Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - John Mackey: Practicing Conscious Leadership | E166

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

What’s the key to a successful business? Whole Foods Market CEO and best-selling author John Mackey believes it lies in Conscious Capitalism. This is the idea that higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership, and conscious culture can transform companies and lead to long-term success. This model was hugely successful for Whole Foods. It helped them grow from a single store in Austin, TX to hundreds of stores around the US and landed them on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for 20 consecutive years. However, conscious capitalism and conscious leadership were things John had to learn and practice. John believes that by being a conscious leader, leading with love, integrity, and authenticity, and following the ideas of conscious capitalism, any business can find success. In this episode, Hala and John talk about what it means to be a conscious leader and how you can become one, his journey in starting Whole Foods Market, failures and what he learned, his secret to finding happiness, and much more.    Topics Include: - John’s background - John’s complicated relationship with his father - Opening SaferWay - What contributed to the success of Whole Foods Market? - How to find the right team - The importance of pivoting and adapting - Wholepeople.com and learning from failure - Conscious Capitalism and the real purpose of business - John’s transformation into conscious leadership - John’s secret to finding happiness - Qualities of a conscious leader - Win-Win-Win situations in business - John’s #1 tip to transform your company culture - John on transparent salaries - John’s intentions for his next business - John’s actionable advice to be more profitable tomorrow - John’s secret to profiting - And other topics… John Mackey is the Co-Founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market. The company has been included on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for 20 consecutive years. John is also the best-selling author of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, and the co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism Movement. Mackey is recognized as one of Fortune’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year Overall Winner for the United States,” Institutional Investor’s “Best CEO in America,” Barron’s “World’s Best CEO,” MarketWatch’s “CEO of the Year,” Fortune’s “Businessperson of the Year,” and Esquire’s “Most Inspiring CEO.” Sponsored By: Riverside.fm - Visit Riverside.fm and use code YAP to start recording studio quality sound and video and get 15% off a membership plan WRKOUT - Visit bit.ly/yap_wrkout to book a FREE Session with a world-class trainer and get 30% off your first TWO MONTHS with code YAP 99designs by Vista - Head to 99designs.com/YAP to learn more and get $30 off your first design contest! Credit Karma Personal Loans - Go to creditkarma.com/loanoffers to find the loan for you Resources Mentioned: John’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/John-Mackey/e/B00AE9FR5K/  John’s Website: https://media.wholefoodsmarket.com/experts/john-mackey  John’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mackey-a824bb1ab/  Connect with Young and Profiting: YAP’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting/ Hala’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Hala’s Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Hala’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yapwithhala Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/@halataha Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/ Text Hala: https://youngandprofiting.co/TextHala or text “YAP” to 28046 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. You can crush your fingers and all your toes during a data center migration. You can knock on wood, pluck a dozen for leaf clovers or look to your lucky stars for a successful office expansion.

You could hold your breath, shut your eyes, and say all the well wishes to help avoid cyber attacks. But none of that truly helps you. Because next level moments need the next level network. With the security, reliability, and expertise to take your business further. AT&T Business. The network you can rely on. You're listening to YAP, young and profiting podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit.

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the

right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhanced and productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. This week on YAP, we're chatting with John Mackie, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods Market, and the best-selling author of Conscious Capitalism, liberating the heroic spirit of

business. John led Whole Foods from a single store in Austin, Texas to a Fortune 500 company, which went public in 1992 and was purchased by Amazon in 2017. Today, Whole Foods has more than 500 stores and 95,000 team members in three countries. However, John's journey to success wasn't straightforward or simple. He had to pivot, adapt, and face challenges, like almost getting fired as the CEO of the company he co-founded, the failure of WholePeople.com, and face challenges, like almost getting fired as the CEO of the company he co-founded, the failure of wholepeople.com, and many other obstacles

in his journey. But as he overcame these difficulties, John learned how to lead, a lesson that would earn him a spot on Fortune's world's 50th greatest leaders list, and would play a role in whole foods making fortunes 100 best companies to work for a list for 20 consecutive years. In today's episode, we app about how John had a huge wake-up call

and how he was almost fired from his role as CEO at Whole Foods. We'll learn how he transformed into a conscious leader to turn it all around and how you can, too, with the learnings from his latest book, Conscious Leadership, Elevating Humanity Through Business. We'll also discuss the importance of finding a team that complements your strengths and makes up for your weaknesses, and we go deep on the four pillars of conscious capitalism, higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious

leadership, and conscious culture. Before we start the conversation, I did want to take a moment to invite everyone to my new text community, YAP Society, powered by slick text. Sign up to get daily motivation, exclusive content, and help us make decisions on the podcast. Like what topics we should focus on going forward and who I should interview. YAP is for you. So join YAP Society on slick text to shape our podcast and our community for the future. Text YAP to 28046. That's YAP to 28046, or

just check out the show notes to join. All right, so let's get into the episode. If you're looking to start a company or if you want to transform into a conscious leader, you won't want to miss this episode with John Mackie. Hey, John, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thanks for having me on, Hala Young and Profiting Podcast. Thanks for having me on, Hala. Good to be here. Awesome.

Yeah, well, I'm super excited to have you here today. I can't wait to hear all about conscious leadership. I think this topic is super hot right now in the business world. And for those of you who are tuning in and don't know about John, he is the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods Market. It started as a small grocery store in Austin, if you can believe it. And now it's a grocery empire that we all know and love over 500 stores. And there's so much to get into in terms of your work at Whole Foods, conscious capitalism,

and leadership. But before we get into all that, I'd love to warm things up by learning about your background, getting a little personal. So after I was doing some research, I found out that you came from Houston, you grew up in Houston, and your family was pretty financially well off. Your father, Bill Mackey, he was an accounting professor. He later became the CEO of a healthcare company that sold for nearly $1 billion in the 1980s.

And so I saw that you had a complicated relationship with your father, but I must also imagine that he had a big positive influence on your career. So I'd love to kind of hear about your relationship and the influence your father had on your career. Yeah, my dad did have a big impact on me and we were close when I was a child. I mean, he was a college professor and he was good dad. He played baseball, played football, take us to football games. He was a professor at Rice University, so I learned about losing at early age,

since Rice lost almost every sport they played in. And then when he left Rice and he went into business, more or less, he got hired by his clients, and he rose up, and as you said, he became CEO of a successful hospital management company. But when I started Safe Away and the Whole Foods Market, I really didn't have very much business experience. I studied whatever I wanted to in college. I never finished.

I took 120 hours of electives and I studied, but I was a voracious reader. So I'm still am. I just read, read, read, read, read. But I just didn't take any business classes. So when I got going with my girlfriend Renee, we were living in this co-op, housing co-op that's where we met each other. And then I had a food awakening at the co-op. That's when I learned how to cook. I mean, it was a vegetarian co-op and I became a vegetarian. Now, I've been vegan for 19 years and I became the food buyer. I just got so passionate about natural organic foods. This was kind of when it was the kind of early, the very early birth of trying to move away from processed foods to really natural whole foods.

And Renee and I started that first store to save for away, vegetarian store. It was a very pure vegetarian. We didn't really sell sugar, white flour, alcohol, and we didn't even sell coffee. And as I like to say, we also didn't sell much of anything because we started the business with $45,000 in capital and we lost 23,000 of it in the first year. Despite Renanne, I living on about $200 a month

and living in the store. We lived on the third floor of the store. But we did better in the second year because I was reading business books left and right, everything I could get my hands on. We eat out a $5,000 profit in year two and I realized, well, gosh, we need a bigger location because this one's competitively disadvantaged and I don't think the board would have given us the investors would not have let us expand. They were attitude was, hey, well, we finally made a little bit of money. Let's make some more money and we'll talk about it in a few years. I didn't know if we had a few years because of the competitive situation in Austin. And they said, well, if you can find a new investors,

and I think they're strategy was he'd be stupid enough to invest in this business. He'll never find anybody else, but we did. And we found some other investors and we were able to relocate the store to a much bigger location. And we merged with another small natural food store and they didn't want to be called Safe Away and we didn't want to be called Clarksville Natural Grocery so we came up with the name Whole Foods Market. That store, unlike Safe Away, we sold meat, we sold seafood, we sold sugar, we sold white flour, we sold alcohol, we sold coffee. And that store within just a few months of opening became the highest volume natural food

store in the United States based on all the inside information I had of the industry at that time because I knew all the players. It was such a small little industry. And it was hugely successful. But I just didn't restill in so much about business. So my dad, that's really pivoting back to the answer to that question. Yeah, my father, he was really good at business. And this was so great for our relationship because I went into kind of a, he was really good at business and and this was so great for our

relationship because I went into kind of a he was my mentor and I'd say for the first 16 years at Safe River and Whole Foods, I really never made a major decision without checking running it by him and I like to say that that was a very good thing because I would have driven the Whole Foods bus off a cliff more than one time and my dad always grabbed the wheel and said, you know, what are you doing? Get away from the edge. Let's get in the middle of the road here.

And so I really do think I would have probably failed as a business person if my dad hadn't been there and helped me and taught me. And meanwhile, I'm still continuing to read crazy amount of business books. And yeah, really within a few years I began to know what the heck I was doing and my dad kept teaching me and when I finally ended the mentorship 16 years later, we were alienated for about a year or two because I fired him off our board and and he was in a different place in his life.

He just, he wanted to, he'd made so much money, he made more money at Whole Foods than he ever made in his own business career. And so he didn't want to lose it. And I understood that, but I really wanted to grow the company. So what we were fighting about was the rate of growth. I wanted to grow much, much faster than he did. He was very conservative. And I finally, I said, Dad, you need to get off the board.

And I want you to sell half your Whole Foods market stock. Because then you'll take all the money you ever need the rest of your life. But leave half of it in, because I want you to be pulling for me. And we're going to grow this saying, I'm going to make that other half worth a lot more than the half of the sold.

And after he left within about a year, we had doubled the stock price and whole foods, because we'd already gone public. And so he had gotten his full investment back, even though he'd sold half of it. And even though he was a little upset, we stayed very close. I still saw an advice from him. I just didn't run everything by him.

And so it had a happy ending. Yeah, that does sound. It's like it's a win-win scenario at least. And it sounds like he was a great mentor to you. So that's great. So I'm curious. You dropped out of college, which I didn't realize before I really studied into you. And it's pretty unique to be such a, you know, there's lots of successful CEOs who dropped

out. But majority are like, you know, MBAs and went to Harvard and things like that. So what was that like for you dropping out of school? It was a very different era. This was in the middle of the 1970s. And I'm attriculated. I went back and forth between two universities, Trinity and University of Texas in Austin. I didn't think about it the way you're asking the question because I was on a pursuit of knowledge.

I wanted to figure out the meaning of life. I was so, I was learning at such a rapid rate that even though I didn't study any business, I never thought I wasn't well educated. I was better educated than anybody I knew. I just was very diverse. I mean, I used to go to the library eight to ten hours a day and just read all day long. And I just audited classes I was interested in. So I got a fabulous education after I took control of it and just started studying where

my curiosity in my mind took me. Yeah, I don't have an MBA, but, you know, I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that so many entrepreneurs really aren't necessarily, they're eager to get going on their businesses. I mean, in my generation, you got Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, these guys all Peter Teals, Brianman People, not to finish college. So there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there who don't finish and don't get a BA or so. I don't think this was happening in my era

and I can't speak for it today. The skills, I'm not saying the skills you learn in business school aren't valuable, but I don't really think they teach you how to be an entrepreneur. I think you've either got the fire in your belly for that or you don't. And I did, and so I couldn't wait to go back and study business. I was going to, I was going to figure it out as I went along, and frankly, it worked pretty well for me. Yeah, so you ended up starting safe away, like you mentioned, you dropped out of college to start it. You got $45,000 from your friends and family.

What was it like opening up that first store and taking on such a big risk? What was that like for you? You know, it's interesting. You're asking this because I'm in the process. I've begun writing the story of Whole Foods. So that's my next book. It's going to be the whole story. And so I've been revisiting. I did a whole chronology of the history of the Foods. So, this is my next book. It's going to be the whole story. And so, I've been revisiting. I did a whole chronology of the history of the company. So, it's all kind

of freshen my mind. And, you know, what's interesting is that it's easy to remember the very beginning of the business. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 44 years ago, but I remember it clearly. And I remember, obviously's happened the last few years, and then there's the middle period where I can remember it, but I have to really focus on it. And so opening Safe Away was an incredibly, one of the happiest days of my life. I mean, it was like, we have a store. This is amazing.

People, and I liked it. I liked retail. You order things that comes in, you stock it on your shelves. Customers come in, you get to, in a small business, you get to know in, you stock it on your shelves, customers come in, you get to, in a small business, you get to know them, you become friends with them, the people you're working with, your friends with. So it's a community of people that share similar values, beliefs, and we were all really young. I mean, part of the reason I remember it is because, you know, I was 24 years old, and my girlfriend was 20, and that's an amazing part of the,

all stages of life are good, but those early 20s are particularly interesting because everything's fresh and new, and you're excited and you have a lot of energy, and I don't think I was taking a risk, I didn't think about it that way. I was just doing something I wanted to do, and if it failed, well, I'd do something else.

I wasn't very attached to the outcome. So I never, I didn't, wasn't afraid. And I think as general rule, most entrepreneurs, it's not about risk. I don't think they think about it that way. That's how other people think entrepreneurs must think. Mostly they just, they're passionate about something and they believe they can, they'll figure it out

as they go along. I didn't think I knew anything much about business, but I thought I was smart, and I thought I would learn, and I thought I would, once you're interested in something, Holly, you just, you'd learn it so much faster than if you're not interested in it. And I also think, I experience in something as an entrepreneur that, serendipity occurs frequently.

You seem to meet the right people at the right time. Things circumstances seem to arrange themselves so that things work out. It's kind of like you're on this journey and the right people show up at the right time and you learn the right things at the right time and you make some mistakes but you learn from them as well. So I guess while say it was a lot of fun. Starting a business is hard, but it's so much fun. It's building a company, I mean, doing it for 44 years, right? There's nothing I've done in my life that's been as much fun

as building Whole Foods. So Whole Foods is one of the biggest companies in the world right now, and you're a founder, not only a CEO, you founded this company, and you're an entrepreneur. So I'd love to hear from you like, what quality is personality wise? Do you think contributed to all the success for you? I mean, I think there are probably many things, but first of all, I think I have a very high degree of self-awareness, meaning I know what I'm good at, but I also, I'm quite aware that I'm not good at many things.

And I've had the wisdom to be able to, I think when you're passionate about something, you attract people to, people want purpose, and if you're purpose-driven and passionate, you do attract people that share your vision and values, and they get, you get them excited, and they want to play along with you. So that's one of the things that I've been able to do. Well, I'm just a very intense passionate person. And that is attractive to many people. And so I've never had a problem attracting people to want to play the same game I'm playing.

It's like, this is going to be fun. Let's do it. Come on, get on. Let's be able to blast. And so that's one thing. And so that's important because I've been self-aware about what I'm not good at. I've been able to attract a lot of people to hold foods and hold onto them that had many talents and abilities that I didn't have.

It takes a team to build a successful business. This, the media glorifies the entrepreneur as some kind of genius. And sure, people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Sergey Berin, these are obviously brilliant people. There's no question about it. But I promise you, if you look under the hood, you'll see there's the Eric Schmidt at Google

and there's this Steve Bommer at Microsoft or there's always the team. And I recognize that and I built a great team. A team that worked together for decade after decade, the talent rises up, we learn together, we shared in our success, we shared in our failures. So the self-awareness is to know that I'm not really that good at hiring people, I'm good at attracting people, but I'm not good at hiring them because it comes, it's a weakness because it comes out of one of my strengths.

And that strength is, is I see the good in people. I see their potential. And that speaks to them and they want a, like he sees me and he knows what I'm capable of. And so people want to live up to that too. It also means though though, that I oftentimes overestimate people. My longtime chief financial officer, Glenda Flanagan, who I worked with for 29 years before she retired a few years ago, Glenda was really good at seeing through

people's mask and their and their and their and their pretenses and their bullshit. And so I she was so good at it. I learned basically if Glinda didn't want to hire somebody, I didn't want to hire him either. And if she wanted to hire somebody, I trusted her judgment, because she almost never made any mistakes. So building people that compliment your weaknesses, I think, is one of my secrets. And I think I'd to seek it for anyone.

One thing I noticed happens to some entrepreneurs, particularly young women, is that make a lot of money quick. Their egos can go out of control. They, they, I had my face slammed into the ground repeatedly. Starting in the first year, I lost half the capital and trusted to me. I almost went bankrupt in the first year. And then in the second, and we start whole foods, we had a flood that almost wiped out the company. You know, nine months after we opened up and we were lucky to survive. I've had repeated times in, in 2008, our stock price dropped 90%.

We were trading it two times our cash flow. We could have been taken over by anybody and paid for it with our own money in just two years. So I've repeatedly had setbacks, failures, times when I got my head kind of cracked down to the ground. And that teaches you a certain amount of humility. It's like, and a sense that you're very fortunate, and a gratitude comes along that, well, here I am, I'm still alive, I'm still going, I'm still learning, I'm still growing. Lots of times I could have failed. So I think self-awareness knowing what you're good at, knowing what you're not good at, and attracting people, those are some of the things that have led to me

to be successful. And now a quick break from our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast.

The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who want to run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke. Justin and Tara started from Square One, just like you and me. They faced lows and dug themselves out of huge debt. Now they're financially free and they're sharing their hard-earned lessons with all of us. That's right, millionaire university will teach you everything you need to know about starting and growing a successful business.

No degrees required. In each episode, you'll gain invaluable insights from seasoned entrepreneurs and mentors who truly understand what it takes to succeed. From topics like how to start a software business without creating your own software, to more broad discussions such as eight businesses you can start tomorrow to make 10K plus a month, this podcast has it all. So don't wait, now is the time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays. Find the Millionaire University podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your dog is an important part of your family. Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with nom nom nom. Nom nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's individual needs. Each portion is tailored to ensure your dog gets the nutrition they need so you can watch them thrive. Nom nom's ingredients are cooked individually and then mix together because science tells us that every protein, carb and veggie has different cooking times and methods. This packs in all the vitamins and minerals your dog needs so they truly get the most out of every single bite. And NAM NAM is completely free of additives,

fillers, and mystery ingredients that contribute to bloating and low energy. Your dog deserves only the best, and NAM NAM delivers just that. Their nutrient-packed recipes are crafted by board-certified veterinary nutritionists, made fresh and shipped to your door. Absolutely free. Nom-nom meals started just $2.40 and every meal is cooked in company-owned kitchens right here in the US, and they've already delivered over 40 million meals, inspiring clean bowls and wagging tails everywhere. Ever since I started feeding my dog Nom-nom, he's been so much more energetic, and he's getting older, he's a senior dog, but now we've been going on longer walks, and he's

much more playful. He used to be pretty sluggish and sleeping all the time, but I've definitely noticed a major improvement since I started feeding him Nom Nom. And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk two week trial at trinom.com slash app.

That's trinom.nom.com slash app for 50% off. trinom.com slash app. And the other thing that I'm hearing as you're saying all this is your willingness to kind of adapt and pivot when necessary. So for example, you were willing to combine with another competitor, so to speak and create Whole Foods. You were willing to sell ultimately to Amazon, knowing that it was in the best interest of your company. So talk to us about pivoting and the different pivots you've taken as an entrepreneur.

One way to think about it, Hala, is that it's an adventure. You're launching on this adventure. You don't exactly, you might have some kind of business plan, which I always laugh at people's business plans because don't take them too seriously. You need to do them because they're a good exercise in thinking through your business. But I've seen people take their business plan like if they write it down, somehow know that that makes it real or true.

Permanent is not. It's simply a temporary roadmap which you need to periodically throw away and write another one because the world's continually evolving and changing. So if you see it as an adventure, then you're on this adventure and all these interesting things are going to happen. There's going to be twists in the road, unexpected setbacks, unexpected opportunities that you

never, so many businesses. I mean, a good example in Amazon, for example, the whole, a good part of the business success of Amazon is due to a lot of things. But one of them is AWS. And that was never there. I wasn't their primary business. They almost sort of stumbled into it and it become one of the most important parts of the whole company. Now, is AWS. It's very important to Amazon. But it came along. It wasn't written in their business plan. It was something that was sort of serendipitous that occurred. And Jeff being such a brilliant guy took advantage of that and

got a guy like Andy Jassy who's now the CEO to do AWS and the rest is sort of history. I think that happens all the time. And we had so many different opportunities at Whole Foods. And it's knowing which ones to take and which ones to not take. But it's fun that way. You're constantly learning and growing and discovering, and it's just the joy of the adventure. Yeah. And one of the opportunities that I read about was Whole People, which was your first attempt

at being Whole Foods online. So I'd love to talk about that experience, that failure, so to speak, because it's just so interesting. Now, millennials, including myself, all my grosser years are brought on Amazon Whole Foods. I don't even go to the grocery store, and I think that's majority of my listeners.

We're losing money on all of you. It costs us $20 to make it flip free. So, wholepeople.com was back in the, I got so excited when the internet was, when the World Wide Web was really invented and it was like, oh my god, I was like an early adopter and I thought this is definitely going to change the world. And so we started wholepeople.com back in light. We started as Whole Foods.com back in I think 1998. And then we acquired a mail order vitamin company called Amrion based in Boulder, Colorado. And I thought, you know what, we need to combine this with Whole Foods.com. And maybe we'll, this was a mistake. We changed it because our slogan was Whole

Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet. You'll notice we have a foundation called the Whole Planet Foundation. Well, Whole People was like, okay, we'll do Whole People. We probably should have left it at WholeFoods.com. That just shows you how a little I knew about marketing and branding at that time. And we did Whole People and we had, it was a big idea. We were a lot of different categories and It was a big idea. We were a lot of different categories. We were actually just kind of ahead of our time. We were caught up in that whole internet, land, rush type of thing. If you got to get jump in now, you're never going to be able to get into it.

I discovered a bunch of things. First of all, the market wasn't there. The only people that were using the World Wide Web backs in, for the most part, were techies. Mostly techies, and they weren't necessarily interested in the products that we were selling. They were just looking for deals, because all these guys were getting venture capital money, because they had these incredible, ridiculous valuations. They didn't have a business plan. They often just had a couple of pages on a computer

that was their pitch deck, we just do three pages. But they still raised money. And then they subsidized stuff with venture capital money. They basically sell and stuff below cost in order to generate sales. And sometimes you can make the leap past the chasm there to build a business that lasts. I mean Amazon did, although I think they probably came close to failure as well. But I remember when the great wipeout occurred when Pets.com and Drugstore.com and basically

all of these generic web URLs, they just started falling like dominoes. And whole people was no different. Now we didn't lose too much money from Whole Foods because we had funded most of it through venture capital money. But I moved to Boulder, I was the CEO of both companies, but I put my president in chief operating officer in charge of Whole Foods and I focused on Whole People. But really seriously, after a year, I thought this thing's not going to work, at least not anytime soon.

And back then, today the market believes in a hybrid model, but back then, in 1999, they believed in a pure place, and they thought the hybrid model was a terrible idea. So unlike Whole Foods market capitalization, our stock price was getting killed because we were losing money on the internet and they said, well, we don't want the people that bought Whole Foods, didn't want us on the internet, was new. They thought this was a distraction. And so eventually, I just realized, you look, this is killing our stock price. I don't know when we're going to make money. It may not be years before this thing is financially viable. So we basically closed

it down and sold off some of our intellectual capital to GuyM. GuyM.com. And we exited and I moved back to Austin. So let's transition to the main topic of today's episode, Conscious Leadership. I thought a great way to start this off was for you to explain the philosophy of conscious capitalism, which from one of my understanding, that's where the philosophy of conscious capitalism, which from one my understanding, that's where the idea of conscious leadership really stems from. So you wrote a best-selling book called Conscious Capitalism. Can you unpack that idea for us? Sure, I can. The first thing is conscious capitalism is basically its capitalism. I'm going to state that very clearly. it's not some kind of socialism or some type of utopianism.

It's based on capitalism. And it just recognizes that some things that are taken for granted are not ordinarily seen in business, that number one, the four pillars of conscious capitalism are, the first pillar is that every business has the potential to have a higher purpose. It's like if you go to a party sometime and ask people, what do you think the purpose of business is? And people will look at you kind of with oddly, it's like, what do you mean what's the purpose of business?

Like everybody knows the purpose of business. Purpose of business, make money. It's like, that's an odd answer. If you ask what the purpose of a doctor is, they're very well paid, but the purpose of a doctor is not to make money, the purpose of a doctor is to help heal people. If you ask what the purpose of a teacher is, is to educate. Purpose of an architect designs buildings, engineers construct things. Every one of the professions refers back to some type of value creation that they are doing for other people. And business put in this very narrow box, which is not flattering at all, which is it's just about the money.

That's all business people care about is profits and money. And it's like, gee, it really not. Business is actually the greatest value creator in the world. Business creates far more value for other people than all the nonprofits and all the governments combined by exponentially more. And yet it doesn't get credit for it because the enemies of capitalism have put this label on it. It's just about profit.

It's greed and selfishness and exploitation. So the first thing about conscious capitalism is to say, you have this potential for a higher purpose, and every business has a higher purpose, whether they're conscious of it or not. That higher purpose comes into the value creation that they're doing for other people. So like Whole Foods' higher purpose is to nourish people in the planet. Amazon's higher purpose is to be the Earth's most customer-centric business. Google's higher purpose is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. All the companies that you most admire

have an articulated higher purpose, but they're generally not given credit for it, and they're generally continued to be criticized. So purpose-first, and the first chapter of Conscious Leadership I might add is put purpose- purpose first and we'll get back to that Second pillar of conscious capitalism though is all stakeholders matter and by stakeholders now This is a tricky word that because it's it's been hijacked by people who hate capitalism and they're trying to they're trying to use it as a weapon It's been weaponized but stakeholders really just mean that it's

not that it just means that the business has stakeholders that it creates value for. It has customers, it creates value for customers, it creates value for employees, it creates value for suppliers, it creates value for investors, and it creates value for the communities that it's part of. And once you see this clearly, and then you can begin to see that there's an interdependence between these stakeholders. For example, at a Whole Foods Market, we're retail business, so management shops do first higher, really good team members and make sure they're well trained. And then once they're well trained, their job is to help them be happy, because if the team

members are happy in their jobs, they're going to naturally create more happiness for the, they're going to serve the customers better and therefore help them to be happy. And if the customers are happy, the business flourishes and that's really good for the investors. So and you can't really do any of this without having, creating value for suppliers because they're the ones that produce everything that we're selling in our stores. So they're a very important stakeholder.

And so it's like conscious capitalism says you all the major stakeholders matter, manage the business in a conscious way, so all the stakeholders are benefiting. They're all flourishing together and you have this upward spiral, higher and synergies begin to happen. It doesn't mean everybody has equal ownership of the business, not the businesses owned by the investors. The investors, they won't return

on their capital investment, but maybe a good way to put it to show you how profit's been misunderstood is, the founder of stakeholder theory is Dr. Ed Freeman, who I consider a good personal friend. He's had a massive impact on me over the years. And Ed says that, you know, it's like my body has to produce red blood cells or I'll die, right? It doesn't follow the purpose of my life as to produce red blood cells. Similarly, business must make profits or it will fail. It will die. That's a simple

fact. If it doesn't have profits, it's not going to be able to meet its payroll, it's not going to be able to buy new inventory, it's not going to pay the rent, pay the taxes, it's going to fail. So profits are essential for a business to exist. But it doesn't follow just because business must produce profits that that's why it exists. No, that may be how the shareholders and investors see it, but that's not what's interior to the business. What's interior to the business is its higher purpose, whatever it is, whatever its major value creation, primarily for customers, is all about.

That's where the higher purpose leans. And every business should articulate that very clearly. If we want to defend business and capitalism, it starts with purpose. And then it starts with realizing all the stakeholders matter. That leads us to the third pillar, which is conscious leadership. Now, the reason I wrote conscious leadership books, like we have two chapters on conscious leadership and conscious capitalism. When I'd go out and talk about conscious capitalism, people come up to me afterwards, and they said,

their favorite chapters in the book, besides purpose, generally, and stakeholders, they love the chapters on leadership. Couldn't we tell them more about that? Because if they're an entrepreneur or a business person, it's like, how do I do this? This is all great in theory. How do I actually do it? And not just talk about it. What happens when times get tough? And so conscious leadership was written

with the purpose of trying to help business people and entrepreneurs to be able to perform conscious capitalism. And you can't do that without conscious leadership. And so on, we'll talk a little bit more about that. So I'll just skip on now to conscious culture. Conscious culture is very simple. Look, we're going to spend a lot of high percentage of our lifetime at work. We should create cultures that really help people to flourish, help people to learn and grow, that are fun, that people are better

off for being part of that culture, that when people leave Whole Foods, we want them to be, well, hopefully, many of our people work with this, you know, they just found their tribe and they never leave. But others, we wanted to look back and say, one of the best learning experiences I ever had was Whole Foods. That was a great company to work for. And I think Whole Foods does have a great culture. We were named one of the 100 best companies to work for

for 20 consecutive years, leading up to the merger with Amazon when we were no longer an independent company. So we really weren't eligible any longer. So that's kind of what conscious capitalism is about. It's purpose, stakeholders, leadership, and culture. Those are the four pillars that we built it around. Amazing. And I really, obviously, we're going to get into leadership and dig really deep on that.

We're also going to touch a lot about culture, which are super interesting facets of everything that you talk about. So let's talk about your own personal transformation into conscious leadership. So as I was doing my studying about you in the late 2000s, you had a big turning point. It was a wake up call in your career. You were nearly fired and removed from your position at CEO.

So I'd love to hear about those uncertain moments when you knew that there were some difficult conversations that were coming up, what was going on through your head, and then how you evolved and grew as a conscious leader over the years. Well, I'm going to do this in detail in the book. So you'll get a little preamble, but I'm not going to get to the same level of detail

and I'm going to leave a few people, but I'm not going to get to the same level of detail. And I'm going to leave a few people out of it, not going to identify them. They'll be identifying the book, but I'm not going to say it now. But basically, I got to go back to the year 2000. That was after whole people had been written off, and we'd sold Amrion, and the whole mess was now out of the way. But I had alienated a couple of directors, and there were two directors in an ambitious executive who really wanted me to go and the other executive to take my place.

And so there was no other way to put it. There was a coup attempt. And there was a power struggle I won they lost and But it was a total wake-up call for me and that launched really I realized you know what John you've got to grow You have got to learn more you've got to be more emotionally intelligent You how did this ever happen you should have seen this coming you weren't paying attention You're taking your position for granted you You weren't listening well enough. You weren't thoughtful enough. You hadn't. And so, and you most importantly, I needed a better relationship with my boarded

directors. I realized, you know what? I need to cultivate this board. I need to spend time with them. I need to call them up and make sure that they feel like I'm listening to them and they're being heard and they're acting on a lot of their suggestions. Then I took advantage of that executive departing to promote people that were actually better. That launched a tremendous period of growth for a whole-fage market. After I began to wake up to become a more conscious leader, combined with really the promotions of Walter Robb and A.C. Gallo to the chief operating officer positions, and then they became co-presidents,

and the Walter came on to become co-CEO until he retired from the company back in 2016. We had such a good team and we just rocked and rolled and we just were companies shot up. We grew 10X over the next 15 years. So we really, really, that was an explosive growth. The stock price went up. It was really happy times.

Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully

growing your business. Shopify is packed with industry leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth, giving you complete control over your business and brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code. And Shopify grows with you no matter how big your business gets. Thanks to an endless list of integrations and third party apps, anything you can think of from on-demand printing to accounting to chatbots, Shopify has everything you need to revolutionize your business. If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn secrets masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was going to collect payments and how I was

going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me was just a click of a button even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button. It was so easy to do. Like I said, just took a couple of days and so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be and I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat and enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights

around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly recommend it. Shopify is a platform that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Again go to Shopify.com slash profiting all lowercase to take your business to the next

level today. Again that Shopify.com slash profiting shopfly.com slash profiting all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Yeah bam if you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the six or seven-figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach Show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host,

and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of NotOne, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach show. Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur. And I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on Young and Profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework, it was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me

in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in 95. And at the same time, she built her eight figure company as a side household and eventually took it and made her full-time hustle and her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire she's earned a life-changing wealth and on top of all that she maintains a happy marriage and healthy home life. On the Kelly Show, you'll learn that it's possible to have it all.

Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, yaap fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate. And I recently had best selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master

class, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candander method every day with my team to give insolicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework and I'm so happy because I really needed this class. With masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business.

With masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world-class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do better It's just a few clicks away. On masterclass you'll find courses from many app all-star guests like Chris Voss and Daniel Pink I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real shark lately I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best? A lot. But with Masterclass annual memberships,

it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising thing about Masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value. For the quality of classes, instructors, the platform itself is beautiful. The videos are super high quality. You can't beat it. Gain new skills in as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer,

tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way, I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class. And right now, as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com slash profiting. That's masterclass.com slash profiting for 15% off an annual membership masterclass.com slash profiting. So I love how you mentioned that you made some physical changes in terms of changing the people around you and your team. But how about mentally, like, what shifted inside of you in the way that you thought and connecting with your purpose with whole foods and what shifted mentally for you?

You know, the best analogy, I think, is kind of like a near-death experience. I nearly died as CEO. And a near-death experience is, if you don't wake up then, you're going to win-win you wake up. It's like if you've had a heart attack, you better wake up and change your diet and your lifestyle. You're going to have another one. You've been given the final warning. You know, when you're lucky that it wasn't that you didn't die at that first heart attack, that's a wake-up call. It was really one of the best things that ever happened to me. I think a person is wise if the most terrible events, if they view them as that's their best opportunity to grow. A crisis is the best opportunity you'll ever have to accelerate your personal

growth. Take advantage of it. And that Rama manual said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste back when he was chief of staff for President Obama. Well, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste back when he was chief of staff for President Obama. Well, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste for anybody to waste because it's a great opportunity to become a better leader, to become more conscious. Yeah, I couldn't agree more 100%. So talk to us about why is it important for leaders to align to a higher purpose? And what higher purpose do you have at Whole Foods? Well, the higher purpose of Whole Foods is to nourish people on the planet. And there's

a lot, there's a lot, if you unpack that, nourish is a very powerful word because it, you can nourish people with food, but you can also nourish them with love, you can nourish with them with attention and appreciations, and there's a lot to waste in nourish. The people that meet refers to all the stakeholders all the stakeholders ultimately are people right and then the planet that means that's an environmental call. But it's also thinking about the larger planetary impacts on animals, on people that live in other countries, Whole foods, you know, we purchase from, God, I don't know, 80 different countries. So we have a connection to them and how we do business in those countries makes a difference. So purpose, we've already talked about purpose, right? And the importance of that and how I use the red blood cell metaphor. But here's

another way to think about it. Imagine for a minute that you think your purpose is to maximize profits. Okay, so it's, you, let's say you're doing your orientation for your employees, now you got a new crop of employees, new crop of team members at Whole Foods, and it's like, hey, so glad you decided to come work for Whole Foods. I want to know why you're here, your purpose is to maximize profits and get our stock price up as high as possible. Anybody have a problem with that? Is that okay? That's what we're gonna be doing. So whatever it takes, whatever it takes. How inspiring is that gonna be to people? I think they're gonna want it. It's like oh boy. I can't I love working for Whole Foods

I'm just trying to make as much money as possible there's just trying to make as much money as possible. I wish you think it's going to inspire people more that we're trying to nourish people in the planet. We're literally trying to sell the healthiest food in the world. And you're helping to do that. You're helping to sell food that, from a higher degree of animal welfare,

we have our source for good program. When you're working for whole foods, you're working for a company that really does care about these things, and you're helping us to do more good in the world. That's far more magnetic. It happens to be true. So I'm not saying that you should say these things that they're not true, because they'll know if you're authentic or not.

But if it's authentic, and you mean those things, and you walk the talk, and you live it, well, that inspires people. You're going to, people are going to work harder and do a better job. They're going to be more creative because they align with the mission and you live it. Well, that inspires people. You're going to, people are going to work harder and do a better job. They're going to be more creative because they align with the mission and purpose. I've had many debates on this purpose question with people that think purpose, business,

maximize money. And there are almost never people that are entrepreneurs running a business. They're intellectuals, are they're economist, or whatever. And I always say, I wish I could compete against you. Because there's nothing easier than competing against a business that only cares about making money. You will lose in the long run.

That's the paradox of it. If you want to maximize long-term profits, don't aim for it. I use a metaphor to prove my point, or at least to give evidence for it. If you believe the purpose of life is to be happy, you've made a huge categorical mistake. If you pursue happiness as your goal in life, I almost guarantee you will not find it. Because what happens when you pursue your own personal happiness is you're thinking about yourself primarily and you're kind of in a narcissistic world and that does not lead to happiness. What leads to happiness is love and caring about other people and having a purpose that makes

a difference in the world that you're creating value for other people. Purpose and love, they lead to happiness. So when you make happiness to primary goal, you've made a mistake and you will not find it. But if you're just driving to fulfill a higher purpose and you're just trying to be loving and helping other people, then you will find happiness. It comes indirectly. It ensues when you don't directly pursue it. Well, that's the same way with prophets. Ultimately, your prophets will come about better as a result of fulfilling a higher purpose because you're going to then create the value for customers and that will lead to more profits. If you aim and make profits your primary goal, you will sub-optimize in the long term.

So I want to get into conscious culture, but first I did want to get a little bit more detail about the qualities of a conscious leader in terms of integrity, honesty, truth telling, authenticity, things like that. Yeah, well, the first four chapters of the book sort of kind of sum it up. The first chapter is put purpose first and we talked about that, so I don't need to talk about it anymore. The second one is lead with love. And love is, it's in the closet in corporate America. It's not talked about, it's a, and by love, I don't mean romantic love. I mean love in the sense of caring about other

people, being compassionate, thoughtful, kind, generous. And it's in the closet primarily because people think love is weak. That's the, they think they're a war. The metaphors we use in business are all hyper competitive metaphors. It's all this, you know, and we gotta kill our competitors. We've gotta, let's roll.

There's all these army war metaphors. Let's go to the war room and plot out our grand strategy here. Or they are Darwinian metaphors. Let's go to the war room and plot out our grand strategy here. Or they are Darwinian metaphors that survive the love of the fittest. It's a jungle out there. Only the paranoid survive. Or they are hyper competitive sports metaphors.

And in typical sports, there's one winner and everybody else is a loser. So there's an obsession about winning. Winning isn't everything. Winning is the only thing. And so you get obsessed with winning, you get obsessed with defeating someone else. And these are the metaphors that generally we use

to think about, there are other ones too. There now you have a lot of tech metaphors. But the metaphors structure our consciousness the way we think about things. And most of the dominant metaphors are hyper competitive metaphors. And when you're at war, there really is no place for love. Yeah. Or check all that wimpy love stuff at the door here, because we are going, we're going into battle and I need everybody ready.

I don't want, I don't want to love here forget that stuff. And so there's kind of a macho and there has been of a macho, and there has been traditionally a macho boys culture, which it's about winning, it's about killing the other side. And so love is something you don't have in the workplace, it's something you do outside the workplace. Now think about how, I want to point out a few things, how inhuman is it or unhuman is it to not be able to bring your whole self to the workplace? Just this narrow part of your being, this competitive part of your being is what's allowed to be in there. And the rest is tough you do with your friends, you do that at home, with your family,

but say you're basically dividing yourself into. You're leaving the loving self at home and you're bringing the tough guy self to work. But more importantly, even than that, is that love is the glue that holds a company together. That's the, that unites the teams. It's why customers keep coming back because they feel appreciated. They feel like you care about them. One reason Whole Foods is such a good company to work for and why we've was named 100 best comes to work for 20 consecutive years is if you get these two

things right, Hala, I almost promise you you'll be successful in business. The first one is purpose because if you put purpose first, you've got like your GPS going in the right direction. And if you lead with love, you're going to create such loyalty from people that you work with, from the people that you're serving with customers, your suppliers. When you take care of your suppliers, you become a customer they like to deal with. So purpose and love, people never want to leave your organization. Why would they? They've got the two most important things in life. It work. Purpose and love, people never want to leave your organization. Why would they? They've got the two most important things in life, it work, purpose and love. And those are the

things people crave. We crave meaning. And we simultaneously crave. We want people to care about us. Of course, the secret to getting the people care about you is to care about them. You get back what you give. And if you're focused on just yourself, like your own personal happiness, you are not going to find it. So the third one, after those, is integrity. Integrity in everything you do, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation of integrity, and you can pretty much destroy it in a single day with some acts that are that lack integrity. And I would say in my experience in business and life,

integrity is not, it's not extremely rare. I meet people all the time that I think have integrity. But I'll also say I don't think it's that common. And integrity means a lot of things. First of all, of course, it means truth telling. And let's face it, by the time you're two years old, you've become a master at lying. Anybody that's ever had small children

is amazed at how skillfully and quickly their children learn how to lie, and how they can fool their parents. So we have to learn how to tell the truth because the natural thing is basically to protect ourselves and to tell whatever is necessary to do that. And then authenticity, we generally, we crave authenticity, but in a cancel culture world, oftentimes the authentic people are the ones that say what they really think and feel, and they get canceled. We say we want it, but when it shows up, we oftentimes are frightened of it,

and we seek to destroy it. But authenticity is one of the qualities of integrity. Honesty, authenticity, trustworthiness. When you meet somebody that truly has integrity, you will find that you trust them. Because you know they're going to deliver on what they say. You know they're going to act in a right, they're going to try to do the right thing. And therefore, the other quality of integrity is moral courage. You

have to be willing to do the right thing in the circumstances, even if people may not like you, even if you may get shouted at, even if you may risk being canceled. If you have integrity, you will face that fear and you will do what is right, regardless. And that, as the stakes get higher, integrity becomes rarer. Most people hide. They don't want to be hurt. So they're willing to hide their integrity in order. They don't have the moral courage and they don't take the risk.

So integrity is very important. It's one of the most important virtues that we should cultivate. And by the way, purpose, love, integrity, these are qualities that you develop. You have to develop these within you. You have to practice them. These are practices. People say love is an emotion, John.

Actually there's an emotional component to love. I mostly see love as a set of skills. To be loving is not just to have a feeling, it's to practice gratitude, generosity, kindness, care, compassion, forgiveness. And the more you practice it, the better you get at it. You get more skillful. Because we all know, every day, we aren't always loving

and every instinct with everybody you encounter. And, but if we become aware that, oh, that was the kind of a bad thing to say. I'm really sorry, I said that, I was out of line. Or, oh, gosh, it'd be more patient. I mean, I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't be more patient and let people finish what they're saying. That's, that's when I'm always continuing to work on.

So, integrity is the same way. These are skills that we develop. And the final thing I want to say on the conscious leadership, if we skip the culture, there's a lot more to the book, obviously. I am very, very high on our fourth chapter, which is fine, win, win, win solutions. I'm a great believer in win, win, win. And this is something that's not understood about business because we use these sports metaphors and in a sports metaphor, there's somebody that wins and somebody that loses. There's a for every winner, there's a loser. And people tend to think that that's the way businesses winters take all and that everybody else is that, but that's not how business works. That is a fundamentally

wrong metaphor. Business is really a win-win-win game because you have all these stakeholders that are voluntarily trading with each other for mutual benefits and gain. When customers come in, they're both winning. The company's winning and they're winning. Nobody's forcing them to trade with us. They have competitive alternatives in the marketplace. They come in because they like our particular combination of quality, selection, service, ambiance, and prices, or they wouldn't trade with

us. In fact, most people don't trade with Whole Foods. We're 22 billion, but we got like a 3% market share of the United States. So 97% of the other grocery businesses go in somewhere else. So they do have plenty of alternatives in the marketplace. Every one of those stakeholders is benefiting when they trade. So business is the ultimate win-win-win game where customers are winning, team members employees are winning, suppliers are winning, investors are winning, and the community that we're all part of is winning because philanthropy comes out of

that success of the business, taxes comes out of the success of the business, taxes comes out of the success of the business that funds government and nonprofits and government respectfully. So I put, and we don't naturally think win-win though. We don't think win-win-win-win. But the third win, by the way, good for you, good for me, and good for the larger community that we're all part of.

And that's a way of framework. That's a way to think about the world. And it's a skill. And so whenever I'm making a decision, I always ask this important question. Is anybody losing here? And if somebody's losing, if one of those take-colors is losing, then it's probably not a good decision.

I need to go back and be more imaginative. I need to look for the win-win-win so that no one is actually losing, that all the major stakeholders are winning. And then once you begin to think that way, you give your mind permission to be creative in that direction. And it begins to come up with solutions that you didn't know were possible. Because if you just refuse to not compromise on the first solution that comes to mind, if it's a's a bad solution into hurting people or hurting someone's losing. So business is inherently a win-win-win game but we can do it in a different way where we we

don't make trade-offs all the time where somebody else is gaining and someone else is losing. We need to try as best as possible to move away from that trade-off mentality and ask the question, how do we make sure that all of us are winning together? Yeah, I love that advice because in business and negotiations, everybody always assumes that there's a winner and a loser, but there doesn't have to be. It's a good negotiation. They're both winning. Okay, cool. So really quick, where can people go get conscious leadership? I want to make sure you're able to let everybody know.

Well, hopefully if you went to one of our stories, you could get it there, but sometimes they don't have it. You can buy it. You certainly can buy it at Amazon. And I guess I'll recommend to Amazon since I they own whole foods. So and you can, the easiest way to get it is if you have a candle is just to download it and it's cheaper that way too. I read most of my books on my candle. I listened to the audible version and I loved it. I do that too.

I highly recommend the audible. Yes. And you know, there's a story there that the guy that did the audible, did voiceover. I've listened to him. His name's escaping me. It's Michael, somebody or another. I've listened to him, his name's escaping me, it's Michael, somebody or another, I forget his last name. But I've listened to a number of books where he was the reader, and I said, I love this guy. I actually bought a couple of books just to listen to him read the book. So when I was talking to the publisher, they said, is there any writer,

any reader you'd like? And I said, yeah, I want this guy. And they called him up, and he did it. So I was really happy about that. He's really good. Yeah, he's really good. Yeah, he's really good. I love the audible version. So make sure you guys go check that out. I love that book. Lots of actionable advice on how you can become

a conscious leader as well. So just really quick, I want to touch on conscious leadership because as we heard about Whole Foods is quite often ranked as a top place to work. And you do a couple things that really prioritize employees and help retain them. One of them is ending every meeting with appreciation. And another one that I heard is that you guys make salaries

transparent across the company, or at least you did at one point. So I'd left to kind of hear about the way that you make employees feel prioritized and the way that you retain them. Well, I will tell you, Hala, if you got nothing else out of this entire podcast, but this one thing, you will transform your organization, because on Whole Foods, we end all our meetings with appreciations. And I promise you, when you, that is a transformative technology, it's a very simple thing to do.

We just set time aside at the end of the meetings to give. It's voluntary, nobody has to appreciate. But when people give authentic appreciations, two wonderful things happen. One is you may not, somebody gives you, I will give you an example. I recently, because I'm doing this farewell tour at I was touring in this region, and after it was over, I got this email that from a guy that I was pretty sure didn't like me. I just kind of never got a vibe from him. And he wrote me the most amazing letter, where he just said, how much he loved Whole Foods, how much he loved me, and how much a difference I'd made in his life, and how greatfully

was. And it was like, I just felt fantastic. It's like, wow, I didn't even think he liked me. And here he is telling me that I'm, and he was just oftentimes just felt fantastic. It's like wow I didn't even think he liked me and here he is telling me that I'm and he was just oftentimes just kind of a little nervous or even around me, tongue tied a little bit, I intimidate any of my suppose. And so I felt great. And so obviously that helps in any kind of team situation when you may think somebody doesn't like you and then they appreciate you and you feel that it's authentic You change your attitude towards them completely like I just did to that individual But the real gain or an appreciation to whoever doing the appreciation because when you do an authentic appreciation

Intrinsically you're opening your heart to do so We make a do you got to make a distinction between an authentic appreciation and in a flattery We make a, you got to make a distinction between authentic appreciation and a flattery. Flattery is when somebody's just saying something and they're manipulating you in a way. They don't really mean it. They're saying it because they think you want to hear it. And we know the difference. People can, most of the time, we can tell the difference between somebody who's really authentically appreciating and who's, and somebody who's trying to flatter us.

And so when we do the authentic appreciation, we, we appreciation, we have to open our hearts to do it. That is so good for us. Every time we express love to other people, we're like reinforcing a pattern in our psyche, the love pattern. So I always take advantage of the appreciation times at Whole Foods. I just look around the room and I'm thinking about,

who do I feel and really good about right now? And you guys end every meeting that way. You say, give your appreciation if you have any. I'll tell you a secret. It took me years to let get our boarded directors to do it. After we did that, started doing it the boarded directors. I never had another boarded director ever leave voluntarily. They love coming to the board meetings.

And that's part of the reason they love coming to the board meetings. There's kind of a love in. And so it hold in our, in our leadership meetings, we actually had to cut off appreciations because they were going on too long. It's like we got to just work too. And so first, we used to be unlimited appreciations and then it was, we went down to three and now it's, you get one appreciation, so really make it count. So please try that, anybody that's listening to this.

I promise you, once you do it, I've seen a lot of my friends and started doing it and their companies, and they come back, always come back and say, that was the greatest thing. I can't believe you waited so long to do it. I can't wait to implement that with my team. We do gratitude Fridays on Slack, but this seems even more powerful

because it's like everybody's on the call You can hear it and and you're just opening up space every time to increase that bond with with everyone So I love that and Let's talk about transparent salaries just really quick and and then I'll be letting you go Yeah, that one's that one's It still existed whole foods, but I implemented that many years ago, 30 years ago, because people were, it's almost human nature to be envious of each other.

And oftentimes, there's also can be unfairness in the wages. So once you put a transparent system in everybody else knows what they're getting paid, a couple of very good things come from that. One good thing is, is that you begin to see who the highest paid people. So it gives you career direction. It's like, well, I want to go the direction that Beth is in because look how much money she's making. And I want to be like Beth because she's getting paid a lot of money.

So it helps direct people into somebody else. It's like, well, Tom has paid a lot of money and and then I thought, I don't wanna go down that path. That's, so it sort of gets career direction. And secondly, it also, if you're the team leader and you know everybody's gonna see what you're paying people, you better be able to justify it. You can't just play favorites. And if somebody confronts you, it's like,

well, how come you're paying Larry that much money? And it's like, well, here's why I'm paying Larry that much money. One, two, three, four. If you do those things Larry does, I'll pay you that much money. So it's recognizing that envy is sort of intrinsic to human nature and taking it head on and basically saying, okay, people are going to be envious. So let's go ahead and open it up, make it transparent, and we can get it out on the table and deal with it. And it also means you're probably not going to over-pay somebody if you're going to

get called on it. So you have to be able to justify it because you make it asked about it. So let's talk about your retirement. You are 43 years at Whole Foods. Now you're retiring. Do you have anything that you want to say about your retirement and your plans for the future? Well, it'll be 44 years when I retire. September 1st, I gave notice about it, almost gave a year's notice, it gives me a last farewell tour, it allows my replacement. You know what

is, Whole Foods gets used to the idea of me not being there anymore. And frankly, it gives me a chance to get used to the idea of not being there. Yeah, I more time off in our retirement. Honestly, I'm not going to do a teaser on this one, I'm not going to take exactly what I'm doing, but I'm going to start another business. It will be in the wellness health category. I'm very excited about it. I've got a lot of my retired executives from Whole Foods that built a company with or partnering up with me on it. So I'm kind of bringing the old band back together. Yeah, so you'll hear about it and you'll remember we talked to I that I teased it out, but I didn't give any details. So I say in a year or so that'll be pretty much in the public domain.

Cool. So we'll look out for that. So we always close the interview with the same questions. What is one piece of actionable advice that my listeners can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Nothing I can tell you would make your business more profitable tomorrow, because most of it will take a little time for it to develop. And in the spirit of what I think you asked that question, what can I tell your listeners that will help their business become more successful and profitable? I would say, think about how you can create more value for your

customers. No one is forced to trade with you. They trade with you because they are getting something from the exchange. So how can you create more value for your customers? You should ask that question every single day. Ask that question constantly. How can I create more value? And you know what? If you start asking the question, you'll start seeing ways that you can create more value, and that will lead to more profits. Love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life?

And this can be beyond just financial. What is your secret to profiting in life? Follow your heart. Most people are too afraid to do it. And they get off, they get sidetracked into something that doesn't lead to happiness. Follow your heart wherever it got, wherever it leads you. And I mean by heart, I mean your passions, your purpose, the inner voice that's in within each of us.

Follow that inner voice, trust it. Don't let fear hold you back. If you do, you'll have a licensed adventure. You should go for it. Follow your heart. Ooh, I love that. Super powerful, short and sweet. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you

and everything that you do, John? You probably can't. I'm not on any social media yet. Although I'm thinking about adding that on now that I'm getting. I can't be on social media because of the whole food stuff. It's very difficult. People are... I got on LinkedIn for one day and I had thousands of people. I'm gonna be for one day and I had thousands of people. I'm gonna be putting my toe into social media in the next few months. So you'll probably see me, I'll get in there and we'll manage it intelligently. Maybe I'll have her contact you. Yes, we're gonna stick all of your links in the show notes so people know where to get your book. Thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure. Thank you for unpacking your wisdom. Thank you. You have a good day. Bye-bye.

It was a pleasure. Thank you for unpacking your wisdom. Thank you. You have a good day. Bye. All right. So I loved this episode. I've admired John for a long time as a CEO, and it was incredible to be able to host a one-on-one with one of the most influential CEOs of our time.

And so I'm very excited for the future. John has coming up as he retires and starts his new business and I will certainly be keeping tabs on him. Well, let's get into some of the key takeaways from the episode. If you guys are a long time listener, you know that I do not skimp on the outros. I love to give a summary and make sure that all the key messages really stick with you. And in this episode, something that stuck out to me was a higher purpose. We talked about how important a higher purpose is when it comes to starting a company or even when you're just considering applying for a job at a company. And what it boils down to is that in order to become successful over the long term, a business

must provide true value. This is the why or the reason a company exists. When I started young and profiting, my higher purpose was to help people accomplish their dreams and lead a better, more successful life, both financially and professionally. I had super pure intentions. I never thought that YAP would make any money. I never thought that I'd even be able to take YAP full time.

I was just giving back being of service and following my passion and purpose. And because I was so focused on my passion and purpose, I was mag giving back being of service and following my passion and purpose. And because I was so focused on my passion and purpose, I was mag-netic. I wasn't worrying about monetization. I wasn't worrying about if this was going to be a lucrative endeavor or not. And I was able to then attract other people who believed in me and who believed in YAHPS mission. And we created an amazing team that was focused on one singular goal,

and then the money and success followed after that. We actually just celebrated YAHPS four-year anniversary, and we're still guided by that same purpose of helping others accomplish their dreams, whether they're listeners or clients. So if you're wanting to start a business or a side hustle, really ask yourself about what the purpose of the business is, and figure out how your business contributes to the greater good. I promise you won't regret that.

Find a purpose beyond just the financial gain of your company. Plus, you're going to be putting in a lot of hours starting a business or a side hustle. So you want to make sure you're investing that time into something that matters beyond just trying to fill up the bank. Because like we've learned on this podcast time and time again, money does not create happiness. Purpest us. So let's jump into conscious leadership next. Being a leader is without a doubt one of the most important roles that I play.

But it isn't always that easy. And I've noticed it's something I have to be intentional about. Like John says, conscious leadership is something that takes practice, which reminds me of a concept called talent stacking. Listen, young and profitors, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Everything we do and everything we learn ultimately helps us in the long run, especially when it comes to failures. So do your best to lead with love and integrity and learn from the mistakes you make along the way. Your leadership style will grow and evolve over the course of your career. Just be sure you're going it consciously

and with intention. I wanted to leave you with the idea that business isn't war. If we're practicing conscious capitalism, we can all win. And by all of us, I really mean everyone, employees, CEOs, customer vendors, you name it. It's a win-win-win situation. I'm really tired of these black and white win-and-lose mentalities when it comes to business. If I'm winning, you're winning. And if you're winning, I'm winning. Collaboration over competition.

That's what I always say. So, young and profitors, let's get out there and get after it. And while we're talking about win-win-win, why don't you help us out and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. This is the number one way to support us here at Young and Profiting Podcast.

And if you haven't yet, join my text community, Gap Society, powered by slick text. If you join this community, you'll receive texts from me, special offers, exclusive YAP content, and you get to help guide the future of this podcast. So go ahead and text YAPYAPE to 28046. That's YAPY to 28046, or check out the show notes to find that signup link.

And while you're at it, follow me on Twitter and Instagram at YAPYAP with Hala. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. Just search for my name. It's Hala Taha. Thanks as always for tuning in to another incredible episode of Young & Profiting Podcast. And thanks so much to my amazing Yap team,

I couldn't do this for that, you guys. This is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcast.

My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year or design your summer.

We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast happier with Gretchen Rubin. Whether you're doing intans to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior One in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby.

Or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier or page description starting at 1299 per month. it. Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier or paid subscription starting at 12.99 per month.