John Mackey: The Dropout Who Changed How America Eats

Well, one of your themes that comes through in listening to a lot of yours is that you admire entrepreneurs, and you find one of the common threads among successful entrepreneurs to be that they’re basically fanatics. They’re just completely into their businesses. I was just listening to Michael Dell. I mean, Michael says—and you even started off the episode by quoting him—“How much time did you work?” And he said, “All the time. All of the time.”

That’s a theme for entrepreneurs. It’s not like they’re even thinking about working. Michael doesn’t make a distinction, I don’t think, between work and play. Neither do I, because when you’re really enjoying it, is it work? You’re doing what you want to do, and it’s playful. So it takes a lot of time, but you’re not thinking about it because you’re loving every minute of it and enjoying it. That comes through with the Todd Graves one as well. He just loved his business so much, and all these entrepreneurs are 100% in. That’s where their time goes.

You ask Michael if he was kind of like a Renaissance man or if he was doing a lot of different things, and he was like, “No. No, not really.” I think that’s also true for most entrepreneurs. They’re pretty focused on a few things, and mostly they’re focused on their business.

Yeah, with the conversation we were just having—

Yes, exactly.

Before we started recording, I was essentially seeking your counsel because I think I am just like these kinds of people. You wouldn’t spend 10 years making this podcast and reading 400 of these books—and your book is excellent, by the way, which we’ll talk a lot about today—if you didn’t think that you were similar to them or that there was something about them that was attractive. I feel like essentially my entire life is my work.

I think one thing that we share—and we spent several hours together, too—is that it’s very obvious in your book, and also when talking to you, that you’re definitely a missionary. One of the things I want to talk to you about—I talk to a lot of founders about this—is co-founder conflict. It’s very obvious that, especially when you’re a missionary, you weren’t like, “I just want to start one grocery store so people eat healthier and better food.” You were like, “We’re going to change the way that the country eats.” That was a very distinct philosophical mismatch with some of your early co-founders. Can you talk a little bit about that?

The first one, when we started it up, it was kind of like, “That ought to be fun.” We weren’t trying to change the way America eats. We just wanted to open up a small natural-food store called Safer Way.

A good part of the book is dedicated to the early days because I think many entrepreneurs remember the early startup part of the business very well, and then they remember the last few years. There’s a period in between that they don’t think about. One of the good things about writing a memoir is that I got to rethink it all and relive it all.

My original co-founders, particularly one of them, Mark, just wanted to make a lot of money. The very first store—the very first Whole Foods Market—was very profitable. Even though the flood knocked it back, we got back on our feet, and it was just very profitable. He said, “We don’t really need to do anything else. We’ve got it made. Let’s just not screw it up.”

I didn’t want to have just one store. I wanted to open more stores, and he went along with that. But those new stores started slowly and had to grow into it. There even came a time when we were losing money again, and he was very angry about it. He said, “You’ve blown it.” I said, “No, these stores are going to be fine. They’re going to grow. You wait and see.” But he didn’t have the patience to do that.

It’s like planting a seed: You can’t keep digging it up. You’ve got to let it grow. You’ve got to give the seed time to germinate and turn into something, so you have to be patient. It’s sort of like investing. You have to let it compound over many years. Well, you have to let a business compound over many years as well.

The missionary part was that, as we began to grow, I began to realize nobody was really doing quite what Whole Foods was doing. Nobody quite had the vision that we had—or that I had—to be a national company, to maybe change our agricultural system, and maybe be able to help people eat healthier.

I could see what was happening simultaneously with Whole Foods’ growth: America was getting sicker and sicker. That’s the paradox. It almost tracks perfectly. David, 74% of Americans are overweight, and 43% are obese, and that has not peaked. It is still going up. You can see it now with “Make America Healthy Again”—people are beginning to respond to the fact that we are literally killing ourselves through what we’re eating.

The co-founder who had the philosophical mismatch—was that the same one that you guys bought out? Was it Mark that you bought out early on?

Yes, Mark.

Okay.

That’s right, Mark. The other co-founder was with me. He was Mark’s partner originally—Craig—but Craig really had a larger vision. Craig really wanted to grow the business.

I remember—I don’t know if I told it in the book or not, but I think I might have mentioned it—one day early on, we were starting to grow and starting to go to California. Craig said, “John, we’re going to be everywhere. We’re going to be everywhere in America. Can you believe this? We’re going to have Whole Foods Markets everywhere.”

He said, “I’ll bet someday we have a store in Kansas City.” For Craig, Kansas City was the last place we’d have a store, but he thought, “We’ll get there someday.” I remember—I think Craig had retired by the time we finally got to Kansas City—but I remember calling him up and saying, “Craig, we’ve done it. We’re in Kansas City, dude. We made it.”

There are a lot of things that I mentioned in the founders episode I made about you. I wasn’t expecting it because you’re hilarious in the book, by the way, especially at the start. You’re like, “I’m this shirtless, hitchhiking hippie. I just dropped out of college. I’m looking for my life’s mission and what I want to do for work.”

You wouldn’t think that a shirtless, hitchhiking hippie would have a lot of parallels with Johnny Rockefeller. But there definitely are, specifically in the early days of his career, when there was a commitment mismatch between him and his original co-founders. He wound up buying them out. He said the day he got rid of those partners was, looking back, one of the smartest and best decisions of his life.

You were constantly wanting to expand, expand, expand. That’s the next question I’m going to ask you. From the very early days of Safer Way and then what turned into Whole Foods, your partners were trying to put the reins on you and pull you back. Can you talk us through that time of your life?

I just had a lot of confidence. It’s not that we weren’t making mistakes. I just think entrepreneurs believe—I got this from listening to the Michael Dell episode on the drive out here—that you have to make mistakes. That’s how you learn. That’s how you iterate.

Entrepreneurs have confidence that they will solve the problems. Michael likes to figure out puzzles, right? Well, business is, in some way, a puzzle. I’m doing it again with Love.Life. It’s like, “What does the market really want here? This isn’t working. We’ve got to do less of that. This is working. Let’s do more of that.”

You’re constantly trying to think about how to create more value for your customers in ways that they don’t necessarily even know they need. The entrepreneur has confidence that he or she will figure it out, crack the code, and solve the puzzle. They’re willing to go ahead even though they don’t know for certain, because they believe they’re going to figure it out.

My co-founders weren’t sure we would be able to figure it out. They didn’t want to blow it. They wanted to play it safe. They didn’t want to lose what they had, I think. Failure wasn’t an option. I just think entrepreneurs have great confidence in their ability to solve the problems. They’ll figure it out and win. I think I fell into that category, looking backward.

Why did you understand, though, that you had to expand when they thought, “Okay, we can just stay with this nice old store”?

Because the world is constantly changing. Whole Foods had no patents. We were just a grocery-store retailer. Anybody could see what we were doing, and anybody could copy what we were doing.

I was amazed. I always liked to make the joke that Whole Foods flew under the radar. The supermarkets never took us seriously for decades. It wasn’t until we opened up in Columbus Circle in New York City that they started to take us seriously as a competitor.

The media never paid any attention to us, either. We opened up in Columbus Circle, not Times Square, in the biggest supermarket in New York. It was in a basement. I talk in the book about how difficult a decision that was because of the capital investment, the lack of parking, and the fact that it was in a basement. It was like, “We’re bound to fail.”

But we took the risk, and that store was—and still is—the highest-volume store at Whole Foods, even though it’s got some challengers now. Ever since we opened, it just took off. Then the supermarkets discovered us. They started to take us more seriously as a competitor because of all the publicity we received, and they had everybody go see that store.

And then the media started to pay attention to us as well. As the media gave us more attention, more people began to buy the stock, and so we had this upward spiral of success.

One of the things is that we can't patent anything. Anybody can see what you're doing. It's easy to get your intellectual capital—just hire away some key employees. Whole Foods was fortunate because we were never taken seriously by the supermarkets until we really developed scale on our own.

I think I told the story of a venture capitalist who didn't invest, and his basic argument was, “Well, I don't think it's a big market. You're just a bunch of hippies selling food to other hippies. But then, if I'm wrong, these other big supermarket chains will put you out of business. You can't compete with Safeway or H-E-B or those guys.” He might've been right, except that they didn't pay any attention to us, so we kept doing what we were doing. They were hypnotized by Walmart. They were so scared of Walmart that they ignored us.

This is one of the most surprising things. I want to go back to the venture capitalists first, and then I want to go to Walmart, because we talked about this when we had dinner, but in the book, that was one of the most shocking things. You're like, actually, Walmart played a huge role in our success, and I didn't even put it together before that.

You call venture capitalists “hitchhikers with credit cards.” In the book, you do not hide your disdain for them in general. Can you explain why? You call them “hitchhikers with credit cards,” and recount some of the experiences that you had with them in the early days.

First of all, I'm glad we got venture capital money. I don't know if we could've grown without it. We didn't get very much, but it was enough to get us into Northern California, and then, 4 years after we got the money from them, we were public. So they were important for us to get to where we got to. Once we had the public money, we didn't need those hitchhikers any longer, and they got out of the car.

I tell entrepreneurs this all the time: VCs are playing a different kind of game. The game VCs are playing is kind of a blockbuster model. They're looking for exponential growth, and when they get an Apple, an NVIDIA, an Intuitive Surgical, or one of these companies that just compounds and compounds and compounds, they can get 100× their venture capital money. That's what they're looking for.

What ends up happening is they oftentimes take good businesses and try to scale them too rapidly because they're trying to get that exponential payoff. Remember, they've usually got these funds where the money is only going to be in that fund for, you know, 7 years. They've got to start paying back. The funds are not evergreen funds where you can keep the money in them for decades.

They pressure the entrepreneur to try to scale rapidly, and that works for some businesses. Those are happy endings. But a lot of times, you take a perfectly good business that's not going to be a multibillion-dollar business that's going to change the world, but is still a good business, and they wreck it.

They can afford a lot of failures because the blockbusters make so much money. It's like a batting average: They don't have to hit 1,000. They just need to hit well enough, and the blockbusters are home runs, so they make a lot of money on that.

I'm often telling entrepreneurs, “Be careful with the VCs, because the first thing they're thinking is that they want to scale your business. They're going to tell you, ‘Don't worry about your burn rate. We'll do another round of financing at a higher level, and a higher level, and a higher level.’”

But what often happens down that road is that the business doesn't scale as well as they want it to. Then you get the round where it's kind of a cram-down round, a down round, and the entrepreneur's share is diluted way down in those down rounds. Or they get rid of the entrepreneur, bring in professional management, and throw them out on the side of the road.

I always tell young entrepreneurs, “Don't give up control of your business to the VCs.” They may talk a good game, but they're not fundamentally aligned with you. I think for most entrepreneurs, you really want to build a business, and you probably want to be here a decade, or 15 or 20 years from now, still growing your business.

If that's the case, you have to be very careful about the VCs, because that's not what they want. They have 7 years. They want a 100× return if they can get it, and they're prepared to crash your business prematurely if that's what it takes. So be careful. That's the main thing I tell them.

How do the younger entrepreneurs that you're advising usually respond to that advice?

Well, for one thing, most of them don't care, because I think you're a builder. Michael Dell is a builder. A lot of these entrepreneurs you're talking about, these iconic entrepreneurs, are builder entrepreneurs. But that's not the most common entrepreneur. Those are the ones you get biographies about.

The most common entrepreneur is a serial entrepreneur. They just start businesses, and they do them for 5 years and flip them. They're like somebody remodeling a house and then flipping it, except in these cases, they're really creative. They're good at germinating things. They don't want to operate them, and they don't want to really build them over the long run. So they're okay with trying to scale them because they're not going to be around anyway. They want a rich exit. That's more common than you realize.

I think I now am realizing that, and I have for several years. Actually, it's funny—I just thought about this story this morning, and I think this is actually a really important point.

I remember, a few years ago, having dinner with a founder. The weird thing is, I had never met him. He was a fan of the podcast, but I was thinking, “I don't know if this guy is actually listening to the podcast,” because he wanted to talk about the watch he had and the car he was driving. I found out he was selling a ton of secondary before his company was successful at all.

It just came out yesterday or the day before that this company—which had a $2 billion valuation in 2022 or 2021, whenever I was having dinner with him—did $7 million in revenue last year.

Wow.

And they had $47 million in expenses. I'm like, “Oh, you're just that kind of guy.” I was like, “I don't give a shit about the car you have or the watch you have. I care about what you build, not what you consume. You should be proud of what you have built—not that you bought something, or that you have money to buy somebody else's product. That doesn't impress me.”

Obviously, I left the dinner and never saw him again. I'd kind of forgotten about him until yesterday. One of the benefits of reading a book like yours, or any of these biographies, is that you get to the end of the story and you're reminded that our life is limited. We have limited time here.

Mm-hmm.

You should be ruthless with how you're spending your time. I just gave 2 hours to this guy who wasn't even a B player—he's an F. You've done nothing, you fucking joker. This is useless for me to spend any time with you.

This is why people think I'm a little crazy. I spend almost all my time with people that have, as I said in the episode, people like you—Michael Dell, Todd Graves. I'm obsessed with people who do things for a long time.

Right.

Time is the only filter that I trust. I have no idea—no predictive ability—that this entrepreneur who started a company today is going to be successful. We're going to see, and it's going to be up to them and the decisions that they make.

I'm kind of drawn to these more missionary founders because you just make better, longer-term decisions.

So I'm not sure he was a typical serial entrepreneur, because a lot of serial entrepreneurs that I know—I know a bunch of them—and they do care about their businesses. For them, it's more that they have a certain skill set of creating businesses and then getting them to a certain level, and it's not primarily about the money.

For them, the fun part is creating a business. Then, as you start to staff it up and build a bureaucracy, they feel trapped by their own creations in a way. They're not wired to fit within the kind of corporate structure that they're creating, and all businesses eventually evolve to—or almost all businesses eventually evolve to—if they get any scale.

They just don't like that, so they start over again. But I think those people are very interesting. I think many serial entrepreneurs are not simply shallow people doing it just for the money.

I have some good, close friends who've made a lot of money creating different businesses. One of my good friends in Austin is a guy named Brett Hurt. He co-founded 3 public companies. His most famous one was Bazaarvoice, which did all the—if you do a review on an online business, you're probably using Bazaarvoice technology.

Brett says, “Well, I just love creating businesses, but after I've done it for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years, I just get bored with it and I want to create something new.”

Yeah, I don't have any problem with that.

Yeah. The whole point of being an entrepreneur is that you get to decide what you work on and who's around you. That's one of the biggest joys.

But Brett would never be bragging about any of the cars he drives or his wealth. He just wouldn't do that.

Before having this conversation with John Mackey, I got to spend seven hours with him over two days, and it was during one of our conversations that John Mackey told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about the "Founders" Podcast. He had listened to over 100 episodes before we met, and he told me that if the “Founders” podcast had existed when he was younger, Whole Foods would still be an independent company. Because the podcast and all of history’s greatest entrepreneurs constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses, he would have put a much higher priority on it, especially during good times.

During boom times, it’s very natural for a company, and for human nature, to not watch your costs as closely because everything is going so well. Andrew Carnegie would repeat this mantra time and time again: “Profits and prices are cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace.” Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie’s view, any savings achieved in the costs of goods were permanent.

Let’s go back to the role that Walmart played in Whole Foods’ success, which is a very interesting part of your book.

Well, if I was using a metaphor—it’s kind of like, we were using a football metaphor—Walmart was such a massive force, they distracted everybody, all the supermarkets. Remember, when Walmart started out, they didn’t sell food.

Sam Walton—you’ve read his book probably 10 times. He started out in kind of a five-and-dime store, and that was his initial model. I remember he had this big idea to do the bigger general merchandise store, and he couldn’t sell it to Ben Franklin.

To Ben Franklin.

So he just went out and did it on his own. It was only later, after Walmart was very successful and growing, and they were competing with Gibson’s and companies like that, Kmart, that they started thinking about food. But when they put groceries in, it disrupted the conventional supermarket industry so much that all they wanted to do was figure out how to compete with Walmart.

So the existing grocery stores saw the competition from Walmart, and they made the drastic mistake of trying to compete on price?

Yes.

With the low-cost provider.

Correct. And so they tried to cut their costs. They spent less money building out their boxes. They looked more like warehouses. They were more sterile. They went with cheap lighting—everything to cut their capital investments down. Then they cut their labor to the bone. A lot of them had unions, so they had to cut service back, and they still couldn’t compete with Walmart because they were playing Walmart’s game.

Whole Foods was going in this different direction. We said, “Well, we can’t compete with Walmart on price. We’re not even going to try to. We’re going to compete on quality. We’re going to compete on service. We’re going to have a differentiated product mix.” And so that’s what we did.

In fact, one venture capitalist said, “You’re a bunch of hippies selling food to other hippies.” That’s true—it was true at one point. We were definitely focused on a younger generation and more health-conscious people.

But what ended up happening was that as those supermarkets made their stores less attractive to, we’ll say, middle-class and upper-middle-class women, who do most of their food shopping, they wanted to come into a store that was pretty, that was beautiful, where people gave them good service, took their groceries to their car, were nice to them, and answered their questions.

They didn’t get the products that Whole Foods sold. But what they got was beautiful produce that tasted good, and these people were really nice to us, even though they had piercings and tattoos and didn’t look like them—they looked like their children, actually. So we kind of cracked the upper-middle-class market next, and they bought our food for the quality and the service.

As that happened, we began to grow faster. Our comps went up. We were not just in our own little hippieville any longer. The supermarkets didn’t pick it up. They really didn’t pick it up.

So they were ignoring you?

They were ignoring us. Using our football metaphor, Walmart was like this giant distraction, and we were running down the field wide open for the touchdown pass. They were so obsessed with stopping Walmart that it allowed Whole Foods to compete on a different framework, a different competitive strategy.

For the longest time, the supermarkets only competed on price, really. They had nice stores with Muzak in them, but they were all trying to compete on price. Then Walmart was the killer app, so to speak, and that’s all they knew how to do: compete on that.

So Whole Foods created a different business model. Once they figured it out, it became a lot tougher competition for us. They started copying us. They started making nicer stores, putting a bigger emphasis on their perishable foods like produce, and competing with us on price instead of with Walmart on price.

How many years did they give you the run of the field?

That’s a great question. I’d say we got the run of the field. We opened the first Whole Foods in 1980, SaferWay in 1978, and we didn’t open up in New York until 2004, when we opened up Columbus Circle.

Think about that. We had 20 to 25 years where nobody paid any attention to us. That allowed us to scale and compound. They just dismissed us. They thought, “Who cares about Whole Foods? They don’t hurt us.”

We never hurt any one supermarket that much. In fact, we’d come into a new market, and they’d compete initially. They’d try to lower prices against one of our products. But then their sales didn’t drop very much, because Whole Foods would take a little bit from a lot of different grocery stores. We wouldn’t take much from any particular one.

As a result, they just thought, “We don’t have any problem competing with Whole Foods.” They just ignored us.

What was going on there? I don’t understand how you would take a little bit from, let’s say, 5 of the other grocery stores in the area.

Because we were so differentiated, we would take only a few of their customers. Most of their customers didn’t switch over; just some of them did. A few switched over from a lot of different places.

In the early days, when we were the only natural-food supermarket maybe for 50 miles around, we had a lot of people who would drive in on the weekends and stock up. They’d buy $300 or $400 worth of groceries.

How far were they driving to get to you?

Sometimes 100 miles. When we only had one store in a market area, people might come in. It wasn’t their everyday shop, right? They’d come in because they couldn’t get this food anywhere else. They didn’t have what Whole Foods was selling at a typical supermarket.

Back in the day, we were so unique. I always say, David, that during the first 20 years we existed, when people would first walk into a Whole Foods Market, you could see it—I’d see it again and again and again—their jaw would drop. It was like, “I’ve never been in a store like this.”

Mm-hmm.

Now people don’t have that feeling because it’s more common, and supermarkets have upped their game. But for at least 20 years, people were just blown away the first time they came into a Whole Foods Market. They’d never seen a store like that. It was so different from any other supermarket they’d ever been in.

We were very well differentiated. We were in a niche, and people did not compete with us in that niche. So we sort of owned it. But as I said, retailers don’t have patents. We couldn’t patent a natural-food supermarket. We couldn’t patent our product mix, our marketing, or our service levels.

And so scale was your solution to that?

Well, as we scaled, we could get better pricing as well.

So that was one of the craziest stories in the book. Again, I’ve been shopping at Whole Foods forever, but for some reason I never thought about its creation. I just figured, “Oh, he started the first Whole Foods and the second, and he’s been doing it for 40 years, and that’s how it happened.” I had no idea how much you grew by acquisition.

The acquisitions were key because they created a geographical platform for us.

To go into a new geography and create a team of people is very expensive. We did it a few times. We started in Texas, we did it in Northern California, we did it in Chicago, and we did it in Northern California. But most of the other regions—Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Florida, and North Carolina—we got our platform by an acquisition. We bought out an existing company.

It didn't mean we didn't get many stores. We might have gotten 6 stores in Boston, 7 in Los Angeles, and 2 in Florida. But that was still enough to create the platform, and from there, with that platform in place, with support already there and good intellectual capital—people who knew what they were doing—we were able to grow faster. Let's say Whole Foods has 550 stores right now. Probably, of those acquired stores that still exist and weren't relocated, maybe 25.

So the acquisitions were happening earlier in the company's history?

Yes, earlier. They created a geographical platform that allowed us to expand out from that platform and, in a sense, open new stores in that area.

This is, again, one of my favorite parts of the book, and I think I want to spend some time here, if you don't mind. Again, Rockefeller did this exact same thing. I mention it in the Founders episode I did on you, where he had this thing called secret allies, which I think is one of my favorite ideas I've ever come across in any of these books.

He's at the very beginning of the refining industry, and you're at the very beginning of the natural foods industry.

Yeah.

It doesn't really exist.

Right.

You are, by far, the most ambitious. I called you in the episode—I thought, “I should have known this.” Anybody who's going to start in a new industry and build the category-defining company in that industry, of course they have this huge ambition. They're essentially a conqueror, which is the way I think about you.

Even though I think a lot of people would not come away with that same conclusion because of the hippie nature that you started with, what you do is very smart. You did exactly what Rockefeller did. You looked around and thought, “Well, I'm doing this thing. Who else? Let me look around—not just in my area—who else is doing the same thing?”

In some cases, you find out about them in trade journals, and then you don't just think, “Oh, that's interesting.” No, you get on a plane, you go there, and you start building a relationship.

Yeah.

You built a network, right? Was it an official network? Was this unofficial?

Yes, we had a name for it. It was called the Natural Foods Network.

Talk about this. This is phenomenal.

In some ways, the natural and organic foods industry came out of the health food industry. The health food industry started earlier, but it was mostly what we call pill shops. They were mostly selling supplements, some packaged whole grains, whole-grain flours, and things like that, but most of their sales came from supplements. That's where the industry grew out of.

Think about Jack LaLanne. He was back in the health food era, and he was a health food champion.

Was that the 1970s? What time period?

No, we're talking about the early health food industry, which was probably after World War II. Then, until my generation came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you began to see natural food stores start to pop up that were primarily food rather than supplements.

There came a point where we realized we weren't really health food stores in the old, traditional sense. We were different. We were natural food stores. Then the next iteration was, what if we did a store that was a complete, one-stop shop for people living this lifestyle? We would be a supermarket—a natural food supermarket.

When Whole Foods started, there were only 3 or 4 other natural food supermarkets in the United States. There was Bread & Circus in Boston, Mrs. Gooch's in Los Angeles, and Frazier Farms in San Diego. That's about it. There were some smaller stores. You've got to be at least 10,000 square feet to be a natural food supermarket, in my mind.

I heard about those in the Natural Foods Merchandiser and went and studied them. I remember it was pivotal. I could go and tell the investors, “Hey, I didn't invent this. There are other people doing it. It's working in Los Angeles, it's working in Boston, it's working in San Diego. Why wouldn't it work in Austin? It'll work in Austin. Let's try it.”

Otherwise, I may not have been able to get the money if I didn't have at least a few prototypes that were already working. I went and studied them, became friends with them, and ultimately acquired all of them.

You jumped to where I was going.

But there were others that were opening up around the same time, like Alfalfa's in Boulder, Whole Food Company in New Orleans, and Unicorn Village in Miami. There were others that were forming about the same time. It was an idea whose time had come.

But what was the initial instinct? The initial instinct was, “These people are doing what I'm doing. Let me go build relationships with them,” and then you realize, “Oh, there's a mismatch of ambition here, and I can actually acquire them?”

No.

Because they didn't want to expand?

You're giving me too much credit there.

Okay, but Mrs. Gooch's—I remember that one.

Yeah.

Because that was instrumental. At the time, I think you guys were doing $8,000 to $10,000 a week in sales. There wasn't a butcher.

That was at SaferWay.

Okay, at SaferWay, $8,000 to $10,000 a week or something like that.

Yeah.

They were doing $100,000, and you were like, “Oh!” That kind of opened your eyes that you could add the other—

Yeah.

—product category.

That's right.

Correct?

Bingo.

Okay.

Mrs. Gooch's was a huge influence early on because it was like, wow, they were doing 10 times as much sales as we were doing. Their stores were a little bit bigger, but they weren't that much bigger. They were selling fresh meat, and they had big produce departments. So that's what we needed to do too. We couldn't do it at SaferWay; it was too small. We needed a bigger location.

But what ended up happening—I think of it this way—we were all missionaries in a way. We really believed in natural foods. We saw what was happening with the processed food industry, that it was basically poisoning people. People were eating this terrible food and eating junk food diets, and we wanted to create this really natural, organic revolution that could change the world.

We were sort of like Puritans in a way. Other people who were our colleagues were missionaries too. They were doing it because they really believed in it.

Initially, we created this Natural Foods Network because we were helping each other. We would get together, bring our financial statements, and trade them. We didn't see ourselves as competitors. We each had our own geographical niche, and by exchanging financial information, we were all becoming better retailers.

It was a club, and we used to take trips together too. We did have some people in the industry who weren't just retailers. We had a Wild Man's group. We did some adventures together in Alaska and Yosemite.

This wasn't work-related? This was just friendship?

Belize, yes.

Building friendships.

Building relationships.

Okay.

And having adventures together.

Wouldn't you guys also travel to other stores together and do store visits as a group?

Oh, yes. What we'd do is come together in a city, and there'd be a host company, usually around a new store. “We've opened up a new store. You've got to see it.”

When we hosted in Houston, we opened up our first natural food supermarket in Houston in 1984, and we hosted the Natural Foods Network meeting there. That became one of the highest-volume stores in the natural foods world within a couple of years.

Was this like a collective, or did you feel you were kind of the leader of this organization?

The guy who organized the Natural Foods Network, whom I credit in the book, was a man named Peter Roy, who was a natural networker. Peter started Whole Food Company in New Orleans, which we bought out in 1988, and then he came on and helped start Northern California.

He eventually became president of Whole Foods for 5 years, and he left us in 1998. I go into some detail about that in the book. He was instrumental. He worked for us for 10 years and brought the network together.

One of the first acquisitions we did with Peter—and it was key before we went public—was Wellspring Grocery in North Carolina. Lex Alexander and Peter were best friends, so Peter said, “John's a good guy. We're going to take good care of the business. We're going to grow it. You're going to get a big paycheck.”

We needed to go public because I didn't want the VCs to get control of the business.

You said they were trying to grab the steering wheel at some point?

Yes. The founding investors still had a majority of the stock. The VCs owned 34%. But if we'd done another round, they would've gotten control of the business, and they had different agendas.

There's a great story in the book because your dad—which we'll get to—plays a huge role in your life—

Yeah.

—and in the company.

Yeah.

And there's this knockdown, drag-out fight between you guys, and then he pulls you into a room with the VCs afterward. He pulls you into a room, and he's like, “We need to get rid of these guys as soon as possible.”

Yeah. He just said, “They want to take over the company.”

“Let’s get them out. Let’s get them out of the car.”

“Yeah. Let’s get them out of the car.”

“He used more choice language about it than that.”

“Let’s go back to this network, though.”

“So, we’re now developing all these—”

“Yeah.”

“Relationships with these guys. What ended up happening is I did have an ambition to grow the business. Most of them wanted to stay, and when I went to Northern California, that was the first rupture in the Natural Foods Network because we’d gone out of our state, and Mrs. Gooch’s felt like California was theirs.

“I said, ‘Guys, LA is yours. You’re there, but nobody’s in Northern California. That’s 400 miles away. You never said you even had any ambition there.’ And they said, ‘Well, we don’t, but we didn’t think—we’d get there eventually, and now you’ve gone there.’ So, that kind of began to break up the Natural Foods Network.

“We stopped sharing financial information. Whole Foods sort of created some fear in some of these other entrepreneurs that we were maybe going to come into their territories. I kept saying, ‘No, guys, we’re not going to compete with you head-on.’”

“What do you mean you’re not going to compete with them head-on?”

“There were markets that we stayed out of for years.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, then we bought them. But you see, that’s a different thing.”

“John, John. Come on, man. You are unbelievably humble, and I don’t think that’s an act, but you also are this ruthlessly competitive conqueror. You admit to how competitive you are in the book.”

“Yes. But the point is that these were my friends, and I did not want to hurt my friends.”

“Okay.”

“So, I never hurt Mrs. Gooch’s. It didn’t hurt them. I mean, maybe it lessened their upward potential someday if they’d gotten there in 10 years or whatever. Somebody else would’ve gotten there before them, though, slow as they were going.

“But I didn’t compete directly with anybody else’s stores ever. I never did it. I didn’t go to Portland for that reason because Nature’s was there. I didn’t go to Boulder until Alfalfa’s and Wild Oats had partnered up. So, with the people that I developed those relationships with, we could pick where we went.”

“Why would they be scared of you? What are they seeing in you?”

“Well, Whole Foods got out ahead. We raised the VC money, and once we went public in 1992, that was the big event because now we had this currency and all—”

“The entrepreneurs? You mean the VCs could cash out? Okay.”

“No, I’m talking about the—”

“Oh, the acquired—”

“Natural entrepreneurs.”

“The people that were acquired. Okay.”

“And they all did. What ended up happening is they had no—how could they get liquidity? The reality for most businesses is they’re never going to be big enough. To get liquidity, they have to sell the business because most of them can’t go public. How else can you get liquidity? You’re going to either have an IPO or you’re going to have a sale.

“So, most of them saw the writing on the wall. Whole Foods was expanding, and they should cash out. Most of them came to us and said, ‘Would you be interested in buying us?’ Once we bought Wellspring, and particularly once we bought Bread & Circus, what we paid was public, and they thought, ‘My God.’

“We paid Anthony $28 million, but he ended up getting $30 million because there was a lag period before we could cash the stock out for him, and it was worth more when we did our secondary offering. They were like, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize my business was worth this much money.’ And so they came to us.

“The guy, Terry Dalton, in Florida said, ‘Buy me. Why don’t you come to Florida? We’re great.’ And so we did buy him. That’s kind of how it happened. They trusted me. They knew we were going to take care of their business, too. We were going to love their business and make it better, actually.

“Most of them saw what Whole Foods was doing, and they admired us. They envied us partly, but they also admired us, and they knew if they sold out that we were going to take care of their team members and that we were going to maintain our standards. We weren’t going to turn it into a regular supermarket, and they felt good about that. Win-win-win.”

“I want to go back to your competitive drive because I do want to talk about that. I think it surprised a lot of people. My question, though, is that I want to know from your perspective and your mind, okay?

“Because I do the exact same thing now. Podcasting is very positive-sum. There’s really no competition. It’s a lot more collaborative. But I am very curious, and I run with the same idea that you did and the same idea that Rockefeller does. I will fly across the country just to have lunch or dinner with another podcaster because I want a download of your thoughts on how you think about your business and what you’re doing.

“Did you notice, as you were building this network and meeting all these other people in all these different regions, that you were different from them?”

“Sure. One of the things I liked about your Michael Dell interview, which was impressive—I know Michael, of course. We both live in Austin. For a long time, we were the 2 big entrepreneurs in Austin before it became an entrepreneurial hub in the last decade or so. I followed his career closely, and I know him. He’s a really good guy.

“Michael talked a lot about continuous learning. Remember how he talked about—you asked him, you said, ‘Well, you had to reinvent yourself 3 or 4 times.’ He said, ‘No, more like 7 or 8 times.’ Yes, because every time there was a new revolution, he had to adapt his business, right? So, I continued to learn.”

“And you thought they were complacent?”

“The world is constantly evolving. It’s constantly changing. If you sit still—Michael said it in his talk with you: ‘If you stay the same, you get passed up. You’re going to fail.’ You have to continue to evolve. New things emerge, and you have to change with them.

“Whole Foods was changing rapidly. We were opening up bigger stores. Most of these guys didn’t have the capital to try to match that. They didn’t have the ambition to do it.”

“Let me back up. I’m not trying to say this so somebody can be an arrogant person—‘Oh, I’m different from all my competitors.’ No. It’s a really great way to spot opportunity: the fact that you see this over and over again.

“It’s one of my favorite lines in Steve Jobs, that if you actually look at one of his main skill sets, it was that he was able to identify markets with second-rate products—products that he thought he could make better or think about in a different way. He didn’t invent any of them, and you can just go through all of them, from personal computing to the phone to everything that he’s done.

“I was like, ‘Damn, I didn’t even realize that until—’ It was probably the 10th time I’d read that book, too, or the 10th biography of his that I’d read. I see that a lot in what you are doing, too. So, I’m not trying to say, ‘I was better than these people.’ It’s just, ‘No, I’m fundamentally looking at this industry differently than they are.’ And I was wondering if that was obvious at the beginning when you started going around and building this network.”

“Well, I think about Steve. Maybe he took products that were very early. He may not have invented the personal computer, but they weren’t very good.”

“No, he made it easier to use.”

“Yes. He transformed it with something much better. The Apple II, in particular, was a huge step. Or he didn’t do the MP3 player initially, but the iPod was massively better.

“No, he didn’t do the phone. You could say he invented the smartphone, though. Was there a smartphone before—”

“No, but everyone was using cell phones, and so it—”

“Yes, but the smartphone is not just a phone. It is a completely new category.”

“Yeah.”

“You could almost say nobody invents anything because they’re always taking other ideas and putting them together in interesting new combinations.”

“But from your perspective—”

“Yeah?”

“Obviously, you felt different at that time, or no?”

“It’s hard to say, David, because I don’t really know how other people are thinking. I only know how I’m thinking. I just see how they act.”

“Okay.”

“I just know most of these people were older than me, for one thing, and they had families. They were more security-oriented. They wanted the financial security. And I was always kind of all-in.

“Was I more ambitious? I really liked growing the business. I think that’s one thing entrepreneurs have in common: They like to grow their business. You like to see it grow. Michael called it a puzzle he’s figuring out.

“But growing a business is immensely satisfying because all the stakeholders are benefiting. Your customers are benefiting. Your employees are benefiting. They’re getting new opportunities and new promotions. You’re watching them flourish.

“One of the greatest, most satisfying things—particularly because Whole Foods was a public company before Amazon bought us, publicly independent for 25 years—was that so many of our team members became millionaires through our stock option program. If you’re on a winning team that grows, you can make a lot of money, even if you’re not one of the most senior executives.

“We gave stock options to everybody who worked there. I remember going to an annual gathering, and we had hundreds and hundreds of people, and I got this…”

They gave me a standing ovation because they were telling me, “We bought a house. I didn’t think we’d ever be able to buy a house. My kids can go to college now. I can retire. This is so great.” And these are grocery people, right? They’re just people who were meat cutters and ordinary team members who never thought they would really have any prosperity in the world.

That is so deeply satisfying. That’s one of the things I liked about Todd Graves’s talk, by the way. He was so focused on his employees flourishing. That is a tremendously good feeling.

This is one of the reasons I’ve resisted for years. Very close friends of mine told me, “With all this history you have in your head from the history of entrepreneurship—maybe better than anybody else in the world—you need to start recording some of the conversations you’re already having.”

I was very resistant to that idea until I realized the gap in the market was that a lot of the business and tech press hate business and tech. I don’t consider myself a journalist. I’m sure as hell not a journalist; I’m an enthusiast. I’m obsessed with this stuff. Look what the books look like when I’m done with them. Where’s the camera? What does that look like? That looks like obsession.

Looks like you need a new book.

That’s obsession. And what I realized is that a lot of the business and tech press hate business and tech.

They’re just journalists. That’s what they got channeled into.

And so the opening was exactly this: I said, “As the son of a Cuban immigrant, I think capitalism is awesome.” You have this great thing where you said capitalism was the greatest thing that humans have ever invented—

Yeah.

—which you and I have bonded over. And I’m like, “No.” I want to start hosting conversations to celebrate these kinds of people, where you had this idea, as a shirtless, hitchhiking hippie: “I want to start my own little natural food store, and I’m going to continuously learn. I’m going to grow it, and as I grow it, I’m creating products that people love,” which I’ll get to in a second.

Then I’m creating wealth for myself and others—for normal people to work at Whole Foods and be able to send their kids to college as a result of the wealth that the company was able to create, to buy a house. These are things that should be celebrated, not denigrated.

They should be. And they’re not seen because we live in a zero-sum world. We don’t. We live in a win-win-win world, but people don’t realize it.

Think about the history of humanity, David. For tens of thousands of years, there was really no progress in the world. First came the Enlightenment and science, and then the birth of capitalism lifted humanity. Particularly capitalism has lifted humanity out of the dirt. People have no reference points.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, 94% of everyone alive—94%—lived on less than $2 a day, and that’s in today’s dollars. Eighty-eight percent of the people alive were illiterate. Eighty-eight percent. The average lifespan was 30. So many women died in childbirth. There was no modern dentistry, no antibiotics, and no vaccines. It was horrible.

People do not understand where we came from, and capitalism created the possibility of the win-win-win. It used to be a zero-sum game where somebody won and somebody else lost. The biggest mistake people make, intellectuals in particular, is that they still think we’re in a zero-sum world.

They’re obsessed with some billionaires because Bernie Sanders thinks that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk somehow stole the money from the people. They don’t understand that it’s this prosperity machine that’s creating more—not just for those billionaires, but for everything that they’re touching.

They’re creating value for their customers. They’re creating value for their employees. Their suppliers are flourishing. Their investors are seeing their capital go up, which can be reinvested and compounded. We’re seeing governments—

Where does all philanthropy ultimately come from? Business. That’s where the profits are.

Where does the money come from?

And where do all the taxes come from? They ultimately come from business as well, whether you’re taxing the employees who are flourishing. This is the engine that’s lifting humanity out of the dirt, and the entrepreneurs are the drivers of that engine.

Somebody like Elon Musk gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world. He and people like Rockefeller are lambasted as the villains when they are the greatest heroes that have ever, ever lived in terms of creating value and helping people.

You just mentioned Bezos, and he’s got a phenomenal idea.

One of my heroes.

One of my heroes. I just got to spend time with him one-on-one. It was incredible. He’s amazing.

One of my favorite ideas that he has is the fact that we have a Forbes 400, and we have a list of the richest people. He’s like, “There’s a better idea. Why don’t we have a list for how much wealth these people have created for others?”

I think he used the example of, I don’t remember what the market cap of Amazon is—it might be $2 trillion today, whatever it is. He’s like, “Out of that $2 trillion, I might own $150 billion of that.”

When you see Jeff again, you should say, “Hey, Jeff, I thought about your idea. Why don’t we create a Bezos 1,000?” There’s an organization, with AI in particular, that can calculate it.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Why shouldn’t we remind other people?

Why don’t we do that?

Why don’t we—

That would be so great for people if they could begin to see the multiplicity of value that comes out of those entrepreneurs and how it compounds over time. It’s so enormous, and the intellectuals do not see it. The average person doesn’t see it. They’re still stuck in the idea that it’s a zero-sum game—that somebody’s rich, somebody else is poor; the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.

That is not true. In fact, there’s a new book for you to read that just came out. One of my good friends, Alexander Green, has written a book called The American Dream. He shows in that book how the American Dream is alive and well, and it’s never been better. In fact, the dream is not only not dead, it’s much better than it’s ever been before.

Only the intellectuals and the media cannot see it. They refuse to see it. Instead, they focus on all the things that aren’t perfect yet in society, and they’re doom-and-gloomers. They think it’s all going downhill. That’s a book you might want to take a look at.

I’ll definitely check it out. I have a recommendation for you. After this, listen to the episode I just did with James Dyson.

You know why I’m going to listen to that? Because in the episode I was just listening to on the drive, you said that’s your favorite all-time autobiography.

Number 1.

Yeah. So I thought, “Okay, that’s the next one I’m going to listen to.”

I told him when I saw him, too, because it’s out of print and they own the rights. I said, “Please, just not even for money. You don’t need more money. This book is so important to get into entrepreneurs’ hands because of the struggle,” which I think is what most people identify with.

The reason I brought him up is because one of the things I love about him, and what I’m trying to apply to every single thing that I work on, is that he demands differentiation. If somebody else has already made the product, he won’t just say, “Oh, I can do that a little better.” He’s like, “I have to invent a completely different spin on it.”

The reason I think differentiation is really important is that there are 2 things where you knew, at the very beginning, that you were onto something very powerful. You just gave an example: If somebody is driving 1 or 2 hours to shop at your store, that should tell you something.

The other thing is that you mentioned how you reinvested in growth. As you were investing in growth, obviously sometimes you’re going to lose money for a little bit. But the first store was profitable at 2:00 PM on the first day.

And then, a year later, there's a 100-year flood in Austin.

Yeah. Nine months later.

Yeah, nine months later. A 100-year flood in Austin, okay? Eight feet of water. When there's a flood, it's not just water. The stuff from the sewers comes up. So it floods your store, and you have shit water everywhere.

Yeah.

And then, in the days after, you guys are mopping up and trying to clean up the store.

Oh, and getting tetanus shots.

And getting tetanus shots. And then you go into this aisle, and you're like, “I thought I knew everybody that worked here. Who's this person?” You go over and say, “Hey, I'm John. I'm sorry. I guess I didn't know who you were.” And he's like, “Oh, I don't work here, but I'm such a huge fan of what you're doing. I shop here several times a week. I had a day off. It's very important to me that you guys get through this, so I wanted to help in any possible way.” No one does that if your product isn't valuable to them and differentiated.

Right. I didn't have the language, but that's when I began to discover stakeholders—the people that care about your business. In that case, he was a customer and a neighbor, and he loved Whole Foods. It made a big difference in his life.

I think you will find that most brands that are really popular, particularly in their early days, were kind of cults. They were cults, meaning they had a following, because I think most brands are ultimately built by the evangelist enthusiasts among their users and customers.

Apple's a great example of that, right? I mean, people would line up to get that next iPhone, just camp out to get the next iteration of the iPhone back in the day. Tesla—I own a Tesla, and I remember my friends talking: “You've got to drive this car. If you drive this car, you'll want to buy this car.” And I said, “Ah, I don't want a Tesla,” and blah, blah, blah. “It's pretentious.” As soon as one of them finally taught me to drive, I went out and bought it the next day, right? And I became a Tesla fan, a superfan.

So, I do think that happened with Whole Foods. People loved our stores, particularly in the early days, when we were so unique and so differentiated. I remember those people would drive in. A lot of times they would tell me—I said, “Why are you coming in?” She goes, “Oh, I want to make sure my little boy doesn't eat this poisonous food. He's just going to eat healthy food. My child's going to be nourished. I'm going to make sure my children grow up really healthy.” And it was oftentimes those parents that were doing it for the next generation, so to speak.

So I do think Whole Foods benefited from that type of cult-like following.

But the evangelism that you see present in customers, I would say, is a byproduct of the fact that those cult brands—which I completely agree with you—are started by an evangelist. You use that word multiple times in the book.

Yeah.

Steve Jobs, obviously, was an evangelist for Apple. Elon is one of the greatest evangelists that we've ever seen. You knew that you had that very special skill of evangelizing. The way I think about it is: passion is infectious.

I didn't know I had it until it worked. I discovered it.

Wait, okay. At what age did you discover it? Right at the beginning, when you were starting this, in your 20s?

When I started—yeah, even raising money the first time. Think about this for a second. I'm out raising money, even with my friends and family. I have 6 months of experience working in a natural food store. I have absolutely no business background. I'd worked jobs and stuff, but I'd never really been in management. I didn't take any business classes when I was at the university. I didn't know much about business.

These people were willing to trust their money to this young kid and his girlfriend simply on my enthusiasm. Really, at the end of the day, I was so excited, and I more or less said, “I know this is going to work. Trust me.” And they did, and it did work.

I think Jobs called it the reality distortion field, or somebody said about Steve that he had a reality distortion field. I think I identified with that. I think most persuasive entrepreneurs, charismatic entrepreneurs, have a reality distortion field. They're able to get people to suspend their normal skepticism, and for a moment, let them into their vision, and they catch a little bit. Maybe they don't get the vision, but they see the passion.

I think you've talked about how passion is infectious. Entrepreneurs are generally passionate, and they sell others on their dream. I always say that entrepreneurs are a little bit like panhandlers, out there begging for money, but what they're doing is selling dreams. They're selling dreams to people. They make the dreams come alive, and people in the reality distortion field catch a glimpse of what's possible, and then they want to get into it.

Was there anything you were working on before Whole Foods? What other jobs did you have?

I make this joke. If I did a résumé, it would say: busboy, cargo restaurant, dishwasher at some other restaurant, boys' camp counselor, assistant manager at the Good Food store, CEO of Whole Foods Market.

Were you passionate as the assistant manager at the Good Food—what?

Good Food.

Good Food store?

Yeah. That's when I remember I loved working at that store. I only worked there 6 months, and I loved it, though. It was like I'd never worked in a retail store before. I liked it because, A, I liked the customers. I talked to the customers, and they had a similar lifestyle to mine. They were like me, counterculture types. I liked the people I was working with as well. We shared a purpose; we were taking care of the customers. It was fun. I liked it.

I remember coming home, back to the co-op, back to Prana House, and I had thought that day—I remember, while I was working, I was looking around, loving it—and I said, “I could do this. I could do this the rest of my life. I could open up my own store. It'd be fun.”

And I went back to the co-op full of this enthusiasm. I guess Renee was the first person I sold on it because I was so excited about it. I said, “Renee, what if we do our own store?” And she looked me in the eyes, grabbed my hands, and said, “Oh, Mackey, I think that'd be really cool. Let's do it.”

I always say that if Renee had pooh-poohed the idea, maybe that would've been it, but she got excited. So my spark lit her spark, and together, we created SaferWay, and that led to Whole Foods Market.

That entrepreneurial enthusiasm is very important. Also, entrepreneurs have to be very resilient. This is a quality that's underestimated because they do fail a lot. They make a lot of mistakes.

I mean, SaferWay—I could have quit if I wasn't resilient. I remember going back and doubling down and saying, “We need to do this.” As I read all these books, I realized, “My God, we opened this SaferWay, small store in this residential neighborhood, and it's an old house. It's cute, but it's a terrible place to have a store. No cars go by here. This is terrible. We've got to relocate it.”

That was a terrible mistake. Fortunately, I still had enough enthusiasm that I was able to sell people on, “This big store's going to work.” So we raised more capital, and that did work.

I think you have to be able to overcome your setbacks, and the flood could have knocked us out as well. There are so many times that failure is always accompanying you, and entrepreneurs, in some ways, are constantly learning from their near-death experiences, then determined to learn and get better.

You're going to like the Dyson episode because that's his whole point. He's like, “Success isn't that interesting. Failure is where all the learning actually happens.”

Success is interesting. I think he's exaggerating there. But you learn more. You do learn from success as well—

That's his point.

—but you learn more from failure.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Because you have to. Learn or die.

I was always working, like most entrepreneurs, but I was always taking odd jobs and stuff. I worked for Astroworld for a while. Even before I legally worked, my parents did something that was pretty smart. I always tell people they should do this for their kids.

They didn't give us an allowance. They assigned prices for things they wanted to get done: dishes washed, lawns mowed, leaves raked. They assigned a price for all those things. If you wanted any money, you did the jobs.

So, at a very early age—we're talking 10 years old—I thought, “Well, I'd like to have money so I could go buy comic books.” Then later, as I got older, so I could buy records, or I could save up and buy a car. And so I eagerly worked.

As soon as I could legally work, I went and took jobs because I wanted to earn money. To me, money meant freedom. I could do what I wanted to do with that money.

I feel the exact same way.

Yeah.

That's exactly what I felt. I so deeply desired control over my life. I was actually just talking to a really close friend about this yesterday, that I had this relentless work ethic and started working when I was 15.

I remember my dad coming into my room and telling me, because at the time I really wanted a car. When I turned 16, he was just like, “You don't have to pay rent, but I don't have any money for a car. So whatever—you have to find a job, and essentially, you're on your own.”

Yeah.

And so, since I was 15, I never got a dollar from my family. Then they kicked me out at 18, which is a whole other thing.

I think there's a lot of people like this, where the connection is just some kind of default unhappiness with your life, and you realize that you're in charge of it. I'm going to channel this intense work ethic into trying to achieve success.

And mainly, the success is not because it's monetary. It gives me control over what I'm doing. Now, the next stage of that, and I think the ideal stage, is that you're actually working on something you're passionate about and believe in.

The reason I asked you what other jobs you had is that, multiple times while I was reading this book, I thought of Phil Knight's book, “Shoe Dog,” which is, to me, one of the greatest—

This book was my benchmark: “Shoe Dog.”

It's one of the greatest—

Entrepreneur autobiographies ever.

Absolutely. I love that it's in chronological order. I love the fact that every chapter is the year in which it takes place. It's just remarkable. I'm about to reread it again and make another episode of Founders.

The reason I bring it up is that there are 2 things you say in this book that I think are important for the next generation of entrepreneurs to understand. First, Phil Knight realized that he was an evangelist. But he didn't have that evangelism until he found something he was passionate about. He sold encyclopedias—

He sold encyclopedias.

Right. And he failed left and right. Then he's like, “But I'm obsessed with running,” at a time when running, just like you, was something weirdos did. You didn't just go out for a run at the time he was doing that.

Right. That's right.

The funny part in one of your books is that you're trying to get the store. I think it's the first store outside Austin, so maybe it's in Houston or something.

Yeah.

You meet with the landlord, and the landlord's like, “Listen here, hippie guy. There aren't enough other hippies who are going to eat your hippie food.” And you're like, “We're not open, and this is not hippie food.” Then you explain to him what it is, and he goes, “This is hippie food.” But he bought into your enthusiasm.

Yes.

And he said that you reminded him of a younger version of himself.

Slight correction on the narrative. You got the essence of it right, but that was actually our very first Whole Foods Market, when we were moving up from SaferWay. Ben Powell was a lawyer from Houston. He'd been in LBJ's administration, and he owned the property, so I had to sell him on the idea. Entrepreneurs have to sell people on things, and he just thought this was a crazy idea. He said, “You're doing a hippie food store. How can that possibly work, son?” I said, “It's going to work.”

He said, “There are not enough hippies in the whole world to fill up the store.” I said something like, “There's more than you think.” I kept going on, and he started laughing at me. He said, “Son, you remind me so much of when I was young. You're so full of enthusiasm, and you're so sure you're going to be successful.” Then he said, “Let's do your damn hippie store.”

You know, “one thing I can tell you, son, is life's going to teach you a thing or 2 before it's through with you.” He was great, and he was very helpful.

I love these people—the people who are older, further down the path, and reach back to give you words of encouragement or help you. The guy who helped you at the bank after the flood loaned you money, and he didn't even tell you until years later that he'd gone to bat for you. That's a funny story because it happens in these books over and over again.

I want to go back and close a loop on Phil Knight, though, because I think it's important.

What he realized is that belief is irresistible. He said, “I couldn't sell the stuff because I didn't believe in the product. Now I'm selling Japanese running shoes out of the trunk of my car, long before Nike is even a thing, and I can't stay in stock.” He's living at his parents' house, not in a situation he wants to be in, and he's like, “What the hell is going on here?” That's when he realized, “Oh, belief. I believe in my product. Belief is irresistible.” That was like this fuel.

The second thing that you said in the book—and I think you mentioned it; I don't remember if this was before we were talking or when we started recording—is that entrepreneurs tend to remember the beginning, like the early years, and then maybe the later years. But there's a huge gap—maybe 2 decades in here.

Yeah.

And Phil Knight, because he was writing that book for the benefit of future generations of entrepreneurs, said, “Man, there were so many times in the early days when we were talking about what we wanted Nike to be. We were having incredible conversations. We were such a close-knit group, and those conversations have been lost to history. I wish I either had a tape recorder or had written it down in a journal.”

“When I meet younger entrepreneurs, I'm like, ‘You need to write down what you're experiencing.’ It's such an intense feeling that you think you're going to remember it. You're going to forget all of this, and you're doing an active service for your future self 2, 3, or 4 decades down the line.”

Since I used “Shoe Dog” as a benchmark, one thing I did differently from Phil in his book is that I documented it. I kept track of time. Do you know that almost all of “Shoe Dog” takes place in a 5-year period?

I think it's a little bit more than that, but it ends—

With the IPO.

The IPO.

Yeah. He got his early years, but he didn't go into how Nike became this phenomenon that changed the sports apparel business and changed marketing. It was a huge benefit for athletes. There are a lot of things about Nike in the story that he doesn't go into in that book.

In my opinion, he should have written a follow-up book, because I think so much of the Nike story takes place after that occurred. One of the things I did in this book is talk about how old I was at the time. The book is written chronologically, and it spans a 44-year period, actually.

I do that all the time, even if it's not stated where I am in a book. I'll go and be like, “Okay, we're in 1969. When was he born?” I'd write down on the page, “Okay, he's 24 when this is happening.” Or I'll ask, “What was he doing when he was my age?”

I do the same thing.

How was he thinking? Do you?

Absolutely. I'm thinking because I'm trying to understand an entrepreneur. By saying, “How was I thinking and feeling at that age?” I can understand them a little bit better.

I really like the idea of—I mean, you said I was like Rockefeller. You did draw some analogies there, but there are so many major differences. Rockefeller is the greatest entrepreneur that ever lived. Maybe Elon Musk and Steve Jobs can challenge him, but he's probably the greatest entrepreneur who ever lived.

I would argue he's probably done more good in the world than maybe anybody except some religious leader or Christ or something. It's unfortunate that he goes down in history as one of the great villains.

Not in the episodes I make about him.

No, but the reality is that Rockefeller invented the modern corporation. Oil has fueled the entire rise of prosperity in the world, and he's totally misunderstood. Was he perfect? No. But he's still the greatest philanthropist that ever lived.

So, did you take issue with me comparing you to Rockefeller?

I was deeply flattered.

Okay. The way you started, I was like, “Wait a minute.” I didn't know if you took offense. When I compare people to other historical people, it's always, “This one thing they did is very similar to this act that you did,” because people are dynamic.

One thing Rockefeller did that I never did—and it was a different era—is that he continued to vertically integrate the industry. He was trying to bring order to his industry because of the boom and bust of oil discoveries. He was a much more disciplined thinker than I am in terms of thinking through the whole structure and the whole system, and trying to control it. I never tried to control my suppliers.

He was a totally ruthless competitor in the sense that he would do things that today would be illegal, but were legal at that time. People don't understand what he was doing. They were considered sharp business practices, but they weren't considered illegal at the time.

He'd threaten a lot of his competitors: “You should sell out, and you should take the stock because you're going to get a lot wealthier.” But if they didn't sell out, then he basically undercut them on price and lost money until they were out. You can't do that today.

One of the best quotes I ever heard from him was when he was trying to buy a competitor. The competitor said, “I'm not afraid of you.” Rockefeller said, “Well, if I cut off your hand, your body will suffer.” That's a very crazy thing to say, but I think you nailed the fact that he was probably one of the greatest strategists.

Yes.

I had the thought: I reread things over and over again, and I know you have that same habit. You'll read a book and then reread it, either reading the entire book again a few years later or reading your highlights from it.

Yes. We talked about this at dinner.

Yeah. Readwise, too.

Yeah, they're excellent.

I think I was rereading Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters for the third time, which I think are very valuable. I think I should read them almost every year because, first of all, you can read them in a weekend, and there are just so many insights per minute.

In my opinion, the 2 best strategists I've ever come across in all the reading I've done have been Rockefeller and Bezos. They describe what they want to do, and then they go out and do it. It's very, very similar.

Yeah, I think you've got to put Musk in that category as well.

People don't understand what a master strategist Elon is. Think about the way SpaceX has evolved. He's so many steps ahead of where people realize he is in terms of thinking it through.

No, that's a good point.

He has that document, I think, called “Master Strategy,” that he wrote 15 or 20 years ago, whenever it was, at the beginning of Tesla. He's like, “We're going to do this, and then we're going to do this, and then we're going to do this.” You go back, and it looks very similar to what actually occurred.

I want to go back to your competitive drive, though, because we touched on it, but I think there's a little bit more there.

Well, I'm a very competitive person. I always have been, from an early age. Competition, I think, helps me focus. One of the things I got, I think, from the Todd Graves episode that I listened to recently is that he talked a lot about how people are always telling an entrepreneur, “It's not going to work,” and Todd would use that as fuel.

He'd say, “I'm going to prove you wrong. I'm going to show you.” I still feel that way from time to time. People tell me the idea is not going to work, and it's like, “No, it is going to work, and I'll show you.” You climb this wall of skepticism.

A lot of people get discouraged when people criticize them. It's like, “Maybe they're right. Maybe it's not going to work.” The entrepreneur, I think, says, “No, you're wrong. It's going to work,” and it causes them to focus even deeper. Part of it is an ego thing, to prove the other person is mistaken.

I remember when that guy told me, “You know, you're never going to be able to compete with those guys. You're just a bunch of hippies. It's never going to work.” I make the joke in the book: The guy had just turned us down, so why is he telling us why he's not going to invest? I say it's like getting turned down on a date and then the girl tells you, “Well, here's why I'm not going out with you.”

It's like, “Hell, who wants to be told why you're not going out with me?” In this case, though, I remember having a slow burn in me that said, “You're wrong. You're wrong. I'm going to prove you wrong.”

A good entrepreneur uses that criticism, uses that skepticism, uses that wall of doubt that people are throwing at him or her as fuel. It's like, “No, it's going to work. I'm going to prove it.” They double down on their vision, you might say. Instead of quitting, as many people would, the entrepreneur says, “No, no, it just makes me more determined to succeed.”

That exact same story is in Michael Dell's autobiography. I went and picked it up off the shelf the other day because he says something that I think is very fascinating, something I reference in conversations and other episodes that I make. He's like, “I'm 19 years old. I have $1,000. I'm in a dorm at the University of Texas, and I'm going to compete with the largest company in the world, IBM.”

You expressed some skepticism in your interview with him about this.

Well, I never doubt Michael Dell. He's one of my heroes, and I get to spend a lot of time with him, which I'm very, very thankful for. But on that page, he's like, “Was I a little full of myself at 19?” He's like, “Sure, I was.” And he's like, “I think you have to be to do anything great.”

When you talk to him now, the guy is so impressive, but he's so low-ego.

And he's just very calm. He really—

Yeah, I agree.

—just looks at things like a puzzle, and I think a lot of the work he does comes from a very positive and healthy place. That's why he is one of my heroes and somebody I'm trying to emulate.

Fire still burns in Michael, even if you don't see it.

It's still there.

Oh, yeah, but I think it's a positive source.

Yeah.

But later down, I reread that entire page, and he's talking about this other guy at the time who was older than him, living in his city, doing the exact same business. It sounds very similar to when you viewed some of your friends, who eventually became competitors, and some of the people you actually acquired. Michael was like, “Yeah, but I have ideas about where I could take this that this guy can't even contemplate.”

And he was not—

Uh-huh.

—saying that in an arrogant way. He was just saying, “You don't have any limits.” Did you listen to the Daniel Ek episode?

Yes.

Okay. So, Daniel—this is one of the most important things about that episode and about spending any time with him. You get around him, and you realize he has no ceilings. There's no self-imposed ceiling.

I want to go back to the people you acquired, because it's one of my favorite things. I'm doing this for selfish reasons. This is why I'm having these conversations: because I had the opportunity to learn from you.

Mm-hmm.

One of the things that's so incredible is that I think a lot of people—and I've done this myself—put these fake ceilings in place.

They put self-limiting beliefs in.

But, literally, like, “I can't go any further than here.”

Right, right.

When you spend time with Daniel, he's just like, “Get that shit out of here. That doesn't exist.” And he does that not in a direct way. He does that by example.

I remember one of the first times I talked to him. Spotify is obviously incredible, but he's also doing incredible work investing in business incubation, and I know that team very well. I spent a lot of time with them, and I was like, “How the hell did you build this incredible business that was so difficult, and then now you have this other thing where…” He's more like a co-founder than an investor.

You're talking about Neko?

Neko, Helsing, everything he's doing with Prima Materia. I was like, “Were you always interested in investing?” And he goes, “No, I didn't even think about it until 2018.” I go, “How did you learn how to invest?” He goes, “I listened to Patrick's podcast. That's the best.”

He said, “I would listen to what the guy says, and I'm like, ‘Oh, let me try that idea. Oh, I don't like that idea.’ I would read the book he recommended.” He essentially consumed all this information and then decided, “I like that. That fits me. That doesn't apply to me. I don't like this.”

Then he created his cohesive philosophy, actually applied it on a grand scale, and I'm like, “Oh, he's got no limits.” This is one of the most valuable things that you could possibly do. If you can instill something in yourself, it's just: Stop believing that you have a limit. You're at a plateau, but you don't stay there. Just like Bruce Lee said, “You don't stay at plateaus.”

I totally agree. Human creativity is fundamentally limitless. There is no limit to the mind except what we self-impose on it, and once you realize that, you see that most people self-censor themselves. They don't let these ideas come through, because it's like, “Well, that's not possible. That's crazy. That's nuts.”

I think an entrepreneur lets a little bit more through in terms of that flow that emerges up through their minds—

The possibilities.

—but not all entrepreneurs, because we're seeing this in the book—

Well, sure.

—you have that slow burn, which I want to ask you a question about in a minute. Then you're meeting other people in your industry and realizing that they're not like you.

They just had different ambitions. That's all. I just wanted to grow a bigger company. They just didn't have that vision.

Do you think your father played a role in your expansive ideas and your ambition, or was that completely an inner drive?

I credit many, many good things to my father.

I actually think he played a counterforce on that. My dad, for example, was a Depression kid who came of age during World War II. He was 20 when Pearl Harbor happened.

One of the mistakes that I made was after Whole Foods went public, my dad got me to sell stock in the IPO. Todd Graves would hate this. He urged me to continue to sell it off. He said, “John, I mean, we don’t know when the next Depression…”

My dad would have made a lot more money. He was always thinking there was going to be another Great Depression, so he was always trying to protect himself from that because it was such a traumatic experience for him as a child, growing up during the Depression with his family. They lived through it, and it was the biggest thing that impacted him in his life.

In some sense, that spread to me, so you might say that’s more limiting. I sold it because he advised me to do it, and I trusted my dad. But in retrospect, that was a mistake. I really should have compounded it and compounded it and compounded it. I mean, I’m still a really wealthy guy, but I could have been a lot wealthier if I had probably followed my own instincts instead of his advice in that regard.

You’re right about that, because I forgot: in the book, you ask him to step down from the board.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Because you have this expansive, conquering nature—which, you’re going to use the word “expansive”; I’ll use “conquering nature.” He was kind of pulling you back constantly, and you guys were having a series of fights. Am I remembering that correctly?

That’s correct. But I think in that case, my dad was already being impacted by the Alzheimer’s that was diagnosed a couple of years later.

But you didn’t know that?

I did not know that.

It was unknown. Okay.

I just didn’t understand why he’d gotten so conservative, because he’d been very supportive of my expansive mode. At the time, I just thought, “You know what? Now we’re worth so much money,” and a lot of my father’s wealth was created by Whole Foods. He had his own business, but I think he made more money from Whole Foods than he did from his other business.

I thought, “He just doesn’t want to lose what he has. He’s in a different era in his life. He can’t rebuild, so he wants to be more conservative.” I just said, “He’s getting super conservative.”

That’s why I said, “Dad, sell half your stock, cash it out, keep the other half, let me compound it, but let me go. We’re going to grow this thing. It’s going to be an incredible company. Just let me do it.”

Do you remember how old you were when you—

Forty.

You were 40, and he was what? Seventy?

My dad was 72.

Seventy-two.

The same age as I am right now.

Okay. And so he had been around for the ride for 15 years up until that point?

Yes.

Oh, no. Yeah, 15 years, that’s right.

Fifteen years.

Yeah. So that had to be one of the most difficult conversations you had in your life.

That was the most difficult conversation. The most difficult thing I ever did was firing my dad from the board. It took all the courage I had. I love my dad so much, and it hurt him so badly. It was so hard to do.

But it was also a pivotal event in my own evolution, because that was when my mentorship was over. He still advised me, but from that point onward, I really was on my own. I was not going to follow him any longer.

Before then, I pretty much did whatever my dad suggested. I didn’t buck him. I argued with him, but I often caved in because I had so much love and respect for him. That was a good thing. My dad made so many good decisions that helped Whole Foods.

But at that point, I had basically grown up. I remember saying, “Dad, I’m 40 years old. I’m going to make these decisions now. I’m not going to just do what you want me to do. That’s why I want you to get off the board, because I don’t want us to be fighting. It’s tearing our relationship apart.”

I remember he said, “Son, you think 40 is pretty old, don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah, 40 is old.” He said, “It’s nothing. You think you know some things—you know a little bit more than you did when you were 25 and started the business—but frankly, son, you still don’t. You’ve barely got your nose under the tent. There’s so much you don’t know.”

I said, “Well, that may be true, but I’m going to find out on my own. I’m not going to do what you tell me to do any longer, particularly when it comes to growth. We’re going to grow this business, and you should sell half your stock. You’ve got all the financial security you need, and watch what happens to the other half.”

I always tell this story in the book: a year later, that half that he’d sold was worth more than it had been before he sold it, because we doubled the stock price in a year. Half the stock that he owned was more valuable than it had been prior to selling half of it, so he’d already made it all back.

A few years later, even though the Alzheimer’s had started to grip him, my dad told me that I had made the right decision, that he was proud of me, and we were back on really good terms.

That’s incredible. There is a very negative—and it has to be a heartbreaking—story in the book: your mother’s view of Whole Foods. I don’t know if you want to talk about this or not.

Yeah. My mom was, again, another Depression child, and I was named after her father, who was a doctor.

My mother grew up in Bastrop, Texas, in what was, I guess, almost a poor, white-trash kind of environment back in that rural, little tiny town—a very small-town Baptist community. The most important thing for her was that she really wanted to be respectable. She wanted her children to rise in society and be seen as respectable citizens.

My sister, the eldest, went to Wellesley, got a master’s in French literature and a PhD in psychology, and went on to teach. Here I was, scoring really high on IQ tests, with great aptitude and A’s when I was interested in something—maybe not so good when I wasn’t—and I kept dropping out of college and started this grocery-store business.

My mother could never get over the idea that I was not respectable. She’d go to her bridge parties and talk to the other mothers, whose sons and daughters were becoming doctors and lawyers. They were engineers, college teachers, and professors. She saw them as respectable people in society.

She thought a grocer was really a second-class citizen. In her mind, her son wasn’t an entrepreneur—she didn’t even know what an entrepreneur meant, I don’t think. I wasn’t a successful businessman. I was a grocer, and I had squandered all the money and love they had invested in me. She thought I was a failure.

I remember—and I tell this story in the book—the very last time I ever saw my mother was back in 1987. She had had a stroke a couple of years later and was basically partly paralyzed and bedridden. I went to see her, and it turned out to be the last time I would ever see her because she died a couple of weeks after that.

On her deathbed, she begged me. She said, “John, will you do this for me? Will you make this promise to me? I’m your mother. I’ve nurtured you, I’ve borne you, and I’ve given you so much. Please, please, please promise me you will go back to school and get your degree and make something of your life. You have so much potential. You scored so well on all these IQ tests and aptitude tests, and you’re just nothing but a grocer.”

I said, “Mom, I’m not a grocer. I’m a businessman. I’m building this business, and Whole Foods is going to be this great company.”

She said, “John, it’s just these little grocery hippie stores. You’re not doing anything. You’re wasting your life.” And she said, “Please promise me. Please promise me. It’s the only request I have. Please promise me.”

Now I look back, and I kind of wish I had lied—just told a white lie to make my dying mother happy. But it was 1987. I guess I was 34 years old, and I just said, “Mom, I’m never going back to school. I’m not going to go back. I’m building Whole Foods, and it’s going to be this amazing company. It already is an amazing company. It’s going to be even more amazing.”

I said, “Maybe I will get an honorary degree someday, because I’m going to make a lot of money, and a university is going to give me an honorary PhD,” which actually did happen.

She died a very disappointed person. She believed that her son, in whom she had placed so much hope, had wasted his life. We were alienated when she died.

That was the last conversation you ever had with her?

That was our last conversation, and she died a couple of weeks later.

The funny thing is, my mom has been dead—I think about my parents. My dad died in 2004. My mom died in 1987. And I still have conversations with them, in my mind. I ask them for forgiveness, and I give them forgiveness.

What I wouldn’t do to have one more night with my parents. I’d probably pay my entire fortune to have one more night with them. It would be so great to be able to tell them how much I appreciate all the things they did for me and how much I love them. And also, “Hey, Mom, I turned out okay.”

We’ll call that a minor regret in my life: that I couldn’t make my mother happy on her deathbed.

Give me one minute. That’s f***ing heavy.

Sorry to take the energy down a little bit there.

No. Don’t apologize. That was absolutely incredible. I think it’s very important.

I’ll tell you, somebody helped me see this. I was doing a podcast, and they had read the book. They had an interpretation of my mother that I’d never heard before, and I realized they were right. I’d always thought that I was much closer to my father than I was to my mother.

But my mother had grown up in, again, this small Bastrop town. Here’s the ironic thing: My mother was a total rebel. She rebelled against that. She left that town, went to Houston, went to Rice University, went to school, and got a degree.

She was in a Baptist town. My mother started to smoke in rebellion against their ways. She started to gamble, drink, and dance. She was a total rebel against the small town of Bastrop, Texas.

The guy I was talking to about it said, “You know, John, you probably got your rebel side not from your father, but from your mother.” I had never thought about it before, and I thought, “You know what? I think he’s right.” I had always credited my own rebellious nature to my father, but I realized my mother had secretly inculcated it in me, and then didn’t like it there.

You know how we oftentimes project onto other people the things about ourselves that we don’t like? My mother wanted to be respectable partly because she had rebelled against all the things her parents had taught her and went her own path. She had inculcated that in me unconsciously. The other children were more obedient. I was this rebel.

I never credited her for it, but then I had my own little ceremony. I thanked her: “Mom, thanks for helping me become a rebel, because it’s really helped me be successful in life. Thank you. I owe you so much for that.”

The reason that just impacted me, and the reason I wanted to talk to you about it, is because when my mom died, I was around that same age, and we were estranged. The saddest thing is, she died just a horrific death: metastatic breast cancer that spread everywhere.

Yeah.

And the last 2 years of her life—that’s not life. That was not living. That was suffering. What I’m—

I have some advice for you. I would recommend that you do, in your own way, if you haven’t already done it, some type of ceremony of forgiveness with your mother. Just actually ask for her forgiveness, forgive her, and tell her, “I love you so much, Mom. Thank you for everything you did for me. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you.

“You nurtured me in the womb. You went through labor and pain for me to be born. You wiped my butt, you breastfed me, you took care of me, you kept me alive, you nurtured me, and you helped me get educated. I owe so much to you. I’m so grateful for you. Thank you so much.

“And I didn’t tell you that the way I needed to tell you while you were alive, so I’m telling you now. Please forgive me.”

And then forgive her. I’ve done that, and I feel like I’m at peace about it.

That actually is a good lead-in to, I think, one of the most important things in the book. You also talked about this when we had dinner: You recommended MDMA therapy for me.

Yeah, you said, “No way I’m ever going to do that.”

Which I still haven’t. Talk about the inner work that you did.

But you know what I can recommend that you could do, and it would be just as powerful? You don’t have to take a drug. Do some serious breathwork, because I always tell my friends who particularly don’t want to do any type of MDMA or psilocybin, who don’t want to do a psychedelic, that you can have a transcendent experience just through breathwork.

You can access deeper parts of your unconscious mind that you’ve repressed, and you can relive those experiences in a safer environment. Because what’s safer than just doing deep breathing? Do it with a guide. You need to do at least an hour to an hour and a half, or 2 hours, and you have to do the deep breathing.

What happens is that the breath activates parts of your deeper self, which are mostly hidden from you, and lets them come into your consciousness in a way that you can see them and not be overwhelmed by them. It’s a way to practice letting go of some of the stuff that we feel guilty about, that we’ve suppressed, that actually drives a lot of our behavior, and we’re not even conscious of it.

You can have a transcendent spiritual experience through breathwork, and it’s completely safe. And if it gets too scary, you just stop breathing, so you’re always in control.

When did you start realizing you needed to fix something that was inside your mind as you were building the company? Was it early, when you were starting the company?

Remember, I did psychedelics before I even started the company.

You tell this crazy story about doing LSD, and I think you were—

Yeah.

That’s how the book starts out, in the prologue. So I had already done—

I wasn’t doing it therapeutically. I was doing it spiritually. I was trying to access deeper parts of the spiritual being that we don’t normally access.

Think of psychedelics as opening a doorway to going into parts of our mind and our greater self. There’s an interior self that’s every bit as big as the external universe, maybe bigger, that we don’t—because we’re so focused on living in the material world—we’re not conscious of this deeper part of our being. Psychedelics open a door to it.

But there are other ways. Meditation does, if pursued. Breathwork does. There are different types of modalities that help us access deeper parts of our consciousness.

I think to grow as a human being, we need to go deeper so we can begin to release fears, guilt, and judgments that hold us back. I think every one of us can access that.

Were you doing this the entire time you were building Whole Foods?

Yes, sometimes more seriously than at other times. But yes. As you read the book, I’m telling the narrative, but I’m also telling my own narrative—my own spiritual evolution—all the way to the very end of the book. And it’s still happening now. I’m still evolving.

I think, rightly seen, the entrepreneurial journey is also a spiritual journey. It’s also a hero’s journey. I talk about the hero’s journey in the book.

Most people do not go on their own hero’s journey. We have a voice—a deeper part of our being—that is whispering to us, telling us, urging us on to follow this. Entrepreneurs are following this inner voice. They’re following this passion that they unleash and create in the world.

You have that voice whispering to you, too, and that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, because you’re so passionate about it. That is the hero’s journey.

In my experience, most people do not answer that call because they’re too scared. They’re too scared to do it. They have a fear of failure, a fear of people ridiculing them, and a fear of rejection.

Remember how we talked a little earlier about entrepreneurs, like Todd Graves, and people telling you you’re going to fail? I was saying, “That would just make me more determined to succeed.” When you’re on the hero’s journey, you are determined to succeed.

You’re going to have a lot of setbacks and failures, but that’s all part of the path. That’s how you’re learning, and that’s how you’re growing. Rightly seen, the entrepreneurial journey is a hero’s journey, and a hero’s journey is a spiritual journey.

It’s a journey of discovery. It’s the journey of going deeper into yourself, knowing who you are and what really matters in life.

John, that’s a beautiful place to close. Thank you very much for writing the book. Thank you very much for taking the time to have a conversation.

Thanks for talking to me again, David.

I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Of course. Thank you.