John Mackey

So I have a whole file.

People like John Mackey historically.

Yeah, but people are trying to do it.

And a lot of people have reached out to me to say, I want this.

Yeah, so I love it.

It was started by two guys, John Mackey, who is the... founder of Whole Foods, and Raj Sisodia, who is a professor.

He was actually at George Mason at one point.

Bentley, I think.

But, but a business, uh, world where you can basically do whatever you want within some reason means that the business owner has a lot of discretion about how they choose to run their business and their life.

I, this is why I've always admired John Mackey at Whole Foods.

Mm.

Like, nobody...

Hmm.

And so in my mind, one of the biggest, uh, things that's gone bad for business when it comes to justice is, uh, public stocks, third-party investors, and short-term incentives.

And so I think most CEOs and business owners actually wanna be John Mackey.

Yeah.

I'm not sure I believe in the other stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, John Mackey is the founder of Whole Foods.

And I had a beautiful lunch with him when I was quite young in my entrepreneurial journey.

And he told me that the consciousness of a business can only be at the height of the consciousness of the leader.

Libertarians get together and we talk about, should we go back to the gold standard? You know, less regulation, all that type of stuff.

So I'm pitching there, and the three judges are Steve Forbes from Forbes magazine, John Mackey, who started Whole Foods, and Rob Arnault, who is the president of an analytics group that supports the PIMCO funds.

So I get up there and I pitch, and I did talk to some people after that pitch, but the real issue, the most important thing was – About five days after the meeting, Rob Arnault reached out to me and said, I'd like to invest in your company.

So here's $100,000.

But by twenty seventeen, it was clear Jeff Bezos saw grocery as the next frontier, a market that still hinged on trust and taste.

Whole Foods, founded by John Mackey in nineteen eighty, had carved out an organic niche with tight supply chains and a distinct customer experience.

Mackey built a brand that was both premium and politically savvy.

Think activist packaging, fair trade sourcing, and a membership program.

So I had the fortunate opportunity to know that I was going to be stepping into the role, which not many CEOs have the opportunity to have that time to process and be able to prepare like I did and having the opportunity to work.

side by side with John Mackey over those 11 months was also a great learning experience at the same time.

You know, a big thing that I did was something we called the whole conversations tour where I went out and visited with each one of our regions and connected with suppliers, customers, community members, all of our stakeholders to understand what are the most important things that we need to be focused on and what are our greatest opportunities as a company.

And that led us to developing something that we refer to as our 10-year vision, which is growing with purpose.

And so because sales were weak, uh, Apple entered a crisis in nineteen eighty-five, a year after the Macintosh was released.

And meanwhile, Steve had brought on John Sculley, his...

the CEO of Apple.

He was gonna provide adult supervision, and so he would be the guy who would turn Apple from a scrappy little startup into an actual corporation.

But he would go to every other office and say, you know, "Hey, you guys are idiots.

What are you doing?" And they would say, "Steve, we don't report to you." Apple got a lot of complaints.

They went up to John Sculley, the CEO.

John was getting tired of him because he could not manage Steve, and so in the end, they made the decision that Steve has to do something else for a while.

And about this time, um, Ray Jardine came out with his, uh, first book, uh, Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook, where he kind of laid out to modern readers the case for ultralight backpacking.

And, uh, my friend Reid Miller, who I know from, knew from work and also from Toastmasters, he was the Scoutmaster of the Scout troop.

So he read this book and got all excited about going lighter, and then he, um, you know, he got me into it.

And we, you know, we saw the boys, when they first come into Scouts, a lot of them are pretty small and just struggling to carry the big packs and all the gear.

Um, and, and I said, "Well, you know, if we sew a, a lash loop on here, you know, then you can load your avalanche probe," or whatever it was, I forget.

And he said, "Yeah, that'd be great." And I said, "Well, let's just do it." And he says, "We can do that right now?" I was like, "Yeah, this is, this is easy.

I've got stuff, the sewing machine's ready." Um, and then I had another friend who, um, we bike with a lot, another neighbor actually.

And he has some respiratory issues and wanted to keep it super light, and so he had a frame bag that went in the frame- interior frame of his bike, but it was super heavy.