The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 381: John Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods) - How To Be A Conscious Leader

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 IG/Twitter: @RyanHawk12 Full notes at www.LearningLeader.com #381: John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Notes: Excellence: Energy - Vitality -- "You cannot be lazy" "You need a strong desire to be excellent" Excellent leaders strive for excellence in everything they choose to do Good physical and mental health Honor - "Hold yourself to high standards" John and Rene Lawson raised $45,000 from family and friends and borrowed $10,000 in 1978 to open a small natural foods store called SaferWay in Austin, Texas. When the couple were evicted from their apartment for storing food products in it, they decided to live at the store. Because it was zoned for commercial use, there was no shower stall, so they bathed using a water hose attached to their dishwasher.  Two years later they brought on partners who owned another grocery store and formed Whole Foods Markets. Having high expectations: As a younger person in his early 20's, John was curious about learning... He loved organic, natural food before it was popular. Revolutions: The running revolution happened in the 1970's - He got into that. The long runs made him feel fantastic. He became a vegetarian. It helped him feel better, be more alive. He is now a vegan. In 1981, they had to deal with a 100 year flood in Austin. "Renee had to swim out of the store that day." "Whole Foods should have died that day. That was when I learned about stakeholders." --> Many people helped them stay in business. "A banker co-signed on the loan without approval because he trusted me. I didn't find out until later." He moved to Boulder in 1999 to run WholePeople.com -- Then the internet bubble popped and it failed. When he moved back to Austin, TX, a coup was afoot... One of his trusted senior leaders was trying to get John fired. John walked through the nearest Whole Foods while preparing to tell the board why he should keep his job... "I get a super high touring that store." Touring the stores helps you feel the pulse of the company. John thought, "Oh my God, this is the love of my life. This is my purpose." That's what he told the board and senior execs and convinced them to let him keep his job. He learned to cultivate and build relationships with his board through that... A "Conscious Leader" = Vision & Virtue – Put purpose first, lead with love Mindset & Strategy – Find win-win solutions. Innovate and create value People & Culture – Constantly evolve the team. Regularly revitalize, continually learn and grow John has elected to take a $1 yearly salary and to forgo any bonus or stock grants since 2007. Hiring: "You're no better than your team." "Excellence is continued growth." "When you stop growing you begin to die." You need to constantly revitalize yourself: Sleep well Eat healthy food Exercise People are addicted to bad food... But you can change this habit if you're willing to go through some pain for a month or two. You can teach yourself to enjoy healthy foods. It needs to become a habit. Hiring: Do group interviews - Don't rely on just one person Looks for: Intelligence ('that's the ante to get in') Emotional Intelligence -- "Steve Jobs would not have gotten hired at Whole Foods" Need to work well with others Take responsibility High integrity Chemistry with others and high character Ask, "Who have you helped get promoted?" "Who have you developed?" "How?" The sale to Amazon "We took a plane up to Seattle and met in Jeff's (Bezos) house. It was very secretive. There was a lot of security around." "The conversation was like falling in love. They were just regular guys who were very smart." "Jeff (Bezos) is unpretentious, has a great sense of humor, and is a genius. He's brilliant." "It's like marriage, I love them 98% of the time." Advice: "Life is an adventure. Go for it."

Excellence is this continued growth. Growth as a person, growth in emotional intelligence, growth in spiritual intelligence, growth in caring, growth in love, growth in integrity. When you stop growing in a way as a human being, you start to die. Over the past nine months, I've been developing a new online learning tool called the Learning Leader Academy. It's been carefully designed to help you become a more effective leader. The content is a combination of what I've learned from the past five years worth of conversations with more than 350 of the world's most effective leaders, as well as lessons learned

from my own experience leading teams. With that said, the content will not be the best part. We are building an online community of learning leaders who will have access to the following. The initial 30 lessons I sat side by side with my team. dad, my greatest mentor in my life, and we spoke through 30 different leadership topics. In addition to seeing all of those videos, you will receive a playbook, a manual to take what you've learned via the videos and put it into action. Additionally, we'll have live calls on Zoom with me and other members of the Academy.

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Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4422 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive Mindful Monday updates. What I'm reading, writing, watching. thinking about, also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader.

Text, learners to 44222. Now on tonight's featured leader, the great John Mackie, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods. He's led the natural and organic grocer to a $15.7 billion dollar fortune 500 company with more than 460 stores and 87,000 team members in three countries. The company has been included on Fortune Magazine's 100 best companies to work for list for 20 consecutive years. John's been recognized as one of Fortune's world's 50 greatest leaders and Ernst & Young's entrepreneur of the year overall winner for the United States. A few of the topics we discuss. John defines the three parts of conscious.

leadership and why they are useful for you. And then he shares the initial secret meeting he had with Jeff Bezos at his house to discuss selling Whole Foods to Amazon. Phenomenal. And I asked him about his hiring process and he shared the five key characteristics he looks for when hiring for a leadership role on his team. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm certain you're going to love this one. It's John Mackey. John Mackey, so good to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thanks, Ryan. It's good to be here. I, we were talking before we hit record that I'm a big fan of studying excellence. And part of the reason why I wanted you, why I've wanted you to be a part of this show for many years is the fact that I think you embody

a leader who has sustained excellence over an extended period of time. And I'm curious, John, from your perspective, when you reflect on your own career as well as those that you've surround yourself with, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence? Gosh, I think there are a lot of common factors and then there are probably unique factors for each individual. So some of the common factors, energy. You've got to have vitality generally. If you're lazy, you might have a peak now and then, but you probably want to sustain excellence. So energy is important. There has to be a strong desire to be excellent. So you have energy, but you also want to excel. You have a drive to

compete if it's in competitive excellence or to maybe you're just competing with yourself and you're trying to do personal best if you're out if you're out exercising. I find people that are striving for excellence generally strive for that in a variety. different areas, not just one. Whatever I'm interested in doing, I want to do it well. It's kind of like that old saying, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. So excellence is energy. It's a desire to be excellent.

And I think to sustain it also requires good health, I think, over the long term, because that affects energy. So caring for yourself. I think it's also sort of, we touch a little bit in the book about honor in the integrity chapter. And you just see yourself as somebody who's going to be at a high level. And you hold yourself to that standard. You hold yourself to a standard of excellence. And you just won't tolerate yourself sort of not being excellent.

It's not to say you can't fail. It's just that you learn from your mistakes. You're not going to be satisfied with mediocrity. So can we go back to 1978 real quick? Can I get to be that young again? Well, I want to get inside your head in 1978. And let me make sure my research is correct. So you borrow $45,000 from family and friends.

You start a business called Safer Way in Austin. And this part blew me away. Tell me if this is true. At one point, you got evicted from your apartment. And so you decided to actually live in the store that you had opened. And the store that you lived in, from what I've read, did not have a shower. And so the way that you had to shower was that you used a hose attached to a dishwasher. Is that true?

Yes, but let me make some minor corrections. Okay. The first one is I didn't borrow $45,000. We got $45,000 in investment money. Okay. I borrowed $10,000 for my parents. That was my share of the investment. The rest was from family and friends that were actually capital investments that they made.

Obviously, those turned out to be very good investments. Those people are probably all doing pretty well right now. Well, the ones that are still alive, yes. I did co-found the company with my girlfriend at that time, Renee, and we were living in a small house that we were using as sort of a warehouse. house, we would have deliveries go to the house and we'd stock up all these bulk grains and beans and nuts and seeds and whatnot. And so we come into our house. We only left a little pathway to get through the main stuff we had.

And one day the landlord came in and basically said, they're using this house incorrectly. He tossed us out of the house. So we didn't have any place to go. So we moved into the store. Now, this store, to be clear, was this old Victorian house. house. And on the first floor, we had a, we had a, it was a vegetarian store, Renee and I were both vegetarians. And it was a, we had a vegetarian store. Then we had a vegetarian cafe on the second floor and we had a little tiny office on the third floor. And Renee and I moved into the office on

the third floor, which had, you know, futon couch. So we just slept on the futon couch. Then we had a dishwasher on the second floor because a Hobart dishwasher because that's where the cafe was. So dishwashers oftentimes, they still do, will have a kind of a hose that hangs down that you rinse off the dishes with. So we would just occasionally just climb up there and we'd have the dishwasher on our head and we could, we could shampoo our heads. I think that did violate health code. But we never did tell anybody. It was fun. You know, we were, we were young. I mean, I'm 24 years old. When we started the company,

Renee, was like 19 or 20, and you don't need too much when you're at that age. We had good health and spirit of fun and adventure. So one of your answers to the first question was that you have honor or you hold yourself to very lofty standards. And I found that to be a commonality among people who are sustaining excellence is that they believe in themselves and they also hold themselves to high standards. and sometimes that can be tough.

When you were that age, when you were showering where you clean off the dishes, how did you think about yourself? Did you have huge ambition? Did you have high expectations? Did you demand excellence? Or were you just a kid trying to figure things out? Probably a little bit of both. I mean, I had gone to two D universities, University of Texas and Trinity and San Francisco.

Antonio and without getting off the record sentence, I'll tell you that I basically just stopped taking required courses and only took electives and audited classes. So I've got like 120 hours of electives and really had no degree. I had a very high grade point average. And but I was just curious about learning. Renee and I started the store because we were we were passionate about natural and organic foods. This is back in the middle to late 1970s. And this was a new idea, organic, natural. These were not common ideas in the larger society. We got on fire about it. And I learned how to cook and I became a food buyer for this co-op we were living in. And I had found my life's path. So at that point, I was striving for excellence. I was following my heart.

I was following passion that I felt about it. I had excellence in other ways in terms of holding myself to training, running, doing yoga, taking care of myself in any type of game I participated in. But initially, the business was not drawn by excellence, motivation, but by passion for the business itself. And that's still true today. I mean, 42 years later, I'm still very passionate. You were definitely ahead of your time when it comes to natural or organic food. I mean, way ahead of your time. You're one of the reasons that that revolution has

happened. Whole Foods is certainly a place that, I know, my wife is, is her biggest passion is health and wellness and what we choose to put into our mouths and eat and eat every day. And so that's why I'm a big Whole Foods fan because we go there whenever possible and, and try that. What was it like, though, when you were on that kick? Because now it is mainstream and partially or primarily probably because of you. What was it like then to now when you compare and contrast to the world of what you were passionate about? And maybe what was it behind,

behind or in your mind that made you so passionate about something that really people were not talking about or didn't care about at all at that time. And now they certainly do. Well, two revolutions affected me back then that when I came of age, that was really when the running revolution began. in the United States, long distance running, jogging. That took hold in the early, middle, late 70s. It was a 1970s phenomenon.

And I got into that and started running long distance and marathons. And so I realized that when you exercise, that could really determine you could feel better. I mean, if I go for a long run, I'd feel fantastic. You go for 10-mile run and it's like, oh, my God, that's such a wonderful high. great. You get lean, you just feel healthier. It never had occurred to me when I was younger that what you ate, what you put into your body could also affect how you felt. If you didn't eat well, you could be tired, your skin wouldn't be clear, you could get fat. This was before we had an obesity crisis in America. That came later as processed foods just kind of invaded

everywhere. But the whole idea of that, so I began all these dietary experiments. Honestly, I mean, I became vegetarian. I'm vegan now. I fasted. I went off some foods, intermittent fasted. I did all, a juice fasted. I did all kinds of dietary experiments. And they all had the same goal.

Was there a way to make myself feel better, to have more energy, to have more vitality, to be more alive, to be something more alive. And, yeah, I was just super passionate about that. And so I found my purpose in life. I didn't realize it when I was 24 years old. When we started up safer way, the precursor to Whole Foods, it was just an adventure. And we were just excited about it. And we didn't have any grandiose plans.

We didn't go to business school. We weren't going to have, we have like 520 stores at Whole Foods. We weren't now. We weren't planning on anything like that. We were just young, not in big adventure, doing what we were excited to do. following something we were interested in, healthy eating, natural food. And it just sort of grew from there, really, literally. What were some inflection points along the way?

Are there specific moments you think back on the course to say, oh, that moment and that moment where the business started becoming a business? It started catching on. It started happening where the growth was there. Can you recall some of those moments early on along the way? Absolutely. I mean, after two years, Renee and I relocated the store to a bigger location down the street, out of a house, into a actual retail building.

And we merged with another, with a competitor, a friendly competitor that we really liked. And we decided to do Whole Foods together. We needed each other. We needed their expertise. They'd been in the business longer. We had the location. We had a lot of passion. We co-founded Whole Foods.

And that first store was so successful. It became the highest volume natural food store in the United States, based on our research, within about six months of opening. Wow. Unfortunately, nine months after we opened Whole Foods in 1980, and then in the Memorial Day, 1981, Austin went through a hundred-year flood. And we were in the 100-flood, a hundred-year flood plane, and our store was flooded. Renee actually was closing down the store that night. and she swam out of the store. So that was an inflection point because I thought we were bankrupt.

We didn't have flood insurance, right? That's something you have to get from the government. We didn't have it. And that's when I first began to learn about stakeholders, although I didn't have the language for it back then, because old food should have died. We had a near-death experience, and we were saved by our stakeholders. We were bailed out by the next day, neighbors and customers came

then help us clean up the store. I mean, I didn't know who they were. They weren't working for us. And I kind of recognize them because they were our neighbors. And they didn't want Whole Foods to die. Our team members worked for free. We didn't have the capital to pay them. They worked to get us back on our feet. Our bank loaned us additional money on my signature, which was worthless. I found out later, this is what banking was like back in the day, that that banker didn't get permission from the bank to make the loan because I didn't I wasn't credit worthy enough he made it because he trusted me and signed co-signed that loan himself so he didn't never tell me that I'd found out about that years later from another banker in passing investors stuck in more money the suppliers front

in this new inventory on credit every stakeholder stepped up and saved us and that also resulted in so I've always felt like we owed the stakeholders ever since then. I really realized how business is dependent on all of its independent stakeholders. And then I also realized we got to get another store because this one could this could flood out again. I mean, it flooded in the first year we're supposed to be about once every hundred years. So we got a second store to open two years later and then we did a third store. This one was in Houston, Texas. And then we just started to grow and we found out growing was fun. So that was an inflection point. The flood was an inflection point and then finding it how much fun it was to grow new stores. It was a it was kind of a high

every time you'd open up a store. Still is a high to open up a new store actually. They're fun. There were other inflection points. I mean, obviously when we decided we took venture capital money in in 1992. That was an inflection. I'm sorry, we took venture capital money in in 1988, that was an inflection point. And in 1992, once you took the venture capital money in, you knew you had to have an exit for them. Either you sell the business or you take it public. And we, when we took the venture capital money in, we decided we were going to take this company public. We didn't know how long it would take. The four years, in 1992, we took the company public. That was a huge inflection point because that gave us, Whole Foods is not highly valued.

It's not like it is today where these IPOs go crazy. Our company had done $91 million in sales the previous 12 months and made $3 million in profit. And we were valued at $92 million, about one-time sales or about 30 times our earnings. And if we take that same company public today, it'd probably be worth over a billion dollars. It's astounding how different the world is today. from a financial stock market standpoint than it was, whether we're in a bubble today, I cannot say we might be. The stock market seems disconnected from the underlying economy.

That's another story. But going public was usually an inflection point because it gave us a currency to acquire companies that were like Whole Foods Market. And we became a platform. And we acquired companies like Bread and Circus in Boston, Mrs. Goochers in Los Angeles, fresh fields in Washington,

the unicorn and bread of life in Florida, Miami that gave us the platforms we needed to become a national company. So those were huge inflection. I can go on because it's a 40, 42-year story. You want me to or is that good enough? No, those are great. So I was reading Conscious Leadership, your new book,

and I'm very appreciative of your team for sending it over, John. And there's a lot of notes I took, and I want to ask about a specific moment. I love moments. and drawing out the stories of the moments and the key learnings and takeaways from the moments because that's real life. These are things that actually happened that you've had to work through. Usually I'll pick ones that were challenging, but we'll also talk about a lot of the good things too. But one of the first challenging ones that I want to talk about that you've written about in conscious leadership is so afterwards,

you at one point moved to Boulder to focus on whole people.com and there were some challenges there and ultimately it didn't work out. then you decided to move back to Austin and you wrote that you realized that a coup was a foot and then you found out it was from one of your trusted leaders from your executive team can you walk us through that story of when you moved back to Austin realized something wasn't right and that they wanted to potentially get rid of you from people that you liked and trusted and and how you felt during that time yeah so My wife and I, Deborah, we moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1999. We had acquired this mail order vitamin company called Amrion.

And we thought that would be a platform. This was back when the internet boom was launched, right? Netscape had gone public and Amazon had been created and there was this huge internet boom. We didn't see any reason why we couldn't be a significant player in that business back in 1999. So we bought Amri-on. They already had some online distribution, and we were going to combine that with kind of whole foods. Because our slogan of Whole Foods is Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet. So we named this business WholePeeple.com.

And we were there, and long and short of it is, is there was an Internet bubble, and it completely popped. And these whole Internet valuations went down into the complete toilet. And we did not have a profitable business. And we had taken venture capital money in for whole people. And we were just burning through cash like crazy because we didn't have enough sales. And I realized the timing was not right for this. We needed to cut our losses.

And we sold off the assets that we had left and got out of the business, which left the scar on me and made me slow to get back into the internet business. It's kind of ironic that we ended up selling out to Amazon, who at that time was like leading the internet charge back in 1999. We didn't realize, obviously, back then what Amazon would become. Anyway, we moved back to Austin, and I'm going to not name the executive because he's still alive and we've become friends again after many years what happened. but he worked with a couple of directors, and they decided it was time for me to leave the company. And I was like, I was completely in shock, to be honest,

because remember, we started the company, we built the company. I'd hired all these. I'd hired our executives. I'd really kind of hired the board, right? I mean, I recruited these directors. I mean, yes, they were the fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. And that's one of my big takeaways, by the way, is that at a certain point, the entrepreneur that founds the business has to recognize that he or she is not necessarily in control of that business any longer. So that was one of my lessons, actually.

My God, these board members who I recruited can actually fire me and replace me. I mean, that's obvious, but I didn't realize it in my gut that it was actually a real risk until that happened. fortunately the coup collapse because the other directors squashed it and uh what there was this meeting and i described in the book where we met with the board down in florida and uh i guess i did a better job selling the future of whole foods to the board than my former executive did and selling the board on his vision of the future do you remember what you said in that meeting i was you know it's funny because I had sort of a very amazing experience that day before I went into the meeting in Florida. I was touring our stores and I got super high touring those doors. I always do because

touring the stores is where I connect with the team members and I connect the customers. I have to remember a CEO in some ways is isolated. If you're in a big company, I'm in my office right now in Austin, but, you know, we have 100,000 people working for our company, and they're almost, you know, 98% of them are working, 95% or more are working in the stores themselves. So when you're in, when you're turning the stores, you feel the pulse of the company, you feel the life force of the business. And as I was touring, I just realized, oh my God, this is the purpose of my life. This is what I love most in the world, this company. And it's, I just can't go.

I really have to stay. I'm not yet. My purpose is not yet fulfilled. And I just got super high from that. And so that carried over. When I went in to talk to the board, I was in this really a higher, I was more conscious, conscious leader. I was more awake, more alive, more present. And I just kind of, I think I just sort of exuded that to the board.

And I just was so relaxed and confident. I wasn't afraid at all. And they asked me, says, I'm not going to name the executive, but so what happened to John Doe here? I said, I don't know. I really don't know what happened. I'm as surprised as some of you are.

And he just said, well, do you think you could continue to work with him? And I said, no, I don't think I could continue to work with him. There's a deep portrayal here because I had trusted him so much and we were good friends or I thought we were. So the board decided to keep me, and learn so many lessons from that. A, I learned that how important the board is. And by God, if you're a CEO and you're reporting the board that has can fire you,

unless you have the ownership, their controlling ownership stake, you need to, you need to cultivate that board. You need to develop deeper relationships with your board. And I did that from that point forward. I realized this board is important. And it's important who you, you know, I can't, I couldn't recruit the directors. They had to recruit themselves. but I would always meet with the directors and potential directors and I'd have certain opinions and the board would listen to me. So I really worked on those relationships going forward. That was a

big takeaway. And then I also realized, hey, your executives, some of them actually want your job. And you've got to know who you can trust and who you can't trust. So I became more discerning. I wasn't so naively trusting going forward. And I really, from that point onward, I made sure, that the people that I surrounded myself with were people that I absolutely could trust. And, you know, I actually said, I've always stayed conscious of who I thought was really wanting to pick my job down the road, not to be paranoid, but just to be aware and be conscious.

So I learned a lot of lessons from it. And I came back determined to be a more conscious leader going forward. I was so happy to have this next opportunity because I thought I might lose it that I went up to a higher level. I wasn't the same leader after that. really was a different person. People told me, you've seen different. I like this. I like who you are better now than who you used to be. I heard that many times. So you've used the word conscious leader multiple times. It's the title of your book, Conscious Leadership. What does

conscious leadership mean to you? How would you define that? Well, of course, I spent, me and my co-author spent like 240 pages defining it or giving it in detail. But if we're going to do just a real short thing, a conscious leader is a leader who is, you know, in sort of a truism way, is simply more conscious. They're more aware of what's going on. They're more aware of the different aspects that we describe in the book. They're more aware of purpose, for example.

Conscious leader is generally a purposeful leader. They're more aware of love, the importance of love in the organization. They're more conscious of integrity. Integrity in all things. A conscious leader is a leader with integrity. They're more conscious of the essence of the win-win-win solutions that exist that potentially can exist in every situation, and they operate from that framework, not a win-lose framework, but a win-win-win framework.

They're more conscious about the long-term. Too often businesses focus on the short-term. term, the conscious leader has to pay attention to the short term. You can't ignore it, but you're making decisions. Whole Foods is living in the decision that we made in a year ago. So you're making decisions that will pay off for you in the long term. And we live in an incredibly innovative world today. So if your business is not able to innovate and evolve, you're going to get left behind. So a conscious leader is always seeking to create a culture of innovation. Also, because of the nature of the East and hyper-competition exists, you have to

continually evolve your team. Constantly upgrade the team, evolve the team. And the conscious leaders, conscious of the people on the team, conscious of coaching them, mentoring them, helping them learn and grow, helping them, you're no better than your team. That is one of my greatest lessons I've learned in business. If I have a great team, they make me look good. They help me be more successful. And no matter how brilliant an individual might be, if the team around him or her is not particularly good, that organization is going to self-optimized. So the team is very important. I learn the importance of continually learning and growing as a human being. You can't sit still. You have to get better. It's that if we loop back to excellence,

excellence is this continued growth. Growth is a person, growth and emotional. intelligence, growth in spiritual intelligence, growth in caring, growth in love, growth in integrity. When you stop growing in a way as a human being, you start to die. And I think we should continually learn and grow. If I ever stop learning and growing, I know it's time for me to leave because I've gotten in a stagnant rut and maybe a double-time's done. And then the final thing is the importance of a conscious leader is constantly revitalizing

themselves. I've been doing this for 42 years. That's a long time. You have to be able to revitalize yourself every day. You know, they'll get them sleep. You need to manage the toxin. You need to need healthy. You need to exercise.

You need to think positive thoughts. You need to do a lot of different things. So it's a marathon, not a sprint. And you've got to train for the marathon. So these are all aspects of the conscious leader. And that's also a summary of the book. Well, I appreciate you. That alone was fantastic.

I think that it's interesting. The revitalizing part doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to being an effective leader. Actually, parts of the book that I wrote got edited out by the publisher because I focused a lot on exercise and what I ate because I mean, I truly, truly believe the physical aspect of, for me, at least, getting up and moving my body early in the morning before my family wakes up, eating healthy. if I didn't do that, nothing else would happen. And I wonder why that's not something we talk about more in America, especially when we're trying to be healthy, is why don't we pay really close attention to what we're eating? And it's not a bad thing to push people to get outside and move your body on a regular basis.

Why do you think this is not talked about more focused on, whether it's in the media or from leaders in general. I mean, you're doing it, but not enough people are. What do you think it is about that? Probably because intellectuals and journalists don't exercise enough. So the ones that are mostly writing, right? And maybe academics as well. But I think the culture realizes exercise is important.

That doesn't, and I think COVID has actually, I've been interested to see there have been two kind of responses to COVID. Some people have said, you know what, I don't want to get this disease, and if I get it, I want to be able to fight it off. They've really gotten. So many of my friends have lost 10 pounds, 15 pounds, 20 pounds. They're exercising. They're eating healthier. They've had a response to COVID to get healthier and more vital.

And others have gone home and sat on their butts and gotten fat, and they've gone the opposite direction. Fortunately, more people in my experience have gotten healthier and lost weight. Some, maybe their family life's not very happy and they've gotten angry and depressed. I cannot say, but some people, we've had different reactions and I find that interesting. But anyway, it's very important and you understand it, Ryan. You get it. Most people don't get it. I didn't get it when I was young.

I didn't see that what you ate could really affect your health, your well-being, how you felt. I didn't believe it, you know? I mean, I didn't want to believe that because, I mean, I have to change. change my diet. And, you know, there's a saying in my business, it's easier to get somebody to change their religion than it is get them to change the way they eat. It's very difficult to get things to change the way they eat. We get, we have food addictions. We have, we like comfort foods and we don't want to give up the way we eat. And that's just simple truth. It's very hard for people to change their diet as Elon Musk has said, it's hard to not eat tasty food.

more. And my thing is let's try to make a tasty, let's try to make healthy food tasty is the way I would, I would, I would, we're, we're addicted to foods that have, or calorie dense foods, right? Food that have a lot of fat and them, food that have a lot of sugar in them, and foods that have a lot of salt in them as well. Those are what we get addicted to. But what I've learned is the palate, our taste buds evolve fairly quickly. So whatever you eat, you get used to eating and then you start to enjoying it. You start. enjoy it. So many people can't change their diet because there'll be all pleasure will go of life if they can't eat the foods they like to eat. Life wouldn't be worth living

if they can't eat these foods that they're kind of addicted to. But the opposite is true. Your palate evolves fairly rapidly. If you change the way you eat for a month or two, you'll begin to enjoy those new foods. And in fact, you'll begin to enjoy them more than the foods that you gave up. For me, for example, I try to avoid high fat foods. I don't eat, I don't eat oil, for example. Now for me, when I go back and I try to eat really fatty foods or foods that have a lot of calories, foods that are fatty with a lot of oil, they take greasy to me. They don't taste good. They kind of sicken me. Foods that are too much sugar in them, they don't taste good either. It tastes too sweet because I have evolved my palate.

I'm used to natural and healthy foods. And I enjoy those foods. So whatever you eat, you get used to. So teach yourself to eat the foods that are really the healthiest foods. It will be no loss and pleasure once you make the transition. You will like those foods better than the unhealthy foods that you're addicted to. That was a huge learning for me. And I tell people that all the time.

Most people aren't willing to pay the price for a month or two of transition. Yeah, it's the discipline there. John, I want to shift gears a bit because there's something you mentioned earlier when we were talking about your board and the potential coup or at least their attempt or one person's attempt. And there's a lot of people listening that are in mid-level leadership management roles. So they weren't necessarily identify with being the CEO like you, but they can identify with parts of your role when it comes to what you said. you are what your team is. And so the importance of hiring is so critically high. And so I'm curious from your perspective,

when you are going to make a hire for someone in a leadership position, what are some of the must-have qualities and a candidate for you to bring them on board to be a leader, at least within Whole Foods? That's a good question, Ryan. So first thing I'm going to say, at least a whole thing. foods, we tend to make, although if somebody's going to report to me, I'll make the final call on that person. We tend to do a lot of group interviews.

We tend to interview people in groups. Because I always say you can generally fool one person, but it's hard to fool the entire group, particularly repeatedly if you do multiple interviews like Whole Foods students to do. So that's my first tip. Don't rely on your judgment solely because some people are really good interviewers. They can bullshit you. But it's really a lot harder to do it to a larger group who will see through them. So what I'm looking for in my people that I hire and promote in my direct report, so to speak,

I mean, it kind of goes about saying you're looking for intelligent people. If you're going to be executives, then intelligence matters. But I have found that that's kind of like the ante in the game. I have to be pretty smart. But emotional intelligence today seems to me to be even more important because it's all about the team. It's all about relationships. I remember when I read Steve Jobs' biography,

Steve is one of the great entrepreneurs of the last 100 years. And he is an amazing human being. So I'm not, this and Steve, but Steve could never have gotten hired by Whole Foods because he was the way he treated people. He did not show a high degree of emotional intelligence. He had other traits that were outstanding. He was a brilliant entrepreneur, incredibly innovative, self-confident, courageous, many, many virtues, but not a great team player.

So I would never have brought Steve on in Whole Foods, which maybe they could say that's a flaw. But I wouldn't have brought him on because you have to have people that can connect with the rest of the team. That'll be team players that will work together. And Steve needed to be an entrepreneur in charge of a company.

But if you're in a, if you're trying to build a team, remember I said you're no better than your team, you want to hire people that are smart, a high degree of emotion, intelligence,

and work well together with other people. Obviously, I'm also looking for people that will take responsibility, will work hard. Looking for people with integrity. If you can't trust somebody, if they don't have integrity

and integrity and trustworthiness go hand in hand, then that person at some point is going to, may stab you in the back or may just do something that's dishonorable or dishonest, and that will reflect badly on you.

So the character of the team matters, the chemistry between the team members matters. And you have to get a team to continually, can continually get better, right? You want to have, you want to hire, many people don't hire people that might be smarter or better than they are. That is a huge mistake. Remember, you will be judged by the success of your team.

So you want the best players on your team that you can get because they'll make you look better. You will succeed if the team is successful. You're helping the team to be successful and they're helping you to be successful. And so the leaders and I watched over the years that have, have underperformed their potential at Whole Foods were leaders that for whatever reason were afraid to hire people that might have been smarter and more capable than they were because they were afraid they would be exposed and that other person would pass them up.

So they were like a competition with people on their own team. That's not good. That's not good leadership. In fact, you have to be willing to have people that might be promoted above you. That's okay because you're showing wisdom in your own hiring and leadership. That's a quality of you as a leader. If you can promote and create more leaders, especially if they get, I think that should be something that's kept track of, of the people that you've done it,

you've brought into the business. How have they done? Are you a talent scout? Do you have an eye? Do you help develop them? What a great quality in a person on your team. You're going to want them around forever. You're absolutely right.

And I do keep track of that. When I'm looking to hire or promote executives at the highest levels at all, market, I'm looking at who used to work for you. Who has, who did you mentor and train that have risen up in the organization? And if they've got this list of huge, a huge, long list of really successful people in the company, it's like you are a good, you were a good builder of talent and character and you deserve a higher promotion. So what's it? I am, I love those kind of people. What's it like when you're the interviewer and they're going for a job? that maybe to work on your team, like directly for you.

Could you take us inside that room? I can imagine for some it could be intimidating. Are there any specific questions that you really like to ask, or is it more conversational? What's it like when someone's interviewing to work directly for John Mackey? Well, most of the people that, not everyone, but most of the people that in the history of the company that have reported directly to me, I knew.

Okay. I mean, they were already in the company. I'd been able to take their measure, their character, their competence, how hard they work, how smart they were, how they get along with people. I can see that play out. So the harder, those are the easy promotions or easier promotions. It's never easy. The harder ones are when you're feeling, like, let's say, Whole Foods has to hire a new chief marketing officer because the other one got hired away. It's like, oh, wow, that doesn't happen very often in Whole Foods, but occasionally does.

And we take an inventory of the people inside the company to realize we don't have the talent right now in the company to take that position. We will let a few people interview from inside the company, but the executives talk it over and it's like, I think we need some outside talent coming in here. In those cases, I won't know the individuals personally. I don't know them. I haven't had a chance to observe their behavior over a number of years. So that's a lot riskier. And so everybody that's going to get to those interviews, there'll be a series of interviews.

Who's ever to get into the final interviews with me, they're already super smart. These are very well-paid positions. They're very smart. They've got great resumes. They can all do the job. So I'm looking in a lot of ways for cultural fit at that point. who's going to fit on my, who's going to fit on this team?

How are they going to get along with everybody else? So I pay a lot of attention to what the, because my team, the other team members on the team are there too. The other executives are in a part of the interview. So I pay a lot of attention to what they think. Who do you like the best? Because, and then why don't you like her? What's wrong with her?

And then, so to the greatest extent possible, I will try to come to consensus with the rest of the team. that reports to me. And the best situation is when the whole team is united around, we're going to pick, we're going to pick Beth. That's the best. And those decisions are easy. Harder ones are when the team is divided.

And then in those cases, we'll often have to do another round of interviews because you may not always get to consensus, but it's a lot better if you can. And if you can't, at the end of the day, I'll make the call and take responsibility. But I pay a lot of attention to what the rest of the team thinks. in June of 2017 you sold to Amazon for $13.7 billion. And when I bring this story full circle from the guy who started a store, got kicked out of his house, was showering where you cleaned plates to then selling that company years later for $13 billion to Jeff Bezos. There's a lot to talk about there. First, can you, as much as you're allowed, can you talk about what it was like negotiating that deal with either Jeff Bezos directly?

I assume a lot of his team was involved for most of it, but I have to imagine you guys talked, what it was like, you know, having those conversations with him and ultimately why you decided, I know they're investment partners. So they play a role in that decision too. but why you decided to sell and what it was like negotiating with Jeff Bezos and team. So, well, to be clear, I didn't negotiate the deal and the board negotiated the deal. And it wasn't negotiated with Jeff. Generally, you want to get in a big negotiation like that. You don't want to have the ultimate decision makers actually doing the negotiating. So our board would have an investment banker that we'd be talking to the team in

Amazon. I was also involved, but I really wanted to make the deal and the board recognized I wanted to make the deal. So I remember at one point, they actually, I was so much advocating for Amazon that they kicked me out of the board room. I was on the board. They said, John, you need to go next door because you were obviously so biased on the, you want to do this deal so bad that we need you out of the room. But I mean, I did spend a little bit of time with Jeff in the, in the early. early part and to see if there was going to be a good chemistry fit there. But the story, which I do go into in this conscious leadership book, I tell the story, Whole Foods had been, the long short of it is we had Cheryl or activists that were to take over our company. Jana Partners wanted to throw out our board and replace the management. And they wanted to sell the company off to the highest bidder. And we thought that happened because our stock had run up so high in 2008.

We got up to at one point where it was highly valued pure food retailer in the United States. We passed up Klober and every other public food retailer except for Walmart and market capitalization. We were trading in a huge multiple of earnings. And we got ahead of it. And then our competitors began to knock off a lot of our problems. a lot of our marketing and started undercutting us in price. And we started to see our same store sales gradually decline and not just de-sellerate, and then they actually went negative for about four or five quarters in a row.

And our stock price fell. And that brought in the shareholder activist who were demanding, we were faced with whether we wanted to fight the shareholder activist in a long, drawn-out battle. or I began to ask the question, is there a win-win-win solution for Whole Foods? I didn't think we wanted to be sold off to the highest bidder because I didn't think we'd end up with a company that had a good chemistry fit with Whole Foods. It was going to be a mission-driven company. I don't want to, I'm not going to publicly throw down on other supermarket companies.

I'm not going to name any names, but we didn't really want to be part of one of those companies. And there were people that were interested. They reached out to us from time to time. We could have taken a company private. That was something we looked at. But if we did that, then we were going to take on massive quantities of debt to, you know, well over $10 billion in debt.

We'd be paying interest payments and repaying that debt. Unless for our cash flow would be going to that instead of growth for many years to come. We didn't think that was in the best interest of the shareholders of the company. We looked at other alternatives. I mean, we contacted Warren Buffett at Berkshire. We thought he might be a good, you know, he's kind of a hands-off kind of owner and he wasn't interested. and we didn't know what to do. And then I kept asking the question to myself,

what's a win, win, win, win solution? And one morning I woke up and I knew the answer. The answer was Amazon. It just, what about Amazon? I woke up one morning back in April of 2017 and said, what about Amazon? And I was like, oh my God, they'd be perfect. They have the technology.

had the online sales. They're rapidly growing. I admire Jeff Bezos. It'd be great to be part of Amazon. I wonder if they'd be interested. We reached out, and it turned out within just a day or two of reaching out, we had a meeting scheduled in Seattle, and we flew down, three of senior executives, and we flew up to Seattle, met with Jeff, and three of his senior executives actually at his boat house on a Sunday afternoon, very secretive. I didn't get the address until we landed. And we got security. It was a very interesting situation.

But we had interesting chemistry right from the beginning. It was like, I use the metaphor of like falling in love. When you meet somebody and you fall in love with them, you'll have what's called the conversation at some point. Or you just sort of like click on all cylinder, you stay up all night and you talk. You realize, oh, my God, I've never met anybody like this. That's how we felt.

We talked to the Amazon guys. It was like they were so smart and they were so unpretentious and they were just regular guys. And we talked about the things we could do together if we merged. And I remember my team went off to a restaurant. We talked for about three hours. And then we went off to a restaurant to sort of before we flew back to just talk about what had happened. And we were all looking at each other sort of goofy. It's like those guys are incredible.

I mean, if they want to do exactly what we want to do, this is fantastic. And then we asked the question, do you think they liked us too? And we didn't know. It's like some very attractive person, you want to date them, but did they want to date you? And it turned out they did. We heard immediately back from them that the meeting went very well. I found out later from their head of Amazon's head of business development that after we left the room, they were super excited.

And they geared up, said, this deal is going to happen fast or not at all. and three days later they had a whole team in Austin and we talked further six weeks after that first meeting we signed a merger agreement and we were we were merged before the end of the summer so it was fun and it was it was kind of a whirlwind romance wow I love that story I mean I talk about it in the book certainly certainly for all of our stakeholders certainly what was it about Jeff Bezos that you liked there are many things I like about Jeff. First of all, of course, Jeff's brilliant.

He is truly a genius, brilliant. But I liked him because he was very unpretentious. Do you view him as your boss? Like, is that how you view this? Do you have a boss? Is he your boss? I don't report directly to Jeff. So I report to Clark, who's heads-up operations.

Okay. Okay. But in talking to Jeff, and I'd met him one year before and I was talking to him, he's brilliant, unpretentious, guy, wealthiest guy in the world, right? But I thought he was very unpretentious. We talked about science fiction. And he's got a great laugh. I got a great sense of humor. So he laughs easily. And again, and it wasn't just Jeff. I mean, he's super impressive guy. But all the other people he had around them were super smart guys and a great team. And we thought these guys would be

wonderful to work with. That's how we felt from the very beginning. And it's, you know, Amazon's got a different culture than Whole Foods, but a lot of overlap. And like in any merit, there's going to be some challenges, but overall, it was a really good decision for our company. Yeah, I've read that you said, it's like a marriage. I love them 98% of the time. And then another quote, I want to make sure this is an accurate quote I found online. You said, I've done this for 40 years. I'm financially secure.

I love Whole Foods. I ultimately am not afraid to get fired. So not that I think they're going to find me, but I'm not afraid of it. So that gives me a position of strength to speak truth to power when it's necessary to do so and I've done it many, many times. Is that accurate quote? It's accurate. That's taken out of context.

I was talking to, I was doing a town hall and I was getting a lot, early on, getting a lot of questions about the merger from team members. Gotcha. And everything that they said, I did say, but they, you know, that stuff was spread out. And then they took sentences. Yeah. One context, then another. So members at that time, we're looking for reassurance that we were going to stay whole foods market.

Amazon going to force us to change. And I was more or less saying, hey, you know, I'm a wealthy guy. I don't need even to do this job. I'm basically saying it's going to be good. Don't be afraid. Trust me. And by the way, I've got your back. I'm willing to go fight for Whole Foods with Amazon.

on. So that's what I intended. And of course, the media takes things out of context. And they were looking for discordance. And there wasn't any. It was a reassurance to the team members that don't worry, I'm always going to fight for what's best for Whole Foods. Yeah. Well, I got to. Yeah. I mean, it's a more, it's a, it's a more juicy story. If it's like, oh, is John Mackey going to speak bad about the people who bought them? Obviously, that that that gets more clicks. than anything else. It does. I mean, and I've been terrible things. I mean, I'm glad I laugh when you said that you were a conversation that's not a journalist because I've had a conversation of journalists and I always want to get it recorded because I'm always amazed at some of the things they say that I said, which are fundamentally just made up. They're just lies. It's astounding to me, but if you, they, as you say, those aren't interesting. They don't get as much click,

click bait. So they were looking early on. The merger's old hat now. So we don't too much about it but early on they were looking for sure they were looking for the dirt the gossip yeah well John I have one more question if you're cool with it the last last few minutes here there right now with somebody listening who's 23 years old graduated college into a weird weird world right now but their their desire is to make a positive impact on the world do good help others have meaning behind it. And if they came to you, and I'm sure this happens that people are emailing you and contact you constantly with questions like this, and they said, what's some general life

principles or pieces of life advice that you would have for this person who wants to do good? They want to do well for others and have meaning, just like you've done, they might not necessarily become wealthy, but that's okay. They just want to do things to help others. What are some piece of advice or maybe a piece of advice you would share with them. Brian, honestly, the book is coming now, September 15th is the answer to that question. Love it. Conscious leadership is the answer to that question. Find your purpose.

What's your purpose in life? Find your purpose. Start with purpose. Then lead with love. If you want to make, you want to do good in the world, then do it with love. Because if you don't do it with love, chances are you're going to do a lot of damage. Live your life with integrity. always do the right thing.

Don't make shortcuts. Strive for excellence, have honor, do the right thing. Look for win-win-win solutions. Don't have a win-lose framework where somebody else has to lose. How do you do it? So you win, they win, and we all win. That's thinking win-win-win-win. If you want to make the world a better place, you have to innovate.

You have to create value for other people. So find ways to create value for other people. don't just do it over the short term. You have to think long term. How can you create value over the long term? And that'll make a difference. Then you have to take care of yourself. You have to revitalize yourself.

You have to recognize you can't do all this good in the world by yourself. You have to do it with other people. So you've got to find the team, build a team, hire a team, promote a team that you work together to make the world a better place. You will magnify your own effectiveness. 10x, 100 X, 100 X, a thousand X, you have a really good team that you're working with. And finally, make learning and growing something that you do the rest of your life. Because you won't be able to do much good if you don't know very much.

So you have to keep learning. You have to become a better human being. And you should devote your life to becoming a better human being. And if you follow these advice, you will make a difference. I mean, Whole Foods has made a big difference. in the world. I'm very proud of the fact that Whole Foods has had. And we didn't know that when we started out. I

started the company when I was 24, just one year older than the person asking that question. I didn't know what we were doing when we started out, but I kept learning and growing, and the company kept learning and growing, and now we've had a huge impact. So life is an adventure. My final

word of advice, life is an adventure. Go for it. Follow your heart. Follow your passions. That's how you find your purpose. you won't find your purpose unless you're willing to go for it and do the things you most care about purpose lies in your passions wherever those might be i love it john thank you so much my favorite leaders are learning leaders the ones that are constantly striving to just get a little bit better know a little bit more each and every day and you certainly have embodied that for decades and i'm very

grateful for you being here the book is called conscious leadership elevating humanity through business i highly suggest you get it and when you you get that, you're going to want to read the other books that John has written if you haven't already read them. But John just want to say one more time, thank you so much for investing your time with me here today. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Thanks, Ryan. I hope I look forward to meeting in person someday. It'll be fun. We have a lot in common. I think we'd enjoy getting to be continuing each other a little bit better. I love to have lunch at a Whole Foods with you at one point. Hopefully when we're allowed to do that,

I'd love to do it soon. Without math someday. I hope so. I'm looking forward to that day. All right. Thanks so much, John. Take care, Ryan. All right. I could listen to John Mackey tell stories all day. What a fascinating life he is currently living and certainly thinking about what he's accomplished over the past four decades, from living in a store, showering where you would clean plates, to then eventually selling to Amazon and Jeff. Bezos for over $13 billion and still working extremely hard. It's an inspiring story.

I want to go back to a few of the keys that I took away. At the very beginning, when he discussed sustaining excellence, that having energy and vitality, you can't be lazy. It sounds basic, but it's very true. A strong desire to be excellent. That sometimes can be overlooked or missed. Do you care about excellence? Very important.

Reminding me of when I've spoken. with Jason Freed and Scott Harrison, that you must first value excellence before you can achieve it. And then anything worth doing is worth doing well. I certainly think when I think about those who have sustained excellence, that is something they have in common. And then hold yourself to high standards. That is another commonality I found among leaders who are sustaining excellence. And then how about that time when another senior leader tried to get John fired and he went down to Florida to have a meeting with the board? And prior to that, he walked around one of his stores and he said, I quote, oh my God, this is the love of my life. This is my purpose.

This is what I want to do. And he said, I got super high from that walk. And he went into the office with all the members of his board and told him that. And I think that should be what hopefully all of us can get to the point that we're doing, where we have that aha moment that this is what I love, this is what I want to do. I hope that could be something all of us can get to. Then one other key point, when we discussed hiring qualities that he looks for, and he shared, do these in groups, don't rely on just one person.

I've certainly experienced it both ways, and I would agree. I think it's a great method to do it, especially if you've built a couple of groups. culture like John has at Whole Foods and you're surrounding yourself with highly intelligent, highly trustful people that you look to to help you make tough decisions. I thought that was extremely helpful. And then his final piece of advice, life is an adventure. Go for it. So good.

Thank you once again for continuing to spread the word. One person at a time. Hey, you should listen to the Learning Leader Show, specifically this episode with John Mackie. of Whole Foods, I think it could help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, you give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you soon. Can't wait.