattered or played up to versus an authentic, caring appreciation.

So only the authentic, caring appreciation will do what I'm talking about here. The other one, people just dismiss it as nonsense or bullshit. So I have found that when you authentically care about somebody, their heart opens up, and your heart has to open up. You cannot do an authentic, caring appreciation without an open, loving heart. Otherwise, it's just fake. And so when you do those things and you end your meetings that way, people's consciousness shifts. And then you do it through your whole organization and you're always going to have this, a more caring organization. That one simple technique by itself can make a huge transformation in most organizations' cultures. Finding Mastery is brought to you by

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try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free terms and conditions apply finding mastery is brought to you by david protein i'm pretty intentional about what i eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods and when i'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day certainly i need something quick that will support the way that i feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day.

What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart,

you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. I love what you're doing here in that you're making it a practice. It's inside the rhythm of business.

And I want to make sure I understand the mechanics. Is it 10 minutes inside of a 50-minute meeting? Or is it 10 minutes in a 90-minute meeting? And I don't want to be too rigid by any of this, but I'm just trying to get like how often you would put it in your meeting agenda. Every meeting. Every meeting. Every meeting.

Doesn't matter. Even if it's just a few minutes, you can still end with a nice appreciation and thank people and appreciate them. But at Whole Foods, we had to put limits on our appreciations because we'd get this effect where everybody's appreciating everybody else and appreciations would go on and on and on. So first we put a limitation of you can only appreciate three people. That's it. And you can't do more than three. And then still it took too much time. So then it's like make this appreciation count so you can only do one person.

You can do the other person outside of the meeting. That way we got some efficiency to it. But otherwise, appreciations were so powerful that they began to take up too much time in the meetings. We had to rein them in, so to speak. But that's a good problem to have. Most organizations can't really get it started because the CEOs may be stiff and unwilling to do it, or they think that's, we're a performance culture. We can't waste time on this, this soft stuff. This is soft stuff. This is, we don't need this stuff. What we need to do is work harder and get out there and raise our standard of performance. They underestimate the importance of care and love. The feminine versus a masculine,

they underestimate the feminine qualities. What about the days when you're not feeling it? You're tired, you're cranky, you got your ass kicked somewhere and you're looking at your team and you're like, man, I need to go take a nap or I need to get to my next meeting or when you're off. Of course, that happens to all of us, right? We have our bad days, we have our bad moments. But I've learned a couple of things. As soon as you become conscious of that, you can choose differently. You have control of your consciousness and you don't have to, if I become aware that I'm being in a bad place or I'm judgmental, in the next moment, I can choose differently. And so it's just about a matter of being conscious.

And if you do that, then you don't need to have a bad day. You might start off on a bad day, but you can shift it. So I'm all about shifting it. And does that mean I didn't have bad days and said things and hurt people's feelings? Sometimes I do. And when that happens, when I become conscious of it, I quickly go ask for forgiveness and say, I'm sorry I said that. That was inappropriate. It's not really how I feel. And get that thing straight and solved right now. I don't let too much time pass. Otherwise, that's a wound that could fester. I try to go heal those. I learned in pro sport that if that mistake, let's call it, or that misstep was public, that the apology needs to be public. And if it was private, then the apology is best served privately. Mike, such a good point. I want to go further

than that. Never, never criticize anybody publicly. Never. Period. Praise publicly. Criticize privately. And yes, and if you slipped up, yes, you have to go apologize publicly and say you were wrong. By the way, that empowers the whole organization when the leader can admit he or she made a mistake, is sorry for it, and ask for forgiveness. I'll tell you, one of the most powerful team moments I've been part of, it was a Formula One team that I was part of and the manager, not the manager, it was the lead engineer. Wait, hold on. No, it was the team director. So one of the most powerful moments that I've experienced in team, it was a Formula One moment and the team director right after the race, we've all got our headsets on and he

says, hey everyone, I want to start this meeting. I screwed up in three ways and it was this and this and that. I'm really clear how to fix the first one. I think I have ideas on the second one. We'll talk about that later, but I'm going to need your help on the third one. I don't know how to fix it. And that level of accountability, of personal accountability, sets a tone that we're learners. We need each other. We've got to figure it out. But I hear you do appreciation, which I'm 100% down with. I hear you say, don't publicly criticize. I like that. How do you get to the

accountability where everybody knows that John or Joey dropped the ball or hasn't been doing the right work and it's kind of glossed over by you? You have to hold high standards of excellence. And one way you reinforce that is when you have genuine excellence. And people know genuine excellence. Then you have to really appreciate that. And you really have to underscore that. You have to reward. You reward excellence.

As they oftentimes say, you get what you reward. If you reward excellence, you'll get more of it. And when people fall short, again, you're not going to publicly berate them, but they won't be rewarded for it. And you'll have to go talk to them with caring about how to up the game. And you can always point people to excellence and say, you see what Bob is doing here. And I think you're capable of even doing more than Bob's doing in this area because you're very smart and you're very dedicated. And I don't feel like we've gotten the very best out of you yet. But I know that we can and I know that you want to.

And I'm here to help you. You're taking basic psychology of behavior modification and making it applied and doing it with two things that are often at tension, which is care and excellence. And with basic psychology, I learned this from Dr. Alex Cohen. He's a colleague, friend of mine at the United States Olympic Committee, USOPC, United States Olympic Paralympic Committee. And he says it's as simple as that, yes, that is how you reinforce the behaviors that you would like to see repeated. You celebrate like a wild person as soon as you see the excellence that they've been working on. And you point it out and then you say, yes, that, that's it. And so you're not criticizing or shaking your head when it's not right.

You're celebrating when it is. It sounds so simple when we talk about it this way, but it sounds like that's been a living philosophy for you. Yes. I'm a great believer in celebrating success and not celebrating failure because you shouldn't celebrate that, but always raising the bar. And if you have a learning organization, that's what's interesting about this word, finding mastery, because do you ever really completely find it? It's always evolving. It's perpetual evolving.

There's no limitation. It's infinite. And that's part of the fun of it is however skilled you can be. And I was thinking about professional tennis, how we lived in this era where you had these amazing three players, Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. And here they are in their late mid-30s and late 30s, keeping winning all these tournaments.

And they're 1, 2, and 3, right, in all-time Grand Slams 1 in tennis. And they pushed each other. And they're all finding mastery through each other. And they're learning from each other. They have to develop finding mastery through each other, and they're learning from each other. They have to develop new shots to counteract that person. So that kind of competition, in a sense, is elevating all of their games to higher and higher levels. We need those standards of excellence that we aspire to equal or surpass if we're going to be the very best versions of ourselves. Yes. And when you say our best version of ourselves, that word gets thrown around ad

nauseum. I think you understand what that means. And if we pull on that thread just a little bit, when you say the best version of oneself, is that something that somebody is developing or is it already inside them? That is a very interesting question. I think it's both. I think it's both. I do believe it's from our passion within, from our own inner greatness, that we are partly an acorn growing into becoming an oak, a tree. But then again, that's not just what it is. And it's self-defined to a certain extent. The best version of ourselves, that may be very different for me than it is for you,

although there will be some overlap, of course. For me, my best version of myself is I just want to keep becoming more caring and more loving and not making those mistakes where I have to go apologize for saying something I regret. And I feel like I'm a better human being today than I was five years ago, and I was better five years ago than I was 10 years ago. And I hope I'm going to be much better five years from now than I am today. So I think it's a, um, mastery isn't ever,

our standards keep going higher and higher and higher. And our best version of ourselves is an evolving concept. It's never quite, we're a work of art, but we're the work of arts never finished. Even till the point of death, we're still developing the best version of ourselves. Do you see other people, like the Statue of David, that the marble is there, it's in there? Or is it more like the acorn, which is with the right hydration, with the right elements, it becomes what it's capable of becoming.

I love that metaphor, of course. You know, I mean, when I first read Michelangelo say, I just was freeing up David. He was there all the time. He just couldn't be seen because it just kind of reverses the way we think about it, right? So it's a very powerful metaphor. I think we create it as we go along because it's new. I believe it's emergent. It's emergent. And when something's emergent, it's not just programmed from the top down. One of the questions the media asked me the most in my lifetime was

well what do you think what's the world going to be like in 10 years and I always go back and say okay let's go back 10 years ago and you start saying Tesla didn't exist 10 years ago really so did you think we'd have all these electrical cars SpaceX another one. It's like, it's hard to predict the future because we're creating it. The future is something we're creating and it's emergent. And then as things emerge, our own possibilities change as well. So I don't think we're just freeing it out of a block of marble because as you're doing it,

you begin to have different perspectives on it. And that block of marble changes because you're changing, you're evolving, and everything's evolving along with you. I guess I believe in continuous, never-ending evolution. And we're part of it. We're participants in it. We're helping create it. And it's helping create us. We're players in this infinite game. And it's wondrous. It's so joyful to be alive because as we're alive, we get to create. We get to grow. We get to love. I mean, if you read my book, the last sentence in the book is my favorite sentence where it's like, I say, let us love, let us create, let us play again and again and again forever. Love, play, creation. That sums it all up for me in a way.

Yeah, man. Those are your first principles that you're working from and it comes forward in this conversation, comes forward in your work. If I didn't read your book and really study you, I would not have known it. And so somehow you've kept this, I don't, I mean, maybe I'm underneath a rock. Yeah, no, I'm celebrating people to pick up your new book. Okay, let's go back to your book. You're 22 years old. This is how you start your book. You're in Austin, Texas.

It's 1975. I'm imagining you have your hippie long hair. I'm just kind of getting the whole scene together in my head. And then where do you want to go? Ask the man who pulled over in response to my outstretched thumb. By the way, great writing. I don't really care, I told him. I'll go wherever you're going. And I hopped into the car. I love where this adventure starts. And so does this capture the essence of the 22-year-old you, and does it still capture who you are today? I wanted to start there because that was kind of the beginning of the Whole Foods Market journey.

For me, that was a turning point in my life. We're talking about I had just turned 22. I was studying philosophy and religion. I was an existentialist. I was an atheist. I didn't have a sense of purpose. I didn't have a direction. I didn't know what I wanted to become. And I took a pretty large dose of LSD and had a, we'll call it an ego death experience and merged into the one. And that like blew my mind it was like oh my god the universe

is so bigger much bigger and more complex than i had possibly realized and and it was like i just wanted to i just wanted to get on to life and i i began to define what i didn't want to do i didn't want to be an atheist i didn't want to do. I didn't want to be an atheist. I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to be this lonely existential philosopher who was, you know, life is meaningless. There's no purpose to life. It's like purpose is everywhere. You can hardly breathe without purpose. It's all there. It's all, you just have to be able to tune into it. And so, yeah, jumping into that car was symbolic of me saying, I'm ready for adventure. I'm ready to go. I'm open to it. Help me. And now some of the other questions you brought up, it's like,

that purpose is within me. And if you're looking for your purpose outside of yourself, you won't find it. That purpose is within you, but you have to be able to access it and you have to be open to it. And one of my lessons in life is that most people don't follow their own higher purpose, which is within us, because they're too afraid to. They're scared of it. They're scared of failure, or they're scared of success,

or they're scared that people won't like them. There's all kinds of ways we self-limit ourselves. And so it's like me getting in that car was like, I am open. I am ready for adventure. I am ready for this adventure of my life to really get going. And guess what? Once I opened that door, then the purpose began to emerge, not all at once, not fully formed, but the seed of it began to emerge that day.

And then I go on in the next chapter, I talk about moving into this vegetarian co-op, a commune really, and how that changed me. And so the little acorns are beginning to sprout and beginning to move on. And you know what? Here's the thing. My purpose is still emerging. I'm more conscious of it than I was when I was 22, but I am foolish to think that I've got it completely figured out. I'm still learning.

I'm still evolving. I'm still learning. I'm still evolving. I'm still growing. I'm still following that inner impulse I have to explore, to adventure, to love, to learn, to create. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits,

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G-R-A-Y.com and use the code findingmastery20 at fel FelixGray.com for 20% off. What do you really, really, really, really, really want? Love. I want to love everyone all the time. I want to help people. I want to create. The things I've said, I want to play. I want to create. I want to love. I want to be alive. We're alive. Mike, we're alive. That's the most astounding thing.

And every day is such a gift. It's such a privilege to be able to breathe and feel and touch and care about people and create things and serve others. It's a miracle to be alive. And I'm just so joyful every day. I just, it's like, it's so amazing to be alive on this planet right now. I just want to just celebrate that when you said love, you are not talking about receiving love. You're talking about,

I want to love everyone. I want to give love. And I just want to celebrate that because the directionality of that is foundational. And then for you to be able to do that, what are your best practices to be full of love so that you can give what you are full of? First, how I start my day. I start my day with, I'm a longtime student of A Course in Miracles. If you look on the cover of my book, I've got a grocery bag and I've got A Little Course in Miracles. They didn't want to show miracles. The publisher did not want to show miracles completely there because they thought that might put off some of the readers. So I start out with a little spiritual reading. Then I practice. Then I do gratitudes. I believe gratitudes is actually a key to happiness and a

key to a lot of energy. Because when you are doing gratitudes, you're expansive. By definition, you cannot do authentic gratitudes without expanding. Because they make, you think about all the things you have to be grateful for, and you start to feel happy. You start to feel joyful. Then I do meditation. And then I do some yoga for the body. And then I go make a smoothie and I'm on to my day. And this is a general habit every day?

Yeah. Pretty much every day. Unless sometimes I'm traveling, stuff will get a little bit mixed up, but that's generally it every day. And is this, so is, now let's just kind of drill it down just so I can think about your mornings. I talked to John Donovan, which is, you know, was one of the CEOs at AT&T. And he said, Mike, I started with 15 minutes and then I moved to 30 and then it was 45 minutes, my morning practices, if you will. And then he said, at about like the 30, 45 minute mark, I was like, wow, I am better. I am like, I am so much better in my conversations. My thinking is richer. My zest for life is more full.

So he doubled it. He went to 90 to run an experiment. He said, I'm even better. So it moved up to four hours. I said, John, you're managing 300,000 people. How? How do you have four hours where you're filling your bucket? And he says, I need to be giving so much of myself all day long that I need to be on it. I need to be clear. Of course, that's what I have to do. And he was so clear. And I don't know if you guys have met, but he-

I'd like to meet him. You probably might have. I haven't met him. Oh, you haven't met. Sounds he was like, so clear. And I don't know if you guys have met, but he, um, I'd like to meet him. Oh, you haven't met. Sounds like, oh yeah, I think you, I'll, I'll put you guys together. You guys, um, his foundation is love as well. And, um, uh, not everyone's ready for this message, right? Not everyone's ready for this. And so when you are... Okay, so I actually go back to concreteness. Is your practice 15 minutes, 45 minutes? How long do you take for those three things? It varies. I find that if you don't have much time, even a little time, even if it's only 15 minutes, that still is pretty good. But ideally, if we don't count the yoga, I'm talking about an hour. That's probably what I do most days, about an hour. Oh, that's a real commitment. So gratitude and meditation, it takes about an hour

for you. Gratitude, meditation, and the spiritual reading. And the spiritual reading. Yeah, that's legit. When you do your gratitude, I think the science is substantial. It's really interesting. And if you want to be more loving, this is definitely one of the precepts for sure. And I love your word of expansive. When you do your gratitude work, I only know two ways and you'll know which one I appreciate more, but I want to understand how you do it. It's kind of one way is to check

the box. I'm grateful for A, B, C, D, you know, a roof over my head, my two eyeballs, my heart, you know, whatever. Like I'm grateful, grateful, grateful, check, check, check. And the other one is I just pick one and I try to be flooded with it. And what I notice is that it almost isn't too intense. And I'm having to work to get into the state of complete gratitude and openness. And then when I'm in it, I'm oddly enough fighting not to have the fullness because it feels so overwhelming. I don't want to do that second part, but that's what ends up happening for me. So that's my take. Gratitude practice is something I do every morning as well. How do you do it?

What is your mechanism for it? First of all, I've never heard it differentiated like that before, but I think you're absolutely correct. So that's a takeaway from this conversation for me. So I think I do it both. It's interesting to me. Remember how we talked about appreciations before? Gratitudes and appreciations have a certain similarity to them.

And they are both gateways to open the heart. Because that's really what we're talking about doing. If you just do gratitudes perfunctorily, then you're not opening your heart. That being said, sometimes that's a good way to start. It's just not to get stuck in doing the same gratitude over and over again. I'm grateful for my wife. I'm grateful for my existence. I'm grateful for beauty. It's about- Did you just call yourself beautiful? No, the beauty- Sorry, mate. Sorry, mate. The beauty that's all around me. I almost every day do a beauty gratitude. Oh, you do?

For beauty, yes. Nature is so amazing. It's so beautiful. I'm always amazed at the perfection I see in the little things. I'm a long-distance hiker, so I spend a lot of time in nature, and I'm constantly amazed at the awesomeness and beauty of nature. But to really make the gratitudes effective, you have to risk that joy exploding out of you to a certain extent. And maybe that's important to do that occasionally, but I don't do that every day. But I don't want to just make it a ritual. If it's just a mindless ritual and you're checking the boxes, then it's not really serving its purpose because it's not making you expansive. It's not really making – gratitude is a feeling. It's a feeling tone that we have.

It's not just a practice. I love that language. I do like, I'll start with, um, if you were in my head, it would look like I'm scanning for the one that's going to give me an, an, an easy access entry point into that big feeling. And so I'll say like, maybe I'll say like my heart or my eyes back to that point. And, and I'm, I'm not connected to those. Okay. Then I go to my wife and then maybe I'll go to my son. And then all of a sudden I can feel my heart open, quote unquote heart. And I'm like, oh, there it is. I'm on the on-ramp.

And then I just follow that one. And if I'm not careful, like I do my gratitude still underneath my sheets in bed. And like, I'll be crying in the morning before I've even got started. And sometimes that's not convenient, you know, but that's when you really open up, you feel that swelling. I feel it in the base of my throat. And that's when I know I'm on it. This is a great conversation because, because I like the metaphors you're using. I'm, so I'm learning a lot from you just talking here, Mike. I like, I like the on-ramp metaphor. And gratitudes are an on-ramp. They're an on-ramp to the expansiveness of love, to the heart, the heart opening. And yes,

authentic gratitude almost always makes us cry or have that throat because we're expressing an authentic emotion of love and care and gratitude. And by the way, I think for me, the example you use is exactly the example I use. When I focus on people that I care about and really love and think about how fortunate I am to have that person in my life and how much I love that person and how beautiful they are in their essence and their being. And I feel so grateful that I get to know them, that they're my friend or they're my stepdaughter or they are my somebody I work with. And it's in a sense that we're now in the appreciation thing as a way because I'm grateful for it. When I think about it, I'm grateful for a person.

I'm appreciating that person internally to myself. And by the way, once you become a conscious of how much you really love somebody and appreciate them, you need to share it with them. That action is part of the point. It's like the main part of it. Yes. It's a good on-ramp, but they probably need to hear it from you from time to time as well. And that's where like love is a verb. It's action. It's not just a contained experience. It's the experience that you feel put into action. Love has to be shared.

So who comes to mind for you today that you're incredibly grateful for? Right now, I'm feeling pretty grateful to you. I was going to say the same thing. I was going to say that to you. Okay, so I don't want to be too corny, but that's cool. And I bet that people loved working for you. Is that true? Or if we had some of your senior leaders, they'd say, oh, listen, he was a handful. I never knew what I was going to get. I doubt that. You would hear both. And remember, I did 44 years of service at Whole Foods. That's a long trajectory. And I was far more loving when I retired from Whole Foods than I

was when I was 24 years old and just getting going on the business. I was loving at age 24, but also very competitive, very driven, really wanting to create a company, a successful business. And the love part of me deepened and got more fully expressed. So I'd say by the end when I was leaving. So if you ask people when I was 28 years old, what they thought of me, you would get a mixed answer. But if you ask people when I was 28 years old what they thought of me, you would get a mixed answer. But if you ask the people when I was leaving the company what they thought of me, I think you'd see that my own evolution based on my own personal growth as a human being would be expressed based on where in that 44-year period of time you asked people. People that knew me all along, they would say, John's changed a lot. He's a different person than when I first met him. Michael, when you read the book, I don't pretend in the early part of that book to be some

kind of special, kind, loving being. I show my full self, which sometimes is driven, sometimes a little unforgiving, sometimes angry, sometimes judgmental, because I'm trying to be authentic in the portrayal of my own leadership and growth, not just airbrushing it or what do they call it, photoshopping it. I wasn't trying to do that in this story. I was trying to be authentic in every phase of my life. So I'm giving a roundabout answer to your question. When you ask the question, you get different answers, I think. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate

your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash findingmastery. I just want to note that the language you chose 44 years of service to Whole Foods, in other words, 44 years of service to the purpose that was greater than me, bigger than me. And you didn't say the company that I ran or that I owned or that I founded or that I established, you didn't do any of that. Your words there ring true. And would you have said that language, you know, 22 years in to Whole Foods or is that just something

now? No, uh, I wouldn't have said it at the beginning. At the beginning it was, it was play. I mean, Renee and I, who co-created the company and then with a couple of other guys, we were just young and we just thought creating a business would be kind of fun. We really did it in the spirit of play. And I try to communicate how play was important for me through the whole time. And play is, if you watch small children play, they're just joyful in their play and their imaginations and their creativity. That's how it kind of was for me when I was younger. The service was when it got deeper and I realized, my God, we built this company, all these, I'm responsible for all these people and they're counting on me to be a good leader.

And I even, I talk about the flood and how that had an impact on me. I began to realize there are these stakeholders and that I'm accountable to them. And I began to, as the purpose began to manifest, as we were creating it but also manifesting it, I began to realize, my gosh, I'm in service to so many people here that are counting on me to be a wise leader, to not make mistakes. And if I make mistakes, learn from them. So the service metaphor grew as time passed until I just completely merged into it. And that for me really happened in the year 2006, because at the end of 2006, I said, I'm going all in on servants. And I stopped taking any compensation from the company at all. So the last 17 years, I didn't, you know, I took a dollar a year.

My stock options were given to the foundations. I just worked because I loved it, because I was in service to it. And that was when I made that conscious decision that it was all about service. That's what I was going to do for the rest of my time at Whole Foods. And you did pretty well at the end. Your business model worked pretty well to sell to Amazon. I did the best that I could. I did the best that I knew how to do. Yeah. What kept you up at night? So this is love and purpose and doing my very best. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Making mistakes, learning from them. Yes, everything's

amazing in philosophy. Where's the anxiety? Where did it come from? And how do you navigate anxiety when you've got a lot of people counting on you, when you are over your skis going a little bit faster or down a pitch that is a little steeper than you feel comfortable with? How do you manage the anxiety or what caused anxiety and how do you manage it? Two part question. First of all, that's a great question. And it would be dishonest to say I never felt any anxiety because sometimes I did. It depended upon, again, the stage of my own personal evolution and also where the company was. There were times, most of the time I didn't have anxiety, but there were certain threshold events. I had anxiety, for example, back in 2008 when our stock price dropped 90% when we thought we were moving, maybe going into another Great Depression. And our company was trading at three times our cash flow. I really was anxious that we were going to be taken over

by some type of activist shareholder that was going to buy the company with our own money and pay for it in just three years. It's like, my God, this is a discontinuous event that I thought this might be the end of Whole Foods, not by our own fault, but just because the economy's gone crazy and the markets think Whole Foods might go bankrupt. And so some activists could take it over. I had a lot of anxiety about that, but we found a good solution for it and it worked out really well. We brought in private equity money, friendly money to give a big chunk of the business into friendly hands. Obviously, I had a lot of anxiety when Activist came back in the year 2017 into 16, 2017, and they were trying to take over our business.

That ultimately led to the sale to Amazon as the best win-win-win solution available to us at that time. I had a lot of anxiety about that because I didn't, there are all these stakeholders and I thought, I don't want the company to get controlled by people who only care about money and don't care about our purpose, don't care about our culture, don't care about the service Whole Foods is doing in the world. Those were my biggest anxieties, that the wrong motivations, the wrong energy would somehow or another take over the company. And I couldn't protect it any longer. I always felt like I was in service and protecting Whole Foods, allowing its purpose to unfold, allowing its service in the world to be enacted and fulfilled. And so I was afraid of the wrong motivations.

Let's call it the sometimes dark underbelly of capitalism, which is it's just about the money and nothing else matters. Well, profits matter, money matter, but that's not the essence of what business is about. It's about creating value for other people. So I guess my anxiety was always about that. I want to say I was going to lose control of the company, but that the, you might say the, that dark underbelly of capitalism would get control of Whole Foods market and twist it and turn it into something it was never intended to be. How intertwined was your philosophy, purpose and love, and the philosophy of Whole Foods?

How intertwined were you and how intertwined were those purposes? That's such a great question on so many different levels. So the best metaphor to understand, the best way to frame that up is, think of it as like I was like the father of Whole Foods, and Whole Foods was like a child, not just of myself, but of Renee, me, Craig, Mark. It was a family creation. And so I love it like a child. Any entrepreneur loves their business. And I wanted that child to become the best version of itself, to flourish, to grow.

Everybody connected to it to flourish. All the stakeholders simultaneously winning. So I was in service to that Whole Foods evolving and constructive and healthy ways that reflects partly of who I am, but like any good parent, Whole Foods wasn't me. It had its own destiny. It had its own life. It's not me. That's one of the problems some entrepreneurs have. Their own narcissism cannot separate their creation from themselves. They think they're one and the same. Well, they're not. path and you nourish that path and you influence it. A parent influences his or her child, but you don't control it. If you do, you destroy it, but that control, you don't let the fullness of that own whole foods that had its own unique higher purpose. It has its own destiny. It's

different from the destiny of the founder or the father or the entrepreneur that creates it. They may run in parallel paths in some ways, but you have to set it free. And hey, one of the most loving steps I did to Whole Foods, in my opinion, was to finally step down and say, you know what? I've got a younger generation that's going to take this company to places that I couldn't foresee it going. And I trust that'll be a good thing. So letting it go is what every good parent has to do to their children eventually is say, I love you as you are, and I'll always be there. But go out into the world and flourish as best that you can. And I will help you whenever you need help. You ready for a lightning round? Let's do it. It all comes down to love. Living the good success um love i'm sorry

failure is learning pressure comes from't say it. My vision is? To serve as many people as I can. That is loving. Damn it. Money is? Tool. Who tells you no? My wife.

And how does she do it? People that care about me tell me no and how does she do it how does your wife do it always with love my wife's the most loving being i've ever known she's my guru that is cool man what a cool sentence that is. High performance in relationships. Like that's really what you're about. And like, John, like I've loved this conversation. I feel like I could sit with you for a long time. Congratulations on a radical body of work. Congratulations on building cultures that matter. I'm really excited for what's next. Love.life. Can you open that up just a bit to give people a peek? I don't know if it's too early or not, but to give people a peek

at what you're wanting to create. And I couldn't be more excited for what you're building. Uh, yes. I want to, before I say that, I want to say that entrepreneurs tend to be like artists. If you ask an artist what their favorite painting or their favorite music that they created was, it's the one they're working on now. That's their favorite one. I think I read Picasso. Somebody said, what's your favorite painting? He says, the one I'm working on right now. And I think creative people inherently, the creative process itself is what enlivens them and excites them about what they're doing now. And so Whole Foods is in my rearview mirror now.

As I say, it's on its own. Daddy's gone. And I'll always love it. But I'm excited about what I'm doing now. And what I'm doing now is love life. And it's in some ways, it's like a one-stop medical wellness center. You talk about high performance, love life is about helping people to live a whole life, to be the best version of themselves. Think of it as a one-stop. So we're going to have a healthy restaurant.

We're going to have a fitness center, a spa, pickleball courts, and a medical center with doctors and wellness coaches that help people to – Why do people go see a doctor usually, Mike? Because they're sick. To manage symptoms. Yes. To manage symptoms is Yes, to manage symptoms is even more accurate. Our vision of it is to disrupt that so that you begin to see a doctor at an early age whose job is that you don't need to see a doctor because you don't get sick. That we can

be the best version of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And Love Life is dedicated to all of those things. Our first location is going to be opening up in El Segundo in the Los Angeles area in early July. And it's an old Best Buy. It happens to be located next to one of Whole Foods Market's best stores in Southern California. So that's going to bring a lot of, we think, synergies between the two companies. And I'm very excited about it because I think it's going to help a lot of people. A lot of people, I will say that for about the first 20 years of history, when Whole Foods was started, because what we were doing is so different than other supermarkets at that time,

now people have copied us. But if you're old enough, you remember the first time you went to Whole Foods, it's like, wow, this is cool. I've never been in a store like this before. I think the same is going to happen when people go into Love Life, which is like, wow, this is cool. How come nobody's done anything like this before? I love this thing. This is going to be fantastic. That's kind of the wow factor we're hoping to do with Love Life. So it's an adventure. It's creation. I think when people go check it out and also Whole Foods helped change the world because so many people were inspired by it. It changed the supermarket industry. Everybody started copying what we were doing, started picking up the food we were selling, started making their stores look nicer, started to market differently, that eating natural and organic healthy foods was something that began to catch on, so to speak.

I think Love Life will also have that kind of impact over time. Radical. I mean, it is not healthcare. You are disrupting illness management. And so I can't, if there's even a 10th of a dent that you've had in what people eat, you know, through whole foods, the quality of food, then this could be a radical disruptor for good. So I'm rooting for you. I'm based in California. The Mastery Lab is in El Segundo.

Let's figure something out. What? Nobody told me that. No way. Okay, Mike, this is not, hey, I'm a great believer in synchronicity. And I don't think this is an accident. I actually feel like Love Life's going to be able to work some way.

We're going to make a deal to work together because you're an expert in high performance, and that's what Love Life is trying to do. And you're just a lot further along in the psychology part of it and probably the spiritual part of it than we are. So, yeah, let's get together. Let's find some. When are you going to be out in California next? Well, here's the good news. It's going to open up sometime in early July. I'm going to be out there for a month or two months. So we'll get together.

I'll show it to you, give you the tour. We'll talk about possibilities. You are a legend, John. Thank you for what you've contributed. Congratulations again for the third time on a radical body of work and the future is bright. What a great time to be alive. I mean, really, what a great time to be alive. Mike, there's never been a better time to be alive.

There really hasn't. You know, I always give this challenge to people. I'll give you the entire history of the human race. This is the best time in the entire history of the human race to be alive is right now. If there are problems, hey, go out and solve them. Go out and create a better world. You can do it. Jump in. Don't sit there moping and complaining about how terrible things are when it's never been better right now, objectively speaking, right now than it's ever been. So get into the game. Get into the creativity and help the human species and our planet to evolve in caring,

loving ways. That's your job. Take it on. Quit ducking it. Quit making excuses. Be grateful for the beauty that's all around us right now and make it even more beautiful. Hold the standard, John. I appreciate you. I'm excited to meet you in person. And we're going to drive people to love.life. Hopefully,

we're going to drive people to pick up your book. It's beautifully well-written and a great testament to your life experience and insights and best practices. Thank you, John. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for all you're doing. You're an amazing guy too. Thank you very much. Awesome.

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