Whole Foods Market Founder, John Mackey’s Journey of Love, Life, and Capitalism: Hippie to Heavy Hitter:

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[00:01:08] John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods.

[00:01:11] It's my favorite place to shop for food

[00:01:14] or at least order from Instacart from.

[00:01:17] It's such a great story.

[00:01:18] This guy was a young hippie-ish sort of guy.

[00:01:22] I don't know, living in a commune, working in a food co-op.

[00:01:25] And he says, hey, I could do this.

[00:01:27] And he starts, his first store is called Saferway.

[00:01:32] It's kind of making fun of Safeway.

[00:01:35] And gradually this turns into the mega empire

[00:01:41] we know as Whole Foods stores,

[00:01:44] which eventually was bought by Amazon.

[00:01:46] And John was at Amazon for a while.

[00:01:48] And anyway, he writes this book.

[00:01:52] It's a great book.

[00:01:53] It tells a story,

[00:01:54] the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur.

[00:01:56] But also here's the interesting thing.

[00:01:58] Despite this kind of almost hippie-ish sort of background,

[00:02:03] he becomes an arch capitalist along the way

[00:02:06] because he understands that basically innovation

[00:02:10] comes from the type of competition

[00:02:13] that capitalism inspires.

[00:02:15] And I don't know, we have a great talk

[00:02:18] about all this stuff,

[00:02:18] but also we talk about how personally

[00:02:23] he's evolved through the decades.

[00:02:24] And he gives me some really good advice

[00:02:28] that I appreciate towards the end.

[00:02:30] So here's John Mackey,

[00:02:32] the whole story, Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism.

[00:02:39] This isn't your average business podcast

[00:02:41] and he's not your average host.

[00:02:44] This is the James Altucher Show.

[00:02:56] I think last time we spoke,

[00:02:57] you were still at Amazon and enjoying it.

[00:02:59] Well, I just retired a little over a year

[00:03:02] and a half ago now.

[00:03:04] And how are you enjoying that?

[00:03:07] I'm, you know, I enjoy being,

[00:03:09] cause I started another company, right?

[00:03:12] So I'm still working,

[00:03:13] but I'm not working as hard as I used to work.

[00:03:16] And I'm in startup mode,

[00:03:18] so I don't have a big bureaucracy.

[00:03:21] I'm an entrepreneur,

[00:03:22] so it's, I'm in the fun creative side.

[00:03:25] I'm not managing a big business.

[00:03:27] I'm creating a new one.

[00:03:29] And that's, so I'm having fun.

[00:03:30] It's a blast.

[00:03:32] But when you, you know, just reading in the book,

[00:03:34] when you first started Whole Foods or Safer Way,

[00:03:37] the original name or the first name,

[00:03:40] there's that enthusiasm where

[00:03:42] you haven't quite made the money yet,

[00:03:45] but I get this sense,

[00:03:46] you're feeling like this is going to be successful.

[00:03:48] Like your first store on Lamar was good and growing

[00:03:52] and you were making money

[00:03:53] and you finally started taking a salary.

[00:03:55] Next door was a little bit slower,

[00:03:56] but you still had that sense that,

[00:03:58] hey, you're going to expand.

[00:04:00] You're going to create multiple stores.

[00:04:01] You're going to turn into a big business.

[00:04:03] Like, do you have that kind of enthusiasm?

[00:04:06] You're not quite rich,

[00:04:07] but you're rich in entrepreneurship.

[00:04:11] Like, you know it's coming.

[00:04:13] Are you talking about,

[00:04:14] do I have that same feeling about Love Life?

[00:04:16] Yeah.

[00:04:17] Ask me in just a few months,

[00:04:19] because we're opening up our big flagship location

[00:04:22] in the LA area that opens on July 9th.

[00:04:25] And it's going to be, it's an old Best Buy.

[00:04:27] It's 45,000 square feet.

[00:04:30] It's going to have a restaurant, a fitness center,

[00:04:32] yoga studio, Pilates.

[00:04:34] It's going to have a spa.

[00:04:35] It's going to have a medical center.

[00:04:37] It's going to have pickleball courts.

[00:04:39] If that's successful, yeah,

[00:04:41] then I know we're going to be successful.

[00:04:43] And what was, you know, you talk about this

[00:04:45] and you talk about Love Life in the book,

[00:04:47] but we're a little bit towards the end,

[00:04:50] but what was the impetus?

[00:04:51] Can you describe like what made you decide to do this?

[00:04:55] You know, it's interesting as you read through the book,

[00:04:57] you'll see that there are actually a lot of themes

[00:05:00] that have come back together to do Love Life.

[00:05:04] Back in the day, back in the late 80s,

[00:05:08] I almost opened up with some friends

[00:05:10] a center called Life Works.

[00:05:13] And it was going to be a smaller version

[00:05:15] of what Life, what Love Life has turned out to be.

[00:05:18] We were going to have meditation and yoga.

[00:05:21] It was going to be a holistic health center.

[00:05:23] And it didn't happen because one of the key people

[00:05:27] pulled out of it and then I decided to pull the plug.

[00:05:30] So that dream was not-

[00:05:31] You mentioned, I think you're the main person

[00:05:34] didn't want to put money into it.

[00:05:35] Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:36] So that was kind of the tipping point to not do it.

[00:05:40] But the dream was still there.

[00:05:42] And I feel called to do it.

[00:05:48] I think purpose is something that comes from within us,

[00:05:51] inside of us, a deeper part of our soul, so to speak.

[00:05:55] And I really feel like this can help a lot of people.

[00:05:59] And I don't know if I'd be happy if I didn't try it.

[00:06:02] It'd be one of those things that I'd look back and say,

[00:06:04] well, I should have tried it.

[00:06:05] I had the money.

[00:06:07] And I'm not the kind of guy that's going to be happy

[00:06:10] just living the good life laying on a beach someplace.

[00:06:13] I'd get to be boring.

[00:06:15] And it's fun creating a business.

[00:06:17] It's challenging.

[00:06:18] So I like to say that compared to when I was 24 years old

[00:06:22] and getting Safer Way and then Whole Foods going,

[00:06:24] I know a lot more.

[00:06:26] I certainly have a lot more money than I had back then.

[00:06:29] Better business person.

[00:06:30] I'm more mature, more spiritually evolved.

[00:06:33] But I don't have the same kind of-

[00:06:37] I'm not willing to work 80 hours a week,

[00:06:39] week after week after week after week.

[00:06:40] And I was at that age to build something.

[00:06:43] So I've got a lot of other things

[00:06:46] that I'm bringing to this new business,

[00:06:48] but I don't have unlimited time to give to it.

[00:06:53] And with Whole Foods, it seemed like,

[00:07:00] there's a great example when you had that first store

[00:07:02] and then the flood came and everything's ruined.

[00:07:06] And that's that make or break moment

[00:07:09] where you can either decide I'm going to give up

[00:07:11] and pursue something new,

[00:07:14] or I'm going to attempt to rebuild this and recreate this

[00:07:18] and create something even better.

[00:07:20] And what do you think it was that gave you the energy then

[00:07:23] to just not be disappointed in yourself

[00:07:25] and give up and just move on?

[00:07:29] It's a great question.

[00:07:32] I've often tried to think back,

[00:07:34] and of course one of the great reasons

[00:07:35] to write a book like that is I got to relive

[00:07:38] about 50 years of my life.

[00:07:40] And I think, first of all, I'm not a quitter.

[00:07:45] I'm not a person that gives up easy.

[00:07:48] But I've often wondered if there wasn't so many people

[00:07:53] that I was doing it with,

[00:07:55] there was Renee, who was the co-founder and my lover.

[00:08:01] There was my parents.

[00:08:02] My dad had invested money in the business.

[00:08:04] I had friends invest money.

[00:08:05] I didn't want to let everybody down.

[00:08:07] If I hadn't had those things, would I have rebuilt?

[00:08:12] I don't really know if I would have or not.

[00:08:13] I think it was, I really felt like at the end of the day,

[00:08:16] besides I don't want to quit,

[00:08:18] I think that I didn't want to let everybody down.

[00:08:22] I really wanted to, I wanted everybody that trusted me

[00:08:26] and invested in me and the business.

[00:08:28] I wanted them to all flourish and prosper.

[00:08:30] So I couldn't give up.

[00:08:31] I couldn't quit.

[00:08:32] I'd be letting everybody down.

[00:08:34] That was a big factor.

[00:08:36] It was also, you had kind of circumstances

[00:08:39] which allowed you to get an easy bank loan

[00:08:41] based on your earlier cash flows

[00:08:43] to help you with the rebuilding.

[00:08:45] And if that bank loan hadn't come through,

[00:08:49] what do you think you would have done?

[00:08:53] Great question.

[00:08:54] Can't know for sure,

[00:08:55] but probably we still would have gotten open,

[00:08:58] but we really struggled more.

[00:09:02] We would have, it was that 100,000

[00:09:05] helped us kind of get out of a big hole.

[00:09:08] And we still would have been in the hole just a lot longer.

[00:09:12] I think we still would have tried,

[00:09:13] particularly since A,

[00:09:16] the investors kicked in some more money

[00:09:18] and B, we got all that inventory fronted to us by suppliers

[00:09:23] that was so additional inventory.

[00:09:26] The bank money enabled us to get out a lot faster,

[00:09:30] but I think we would have gone through with it,

[00:09:31] even if the banker,

[00:09:33] even if that money hadn't come through,

[00:09:34] I think we would have still managed to claw our way out.

[00:09:37] But all these things are related

[00:09:38] to what you were referring to earlier with culture

[00:09:40] and like, you know, the differences in culture

[00:09:43] between you and Amazon, for instance.

[00:09:44] Like culturally, you had set up environment

[00:09:48] where you're doing something you believed in, right?

[00:09:51] So you're selling food that you believed in,

[00:09:53] that you thought was healthy,

[00:09:54] that you thought the community would benefit from

[00:09:57] as opposed to, let's say other stores.

[00:10:00] And your suppliers, they were part of your culture.

[00:10:04] The bank or the people who helped you get the loan

[00:10:06] at the bank, they were part of your culture.

[00:10:09] And so it does seem like culture has been a key theme

[00:10:14] of entrepreneurship for you over the decades.

[00:10:18] And I don't know if that's always true for people.

[00:10:21] We see many cases now where the cultures are really horrible

[00:10:25] but because, you know, particularly in some fields,

[00:10:28] like let's say an Uber, it scales so fast,

[00:10:32] it's able to scale faster than the culture

[00:10:33] is able to bring things down.

[00:10:39] And this almost seems like kind of a woo-woo sort of thing,

[00:10:42] but like what are the key components you think

[00:10:44] that create a good culture in a company?

[00:10:49] Well, you did trigger a thought that I want to share

[00:10:50] before I try to answer that question.

[00:10:52] What I discovered when we were growing Whole Foods Market,

[00:10:55] there was an optimum growth rates, so to speak.

[00:10:58] When we began to grow faster than 25%,

[00:11:01] maybe it could top out at maybe 30%.

[00:11:04] We were growing faster than that.

[00:11:06] The culture couldn't keep up.

[00:11:08] So I always wanted to keep the growth rate,

[00:11:12] the optimum growth rate was about, you know, 15 to 25%.

[00:11:16] That way our culture would be able to grow and evolve

[00:11:18] and keep up with the growth rate.

[00:11:21] But if you were adding too many people in too soon,

[00:11:25] too quickly, then the culture would begin to get diluted.

[00:11:29] By the way, I often think in the history of America,

[00:11:32] the United States, that we can integrate

[00:11:36] a certain level of immigration successfully,

[00:11:40] we can enculturate it.

[00:11:43] But when we begin to have too much external growth

[00:11:47] coming in from immigration,

[00:11:49] you begin to get this xenophobia.

[00:11:51] You start to get an anti-immigrant blowback.

[00:11:55] And that's happened several times in American history.

[00:11:58] And if you look at, it's about the rate of change.

[00:12:01] The culture can only take in so much.

[00:12:03] It's true for corporations, it's true for a country.

[00:12:07] And so your question is,

[00:12:08] how do you keep the cultural integrity?

[00:12:12] I do think that it's,

[00:12:16] you asked the Uber question.

[00:12:18] When a company is growing exponentially,

[00:12:21] I don't think the culture can keep up with it.

[00:12:24] I think that they don't,

[00:12:27] I mean, every company has a culture,

[00:12:28] but let's say a healthy culture can't keep up with it.

[00:12:32] You end up having to do all kinds of things

[00:12:34] to try to maintain a culture that's healthy.

[00:12:38] But if it's changing too rapidly,

[00:12:41] at a certain point,

[00:12:43] I think it's almost impossible to do very well.

[00:12:46] But the key things are,

[00:12:48] is there a higher purpose of the business?

[00:12:50] What's the purpose of the business?

[00:12:51] Why does it exist?

[00:12:52] What's the value creation it's giving?

[00:12:55] That has to be front and center

[00:12:56] in terms of to maintain a good culture.

[00:12:58] People have to understand what they're doing

[00:13:02] and why what they're doing is important

[00:13:04] and how it's contributing to other people.

[00:13:06] That purpose is gonna tie into value creation

[00:13:09] for other people one way or another.

[00:13:12] And then you have these interdependencies, the stakeholders.

[00:13:15] And so it's important that a culture understand

[00:13:18] that it has these relationships with,

[00:13:20] that's what the flood when we were almost died.

[00:13:23] I didn't have the term stakeholders back then,

[00:13:26] but I realized, wow,

[00:13:27] we're just a network of relationships

[00:13:30] that are all trading with us.

[00:13:31] We have customers that are trading with us.

[00:13:33] We have employees that have jobs.

[00:13:35] They're trading with us.

[00:13:36] We have suppliers that are trading with us.

[00:13:38] We have investors that are trading with us.

[00:13:40] We have a community that we're part of

[00:13:42] that's trading with us.

[00:13:44] We're doing all these exchanges.

[00:13:46] We're creating value for each other and it's very complex.

[00:13:50] And a healthy culture, I think,

[00:13:52] understands those relationships, values them,

[00:13:55] doesn't try to exploit the different stakeholders

[00:13:59] that are voluntarily exchanging.

[00:14:01] And I think that's part of what makes a culture resilient

[00:14:05] and healthy.

[00:14:06] Also say the values of the company, the core values,

[00:14:09] the ethics, the things that give the,

[00:14:15] make people proud of where they're working.

[00:14:17] Those are very, that's a very important cultural element.

[00:14:20] So the core values and whether a business

[00:14:23] is living up to those values,

[00:14:25] whether it's living up to its purpose

[00:14:26] or whether it's hypocritical,

[00:14:29] because if people decide, well,

[00:14:31] the company's not doing what it says it's doing,

[00:14:33] then the culture begins to diminish people's,

[00:14:36] the relationship bonds begin to fray,

[00:14:41] loyalty begins to be questioned, turnover increases.

[00:14:46] So there's all these traits

[00:14:47] that go into making a healthy culture.

[00:14:50] I do think, I think,

[00:14:51] and also the leadership is very important.

[00:14:54] Is the leadership walking the talk?

[00:14:56] Do they embody the culture themselves

[00:14:58] or do they just mouth it but don't live it?

[00:15:01] These are all things that if you have leadership

[00:15:04] that is just in it for themselves, for example,

[00:15:07] isn't really taking shortcuts,

[00:15:09] just trying to get the stock price up

[00:15:10] so their stock options be more valuable,

[00:15:13] that's obviously gonna hurt the culture.

[00:15:16] So James, there's just a tremendous amount

[00:15:18] of complexity in culture.

[00:15:21] So I'm trying to give the highest, most important points,

[00:15:24] purpose, core values, hypocrisy, things like that.

[00:15:28] But it's interesting,

[00:15:29] because you made the analogy to the culture of a country

[00:15:32] and this idea of relationships that are,

[00:15:36] different types of relationships

[00:15:38] are trading with each other.

[00:15:38] Like you say, employees are trading their time

[00:15:42] for money with you

[00:15:43] and vendors are trading their products

[00:15:48] with you to be resold to your customers

[00:15:50] who are trading with you

[00:15:51] and your stakeholders are trading money for equity with you

[00:15:53] but they need it to be treated

[00:15:56] like they're part of the culture as well,

[00:15:57] even though they might not be there on a daily basis.

[00:16:00] I'm wondering if you made the analogy to a country,

[00:16:04] would you make the analogy to a person?

[00:16:05] Like I feel like each person could aspire

[00:16:10] to the same cultural attributes.

[00:16:13] I never thought about it,

[00:16:14] so that's an interesting line of thinking.

[00:16:16] It's probably true.

[00:16:17] Certainly our body is a very complex ecosystem.

[00:16:21] I mean, we've got trillions and trillions of cells

[00:16:25] and they're constantly dying and being reborn

[00:16:28] and we have these relationships

[00:16:29] between all of our organ systems.

[00:16:31] So, hey, our gut microbiome has got like 10 trillion cells

[00:16:36] and it's its own little universe.

[00:16:41] It's very interesting line of thinking.

[00:16:43] But then you also have your wife and your kids

[00:16:47] and your friends and your colleagues

[00:16:50] and acquaintances who are not friends

[00:16:52] but they're acquaintances.

[00:16:53] Like, and all the things you just said about a company,

[00:16:56] like, okay, what's your purpose?

[00:16:59] What are your values?

[00:17:00] Are you living what you preach?

[00:17:02] And on and on.

[00:17:04] It seems like these are attributes

[00:17:07] to a successful personal culture,

[00:17:09] which could mean success in general as well.

[00:17:11] Absolutely, you're absolutely correct.

[00:17:14] I think that's a brilliant insight.

[00:17:15] I totally agree with it.

[00:17:16] It absolutely is true.

[00:17:17] The same thing that lead to a healthy business culture

[00:17:22] are attributes that live to a healthy personal culture

[00:17:26] because we all are in networks of relationships.

[00:17:29] And yeah, sure, if you don't walk your own talk,

[00:17:32] if you're a hypocrite or you treat people poorly,

[00:17:36] you're going to have a bad,

[00:17:37] you're probably going to have a bad personal culture.

[00:17:45] Take a quick break.

[00:17:46] If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it.

[00:17:49] It means so much to me.

[00:17:50] Please share it with your friends

[00:17:51] and subscribe to the podcast.

[00:17:53] Email me at altitradegmail.com

[00:17:56] and tell me why you subscribed.

[00:17:57] Thanks.

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[00:19:11] Like once a time you think personally,

[00:19:14] you weren't quite aligned,

[00:19:17] your personal culture wasn't quite aligned

[00:19:19] with how you're acting or behaving.

[00:19:22] I give a ton of examples of that in the book

[00:19:24] because over time I would have sometimes,

[00:19:30] the metaphor I was oftentimes using

[00:19:32] was my own spiritual growth,

[00:19:33] my own personal growth as a leader.

[00:19:36] And I had these crisis moments throughout the 44 years

[00:19:40] that I'd led the company

[00:19:42] where I might've forgotten some of that.

[00:19:45] I forgot how important love was

[00:19:47] and I had to be reminded of it.

[00:19:48] I forgot how important treating people

[00:19:53] with care and kindness,

[00:19:56] so that I would, but I would be reminded of it

[00:19:58] and I would get back on the track.

[00:20:00] So there were times like when I almost,

[00:20:03] I had a coup, I had four separate coup attempts

[00:20:06] that I go into the book

[00:20:07] and those were all low points for me,

[00:20:08] but also those coups were almost symbolic of my own,

[00:20:13] I wasn't at my very best.

[00:20:15] I was vulnerable when those coup attempts happened

[00:20:18] because I hadn't, my own personal culture,

[00:20:22] you might say had diminished.

[00:20:24] It's not like a continuous thing.

[00:20:26] It has ups and downs.

[00:20:28] I do think my culture continued to evolve

[00:20:31] and develop all the way to the end.

[00:20:32] It's still evolving today in healthy ways,

[00:20:36] but it's not a straight line.

[00:20:37] It's more like a spiral where you take three steps forward

[00:20:40] and a step and a half back

[00:20:43] and there are setbacks that happen.

[00:20:45] Just like our health, our personal biological health.

[00:20:49] I'm extremely healthy right now,

[00:20:51] but I get sick from time to time

[00:20:53] and I take a step backwards.

[00:20:55] I think that's true in all walks of life,

[00:20:59] business culture, personal culture, your body, et cetera.

[00:21:03] It's hopefully we're flourishing and we're improving

[00:21:07] and we're growing and learning

[00:21:09] and their culture is being enriched,

[00:21:11] but there are times when it's not

[00:21:14] and you've made mistakes and you have regrets

[00:21:18] and those are learning opportunities

[00:21:20] to get yourself back on track.

[00:21:22] But I had numerous setbacks

[00:21:24] throughout my career at Whole Foods,

[00:21:26] numerous times when my personal culture

[00:21:28] was diminished rather than enriched.

[00:21:32] Let's take the first kind of cool attempt.

[00:21:35] There was Craig and Mark

[00:21:37] and the first company that you sort of merged with

[00:21:41] when you were a safer way to basically form.

[00:21:43] They had another grocery store across town

[00:21:46] and you were impressed with it.

[00:21:47] You guys merged and they brought a certain kind of

[00:21:51] almost business discipline to the business.

[00:21:53] You became Whole Foods, you opened up,

[00:21:55] but then one of them wanted to kind of keep it small

[00:22:01] or go his own way and his philosophy of growth

[00:22:03] was different than yours.

[00:22:05] So it wasn't necessarily your fault.

[00:22:06] Like how do you think you were not,

[00:22:11] how do you think you could have better handled

[00:22:12] that situation?

[00:22:14] Great question, because I hadn't thought about

[00:22:16] that question for a long time.

[00:22:18] And now I had my own thinking about it

[00:22:21] back when it happened.

[00:22:22] We're talking about 1984, 1985 now, so 40 years ago.

[00:22:27] How could I have handled it better?

[00:22:28] Well, I mean, Mark, the partner that got frustrated with me

[00:22:33] he got frustrated because he really didn't want to grow.

[00:22:37] Our very first Whole Foods market was so successful.

[00:22:40] It was a gold mine.

[00:22:41] It was just, we were printing money.

[00:22:43] It was so successful.

[00:22:44] It's the highest volume natural food store

[00:22:46] in the United States.

[00:22:47] And even though it had a flood, we survived

[00:22:49] and got back on track and I wanted to grow

[00:22:52] and Mark really didn't.

[00:22:54] And then when the first few stores,

[00:22:56] they all did well in the long run.

[00:22:59] But as we went away from the center part of Austin

[00:23:03] and we went to places where we weren't known

[00:23:06] and more suburban areas, the store started slower

[00:23:10] and they lost money.

[00:23:11] And Mark was very frustrated because he said,

[00:23:15] we're dividing up all our energy

[00:23:18] and we can't be all places at once.

[00:23:22] We can't control everything and now we're losing money.

[00:23:25] And it's your fault, John.

[00:23:27] You were the one who wanted to expand.

[00:23:28] I never did.

[00:23:29] And so he got angrier and angrier.

[00:23:31] And I kept saying, be patient, be patient.

[00:23:34] These stores are going to be all really good.

[00:23:36] But he didn't have the patience for it.

[00:23:38] He just thought I was a bad leader

[00:23:41] because I was forcing this growth that he didn't want to do

[00:23:43] and then the stores were not doing that well

[00:23:45] and it was my fault.

[00:23:47] What could I have done differently?

[00:23:49] Well, I didn't know that the stores

[00:23:51] were all going to start slow.

[00:23:53] But then as I learned it, I became more cautious.

[00:23:57] So I did learn from it.

[00:23:58] Mark just didn't stick around long enough.

[00:24:00] He just got angrier and angrier and he just wanted to leave.

[00:24:03] So he didn't have patience.

[00:24:05] But I don't know how I could have handled it

[00:24:07] different at the time.

[00:24:09] I actually think I handled it pretty well in the sense

[00:24:11] that I asked him to take a leave of absence with full pay.

[00:24:14] I wanted him to have a good time.

[00:24:16] I asked him to take a leave of absence with full pay.

[00:24:19] I wanted him to...

[00:24:20] And the stores did better during those six months.

[00:24:23] When he came back, they were much healthier.

[00:24:25] We weren't losing money.

[00:24:26] We were profitable again.

[00:24:27] But he hadn't changed his opinion that I was...

[00:24:29] If I wasn't going to wreck the company then,

[00:24:31] I was going to wreck it later because of my quest for growth.

[00:24:35] Why do you think he had that opinion?

[00:24:36] Well, he called me wacky Mackie

[00:24:39] and it's because I was a new age guy.

[00:24:44] Still am in many ways.

[00:24:46] I was doing meditation.

[00:24:49] I did MDMA.

[00:24:51] I was studying different spiritual philosophies

[00:24:54] and I was trying to bring love into the company

[00:24:56] and I was just out there.

[00:25:00] And he just thought I was nuts.

[00:25:01] That's not what you do with business.

[00:25:03] And he just lost his faith in me.

[00:25:07] He didn't trust me.

[00:25:08] He just thought I was crazy.

[00:25:11] There's no other way to put it.

[00:25:12] Thought I was crazy.

[00:25:13] Even though you rebuilt things after the flood,

[00:25:15] even though you kind of had built the company to that point,

[00:25:20] as small as it was then, but you built it.

[00:25:25] Do you think that he had other things going on

[00:25:26] in the sense that maybe he had personal financial needs?

[00:25:28] So they wanted to take back control

[00:25:30] or he wanted to take back control over that original store

[00:25:32] as kind of a separation deal,

[00:25:34] something which you correctly did not allow him to do.

[00:25:37] And do you think maybe he just had

[00:25:40] some personal financial needs

[00:25:41] that were not being solved in the short term

[00:25:43] by your leadership?

[00:25:45] I don't think so.

[00:25:46] I don't think that's true.

[00:25:47] I think Mark had come from a working class background.

[00:25:51] His family wasn't that well off

[00:25:54] and he'd always worked really hard.

[00:25:56] Mark was a very good retailer.

[00:25:58] He was very smart.

[00:25:59] He was a hard worker.

[00:26:01] Both he and Craig were very hard workers.

[00:26:04] Craig even harder than Mark.

[00:26:06] But you have to understand,

[00:26:08] that first store for the first time in his entire life,

[00:26:11] Mark had money.

[00:26:14] And he just saw that, he just said,

[00:26:17] if we just stayed with the one store,

[00:26:19] we're gonna be rich.

[00:26:20] We don't need to do anything else.

[00:26:22] We've got it made.

[00:26:23] Don't screw it up.

[00:26:25] And there I was screwing it up.

[00:26:27] That's how he saw it.

[00:26:28] I was screwing it up.

[00:26:29] And he just knew I was gonna wreck it all.

[00:26:33] It was a matter of time.

[00:26:34] And he just wanted to get out before I was able to wreck it.

[00:26:40] And he didn't understand me basically.

[00:26:44] And he didn't trust me.

[00:26:45] So I get that.

[00:26:46] He had his own business.

[00:26:48] He was in control of it.

[00:26:49] And now we had this one store.

[00:26:51] He worked really hard in it.

[00:26:52] It was very successful and very profitable.

[00:26:55] And he's right, if we'd stayed in that one store,

[00:26:58] we'd have had a nice long run.

[00:26:59] Eventually we would have gone bankrupt

[00:27:01] because competition came along.

[00:27:04] But we could have had a nice long run

[00:27:06] and Mark would have made a lot of money.

[00:27:08] And that's really what he wanted to do.

[00:27:10] And that really wasn't what I,

[00:27:11] I wanted to make money too,

[00:27:12] that wasn't my primary goal.

[00:27:14] I wanted to grow a business.

[00:27:15] I wanted to build a business.

[00:27:18] And he just, you know, I don't know.

[00:27:21] Again, he called me wacky Mac.

[00:27:23] He thought I was nuts.

[00:27:24] I don't know how else to put it.

[00:27:25] He's not here to defend himself.

[00:27:26] He would probably tell you all kinds of crazy things

[00:27:29] John did that John has conveniently forgotten.

[00:27:33] You never kind of like years later sort of met and said,

[00:27:37] hey, water under the bridge?

[00:27:40] You know, I tried.

[00:27:42] And we, when we created a hall of fame

[00:27:44] for Whole Foods Market,

[00:27:45] Mark was a first round inductee

[00:27:48] because he was one of the founders of the company.

[00:27:50] And he came to our big celebratory dinner.

[00:27:55] And, but I think that was,

[00:27:56] I think I don't know this for sure,

[00:27:58] but I think that was really hard on Mark

[00:28:00] because he'd made a bad decision.

[00:28:02] He'd sold all of his stock

[00:28:04] and he'd created a pizza company, which ultimately failed.

[00:28:07] And if Mark had stayed in the business,

[00:28:10] if he'd held onto a stock, he'd have been worth,

[00:28:13] he wouldn't just been rich.

[00:28:14] He'd have been mega wealthy.

[00:28:15] He'd been super wealthy.

[00:28:17] And it was a huge mistake to make in his life.

[00:28:19] And faced with our success there,

[00:28:22] I never ever saw Mark in a Whole Foods Market store

[00:28:25] after he left, ever again.

[00:28:26] He didn't even shop there.

[00:28:28] And I think, you know, people want to be right.

[00:28:31] And there's a tendency to root against the team that,

[00:28:34] you know, I don't think he was pulling for Whole Foods

[00:28:37] after he sold it.

[00:28:38] He wanted us to fail.

[00:28:39] He said, I would, when he left,

[00:28:40] he said, I know you're going to wreck the company.

[00:28:42] Instead, the company went on

[00:28:43] to these great and glorious things.

[00:28:46] And Mark could have been part of that.

[00:28:47] But he, I think going to our celebratory dinner

[00:28:51] and seeing our success was probably really hard on him

[00:28:55] just because, you know, he wasn't part of it

[00:28:57] and he'd made a mistake

[00:28:59] and he couldn't rectify that mistake.

[00:29:02] I don't know for sure.

[00:29:03] I'm just guessing.

[00:29:04] And if he was here,

[00:29:06] he might say something completely different.

[00:29:08] Now, one of your other initial founders

[00:29:11] was your girlfriend, Renee.

[00:29:12] You were 23, she was 19.

[00:29:14] You were working in the food co-op together

[00:29:17] and decided to do your own.

[00:29:19] And, you know, ultimately like people do

[00:29:23] from the ages of 29 and on up,

[00:29:26] she changed and changed her interests

[00:29:28] and you guys split up

[00:29:29] and she had other things going on in her life.

[00:29:32] Did she end up remaining a shareholder?

[00:29:36] Renee did and she ultimately made a lot of money

[00:29:40] on her investment.

[00:29:42] So she kind of has a happy ending there

[00:29:45] and she has her own business in Talas, New Mexico

[00:29:49] and she married, raised up a daughter

[00:29:52] and I think she's, you know, by all accounts

[00:29:55] had a very happy life.

[00:29:56] And it seems like a lot of your relationships

[00:29:58] were interwoven with your business.

[00:30:02] I think it's hard as an entrepreneur

[00:30:04] to have relationships outside of a business, frankly.

[00:30:06] Like for my own self, I've never had a business

[00:30:09] obviously like Whole Foods,

[00:30:10] but just the businesses I've started,

[00:30:12] I would sooner or later realize,

[00:30:13] hey, all of my friends and social interactions

[00:30:16] are completely related to my business.

[00:30:19] It's hard to move away from that.

[00:30:23] I mean, I think it's true.

[00:30:25] At least the first 20 years I did the business

[00:30:30] until 911 happened and I began to realize

[00:30:34] that I needed to do some other things in life

[00:30:35] before I passed on.

[00:30:37] I think that's probably true.

[00:30:38] Almost all my relationships were connected to Whole Foods,

[00:30:41] one way or another.

[00:30:43] Except Deborah.

[00:30:47] Deborah.

[00:30:47] Yeah, she, you met outside of Whole Foods

[00:30:50] and ended up marrying her.

[00:30:52] And so then I suppose I had new friends

[00:30:55] that came from her side.

[00:30:57] But there's only a certain amount of time in the day, right?

[00:31:01] And between, if when you're married,

[00:31:05] if you're working really hard,

[00:31:06] if you are trying to be, take exercise,

[00:31:10] it was just hard to maintain other relationships.

[00:31:15] I'm in a better place today

[00:31:16] because I have a ton of relationships

[00:31:18] outside of Whole Foods.

[00:31:19] And in fact, outside of love life,

[00:31:24] I'm just an older, wiser person.

[00:31:27] I understand the importance of those relationships.

[00:31:29] And I had other friends that didn't work for Whole Foods,

[00:31:32] but I just didn't have the time to keep them up.

[00:31:36] Our relationships need to be nourished.

[00:31:38] I didn't always nourish them as well as I think I should've.

[00:31:41] I didn't have a healthy personal culture,

[00:31:43] using your metaphor.

[00:31:45] Do you think when you're older, it is,

[00:31:47] like when you're younger,

[00:31:48] it's possible to have quote unquote best friends.

[00:31:51] Just the kid who lives in the house next door,

[00:31:53] you walk over there anytime you want

[00:31:55] and you can go play baseball or whatever.

[00:31:57] Do you think when you're older,

[00:31:58] it's possible to make good, long-lasting life friendships?

[00:32:05] Yes, because I have so many of them, absolutely.

[00:32:09] It's all about the energy you put into the relationship.

[00:32:12] And when you're younger, you put a lot of energy into it.

[00:32:15] You go through a phase in your life

[00:32:16] where you're building your career.

[00:32:17] Maybe you spend less time nourishing those relationships.

[00:32:20] Or if you have kids, you spend more time

[00:32:22] trying to nourish those relationships.

[00:32:24] But I'd say today,

[00:32:26] I have so many friends that I love and I'm close to,

[00:32:30] and most of them are not involved in work in any way.

[00:32:33] I've nourished those relationships.

[00:32:36] So yes, it's possible.

[00:32:37] Now you mentioned, Mark would call you wacky Mackie.

[00:32:41] I feel like lots of people,

[00:32:44] either to your face or behind your back,

[00:32:46] would call you that over the decades.

[00:32:48] Like after your IPO and when you're posting on,

[00:32:53] I remember this, when the day was,

[00:32:58] the news was out there or the article was out there

[00:33:01] that somebody said, oh, the CEO of Whole Foods

[00:33:03] is posting anonymously on the Wild Oats market

[00:33:07] at the same time that they're buying the company.

[00:33:09] And it was just like a funny story,

[00:33:11] but that's a wacky thing for a CEO to do.

[00:33:16] I guess, I don't know.

[00:33:17] I, of course, I didn't go to CEO school,

[00:33:20] so I'm not sure how CEOs are supposed to act.

[00:33:26] I'll tell you a story.

[00:33:27] You would post on the Wild Oats board,

[00:33:29] oh, the CEO of the Whole Foods

[00:33:30] is the most handsome CEO out there.

[00:33:33] No, no, no.

[00:33:33] Stuff like that.

[00:33:34] I never did that.

[00:33:35] That joke was on the Whole Foods,

[00:33:38] not the Wild Oats bullseye.

[00:33:40] I only posted occasionally on Wild Oats.

[00:33:43] The media blew that completely out of proportion

[00:33:47] to the reality of the situation.

[00:33:49] I was just having fun.

[00:33:51] I like defending Whole Foods market.

[00:33:54] And this was like before you had social media,

[00:33:57] those bulletin boards were an opportunity.

[00:33:59] Everybody had screen names and it was fun.

[00:34:04] I enjoyed it.

[00:34:06] I stopped doing it after I lost a bet with a short.

[00:34:10] I was always arguing for pro Whole Foods

[00:34:12] on the Yahoo bulletin board for Whole Foods.

[00:34:15] And this guy was always shorting Whole Foods

[00:34:18] and we made a bet.

[00:34:20] I lost the bet because he said the stock would be below

[00:34:23] this number, this date.

[00:34:24] And I said, no way it will be.

[00:34:25] And I'll tell you what,

[00:34:27] if it's above that number, you get off the board.

[00:34:30] If it's below that number, I'll get off the board.

[00:34:32] And it was below the number barely.

[00:34:34] And I got off the board.

[00:34:36] So I never posted again on that bulletin board.

[00:34:40] And so it was about six months later that

[00:34:43] I go into it in detail in the book.

[00:34:46] You had a FTC was trying to stop our merger with Wild Oats

[00:34:49] and they probably are the ones that notified

[00:34:52] the Wall Street Journal of this.

[00:34:53] Because hey, they got 10 million documents from Whole Foods

[00:34:57] and including my whole computer.

[00:34:59] So they probably leaked it.

[00:35:01] I don't know that for a fact.

[00:35:03] I just, somebody leaked it and not many people knew.

[00:35:07] And then the next thing I know,

[00:35:08] I'm getting investigated by the SEC for insider trading.

[00:35:11] It was the whole thing was a circus.

[00:35:13] We ultimately triumphed in all those things,

[00:35:16] but my reputation was deeply damaged.

[00:35:20] As you say, wacky macky.

[00:35:23] But for me, I'm a playful guy.

[00:35:26] I am playful.

[00:35:27] Entrepreneurs generally are playful people.

[00:35:30] And I was as a form of play, entertainment.

[00:35:33] It was a game.

[00:35:34] And my book starts out with the game of life

[00:35:37] and ends first chapters about the game of life

[00:35:39] and the second, the final chapter

[00:35:41] is about the infinite game.

[00:35:43] Game playing is a huge theme

[00:35:45] throughout my whole entire lifetime.

[00:35:47] And posting on a bulletin board for me

[00:35:49] was nothing more than a game.

[00:35:51] And I had fun doing it.

[00:35:52] And sorry, I lost the bet to that guy.

[00:35:55] But I honored, I was honorable and I stopped posting.

[00:35:59] But, and the idea of an infinite game is interesting

[00:36:01] because obviously you say your reputation was damaged,

[00:36:06] but obviously it survived.

[00:36:09] You grew, you flourished, you transformed in many ways.

[00:36:13] Throughout the book, throughout the life cycle

[00:36:16] of Whole Foods and your career.

[00:36:18] So I think that's a view people have to take

[00:36:21] is that whatever happens in the short term,

[00:36:24] it's not the end of the world.

[00:36:27] There's very few things that are the end of the world.

[00:36:29] And you sort of showed that quite a bit.

[00:36:32] I mean, I think most entrepreneurs,

[00:36:35] I can't speak for everyone,

[00:36:37] but every entrepreneur is going to be criticized

[00:36:41] because if you're a successful entrepreneur,

[00:36:44] you by almost by definition are thinking outside the box.

[00:36:47] You're seeing things other people don't see.

[00:36:49] You're creating something

[00:36:51] that's generally not just a me too thing,

[00:36:53] but you're doing things that are different

[00:36:55] than the way other people do things.

[00:36:57] And so entrepreneurs are just frequently criticized

[00:37:01] and you have to overcome a wall of skepticism.

[00:37:06] And I think for me,

[00:37:07] I was told I was going to fail so many times

[00:37:11] with Mark telling me that when he was leaving,

[00:37:13] but he was certainly not the first and he wasn't the last.

[00:37:16] I've had it, a venture capitalist told me that.

[00:37:18] I had so many people tell me that what you're doing

[00:37:20] is nuts, crazy, it's going to fail, blah, blah, blah.

[00:37:22] I even had one team member that left Whole Foods

[00:37:27] and she came in and told me she was leaving.

[00:37:29] And I said, you know, she really wanted to talk to me.

[00:37:32] So we have an open door.

[00:37:33] So I talked with her and she said,

[00:37:34] you know, you're not like us.

[00:37:35] You don't act like a CEO is supposed to act.

[00:37:38] And I said, I don't?

[00:37:39] How does a CEO supposed to act?

[00:37:41] Well, you know, look at you.

[00:37:42] You got long hair, you dress in shorts.

[00:37:46] You're not a professional business guy.

[00:37:48] You don't look like a business guy.

[00:37:49] And I said, how's the business doing?

[00:37:53] And she says, well, it's doing pretty good,

[00:37:55] but it shouldn't be.

[00:37:57] I said, why not?

[00:37:58] She says, because you're not a good CEO.

[00:38:00] And I said, well, why aren't I a good CEO?

[00:38:02] And she couldn't really put her finger on it

[00:38:04] except that I just didn't look the part.

[00:38:06] I didn't act the way she thought I was supposed to act.

[00:38:09] Because I'm just myself.

[00:38:13] I just show up as who I am.

[00:38:14] I wasn't trying to be a CEO.

[00:38:16] I was trying to be a good leader.

[00:38:17] Leadership and CEOs are not synonyms for each other.

[00:38:21] You can be a good leader and maybe not

[00:38:23] live up to somebody else's opinion

[00:38:25] of what a CEO is supposed to look like or do.

[00:38:28] But ultimately, the results are what count, right?

[00:38:31] So I always used all those criticisms

[00:38:34] I took about how I was going to fail.

[00:38:36] I didn't know what I was doing.

[00:38:38] I'm a bad CEO.

[00:38:39] I don't act the way a CEO is supposed to act.

[00:38:41] I always took it as ways for me to, OK, I'm going to show you.

[00:38:45] I'll show you what I can do.

[00:38:47] And I'll show you what Whole Foods can do.

[00:38:48] And so I always used it to kind of stoke my ambition,

[00:38:53] my drive, my desire to overcome criticisms,

[00:38:58] overcome the obstacles.

[00:38:59] It would always create determination in me,

[00:39:01] not discouragement.

[00:39:03] You were talking about earlier about why didn't you

[00:39:05] quit after the flood?

[00:39:07] It's like I said, well, everybody,

[00:39:09] I would let everybody down.

[00:39:11] There was a second factor, which is maybe

[00:39:13] the most important factor, which is I just

[00:39:16] view setbacks as opportunities to, OK, there's a lesson here.

[00:39:20] What can I learn from this?

[00:39:21] And I'm going to do better next time.

[00:39:23] There's just that resilience.

[00:39:25] You have to have, if you're an entrepreneur,

[00:39:27] you're going to have setbacks.

[00:39:28] You're going to have failures.

[00:39:29] You're going to have criticism.

[00:39:30] You have to be very resilient.

[00:39:32] You have to be willing to get back, pick yourself back up

[00:39:35] and get back in the game and do it better next time

[00:39:38] and not be discouraged and not get

[00:39:40] into that negative self-talk that you somehow

[00:39:42] know they're a failure, you're not any good,

[00:39:44] or you don't know what you're doing.

[00:39:45] You'll definitely sink the boat if you

[00:39:47] start thinking like that.

[00:39:48] So you have to.

[00:39:50] I just always view everything as a learning opportunity.

[00:39:54] When you make a mistake or you have a failure or setback,

[00:39:58] it's like, OK, what can I learn from this?

[00:40:00] I'm going to do better next time.

[00:40:03] I think that characteristic I'm describing

[00:40:05] is true of every time I've read books about entrepreneurs.

[00:40:09] It's true for all of them.

[00:40:11] Entrepreneurs, the ones that succeed,

[00:40:13] they just keep learning and growing and they get better.

[00:40:16] They have many failures along the way.

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[00:41:38] You know, it seems like throughout the lifecycle

[00:41:41] of Whole Foods, one thing that you're particularly good at

[00:41:44] was you had this instinct for expansion.

[00:41:47] Rather than say, oh, we need to have these products rather

[00:41:50] than these products, it seemed like your natural thoughts

[00:41:53] about the business would go to where can we expand to next?

[00:41:57] And OK, now we'll go to other parts of Texas.

[00:42:00] Now we'll go to California, Northern California.

[00:42:03] And it seemed like of your initial founders,

[00:42:07] Craig maybe had an instinct per store perhaps what

[00:42:11] should be in a store.

[00:42:12] I don't really know.

[00:42:13] But you yourself seem to have a good instinct for expansion.

[00:42:17] And that seems to be very important for an entrepreneur

[00:42:20] that's going to be incredibly successful, particularly

[00:42:22] of a physical goods store like what Whole Foods was.

[00:42:25] I think that's true.

[00:42:26] I mean, as Craig said early on, he said, you know, John,

[00:42:29] you're really good thinking about the future.

[00:42:32] And I'm really good thinking about the present.

[00:42:35] And that's true.

[00:42:36] And that's why we made a good team.

[00:42:38] Craig was so good in operations.

[00:42:40] He was so good at the day-to-day part of running

[00:42:42] a store and a retail business.

[00:42:44] And I was good about thinking about what

[00:42:46] we needed to do to grow.

[00:42:48] That we both were, we had both, those were our superpowers.

[00:42:53] And I think there are different kinds of entrepreneurs.

[00:42:58] I was always a builder kind of entrepreneur.

[00:43:01] I didn't want to have just one store as Mark did.

[00:43:04] I never wanted to have just one store.

[00:43:06] Once I had one successful store, let's

[00:43:09] see if we can do a second successful store.

[00:43:11] It's, that's the fun of the game.

[00:43:14] That's the challenge.

[00:43:16] Is to keep creating, keep building, keep,

[00:43:18] and make every store better than the last store.

[00:43:21] Because every store is a new opportunity

[00:43:23] to paint a new painting.

[00:43:25] And you can, it's not the same painting.

[00:43:27] It's, you can create a better painting than the one

[00:43:29] you did previously.

[00:43:30] So I think that creativity is a big part of me as well.

[00:43:35] The three things I emphasize throughout the book,

[00:43:37] and I sum up in the very end of the book,

[00:43:39] I talk about let us, let us, let us love.

[00:43:44] Let us create and let us play forever.

[00:43:48] Because it's love, creating, and playing to me

[00:43:53] that all lead to such a deeply fulfilling life that I've had.

[00:43:56] And I do that for all eternity.

[00:43:59] Those are fun things, those are good things.

[00:44:02] They're all good.

[00:44:04] As you were expanding, how did you know when you would,

[00:44:07] when you should build from scratch a new store

[00:44:09] as opposed to let's say buying an existing store or chain?

[00:44:13] Like, you know how you bought Wild Oats,

[00:44:15] but in many other cases you just simply went someplace

[00:44:18] and built a new Whole Foods.

[00:44:20] Well, sometimes there's nothing worth buying.

[00:44:23] But like Trader Joe's, like, did you ever consider

[00:44:27] going for Trader Joe's or something like that?

[00:44:29] Hey, if Trader Joe's had ever been for sale,

[00:44:31] I certainly would have been bidding for them.

[00:44:33] But they were, Trader Joe's was,

[00:44:36] people don't even know anything about Trader Joe's.

[00:44:38] They never talked to the media.

[00:44:39] Trader Joe's is a very closely controlled company.

[00:44:44] People don't even know, they're just not even American owned.

[00:44:49] The guy that started Trader Joe's,

[00:44:50] he sold that company to a German family, the Albrechts,

[00:44:54] I don't know, 40 years ago now.

[00:44:56] And so they've never been for sale.

[00:45:00] Or they, I'm sure that private equity firm

[00:45:03] or somebody would have bought them here

[00:45:04] or taken them public.

[00:45:06] They're a great company.

[00:45:07] They're a company that Whole Foods

[00:45:08] learned a lot from over the years.

[00:45:10] I mean, that was always, for my family

[00:45:12] when my kids were growing up, that was always our choice.

[00:45:15] Do we shop at Trader Joe's today

[00:45:17] or do we shop at Whole Foods today?

[00:45:19] A lot of people shop at both of them.

[00:45:21] They come from-

[00:45:22] That's what we ended up doing

[00:45:23] because they're slightly different.

[00:45:24] Yeah, a lot of people would come to Whole Foods

[00:45:25] for our perishable quality, get our fresh produce,

[00:45:28] our meat and seafood, and they'd go for Trader Joe's

[00:45:30] to get their very excellent private label products

[00:45:34] or cheap wine.

[00:45:36] And one way which it's almost sort of dissonant

[00:45:41] looking at your career,

[00:45:43] Whole Foods, it makes you think of,

[00:45:45] well, your background.

[00:45:48] You came up with the idea of Whole Foods originally.

[00:45:51] You were at a commune and you're working at a food co-op

[00:45:54] and this sort of Austin hippie culture,

[00:45:57] which is of course very liberal.

[00:45:59] But you're really, I don't want to use the word conservative

[00:46:03] because you're not conservative,

[00:46:04] but you're really like an arch,

[00:46:07] you know, obviously capitalist and very, you know,

[00:46:12] strong about your views on the economy

[00:46:15] and capitalism and so on.

[00:46:17] Where do you think just economically

[00:46:21] we're at right now as a country?

[00:46:25] Like people are doubting the dollar around the world.

[00:46:28] You know, there's a lot of government spending.

[00:46:30] There's a lot of government debt.

[00:46:31] Everyone's nervous.

[00:46:32] Where does this take us?

[00:46:36] Well, who knows?

[00:46:37] I mean, nobody can predict it.

[00:46:40] You can't really know the future.

[00:46:42] One of the questions I get asked all the time by media is,

[00:46:46] one of their favorite questions to ask is,

[00:46:48] you know, what's the world going to be like in 10 years?

[00:46:52] And it's like, well, nobody knows

[00:46:55] because think about the changes that have occurred

[00:46:58] in the last 10 years or the last 20 years

[00:47:00] that you would not have predicted.

[00:47:02] I mean, if you go back people 20 plus years ago,

[00:47:08] nobody had a smartphone.

[00:47:10] Now everybody's totally addicted to smartphones.

[00:47:14] Who would have thought Tesla would come along

[00:47:16] and revolutionize the automobile industry?

[00:47:19] Now you have, the internet itself is barely,

[00:47:22] I mean, in any kind of worldwide web usage

[00:47:25] is barely 30 years old or maybe 35 or 40 years tops.

[00:47:30] AI is the new thing, new kid on the block.

[00:47:33] And who knows how it's going to change our world?

[00:47:35] People ask me, I say, I think in five years

[00:47:37] people are going to be wearing wearable AIs

[00:47:39] with them wherever they go.

[00:47:41] And it'll be like our little friend that is on our watch

[00:47:44] or wearing around our neck or an ear,

[00:47:47] ear something we've got plugged in there.

[00:47:50] And it'll make reservations for us

[00:47:53] and answer questions we have.

[00:47:55] And it'll be a disruptive event for Google probably

[00:48:00] because people talking to the AI instead of doing searches.

[00:48:02] So it's very hard.

[00:48:03] You can extrapolate from what you currently have,

[00:48:06] what you currently know,

[00:48:08] but what you don't know is evolution.

[00:48:10] You don't know innovation.

[00:48:12] You don't know what's going to,

[00:48:15] what new things are going to come along

[00:48:17] you hadn't anticipated.

[00:48:18] I remember the first time I got into an Uber,

[00:48:21] maybe, I don't know, 15 or 20 years ago.

[00:48:23] And it was like, gosh, this is so obvious.

[00:48:26] Why couldn't nobody has done this before?

[00:48:28] Well, you couldn't do it first until

[00:48:29] it tell you how to smartphone.

[00:48:31] The smartphone with a GPS on it made Uber possible.

[00:48:36] But then once it was, that was created

[00:48:38] and put in a smartphone,

[00:48:40] it was like it was almost destined to happen.

[00:48:42] Some entrepreneur was going to come up with that idea.

[00:48:44] I just regret I wasn't the one that thought of it first.

[00:48:48] It was well obvious later.

[00:48:49] So the point I'm trying to make is,

[00:48:51] is that if you go back 10 years,

[00:48:54] you couldn't have predicted the future of marine today.

[00:48:57] And so it's very hard to predict the future

[00:48:58] that's going to be coming.

[00:49:00] But what I will say is I'm a very optimistic person.

[00:49:03] I'm optimistic because I believe in creativity of humans.

[00:49:08] We are very, very creative species.

[00:49:11] And as long as we have a relatively free economy

[00:49:16] that allows entrepreneurs to innovate and create,

[00:49:20] we are going to continue to make tremendous progress

[00:49:22] in this world.

[00:49:23] By every objective measurement,

[00:49:25] we are better off today than we were 20 years ago,

[00:49:28] or 50 years ago, or 100 years ago,

[00:49:30] any other time in history.

[00:49:31] It's astounding how far human beings

[00:49:33] have come in the last 200 years.

[00:49:35] I mean, the statistics show that

[00:49:37] if you go back 200 years ago,

[00:49:39] 94% of all the people alive on the planet

[00:49:41] lived on less than $2 a day,

[00:49:44] and 85% lived on less than $1 a day.

[00:49:47] Think about that.

[00:49:48] The illiteracy rates were 88%.

[00:49:50] 88% of the people could not read on this planet

[00:49:53] 200 years ago.

[00:49:54] And the average lifespan was only 30.

[00:49:57] Childbirth, child deaths,

[00:49:58] childbirth deaths were unbelievably...

[00:50:01] Sanitation was terrible.

[00:50:02] Air pollution was terrible.

[00:50:04] Better, worse then than it is today.

[00:50:08] It's astounding how far humanity has come.

[00:50:10] And there's every reason to think

[00:50:12] the future is going to be better than it is today.

[00:50:15] I don't know why we would...

[00:50:16] So I just don't agree with the gloom and doomers

[00:50:19] because what I see that they don't see,

[00:50:22] I see human creativity.

[00:50:24] We have problems.

[00:50:26] I don't know the answer to all our problems,

[00:50:28] but I guarantee you there are creative answers

[00:50:30] for all of them that let humans create

[00:50:34] and we will solve our problems.

[00:50:36] We'll create new problems

[00:50:37] and there'll be new challenges we'll have,

[00:50:40] but that's the upward spiral of evolution

[00:50:43] and we're evolving.

[00:50:44] And there's every reason to believe...

[00:50:47] I mean, hey, if there's nuclear Armageddon,

[00:50:50] all bets are off.

[00:50:51] But avoiding some kind of crazy, stupid war

[00:50:56] that takes the planet down with it,

[00:51:00] humans are almost surely gonna be better off

[00:51:02] a hundred years from now

[00:51:04] or even 10 years from now than they are right now.

[00:51:06] I tend to agree, but what gets me nervous

[00:51:09] and maybe this is from just reading the news too much

[00:51:14] is like when Iran sent drones towards Israel

[00:51:19] a few weeks ago,

[00:51:20] all the media saying World War III,

[00:51:22] when it was kind of obviously when you looked into it,

[00:51:26] wasn't gonna be World War III.

[00:51:27] Israel was gonna shoot it down.

[00:51:28] Iran had already said, that's it, we're done.

[00:51:31] And boom, the world moved on within a day.

[00:51:34] Everybody was marked safe from World War III.

[00:51:36] But when you see things like more and more

[00:51:40] of these weird geopolitical situations popping up

[00:51:44] and the US $34 trillion in debt

[00:51:48] and people saying, oh, the only way to survive this

[00:51:52] is to inflate our way out of it.

[00:51:54] I don't know how to, I tend to be optimistic too,

[00:51:58] but I just don't know always the answers to,

[00:52:01] you know, what do you say to that?

[00:52:04] I say that you shouldn't focus your attention

[00:52:07] on things that scare you

[00:52:11] because you'll find the world to be fearful.

[00:52:15] It's better to focus your attention

[00:52:16] on the things that you can create,

[00:52:19] the difference you can make in the world.

[00:52:21] And the things that are out of your control,

[00:52:23] you can't do anything.

[00:52:24] What can you do about those drones?

[00:52:25] You can't do anything about it.

[00:52:27] Why direct your life, your special gifts,

[00:52:31] your own life energy to worrying about things

[00:52:34] you can't personally do anything about?

[00:52:36] Instead, take your energy in creative ways

[00:52:40] to create value for other people.

[00:52:41] I mean, my new business that we've co-founded, Love Life,

[00:52:45] I think is gonna make a huge difference

[00:52:47] over the next 20 or 30 years

[00:52:49] because it's gonna help.

[00:52:50] I mean, it's a way I can make a contribution

[00:52:56] to humanity's progress

[00:52:58] in terms of helping human flourishing to occur.

[00:53:02] I can't do anything about nuclear war

[00:53:06] or $34 trillion debt.

[00:53:08] Those are out of my control,

[00:53:10] but I do have things that I can control

[00:53:13] and I focus my attention on those things.

[00:53:17] And it leads to happiness and contribution

[00:53:20] instead of fretting and unhappiness and anger and fear.

[00:53:26] I guess that's a good point because if you look at it,

[00:53:29] look at the past 40 or 50 years,

[00:53:31] every time someone's predicted anything,

[00:53:35] doom and gloom, they've been wrong.

[00:53:38] Like in the early 1970s,

[00:53:40] the world was gonna have too much population defeated.

[00:53:44] We were gonna have an ice age,

[00:53:45] by the way, back in the 70s, just to be clear.

[00:53:47] Yeah, ice age in the 70s,

[00:53:49] London starving by the 80s because of too many people.

[00:53:54] Then the world was gonna heat up too much by the 90s.

[00:53:58] So everybody, and 9-11 happened,

[00:54:00] so that was a disaster for everybody,

[00:54:02] but still everybody survived.

[00:54:05] And like you said, it's turned out better than ever.

[00:54:08] And so I guess you're right, focusing on-

[00:54:11] Let me recommend three books people consider reading

[00:54:14] besides the whole story.

[00:54:17] Of course, the whole story.

[00:54:18] Of course.

[00:54:18] Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism by John Mackey.

[00:54:20] I think the most important book

[00:54:22] that's been written so far in the 21st century

[00:54:24] is Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now.

[00:54:28] That is, Pinker's research is so unbelievable

[00:54:31] and he so documents human progress.

[00:54:34] It's just, it's such a great gift

[00:54:37] what Steven Pinker has done for the world with that book.

[00:54:39] It's incredible, you have to read that book.

[00:54:41] Secondly, a book more recently is

[00:54:45] Marian Toupie's book, Superabundance,

[00:54:51] which shows from a labor, human labor hours,

[00:54:56] how much abundance has been created in this planet.

[00:54:59] And more recently, Johan Norberg's come out with a book

[00:55:02] called The Capitalist Manifesto.

[00:55:04] Think Communist Manifesto, Capitalist Manifesto,

[00:55:07] and there he documents how just given free market,

[00:55:11] more free markets in just countries like,

[00:55:13] or it's an international perspective.

[00:55:14] So China and India moving just a little bit away

[00:55:19] from socialism and making their economies freer,

[00:55:23] allowing creativity, allowing entrepreneurship.

[00:55:27] I've listed hundreds of millions of people,

[00:55:31] just those two countries alone,

[00:55:32] have lifted almost a billion people out of poverty

[00:55:36] in just the last 30 years, India and China.

[00:55:39] It's astounding what happens if we let humans create,

[00:55:44] let the entrepreneurs be free.

[00:55:47] And yes, we need good law, we need government,

[00:55:50] we need a whole bunch of things,

[00:55:52] but we mostly need economic and human liberty and freedom.

[00:55:56] We have those things, we can solve our problems.

[00:55:59] We will create our ways out of it.

[00:56:02] When I sometimes speak at universities

[00:56:04] and I have younger students doing

[00:56:05] what you were doing a minute ago asking me about,

[00:56:07] what are we gonna do about this?

[00:56:08] What are we gonna do about that?

[00:56:09] I say, well, look, I'm 70 years old now.

[00:56:13] My generation solved a lot of problems.

[00:56:15] We didn't solve them all.

[00:56:17] We left you guys a bunch to solve.

[00:56:19] This is your problems now.

[00:56:20] You guys have to figure out,

[00:56:22] you have to create new solutions

[00:56:24] that we were unable to think of.

[00:56:25] Every generation has their own contributions to make

[00:56:32] and you guys have got to work on these problems

[00:56:35] because if you don't, who the heck is?

[00:56:38] You have to do it in a creative way,

[00:56:39] not put yourself in a straight jacket of fear,

[00:56:43] say it's hopeless.

[00:56:45] I mean, I read about the younger generation, for example,

[00:56:48] they're not wanna have children

[00:56:50] because they think it's gonna be a horrible world,

[00:56:54] that climate change disasters are ahead

[00:56:56] and just all the AI apocalypse is coming

[00:57:00] and it's just complete total fear,

[00:57:03] which when you're really scared, you're no longer creative.

[00:57:08] You're paralyzed by your fear.

[00:57:09] And so I'm saying, don't go into that consciousness.

[00:57:11] Stay in a healthy, creative consciousness

[00:57:14] and put your own creative energies

[00:57:17] into creating value for other people one way or another.

[00:57:20] Be a contributor.

[00:57:24] I mean, I just think of somebody like Elon Musk.

[00:57:27] Look at the, whatever you think about Elon Musk,

[00:57:31] politics or whatever else, I don't care.

[00:57:34] Elon Musk with his creativity

[00:57:36] and his entrepreneurial initiatives

[00:57:38] has doing amazing things for this planet.

[00:57:41] He's a very important person because of what he's doing

[00:57:44] and what he stands for, but mostly by what he's creating

[00:57:47] through Tesla, through SpaceX, through Starlink,

[00:57:53] through all these businesses, the Boring Company.

[00:57:58] Those type of individuals really help humanity advance

[00:58:01] and we just need more people like him doing creative things.

[00:58:06] Yeah, and by the way, to your book list,

[00:58:07] I would add the Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley.

[00:58:10] Oh, love it.

[00:58:11] One of my all-time favorite books.

[00:58:12] It's just that one's a little more dated,

[00:58:15] but it's still a tremendous great read.

[00:58:17] Anything by Matt Ridley is a great read.

[00:58:22] I also, if you like Ridley,

[00:58:23] did you read The Evolution of Everything?

[00:58:25] Yes, he's come on this podcast for The Rational Optimist,

[00:58:29] The Evolution of Everything, and his COVID book.

[00:58:32] Oh, well, Matt is one of my heroes.

[00:58:35] Yeah, he's such a smart guy.

[00:58:38] He is, he's brilliant.

[00:58:39] And I agree with you,

[00:58:41] always better to be on the side of optimism.

[00:58:44] Sometimes I do find myself getting a bit overwhelmed

[00:58:48] by what I see out there,

[00:58:50] particularly lately for some reason.

[00:58:52] I think all these college protests

[00:58:55] has gotten me down a little bit.

[00:58:57] Well, the colleges are always gonna be protesting

[00:59:00] something, it's partly what young people do.

[00:59:02] That's true, yeah.

[00:59:04] So, and you know, it's funny about how you say,

[00:59:07] like, you know, people don't wanna have kids anymore.

[00:59:10] I remember in 1974 or 75, you know, Archie Bunker,

[00:59:15] when, you know, Rob Reingold, I forgot the,

[00:59:19] Mike, I think his name was on the character on the show.

[00:59:22] He didn't wanna have kids

[00:59:24] because of what they would grow up in.

[00:59:26] And, you know, it's the same thing.

[00:59:28] And even, you know, so my generation,

[00:59:31] which is considered Generation X,

[00:59:33] it was initially called the slacker generation.

[00:59:37] And yet we ended up probably being

[00:59:38] the most productive generation.

[00:59:40] I'm a huge fan of Generation X.

[00:59:42] The Xers are the hardest working people I've ever known.

[00:59:45] They work really hard.

[00:59:49] As a generation, they're kind of no bullshit people.

[00:59:51] You can't put one over on the Xers.

[00:59:54] They've seen it all, heard it all.

[00:59:56] And, you know, they just keep on going

[00:59:59] like the Energizer bunny.

[01:00:01] I love the Xers.

[01:00:02] It's like the Xers better than my own generation.

[01:00:05] Because the Xers are not too old for the internet

[01:00:08] and they're not so young that they only know the internet.

[01:00:12] So they've had like both worlds.

[01:00:14] But you remember, of course, Austin, I think it was 1992,

[01:00:18] the movie Slacker was about,

[01:00:22] Richard Linklater is about Generation X

[01:00:24] kind of being just a generation of do nothing slackers.

[01:00:29] Well, they turned out to be just the opposite.

[01:00:33] Yeah.

[01:00:34] It just goes to show you that,

[01:00:36] you know, you were talking about the student protest.

[01:00:38] I mean, people, we go through certain stages in our lives

[01:00:41] and think about it.

[01:00:44] You're young, you wake up and you look around

[01:00:46] and you see inequality, you still see racism,

[01:00:50] but you don't have any historical perspective.

[01:00:52] You don't see that,

[01:00:53] well, yeah, there's still racism in America,

[01:00:55] but a lot less racism than when I was growing up

[01:00:58] because I grew up, there were still Jim Crow laws

[01:01:00] and they were actually legal segregation

[01:01:03] in the South, in Texas where I grew up.

[01:01:06] If you go back further than that,

[01:01:09] you've got widespread lynchings going on.

[01:01:12] I mean, is there racism in America today?

[01:01:14] Yes, just a lot less than we used to have.

[01:01:17] And we'll probably have a lot even less 50 years from now

[01:01:20] than we have today because humanity's evolving.

[01:01:24] And if you look into inequality,

[01:01:28] there's always gonna be inequality,

[01:01:30] but there are far fewer poor people today

[01:01:33] than there used to be.

[01:01:34] So it is a rising tide that's lifting,

[01:01:38] maybe not every boat, but most boats.

[01:01:41] And we're certainly better off, the world is better off.

[01:01:46] I always put the challenge to young people,

[01:01:47] I'll give you the entire history of humanity.

[01:01:49] Tell me a time you'd rather live than right now.

[01:01:52] When has humanity ever had it better than right now?

[01:01:56] And the answer is, there has never been a better time

[01:01:59] to be alive than right now.

[01:02:01] It's humanity's at its peak right now,

[01:02:04] right now, but we can still continue to evolve and grow.

[01:02:08] And we will if we allow human liberty

[01:02:11] and freedom and creativity to flourish.

[01:02:15] If we don't become so scared,

[01:02:16] we go into some kind of totalitarian nightmare.

[01:02:20] Okay, there's that qualifier.

[01:02:21] Do you think there's a chance that could happen?

[01:02:23] Of course there's a chance.

[01:02:25] It happened in the last hundred years, for God's sake.

[01:02:27] We saw it happen and we saw communism

[01:02:30] and we saw Nazism, we saw fascism.

[01:02:33] I mean, yes, it could happen.

[01:02:35] And you don't always go straight.

[01:02:38] Evolution is not a straight line up.

[01:02:42] It's more of a spiral with, you have some downtime.

[01:02:44] So yeah, it could happen.

[01:02:46] I wonder if like innovation now has reached

[01:02:48] some sort of tipping point though,

[01:02:50] where innovation and the pace of innovation

[01:02:53] is going to greatly outpace any possible change

[01:02:57] that artificial change induced by government.

[01:03:00] It's a great question.

[01:03:05] It depends on how totalitarian the government becomes.

[01:03:08] If you look back, if you study the Soviet Union

[01:03:12] or you study China, you'll understand

[01:03:15] that they basically executed the creative class

[01:03:19] and they just basically killed.

[01:03:21] They just killed them.

[01:03:23] Just put them in gulags and shot them.

[01:03:26] And so yeah, you can stop it or really slow it down

[01:03:32] by just, if you're prepared to be ruthless enough,

[01:03:35] if you are that much of a socio psychopath

[01:03:40] that you're willing to just destroy millions of people,

[01:03:42] you can do it.

[01:03:43] Because we saw it happen in the 20th century.

[01:03:46] Yeah, but again, I wonder if that's even possible now

[01:03:48] because of A, there's the decentralized nature

[01:03:51] of the internet and you have people like Elon Musk

[01:03:54] or Jeff Bezos and others like them

[01:03:57] who have so much money, you can't catch them really.

[01:04:00] It's not like someone's going to slow down Elon Musk.

[01:04:05] He moves all over the world.

[01:04:06] You don't know where he is.

[01:04:08] Somebody could shoot him.

[01:04:10] That's true.

[01:04:12] So I mean, hey, I'm an optimist.

[01:04:14] I mean, you ask it as in the realm of possibility.

[01:04:18] It's in the realm of possibility.

[01:04:20] I don't think that's what's going to happen.

[01:04:21] I don't think it's a probable thing.

[01:04:23] I do think that particularly now in a more globalized world

[01:04:27] where you have many alternatives and you have this,

[01:04:31] the internet lets information flow in

[01:04:33] from so many different sources.

[01:04:36] That's what scares many people

[01:04:37] because nobody is controlling it.

[01:04:40] It is humanities collectively connected,

[01:04:43] but there's nobody in charge.

[01:04:45] And that terrifies people

[01:04:47] because who you're holding accountable for it.

[01:04:50] And people want somebody oftentimes to be responsible,

[01:04:55] somebody to be in charge.

[01:04:56] And the fact that we're just, that nobody is,

[01:05:00] to me, that's a very liberating thought,

[01:05:02] but to others, it's very scary.

[01:05:06] Yeah, it's interesting.

[01:05:07] I was at a dinner of a bunch of physicists

[01:05:10] and journalists about science.

[01:05:14] Each person there, you bring up anything like AI.

[01:05:17] Oh no, it's gonna take over the world and terminate her.

[01:05:23] Just every, genomics, oh, we're gonna create a bunch of

[01:05:29] a clone army.

[01:05:31] Just like every, and these were scientists.

[01:05:35] Oh, why is SpaceX or Blue Origin having,

[01:05:40] oh, we're gonna put weapons in space

[01:05:43] or it's a joy ride for billionaires to go into space.

[01:05:46] Nothing was positive.

[01:05:48] Everything had a negative look.

[01:05:49] And I even said, you guys are a bunch of scientists.

[01:05:51] How come you're not positive about science?

[01:05:53] But they didn't really have any,

[01:05:56] they said, look, aren't you worried

[01:05:57] if the internet turns off,

[01:05:59] we lose all of the world's knowledge?

[01:06:01] And I'm like, well, the Library of Alexandria,

[01:06:03] we did lose all the world's knowledge when it burned down.

[01:06:06] It actually happened and it's not happening now.

[01:06:09] But people maybe have a,

[01:06:11] maybe there was kind of an evolutionary instinct

[01:06:13] to be more cautious than hopeful so you don't die.

[01:06:18] Well, there's no question that

[01:06:20] from an evolutionary standpoint,

[01:06:23] fear has been selected out, right?

[01:06:25] If you were the ones that were cautious

[01:06:28] or a little scared that if you went outside the cave

[01:06:30] that maybe a saber-toothed tiger was gonna get you.

[01:06:33] Well, if you went out and the saber-toothed tiger killed you,

[01:06:37] then your genes did not spread.

[01:06:39] And those that were fearful and were more careful

[01:06:43] tended to survive more frequently.

[01:06:47] So there is a evolutionary reason

[01:06:49] that fear has sustained itself.

[01:06:51] But now we live in this era where

[01:06:55] with mass communication,

[01:06:56] anything that happens anywhere on the planet

[01:06:58] that's scary, we hear about it.

[01:07:01] And we're constantly, every single day,

[01:07:04] we're bombarded with terrible, fearful things.

[01:07:07] That's why I'm telling you,

[01:07:09] you have to take control of your mind,

[01:07:10] your own mind and the information you feed into it.

[01:07:13] Because if you let yourself,

[01:07:17] the overall consciousness is so fearful

[01:07:19] and it's being magnified by the media.

[01:07:23] And then that's, if it, you know what they say,

[01:07:25] if it bleeds, it leads.

[01:07:28] People, when they're in a anxious, fearful state,

[01:07:32] it's kind of an addiction.

[01:07:33] And they feed that fear and anxiety

[01:07:36] with more scary stuff.

[01:07:39] And so they get more frightened.

[01:07:41] And I'm basically saying, no, you gotta take control

[01:07:43] of the information that you direct your mind to

[01:07:46] because is there scary stuff out there?

[01:07:48] There are, there are scary movies.

[01:07:50] I don't watch the scary movies

[01:07:52] because I don't really like to be scared.

[01:07:54] I like, I wanna, the information I wanna focus on

[01:07:58] is the information that allows me to be happy

[01:08:02] and loving and caring and able to help other people.

[01:08:06] So I'm focused on the ways that I can be

[01:08:09] of greater service, greater contribution to other people.

[01:08:12] And that's just what I choose.

[01:08:14] You can choose to be afraid if you want.

[01:08:16] It's your choice.

[01:08:17] I just don't think you'll be as happy.

[01:08:20] You won't be, your life will be a scary, a fearful one.

[01:08:24] Well, John, we have all benefited

[01:08:28] from your choice to be optimistic.

[01:08:30] We've all shopped at Whole Foods.

[01:08:33] My wife and kids shopped at Whole Foods yesterday.

[01:08:36] And I said, while you're there,

[01:08:38] think of questions for me to ask John Mackey.

[01:08:42] They didn't think of any questions,

[01:08:43] but they bought my favorite foods there,

[01:08:46] which is the bread there.

[01:08:47] I really love bread.

[01:08:49] So-

[01:08:50] Well, you know, I'll tell you, James,

[01:08:51] I have a, because since I've gotten more,

[01:08:54] people ask me for more favors from Whole Foods

[01:08:56] than I ever did when I was a CEO.

[01:08:58] Because I guess I don't have the guards

[01:09:03] to prevent those people from getting to me.

[01:09:06] And I just have a mantra that I just tell everybody.

[01:09:09] It's like, that's not my problem any longer.

[01:09:14] Well, I think Whole Foods is great,

[01:09:16] so I don't have any problem there.

[01:09:17] No, but people usually, they just come to me with,

[01:09:21] they want favors or they have things to complain about.

[01:09:24] And I just say, I'm sorry, it's not my problem any longer.

[01:09:29] Well, John Mackey, author of the whole story,

[01:09:33] Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism.

[01:09:35] Such a different kind of story for an entrepreneur

[01:09:39] than I've ever read.

[01:09:40] And there's so much great stories and insights

[01:09:43] and advice also just about the world in there.

[01:09:46] I also love your first date with your wife, Deborah.

[01:09:49] That was an inspiring first date.

[01:09:51] So everybody should have such a first date.

[01:09:54] Well, one of the things I tried to do in the book, James,

[01:09:58] I just wanted to be as candid as possible.

[01:10:00] I wanted to be honest,

[01:10:01] particularly about all my mistakes and failings.

[01:10:06] But also, I wanted to say that I made progress over time

[01:10:09] and I grew.

[01:10:12] I read too many books that are just celebratory books.

[01:10:18] Look at what I did, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[01:10:20] Those are kind of boring.

[01:10:21] It's more interesting if somebody will reveal

[01:10:24] their vulnerabilities and their mistakes

[01:10:26] and the foolishness.

[01:10:27] And I did so many foolish things,

[01:10:30] including like on that as a first date with my wife

[01:10:32] when the first thing I asked

[01:10:33] if I could look in her refrigerator

[01:10:35] and I almost never got a second date

[01:10:37] because I'm snooping around in her refrigerator

[01:10:40] and who does that?

[01:10:42] I mean, well, I thought I'd learn a lot about her

[01:10:44] if I could see what food she ate,

[01:10:46] but those inappropriate things were what I did all the time.

[01:10:51] Did you know asking that

[01:10:52] that that was kind of inappropriate or no?

[01:10:54] I was kind of nervous.

[01:10:55] I said, I hadn't, it was a blind date

[01:10:57] so I'd never met her before and she opened the door

[01:11:01] and she's the most beautiful woman

[01:11:02] I've ever seen in my life.

[01:11:03] And I just sort of like, went into,

[01:11:06] I just kind of paralyzed a little bit.

[01:11:08] What do I say?

[01:11:09] It's like, hey, can I look in your refrigerator?

[01:11:12] First thing that popped in my brain

[01:11:14] and almost the last,

[01:11:17] I almost didn't get a second date as a result of that.

[01:11:20] I also like how,

[01:11:22] then she asked you to later on to jump around

[01:11:25] while she takes photos.

[01:11:26] And she said, you can always tell

[01:11:29] about someone's personality by how they jump.

[01:11:32] And I've never thought about that before,

[01:11:33] but that's really true.

[01:11:34] Yeah, so I think my wife's a little bit wacky too.

[01:11:40] So I think wacky Mackie had found his soulmate

[01:11:44] when he met Deborah Maureen

[01:11:46] because she liked to do wacky things too.

[01:11:49] Yeah, that's great.

[01:11:50] So that's why I say this is definitely a different story

[01:11:53] for people to read.

[01:11:54] It's a lot of fun and it's very interesting.

[01:11:56] And it's a page turner because of things like floods

[01:12:01] or coup attempts or weird,

[01:12:06] Yahoo Finance message board scandals

[01:12:08] and then Amazon buying you like all the way to the end

[01:12:12] that you have an interesting rollercoaster ride

[01:12:15] that's very unique.

[01:12:16] And it's in a brand and a store that we all use and love.

[01:12:19] So it's a great story and I love the book

[01:12:23] and you're right, it's not just like,

[01:12:27] hey, this is the road to success.

[01:12:29] It's like, just this is a road

[01:12:31] and it's an interesting road.

[01:12:32] It's an adventure.

[01:12:33] That's why I subtitled the book

[01:12:35] Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism

[01:12:37] because it's an adventure story

[01:12:39] and it's written in a narrative form.

[01:12:41] It's meant to be, it's a first person novel.

[01:12:44] That's how I view it.

[01:12:45] Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

[01:12:46] That just happens to be true,

[01:12:48] at least from my perspective.

[01:12:50] Well, thanks very much, John.

[01:12:52] And hopefully you write a next book

[01:12:54] about your next business

[01:12:55] and or come back on when your next business launches

[01:12:57] and we'll talk all about it.

[01:13:00] Hey, our first store launches in LA area,

[01:13:02] El Segundo, California on July 9th.

[01:13:05] So maybe I'll be on sooner than you think.

[01:13:07] All right, well, I'm gonna head out there.

[01:13:09] I will try out your first store.

[01:13:13] It's not, of course, I tried to correct my language.

[01:13:15] It's not really a store.

[01:13:17] It is now this kind of holistic health center.

[01:13:19] So it's, I've got to, my vocabulary is having to evolve.

[01:13:24] A holistic health center with pickleball.

[01:13:27] I love it.

[01:13:28] A little bit wacky, right?

[01:13:30] Yeah, it's perfect.

[01:13:32] All right, thanks so much, John.

[01:13:33] James, great talking with you.

[01:13:35] I really appreciate you.

[01:13:36] You take care, have a wonderful day.

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