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Was there ever a time when you believed that Whole Foods was going to fail?
There were times when it almost did fail, but there was never a time I actually believed it would fail.
You said something beautiful about what it takes to keep people.
Whole Foods was like, wow, you've had so many people work in 20, 30, even 40 years here.
How do you do that?
You give people two things.
Give them purpose.
And secondly, they want to feel they're loved.
So if you give people purpose and love, why would they ever want to leave?
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become healthier, happier and more healed.
I'm so grateful to have your ears and eyes for the next hour or so, and I'm really looking forward to diving in with today's guest.
Today's guest is John Mackey, an entrepreneur and co-founder and visionary of Whole Foods Market.
In his 44 years of service as CEO, the natural and organic grocer grew from a single store in Austin Texas, to 540 stores in the US, UK and Canada, worldwide with annual sales exceeding 22 billion.
John co-founded the Conscious Capitalism Movement and co-authored a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book entitled Conscious Capitalism Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business.
And then the follow-up, Conscious Leadership Elevating Humanity Through Business.
John is also the co-author of The Whole Foods Diet, The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity and The Whole Foods Cookbook.
And today we're talking about his latest book, which is called The Whole Story Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism.
It's available right now.
We're going to put the link in the comments.
I'd love for you to order this while you're listening along.
I promise you it won't disappoint.
Please welcome to On Purpose, John Mackey.
John, it's great to have you here.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on, Jay.
Yeah, really grateful to have you here.
And I was saying to you just now, before we started, that I actually received conscious capitalism as such a pivotal moment in my life.
I just finished three years of living as a monk.
And I would honestly say that I'd, up until that point, thought that consciousness or capitalism were two separate things and that they were two separate pursuits.
My monk life definitely helped me learn how they were integrated.
But then when I was integrating back into the real world, so to speak, I
For me to wrap my head around rewiring my relationship with consciousness and capitalism.
Your book and your movement really helped craft some of that initial thought.
So I want to thank you for coming into my life at a very pivotal and important moment for me.
Thank you.
I mean, you're an author, so you put your books out into the world and you don't always know if it's helping anybody or if it's having an impact, unless you hear back from people.
So, of course, that makes me feel really good.
Thanks for sharing that.
Of course.
John, there's so much to talk about today, especially about your new book, The Whole Story.
And I wanted to start off actually just by...
Was there ever a time when you believed that Whole Foods was going to fail?
I don't think there was ever a time I believed it was going to fail.
There were times when it almost did fail.
Yeah. but there was never a time I actually believed it would fail.
I'm a follower of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey and I feel like every one of us is called The Hero's Journey, but for a variety of reasons, and most people don't answer that call, usually fear.
I just kind of answered that call.
I just I got When I was studying existentialism and philosophy in university.
In my very late teens and early 20s I got really clear about death.
We're going to die.
Nobody gets out of here alive.
And it's a lot shorter than people realize the time that we have.
So what do you want to do with it?
I felt like this is what my heart and my soul called me to do.
I talk about it in the book quite a bit.
And so when you're on the hero's journey, you have a lot of near failures.
You have setbacks.
You do get knocked down.
But also amazing things happen.
All these synchronicities occur.
You seem to meet the right person at the right time.
The right mentor shows up.
Miracles seem to occur when you're on your path.
And it's just sort of this grand adventure.
And yes, I mean we did have.
We had a flood in our first year at Whole Foods Market where we had eight feet of water and I didn't know.
We'll call it a near-death experience.
But actually, it was... turned out in retrospect have been a great thing.
It taught us a lot.
It taught me about stakeholders and how we're all interconnected and how there are people that love you.
Your customers can love you.
Your employees can love you.
Your suppliers can love you.
And the community you're part of can love you and you can love them back.
So, Even in the bad things that happened, the disasters, if you reframe them, they were all lessons to be learned on the hero's journey, on the path.
So no, I never really felt it would fail.
I always thought it would be successful.
But, you know, we almost did a few times, but we didn't.
Yeah.
Do you feel now you're at the stage of the hero's journey where you're returning with the elixir?
Is that where you're at?
You know, I've returned without elixir, but then I feel like I'm still called.
And that's my new business I started up called Love Live, which is, I think, also about it's still trying to help people to be the healthiest version of themselves, but going beyond just healthy food and the deeper part of spirituality physical healing, emotional healing and spiritual healing.
And we now have the technologies we didn't have in the past, and we have the wearables, and we have the consciousness that um So many traditions are integrating now around the world all of the mystical paths.
I mean, you were a monk for three years, so clearly you were doing a lot of meditation.
You were on your spiritual journey.
Well, today, all that knowledge has been available to people.
It's so much easier.
It's easier to become enlightened today than it used to be, you might say.
And I feel like, of course, that's what humanity needs, right?
Collective awakening, collective enlightenment.
And yeah, so I feel like I'm still on the path.
I love that.
I mean in the book, the whole story.
You're very candid, you're very open and you're a different sort of business leader because of what you just spoke about.
I'm intrigued as to when did your curiosity and consciousness and spirituality begin?
Is it something that was always there since you were born, or was it something that you discovered later?
Over time, and how?
Even as a child.
I mean, I think most children have some kind of mystical relationship with part of their being, their imaginations, their love and innocence in children.
I always felt a connection to... divine, even as a child.
And then it was more traditional.
I was raised as a Christian, so traditional Christianity.
The deeper spiritual awakening occurred when I was like first time I actually took a psychedelic drug LSD back when I was 20 in university.
And that sort of knocked me off the path of My parents had planned for me.
My parents wanted me, possibly your parents wanted the same thing, for me to be a professional.
Above all else, they wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or get an MBA.
You know, be respectable.
And but that totally knocked me off.
And then I began my own search for the meaning of life.
I wanted to understand, do I have a purpose?
What is existence about?
Is it all just, you know, random chance, Darwinian survival of the fittest?
Is there a deeper spirituality?
And of course, that's not found anywhere. necessarily externally.
It's an interiority.
It's found within our own being, within our own consciousness.
And the LSD awakened me to that possibility.
And then I began to read Eastern religions.
I studied religion, meditating.
And then I continued on that journey and had experienced an ego death again through psychedelics when I was about 22.
That's really kind of the starting point of the book.
I dissolved my ego.
I mean, I was just part of the one.
There's only the one being.
And I just realized that at the The essence, I remembered it actually.
It was like, oh yeah, I forgot.
Here it is.
And that changed everything because then I was like, all right, I can create to dream.
I can create whatever I want to create.
And what do I want to create?
And that's where the interiority, the hero's journey begins.
And I moved into this food co-op when I was 16.
22 years old, maybe 23, and it was vegetarian.
I wasn't vegetarian at that time, but I was really interested in all things counterculture.
I liked the hippies and I thought man, I'm gonna meet some cool people in a vegetarian co-op.
And I did.
And I had a food awakening.
But until then, I just kind of ate the standard American diet, a lot of junk food.
I was more like a car.
Got to take it in to get gasoline periodically to run fuel.
As long as the fuel tastes good, I'll eat it.
And so I didn't eat many vegetables.
I didn't eat much healthy food.
And so I learned how to cook in the co-op.
I learned about natural organic foods and I got excited about it, Jay.
I was like on fire.
And then I went to work in a small natural food store and it was like I loved it.
I loved I was in a community of employees that I shared a lot of current values with.
I was I was connecting with customers that were my neighbors and becoming friends.
And it was like, I want to do this.
And I remember I went back to the co-op Piranha House it was called Piranha House and talked to my girlfriend, Renee.
I think that time I was probably about 23.
Renee was four years younger, so she was 19.
And I said, Renee, what do you think if we open up our own store?
Don't you think that'd be cool?
And she said, oh, Mackleman, that'd be really cool.
Let's do that.
And so we did.
And that was the beginning.
The first store was called Safer Way.
And then, a couple of years later, we relocated.
It, merged with another natural food company and became Whole Foods Market.
And the adventure was well launched at that point.
I want to go back to a couple of things you mentioned there, John.
This idea that You know not everyone who takes LSD or a psychedelic sparks a pursuit into a deeper spiritual journey.
It can for some, it doesn't for everyone.
For you, it obviously got you into philosophy, Eastern religions, as you said.
It kind of forced you deeper.
What do you think...
When you describe that to someone who's never had a psychedelic experience, never been exposed to that, what does that mean?
When you say I had an awakening,
We'll get to the ego death part.
But when you say you had an awakening, when you say it opened it up, what are you experiencing for someone who may not actually know what that means or feels like?
Of course, it's like describing a rainbow to someone who's blind.
I mean they, They can't understand it really until you have a similar experience, or what is making love like, until you've actually done it.
I mean, there are certain experiences that you have to have to actually understand it.
So when I talk about that, I don't expect people that haven't had similar experiences to understand.
But
I expect the ones that have had similar experiences to say oh wow, I've been there, I've done that, I felt that, experienced that kind of speaking to that audience in a way.
But I also tell people that don't want to do psychedelics that there are other pathways that are gentler, that can have transcendent experiences.
Meditation is one good way, but that generally takes a little bit longer for people.
I have found that breathwork is very, very powerful.
And I've worked with that for years.
And you can have a transcendent experience on breathwork, where you get in touch with your deeper part of your soul just by breathing continuously, particularly in a guided situation, because you're energizing a deeper part of your being, in your interior self, and it's beginning to emerge and that can scare people so they stop breathing.
But if you will keep breathing and continue to go through it, This is the best chance you'll ever have to have an authentic connection with your soul.
Not the best chance you'll ever have, but it's a really good way to do it.
That's safe and nothing to be afraid of.
You're just breathing.
So I encourage people that the psychedelics might scare them.
Just don't believe that there's any meaning in life, that there's any interior thing to look at.
The interior universe is every bit as expansive as the physical universe, if not more expansive.
And just we're Americans here and people don't, oftentimes do these journeys into their interior.
You obviously have, Jay.
You spent three years as a monk.
And so your own experiments, you might say, or adventures in this part of your psyche are probably very amazing.
One of my friends, he always wants me to try to explain it to him in rational terms.
His name is Alec.
And I say Alec listen, I can talk about this, but if you really want to know what I'm talking about, you have to do the experiments yourself.
Because you're skeptical and you're asking me to prove it to you.
And I'll say, I can prove it to you.
If you will do the meditation, if you'll do the breath work, if you do the psychedelics, you can know there's an authentic spiritual reality that you don't believe is there.
It's like that story about the guy that lost his key and he's looking under the lamppost because...
Well, that's where the light is, but it's not there, clearly.
So if you're asking people to become enlightened by just rationality, that's looking forward in the wrong place.
You won't find it there.
The light isn't shining there.
You reminded me of a beautiful vedic term in the language you are using.
In the sanskrit is antarakash, which means inner sky or inner universe, as you were saying, and it talks about, in the same way as the, the external galaxy.
We're so excited to explore and send things to space and figure out what's going on out there.
But the inner sky is as vast, if not more, and as deep and profound and unseen as that outer sky.
And we don't have that curiosity or that energy.
I wanted to ask you because I think one thing I don't take for granted anymore John, is that For those of us who have had spiritual awakenings and spiritual journeys and I agree with you on the rational part
I think the way you explained that is brilliant, and I couldn't agree with you more.
Although I think sometimes we assume that everyone wants to have that experience or we assume everyone should go for that experience.
And I found that I was lucky.
I met people who had enlightened experiences.
And that made me open up to the idea that A it was possible, be it existed and see it could happen for me.
And there was this feeling that I would meet someone that I could tell was operating in a different realm.
They were happier.
They were more conscious.
They were more at peace with themselves and others.
They operated and carried themselves differently.
And because I got to see that and witness that, I recognized that there was a difference between observing them and observing someone else.
And that made me believe that there was another reality that I could want to pursue.
But I think for a lot of people, they hear us and they hear people and they say well, what's the point?
I'm paying bills.
I'm trying to survive.
Well, that helped me be richer and more successful.
Right.
Because they're pursuing a different path.
So you're saying that actually tapping into this alternate reality has benefits in the material world as well?
Of course it does.
Yeah.
We started this conversation off by talking about well uh, capitalism consciousness.
You know, I I don't always see how those things could fit together back then,
You know, I remember the, you read the Herman Hess book, Siddhartha.
Yes.
And so he did it backwards.
Most people, uh, Come to spirituality later, he came to it at the beginning.
But then he took what he had learned and he could apply it in the material world, so to speak.
And it helped him be a better, it helped him make him wealthy because he kind of had his interior together, which made it easier.
But a lot of times people are not interested in the interior part because they feel like, well it, I don't see how that's gonna help me in my day-to-day pursuit of wealth fame success power, whatever the but those things.
Ultimately, what people will discover when they get those is they don't really make them happy.
What makes people happy ultimately, is love and having that connection to other people, to ourselves and to the larger universe that we're part of.
It's not that money or fame or power are bad things.
It's just that most people get addicted to them if they pursue them.
And then they forget about, like Siddhartha did in his book.
He forgot about oh, I forgot as he got deeper into the material plane.
He got lost in it.
So I think...
People that are dedicating their lives to making money or pursuing something in the material plane.
If that's what their whole life is devoted to, they will find when they get it that it's not really what they wanted all along.
And so if you can do these things together, you pursue your own interior spirituality, your own interior growth as a person, the spiritual part of you as that develops and opens and awakens, then you're going to appreciate the external world even more, because it's beautiful.
But most people don't even notice it's beautiful because they're locked in their heads or locked in their own egos.
And so they're trapped there to a certain extent.
But once you can begin to break out or help that ego get.
That's why I like to say the ego is a, it should be a servant, not the master.
And once you get the ego kind of where it needs to be, and not driving the car but in the back seat then you're in a position to have it all, which is to achieve the success that you want in life, while having the relationships that you want, while having your own spiritual joy, Because that's what it is.
As you awaken to that part of your being, you experience a lot more love and joy.
And those give our souls satisfaction.
I was reflecting on this recently, this idea that the material world has always made it about the pursuit of and having certain things as being the goal of life or as being the success of life, and i was reflecting on how spiritually, especially in eastern traditions, whether you have something or you don't ie money fame power, control is actually irrelevant.
It's whether you have freedom from envy, freedom from ego, freedom from Anger, freedom from lust, freedom from illusion, because you could have everything in the world and be envious and feel like you don't have anything.
I've been fortunate to know several billionaires, for example, where they have everything they could possibly want in the material plane.
But they're comparing themselves to people that are even more successful richer, and they feel like, somehow or another, their life's not complete.
And it's like you can have anything you want materially, And it's your envy that's making you unhappy.
Correct.
What I have found to be a very useful habit is, when my friends or anyone has prosperity and success, for me to be truly happy for them rather than feel envious of them.
I feel like envy is a very insidious trap that spoils the joy of life.
Absolutely.
And I always say to people, you either have the choice to envy people or study them.
And if you envy them, then you don't get anywhere.
But when you study them, you have the opportunity to- I like that a lot.
That's a takeaway for me today.
Thank you.
Please do.
Yeah, absolutely.
I focused on that heavily because I always reflected on.
I was in the same way as you, appreciating others, admiring others, but I saw the key part was studying them and wanting to learn from them.
And all of a sudden you didn't, feel that they were that far away.
You felt so much closer to them and closer to that success for yourself and that abundance for yourself.
Going to your point on ego death, I love that you use that language.
Could you describe what an ego death is for someone who may be new to the idea or may not be aware of how you're referring to it?
We're very attached to our ego.
I mean, we in fact think that's what we are.
We believe we are the ego.
We believe we're a body and we're an ego.
And so the ego is the part of us that feels like it's separate.
Hey, I'm John.
You're you.
That's a book.
This is water.
This is a microphone.
These are different than me.
They're not me.
And so we have this great feeling of individuality and separateness.
That is, it's so... real to us that we think that's actually reality.
And so With the ego death or a better way to put it, because death's a scary word is sort of your ego disappearing.
You don't have that sense of separation any longer.
You don't identify with your separation.
And the metaphor I like to use is like clothes.
So I have clothes on today.
They're not me.
I'm not my clothes. and I'm going to go home and I'm going to take my clothes off.
Maybe I'll wear them again.
Maybe I won't.
I'll wear something different the next day.
That's not who I am.
I don't identify with my clothes.
Most people don't, but some people do.
Some people actually feel really, really attached to their clothing.
And so I'm not my clothes and I'm not my ego.
And until you can actually identify, have an experience where your ego is dissolved, you won't really understand what I'm talking about.
But one of the great things about it is is that once you realize you're not your ego, you can also begin to let go of your fear of death.
Because what we are at the deeper part of our being is...
The one self, the one being, we all are.
So in a sense, we are immortal, but not, our egos aren't.
So that's the thing that freaks people out.
It's like, I always like to say, it's another metaphor.
It's like, when I die, I'm going to, Oh, yes, I remember.
Here I am again.
And I'm not John Mackey.
I'm not that ego.
I'm not that the body's going to dissolve and disappear.
But the essence of what we are, the one being, the one self, is there always.
It always has been and always will be.
And as you realize that, it's like our greatest fear, of course, is death.
And you can begin to let that go.
And, by the way, once you begin to let that fear go, then you can really see your life as this adventure.
Whatever happens, it doesn't matter.
It's just like a dream.
In fact, I do think life is really a dream.
And I think that's a good metaphor to understand what we're doing here.
I oftentimes will describe it as, have you had the experience of a lucid dream before?
So in a lucid dream, we become conscious that we're dreaming.
And once you become conscious that you're actually dreaming, you can begin to take control of the dream and you can create it however you want it to be.
And once you begin to realize that you're in a dream here, then you can become conscious.
And then you can begin to create a happy dream, a dream of love, of forgiveness, a dream of on your own hero's journey, so to speak, a kindness, compassion.
That dream begins to change.
As you wake up, it becomes a happier and happier dream, because that's the dream that you're creating.
I always tell my friends, it's like, I believe in the multiverse.
Because when I get to a doom and gloom that says we're all going to destroy everything, I says well yeah, not me.
That's not my dream.
My dream is going to get better and better and better.
But the multiverse is real because all possibilities are being realized.
And I said, there'll be some version of John Mackey that goes down that horrible path with you.
I'm just letting you know, it'll be a different one than this one.
Joy is essential and it's also elusive.
You can't order it, you can't borrow it or simply hope it into life.
But now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence.
And I'll see you next time.
We'll see you next time.
This new podcast will speak to you.
Listen to Joy 101 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I think C.S.
Lewis wrote it best, that you don't have a soul, you are the soul and you have a body.
Yes, that's beautifully put.
It's one of my favorite- I'm a big C.S.
Lewis fan.
Yeah, me too.
It's one of my favorite favorite statements that you don't have a soul.
You are the soul and you have a body.
I loved your metaphor about the clothes.
It reminds me of a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which talks about just as we put on clothes and take them off every day, the soul takes on new bodies and takes them off and takes on new ones.
Exactly.
And that cycle continues.
And I think that there's such a liberation to that acceptance as well, in that ego death, as you call it, that if I start to think I am my clothes or I am my car, Imagine how hard life becomes.
Imagine how difficult it becomes if every time your clothes get a bit dirty or there's a little rip on them or there's, you know, someone knocks into your car.
And we even say that when someone hits our car, we say, someone hit me.
Oh, yeah.
I never thought about that.
We do, don't we?
When you're now trying to operate in the dream, how does that realization actually help?
Are you now visioning in alternate realities?
Are you now strategizing differently?
How does that make you approach building Whole Foods differently?
Because Whole Foods is very tangible.
It's very real.
The way I think about it, and the first chapter in the book's called The Game of Life.
Okay.
And the very last chapter in the book is called the infinite game.
And if the one self, the one being has always existed and I think Hinduism talks about this in the Vedanta we're in the one, in the stillness, in pure beingness, in bliss, and then
The Big Bang occurs and we explode into the multiverse on our adventures, and then we come back together again.
And that's the infinite game.
We do it, and we'll always do it.
And so once you realize that it's all a game, that every possibility is realized, we're just going to infinitely create, then you can frame it up.
So there's just this fun game.
Games should be fun.
And that's a better way to live.
It's living your life as it's fun and loving and joyful and that you're creating.
We are very happy when we're creating things.
Watch children.
They're endlessly creative.
They're endlessly playful.
I always tell people, you want to make a friend with a child?
All you have to do is one thing.
Just play with them.
When you play with a child, they start to trust you.
They begin to find that you're fun to hang around with.
You're not like all those other mean grownups.
I just think that is a good metaphor for existence itself, the metaphor of the game.
But an infinite game that we are creating ourselves and playing, eternal play, because you have an infinite amount of time.
I mean, there's no beginning, no end.
There never will be.
So yeah, find your own connect with your soul, find out what your soul wants to do and then do it and have fun and do good in the world.
I think play is a great analogy because play is not mental.
And I think when you say find out what your soul wants to do, I think the hard part is we're up here going.
I don't know what my passion is.
I don't know what to do.
And I'm speaking on behalf of I know people's genuine troubles when they're listening to the show.
And they're like, well, Jay, like, I don't know what my passion is.
I don't know where to start.
I don't know what skills I have.
And these are all mental issues, arithmetic exercises, whereas what you're saying is not on that level.
So how do we get out of our heads?
Here's the thing.
Those are clues.
The best way is to go directly to the source.
These are the breath work meditation, do spiritual exercises.
However, one clue is the things that give you joy.
That's a clue to who you are and what your own heart is calling you to do.
So I often I get asked all the time.
I'll probably get asked that tonight, when I'm doing this talk at this university, is like well you know, how do you know what your heart wants you to do?
And I said, you know you're on the path when you're happy.
When you're listening to your heart and it's bringing you joy and discovery and creativity and play.
You're on your path.
And it's when you're not experiencing those things that you're not on the path.
And so... the things that draw you in.
Like for me when I moved into that co-op and I had my food awakening and all I was interested in.
I just wanted to learn about food.
I want to learn about agriculture and and organic and regenerative and sustainable and natural foods.
And it was like, I couldn't get enough of it because I was so interested in it.
So those are all clues to what makes your heart sing That's who you're being.
That's in this dream.
That's what you're trying to create.
And you can get in touch with that through spiritual exercises.
In my case, you know, my parents wanted me to be a professional.
And I talk about in the book, my mother died feeling like I was a failure.
She died in 1987 because for her, her son was a grocer.
And for that, I was so downwardly mobile.
I never graduated from college.
I just have 120 hours of electives.
I just studied philosophy and religion, whatever I was interested in.
Got a great education.
I just didn't get credentialed.
And for her, the credentials were what really mattered.
But I was off on my pursuit.
I was on my hero's journey.
And it was giving me happiness and joy.
And that's how you know.
How do you know the difference between the happiness and joy and the discomfort that comes even in the happy and joyful path, versus the discomfort that is not your path?
Because I think when people think of like, am I happy and joyful?
Then things get a bit harder.
Or, like you're saying, there were days when Whole Foods could have failed like and it doesn't get easy.
And then you're like, oh, well, is this bringing me joy now?
So how do you?
We have to introduce another character to the story.
I mean, we talked about the ego, but part of our ego is what I and others call the internal critic.
The ego really doesn't, it judges everyone.
The ego's constantly judging.
That's the part that's envious.
That's the part that's angry.
That's the part that somebody cuts you off in traffic.
You know, you say curse words.
And that's the one that's judging us all the time.
As I got deeper into my own spiritual journey, I saw that the critical life issue for me was I am not worthy of love because I'm not perfect.
I do things that I regret.
I do sometimes identify with the ego and I do things that later on I think I shouldn't have said that.
But then I have to go practice forgiveness to move through it.
There is that part of us that is constantly judging, and that's what it does all the time.
It judges everyone else, And it judges and mostly judges ourselves.
And then those judgments for ourselves, we project out into the world, into the dream.
And then the dream is manifesting all the time.
Our emotions, our thoughts are always creating the dream.
Here's the interesting thing about the dream.
We're always a character in our own dreams, right?
Who are the other characters that seem to be acting independently of us?
We're the dreamer.
How can they do things different?
And how's that even happen?
And once you begin to realize, oh my God, I'm the dreamer, I'm creating those characters as well.
And they're representations of some of my other inner thoughts, emotions, judgments, and whatnot.
Once you realize that, then it's like you stop being a victim in your own dream.
So if these things are not working out for you the way you want, The internal critic wants to project it out into the dream and say I'm a victim.
These people should be treating me differently.
I feel righteous in being angry.
But again you're putting out those emotions that are not furthering your life and not bringing you joy and happiness.
And then you get...
You sort of get stuck in it.
You get trapped in it.
And I think that's the human condition in a way.
The spiritual journey is to awaken, to realize, oh my gosh, it is a dream.
I'm the dreamer.
I'm the character in the dream.
And so then how do I treat all the other characters the way I want to be treated?
And that's with love, compassion, forgiveness, thoughtfulness.
Then that dream begins to change.
That's the energy we put out.
But, you know, it's a path because we will forget.
Here's what I always tell people.
You'll forget.
You'll go back and you'll start listening to the ego and the internal critic and you'll judge, but you'll forget that.
Oh yes, I remember now.
It's my spiritual path.
It's just a dream.
I guess one of the big lessons I learned, Jay, is that the past doesn't really exist.
The past is gone.
All that's real is right now in this moment.
That is what's real.
And in this moment, you can choose again.
In this moment, you can choose love.
In this moment, you can choose forgiveness.
And then if you forget, That's okay, because that's the past.
And now in this next moment, you can choose again.
We have this freedom.
That's our freedom.
We have freedom in the moment to choose love, to choose peace, to choose kindness, to choose forgiveness, to be alive, to be playful.
And it's okay if we forget.
If you get down on yourself for forgetting, then you're empowering that ego to judge you as not perfect.
But when you're sharing love in the moment, you are perfect.
So you can be perfect in the next moment by just choosing again to be present in the moment.
And in the moment, there is love.
How did you transfer that energy?
Like I'm imagining you as you're building this huge company before you're walking to a meeting, when you're leading a staff meeting, when you're meeting stakeholders.
How was this translating into reality?
What does that look like? when you're leading a company?
Because you may not be saying these words, but you're trying to live them.
First of all, I didn't do it perfectly.
I didn't stay in the love space all the time.
I got angry, I got judgmental, I got afraid.
All the fear, envy, they're all there.
I didn't claim that I did Whole Foods in any kind of enlightened way all the time.
I always said Whole Foods was my ashram.
That was the place where I got to practice.
I get to practice forgiveness.
I get to practice returning to love.
I did learn some good things we did.
I always tell people, if you want to have a more loving business, the single thing practice that I most recommend.
We would end all our meetings at Whole Foods with appreciations.
The two things that make the mental shift, the emotional shift, the spiritual shift, one is gratitude.
I start my days with gratitude because that opens the heart.
And then you practice forgiveness when you feel like somebody's wronged you.
You practice forgiveness.
But most importantly, we would end our meetings with appreciations.
Yeah.
That's incredibly powerful.
It's very hard for people to stay in a judgmental frame when you've just appreciated them in an authentic way.
I would say people know the difference between somebody who's flattering them because they can feel like they want something from me, versus somebody who's genuinely appreciating us.
It's very hard to keep your heart closed to that.
And so as we practiced appreciations in our meetings, I could see the love in the larger team and the larger group spreading.
We did it at every level.
And that one technique, is very, very powerful.
I always encourage people that are running businesses or even just running a team.
If you end your meetings with appreciations, you will find consciousness begins to shift in the dream.
I'm so glad you brought that up.
I remember, when I was a monk, one of our practices, after completing a service or completing an offering that we were doing, whether it was feeding the homeless or serving in our local communities whoever led that project would go around the room and honor and appreciate each person who was serving with them.
And so when I started my company, I would do that at like our Christmas or holiday dinners, or at our team events or whatever.
I would go around the room and individually speak uniquely about each person in the room who was doing something.
And people found it so strange.
And to me, it was the most normal thing I'd done growing up.
And it's become such a beautiful ritual that we have because...
I find it so beautiful to reflect on people's individual contribution and the value that they've brought, and to remind them of it.
You're seeing their beauty.
You're seeing the God part of them.
And you are helping them to see it.
Because as you express that authentically, they can feel your love for them.
And they begin to wonder, maybe I'm actually more lovable than I thought.
Yes, yeah, exactly.
And I think we feel the most unloved when we feel unseen.
And so if you really want to make someone feel loved, you can only do that by making them feel seen.
When people feel seen for who they are and what they contribute and what they bring and how much they have to give and share, then they not only do they see it in themselves, but they feel truly seen.
So they feel truly loved.
That's why the greatest gift we can usually give anyone is just to be present for them in the moment not lost in our thoughts.
It's not.
You know, we tend to.
As we listen, we start thinking about what we wanna talk about or what we're gonna say, and we lose presence.
But the greatest gift when you can just be fully present for someone.
You are loving them by just being present for them.
And they feel that presence.
So I absolutely agree.
They feel seen.
I like that expression of it.
Anyone who's listening or watching to be under any false pretense is that I'm always operating from this space either.
I love what you said about there are days when you're agitated and there are days when you're frustrated, and there are days when it's not love, it's fear, it's insecurity, it's results.
That's the normal human experience.
And I think what I definitely learned is And I love that you use the word ashram in that sense, because that's exactly what an ashram is
An ashram is a place to practice, a place to learn, a place to heal.
It's a hospital, not a result center.
I think a lot of people don't realize.
I remember...
One of my first days in the monastery, my teacher told me he said don't forget, this is a hospital.
Like, everyone next to you has got an illness, and so do you.
And the moment you start thinking everyone around you is perfect is when you won't like this place at all, because you came here seeking perfection when actually you should have come here seeking practice.
Obviously, you found a good teacher.
I do.
I'm very lucky.
I have a great set of teachers.
But I love the use of the language appropriately.
It functions so well.
And I love that we're having a spiritual conversation about business.
This is so fulfilling to me.
So thank you so much for this opportunity because it's such a new take.
We've had business leaders on the podcast before. but this is a very different thing.
When you're thinking about growth.
I think, going back to that conscious capitalism point earlier, I do think a lot of spiritual people still feel hung up about being ambitious, about being results-driven, about being focused on a goal.
They feel in some way deep inside of them.
We have that wiring that if you're striving for more, you're in some way ungrateful, unsatisfied.
Well, you could be.
Yeah, so let's talk about that.
If that's your ashram, it's a more difficult path.
You know the old saying, it's easy to be a saint on a mountaintop.
I'm talking about being a saint while you're building a business.
That's not so easy to do because shit happens.
And how you respond to that...
That's your opportunity is how you choose to respond to the circumstances you find in your dream.
How will you show up?
And I think the key is you won't always show up well.
You'll make some mistakes.
But don't have to get lost there because you can remember who you are.
Remember who you are.
And then that next moment, you can choose differently.
We can snap back to it right now whenever we want to.
And that took me a long time to learn.
Sometimes I might be lost in the dream for days and days, even weeks at a time.
And then I remember, oh, my God.
I've been such a jerk.
And then, instead of beating myself up for not being perfect, it's like yes, but this next moment I'm no longer.
I am present again.
I'm back into the love space.
People often ask me, like, how do you function in business?
And obviously now I live in LA and everything else.
And it's I actually relish the battle, because I'm reminded every day that I'm not a saint when I'm here.
Whereas on the mountaintop, I could potentially believe that I've made it.
If you think you're a saint, you've already forgotten.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
The ego is always trying.
It's like, oh, you're going to do this spiritual thing?
I'm going to be the very best there is.
Exactly.
Exactly.
That's the ego trying to maintain control, so to speak.
I love the idea that I live in a universe that constantly holds up a mirror to me, because I'm constantly reminded of my desires, my lower nature, my higher nature, the complexities of it.
And I love that battle.
I relish it because that's what reminds me to stay on the journey and stay on the path and stay committed.
And I wanted to ask you, like when you had moments of difficulty where you feel you are moving away from love in business and away from compassion, did you come up with any practices or habits or tools that locked you back in?
People would.
Oftentimes when you have difficult situations let's say you have to fire somebody or you have a business that you're going to shut down
These are very painful, very difficult things to do.
You know people are going to be hurt.
And because we know that people are going to be hurt, then the call, and the only right call, is compassion.
But you have to think about what's the collective good for all?
And you have to make some difficult decisions because you're always thinking what's my win-win-win solution?
Good for me, good for you, good for all of us.
And that sometimes means you have to do difficult things.
But it's how you do that makes all the difference and how you show up.
If you show up in your heart with love and compassion, you're probably gonna have a.
Even though it's difficult, it's probably gonna go well and you'll maintain a relationship because they can feel your genuine love for them.
If you do it with judgment and anger, it's like you're just getting what you deserve, then you've missed it.
That's another opportunity, we'll say, to be in the heart space and do the difficult things.
It's like it's a skill that you have to practice, and if you practice it, you will get better at it.
And you'll still make mistakes, but then you'll learn from those mistakes.
If you just continue to view it all as an opportunity to learn and grow and spiritually evolve, and that you will make some mistakes and you will learn from them.
And it's like you were talking about learning from those that, instead of envying them, you study them.
Well, it's the same thing.
You learn from your own mistakes.
One practice that's very helpful here Jay, is to have people that love you, that you can talk about all this stuff with, and they will tell you the truth.
They'll say, John, you were really harsh in that.
You were not in a loving space when you did that, were you?
And it's like, no, I really wasn't.
And he says, well, what are you gonna do about it?
And I said, I'm gonna go apologize.
I really do think we underestimate the power of forgiveness.
We will make mistakes, mess up, fess up.
When you make a mistake, when you hurt somebody, when you're not in your heart, when you're in an angry, judgmental space, In the next moment you can choose love.
And part of choosing love is to go ahead.
The ego doesn't like to admit it made mistakes.
It doesn't like to apologize.
It doesn't like to ask for forgiveness.
But that will restore you into that love flow.
So you have to be willing to to go ahead and admit that you're not perfect, that you made mistakes.
And then as you do that, you can then let go of it and then you can return.
Joy is essential and it's also elusive.
You can't order it, you can't borrow it or simply hope it into life.
But now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence.
And I'll see you next time.
I'll offer some of my own tips and takes on seeking a more balanced and harmonious life.
This new podcast will speak to you.
Listen to Joy 101 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
John, you talk about the term servant leadership and I feel like, today more than ever, we don't really have good role models of that.
We don't have it.
We don't have that presidential race.
Yeah, it's so far away from that.
And I feel like Servant leadership, compassionate leadership, conscious leadership all of these things you'd hope are in business schools and colleges and universities, but they're not.
And if it does come up, it comes up because it's, hey, it would be profitable to be this way.
Or we still haven't got to a place where people realize that We should create businesses because they'd be good for our kids and future generations.
Or we should create something that positively impacts the world.
And we're still not there yet.
I'm going to tell you something you've probably never thought about before.
Who teaches in medical schools?
Professors.
They're doctors.
Yeah.
Who teaches in law schools?
Lawyers who teach us in our business schools, not business people.
They're intellectuals.
They're academics.
And it's not that that's bad.
It's just that they don't have the experience of actually leading.
They have a theory about leadership.
There's a reason why medical schools and law schools actually have real professionals that are teaching them the skills that they need to know.
And I think it's part of where we've gone wrong in business.
We have people that have almost no experience in business teaching our students.
So they can't teach from actual experience of leadership.
They don't really know about it because they have never really done it.
So that's one reform that we need to do.
There needs to be sort of a tradition.
I think that if you're passing your wisdom on, if you're a retired business leader, that you should be.
That's going to be invaluable to them, because that's not something they're getting in an MBA program.
Obviously, the decision to sell to Amazon was not one that you made lightly.
No.
Explain what was hard, easy...
Of course, it's always about where do you start the story?
And in this case I won't give the background for how we got into this position, but the short answer is Whole Foods is being attacked by shareholder activists.
Our stock had declined in the last couple of years.
And then the shareholder activist is somebody that generally wants to make change to get the stock price up, and then they'll make money doing that.
So they're very short-term focused.
We had a shareholder activist called Jana Partners.
They didn't want to work with us.
They said we're going to take over your board and as soon as we get control of the board, we're going to fire you, fire other parts of the management team and then we're going to just sell the business to the highest bidder.
And there's not anything you can do about it.
Left.
A little bit stronger language than that.
So for me, it was like I kept asking this question.
It was a spiritual question.
What is the win-win-win solution here?
What is the best thing for all of our stakeholders?
How do our customers win?
How do our employees win?
How do our suppliers win?
How do our investors win?
How do the communities that we're part of win?
And I looked at all the different alternatives, but I kept asking that question.
I really do believe, when you ask the question and you stay on it and you keep asking your soul for the answer, that it emerges.
And I remember waking up one morning and it just popped into my brain right when I woke up.
And I knew it was the right answer.
It said, what about Amazon?
Because that was kind of a crazy idea.
Amazon didn't have any grocery stores.
I'd met Jeff Bezos the year before at a conference, and he and I had really kind of hit it off.
We had a lot of common interests.
Jeff loved to read books. science fiction and fantasy.
We shared that in common.
He liked to scuba dive.
I've done a lot of scuba diving around the world.
He's an entrepreneur.
I'm an entrepreneur.
And entrepreneurs generally can find lots of things to talk about.
Talk about their businesses.
He was very interested in Whole Foods.
We were on a panel together.
And so I really liked him.
I admire what Amazon had created.
And Jeff is one of the smartest, most creative people I've ever met.
We looked at other possibilities.
Maybe Warren Buffett would buy the company and it'd be in friendly hands.
He joked and said, I own Dairy Queen and I eat junk food.
This isn't a good fit for me.
And we talked to Albertsons and we realized, oh my God, that would be terrible for us to be part of that company.
We thought about going private, but then you're taking on 12 13 billion on your balance sheet and you have to pay that back and you have to pay interest on it.
The economy has a downturn like it did in 2008.
You might fail.
And you're also giving control of your business over to private equity people and they'll have different motivations.
Just make money.
So we didn't have a good answer.
And the other answer was to fight Jana.
But Whole Foods needed time to turn around its business.
We needed time to lower our prices.
If you're selling something for a dollar and all of a sudden now you sell it for 90 cents, in the short run your sales fall, your same store sales fall, your profits fall.
And when you have activists that want immediate, quick turnaround, then that takes a couple of years before lower prices will help your customers see.
Well, Whole Foods is actually not whole paycheck any longer.
I love the store.
Now it's more affordable to shop there.
When it pops in my brain about Amazon, we flew, they were very interested right from the beginning.
And we flew out there and I met with Jeff and three of his leaders and I had three of my leaders and it was four on four.
And we talked for about three hours just about what we could do together.
And they were not your typical corporate types.
These were extremely intelligent people, very creative.
They had a lot of good ideas about what we could do together.
And I remember when we left there, My team and I went to a restaurant and we're sitting around talking about it and they said that was an incredible conversation.
Those guys are not anything like I thought they would be.
They're so smart and they're so creative.
It'd be fun to work with them.
It'd be a blast.
And then it was like, well, do you think they liked us too?
And it turned out they did.
And they flew to Austin just a few days later and they started due diligence.
And six weeks after that initial meeting, we struck a deal.
And when people ask me, do you have any regrets about selling to Amazon?
And the honest answer is no.
You know, given the circumstances, that was the best solution.
I regret that the circumstances were such that that was our best solution, but it was the best solution.
If I had to do it again under the same circumstances, it would have been far better than Jana selling us to Albertsons or Kroger or some other supermarket chain that wouldn't understand our values, our culture.
Amazon has largely not...
Completely, but it's largely at Whole Foods, keep its culture and operate independently.
Now with me gone.
In particular, two years now they've made more changes than they did when I was there, partly because I resisted a lot of the changes they wanted to do.
Let me just point out how it was a win-win-win.
We got to cut our prices significantly four times in the first two years.
It cost Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars for us to do that, but they think long-term.
They're willing to make that investment, put Whole Foods in a sounder long-term financial footing.
They increased the pay of every hourly team member in Whole Foods within 30 days of the merger occurring.
And that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.
So it was good for our team members, good for our customers.
It was good for our suppliers because one thing Amazon did was study every supplier we had.
And they discovered we had all these suppliers suppliers.
They didn't know about that.
They put into their Amazoncom and started selling their foods and their products.
And so it was a big boom.
And they didn't tell us we had to get rid of anybody.
They just studied and learned from us.
It was good for our investors because the stock we sold it for 30 more than it was before we started talking to Amazon.
And it was good for the communities that we were part of.
Amazon did not change our philanthropic activities for the Whole Planet Foundation or the Whole Kids Foundation.
In fact, they gave more money to it.
There were lots of taxes paid to governments because of the capital gains that were done.
So I think about every one of the stakeholders was better off as a result of the Amazon merger.
But it wasn't perfect.
I did fight with Amazon a lot.
I would say Whole Foods is a more heart-based company.
Amazon's a more professional culture.
People are there to work there for a while, get in on their resume and then get a higher-paying job somewhere else.
There's not as much loyalty in that company.
Whereas Whole Foods.
That's the thing that surprised Amazon when they dug under the hood at Whole Foods.
It's like, wow, you've had so many people work in 20, 30, even 40 years here.
How do you do that?
And I told him the truth.
I said, guys, if you want longevity, You just give people two things.
Give them purpose.
People need purpose.
They want to feel like their work is contributing to making the world a better place.
In some way or fashion is helping people.
And secondly, they want to feel they're loved.
They want to feel they're cared for.
So if you give people purpose and love, yeah, why would they ever want to leave?
Professional cultures don't generally give either one of those.
Yeah, and then when you resigned as CEO in 2021 and you did a goodbye tour.
I left in 2022, so it's been two years.
I gave notice and I had a whole year of saying goodbye.
I understood.
Which was an amazing last year.
Oh, it was incredible.
So did you go to every store?
No, that was impossible.
But I got to every region.
I did literally talk to tens of thousands of team members.
And what I did for that whole year was just thank people.
Thank you for what you've done for Whole Foods.
I mean, I got so much love from people.
It was a beautiful, beautiful letting go.
And I'm still on really good terms with the leadership there.
And also my gift to them was, you know what?
I'm not meddling at all.
I'm not judging you.
Are they doing some things I don't agree with?
Tons of stuff.
But you know you've got to support the new leadership that comes in, knowing that they've got to make their mark and they've got to follow their own hearts, in a way.
And also, here's the thing, Jay.
I couldn't really do love life until I gave up Whole Foods.
That's what my heart was telling me to do.
It's like you're not – I wasn't happy anymore at Whole Foods.
I was fighting with Amazon some.
And I wasn't being creative anymore.
The game, the playfulness of it, the ability to create, that was all kind of disappeared for me.
I was just running a huge corporation for somebody else that wasn't the same kind of I didn't have the same kind of joy in it.
Remember how I said earlier, you know when you're on the right path because you're happy?
I wasn't happy.
I loved Whole Foods.
But I wasn't experiencing that same joie de vivre that I had before that was sold.
And so it was hard for me to let go of it because I loved it so much.
Yeah.
But when I did let it go, then the new possibilities emerged.
You said something beautiful there about what it takes to keep people purpose and love.
I want to ask you for all the entrepreneurs that are listening startups, new companies founders, large companies What is your best advice on hiring and attracting good people?
I've always been good at attracting good people because I have a lot of passion, a lot of purpose, a lot of charisma.
And people are drawn to that like balls to flames.
But I've never been very good at hiring people.
And I believe people's weaknesses come out of their strengths.
And one of my strengths is I really see the beauty in people.
I see the goodness in people.
And that sometimes makes me a little bit blind to things that are not as good.
I'm the same.
I can relate to you in so many ways.
But what I learned was is that I had other people on my team that had really good bullshit detectors, particularly my chief financial officer, Glenda Flanagan.
And she was so much better at hiring than I was.
So I just learned to kind of trust her.
It's like if Glenda was, if she didn't think they were going to be good, I learned the hard way.
If I hired him anyway, I'd regret it.
I really do believe that you need to create a team.
CEOs and founders get way too much credit.
They get too much credit and too much blame.
You're always doing it in a team.
If you look behind Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Or Jeff Bezos.
Remember I told you how great that Amazon team was?
And Jeff was brilliant.
So were all those other people working there.
There's just a lot of super smart people working for Amazon, highly creative people.
So Jeff was able to attract and build a great team.
And so you're kind of no better than your team.
And I was good at attracting good people, but I wasn't good at discerning who was a good cultural fit or whose weaknesses weren't going to take them down and harm the organization.
I depended on the other people to make those calls.
What would be your best advice for firing someone?
People procrastinate on firing for a couple of reasons.
One is that they don't want to hurt the person.
And secondly, they don't want to feel guilty about it.
So my best advice is, Whole Foods had an interesting practice.
I make a distinction between people you need to get rid of because they don't fit culturally and those who are just struggling at the job.
What I learned is that oftentimes people would get promoted because they had done a good job at a lower level, right.
So you think they're ready for the next step.
For many people, they're not ready for that next step.
And then they get fired.
And what we had at Whole Foods, we called it recycling.
And it was like, you know what?
You were really successful at your previous job.
I want you to go back there because you're not happy.
You're struggling.
And I want you to go back.
And then you'll get an opportunity in the future.
That's fantastic.
And if their egos couldn't handle that, you knew they needed to go.
But the really good ones would say, yeah, I am struggling.
I want to step back.
But I'll show you.
I'm going to learn.
I'm going to be better.
I'm going to get promoted again.
Those that later on got promoted again.
They were great because they took their failure, so to speak, as a learning opportunity to grow.
And so then they became more effective leaders.
So my advice in letting people go is you have to do it for the good of the company.
Okay.
And if you're not willing to do it, I used to tell myself, because I never enjoyed doing it.
It was always a challenge for me.
But it was like, if you're not willing to do this, then you should step aside.
Because this is what needs to happen.
And if you're not willing to do that, then you're not a very good leader.
So you have to do what you really know is best for the organization.
Other people are counting on you. to make good decisions and build a great company.
And as Steve Jobs used to say which I really like what Steve would say he'd say A-listers, hire other A-listers.
B-listers hire C-listers.
Because they hire people that aren't as good as them, because it makes them feel better about themselves.
Good leaders hire people as good or better than themselves.
They're not threatened by their strengths because they know that's what will make the organization better.
Yeah.
I happen to agree with that philosophy.
So you want to hire the A-listers.
And if you have to fire people, that's regrettable.
Also, one of the takeaways there is be more careful in who you hire so you don't have to fire.
John, it's been such a joy talking to you today.
Honestly, I've had such a great time and I feel like we've talked about everything from spirituality to business, to habits, to mindfulness.
And we end every episode of On Purpose with a final five.
These have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
So John Mackey, these are your final five.
The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
Follow your heart.
Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
I don't know.
Question number three, how would you define your current purpose?
My current purpose is to fully awaken to love and to share that love with everyone I encounter.
Question number four, how do you define love?
Love is the essence of beingness.
And fifth and final question we ask is to every guest who's ever been on the show.
If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
Be kind.
Everyone, the book is called The Whole Story Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism.
John Mackey, co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market.
John, it's been such a True pleasure to have you in the studio here today.
And I hope you come back for many, many more.
And congratulations on an incredible journey, incredible book and really excited to see what you continue to do with everything that you're building with Love Life.
Thank you, Jay.
It's been a pleasure.
This has been fun.
I'm into having fun, so this has been very fun for me.
So thanks so much for having me here.
Thank you, John.
Thank you.
If you love this episode, you'll love my conversation with Airbnb founder, Brian Chesky on how to tap into your creative potential and the number one thing people get wrong about success.
The best people in your life will be people who see potential in you that you didn't see in yourself.
And I often wonder...
Joy is essential and it's also elusive.
But now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence.
Joy 101.
It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotb.
If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting and moving on-air chats.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Joy 101 and listen now.
Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb is presented by CVS.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
