The Exchanges

Q Is there a difference between, or actually I'll rephrase this. Um, what's the difference between professional management and a founder led company?

A It's a huge difference. Um, nobody ever loves their business as much as a founder does. Uh, and I mean, I led Whole Foods for 44 years. I will always, it's like, it's like if you're a parent, your child grows up, I raised that child as best I can. It's on its own now. I can't tell Whole Foods what to do anymore. And you just hope you put inculcated good values and that they have a happy life. I will always love Whole Foods. I will always wish the very best for Whole Foods. Even though I'm not in it any longer. And in fact, I deliberately try to stay out of the loop, because it bothers me when I hear things. So I just try to, I just try to leave it alone and do other things. But professional managers, They're not, I'm not saying they couldn't be, but in my experience, they're very, they're not usually mission driven. They've gotten their, their MBA from Harvard or Wharton or Stanford. They're very intelligent. They work hard, but working at Whole Foods or Amazon, it's just a, it's just part of their career path. They want to put it on their resume, and then they want to use that to leverage to get the next promotion. Maybe at another company.

AI assessment note: “nobody ever loves their business as much as a founder does”

Q One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was, uh, your, your first date with Deborah and how it didn't go well. And then you, you sort of mentioned this letter you wrote to her after. What did you say in that letter? Because you totally changed her mind about it.

A Yeah. Well, in that letter, uh, I just kind of, kind of like I've done in this podcast, I just opened myself up and I just said, here's, I don't know exactly what I did wrong, but I knew I did something wrong. But here's who I am. I got, I really like you. Here's who I think you are. Uh, I, I realized that I kind of blew this date, but it's okay. Even having one date with you is very special. And I, I think you're a very special person. I think you're gonna, I wish you the very best. I hope you have a wonderful life. This was before email. I, I stayed up all night writing this letter, and polishing it, and then rewriting it, and, and then I stuck it under her door about five a.m. I mean, I had that very faint hope that I was, it was a Hail Mary pass. You know, I was, I didn't think I was gonna get a second date, but maybe if she really liked this letter, maybe she'd give me a chance. So I was motivated. I was looking for a win-win there. And, uh, it worked because she did like the letter. She called me up and said, I wasn't going out with you again, but anybody that could write that good of a letter is worth a second date. So second date went better, and she likes to say by the third date she knew we were getting married. So.

AI assessment note: “I just opened myself up and I just said, here's, I don't know exactly”

Q Where did the idea for that come from?

A In my book, the whole story, I, I actually talk about, I had the psychedelic experience, uh, where I experienced this ego death, ego dissolving when I was 22, and pretty soon after that, that's why, that's why I started the book there, and I'll start the answer to your question there, and then that, that really just changed my, I got off the path my parents really wanted me to be on, and, uh, I just moved into this vegetarian co-op, A housing co-op, sort of like a commune, and I wasn't a vegetarian at that time, and I really didn't even know much about food. I'd just been a typical American kind of junk food eater, and that, but I had my food awakening. My consciousness awoke there. I, I, I'd already thought of my body as kind of like, well, you eat food to get fuel, like a car needs to get gasoline, and I, and that mechanistic model doesn't do credit to the fact that you actually need to nourish Trillions of cells in your body with super healthy food. If you do that, you'll feel better. Your immune system will be stronger. You won't get sick as frequently, and you'll live longer, and you'll just probably in overall have a better life. I kind of got that when I moved into that co-op. Sort of had some older, wiser people in the co-op, and, and I learned how to cook. I became the food buyer for the co-op, and I got deep into it. It was like, wow, this natural and organic food stu…

AI assessment note: “I had the psychedelic experience... moved into this vegetarian co-op... had my food awakening.”

Q Well, she might have done the same, right?

A She might have done the same. More likely she would have. But, you know, that was a blind date, and, uh, it was hard, it was harder to meet people back in the day. You couldn't just have an app, and, and, uh, uh, I thought I was being very clever at the time. I asked my married friends if they were single, is there anybody they'd like to be going out with? Because I wasn't going to get any tips from my single friends. And so, fortunately, I had a friend that, um, Was married, and he owned an art gallery, and, and Debra was a customer, and he, so he got to meet her that way, and so I think you're going to really like this woman. She's, you know, she's really, she's beautiful, she's smart, she's really sweet, girl next door type that you like, and, uh, yeah, she was like my, yeah, she's my soulmate.

AI assessment note: “She might have done the same. More likely she would have.”

Q So what is Whole Foods? I mean, you've written a book on this, but what, what does it mean for people listening? What does it mean?

A When I say whole foods, I mean a food that's as close to its natural state as possible. So it's been minimally processed. So, and that would be like, uh, the things I listed, fresh fruits and vegetables, uh, meat, seafood, those have been manipulated too. So I think you want to try to get a, um, uh, animal foods that have, you know, not been, that have been grass fed, for example, if you're a beef or they're, There have not been, um, animals have not been put in, feedlots have not been crowded together, that they have lived out there sort of natural animal lives. So, sort of natural, um, meats. Then you've got, you've got your, your, your beans, your nuts, your seeds, all your legumes. Um, you're gonna have, um, uh, things that are produced, um, With minimally processing. So you can cook food, for example, but if you say take oil, oil or sugar, those are not whole foods. If you add oil, whether it be olive oil or seed oil, you're not getting a whole food, you're just getting the pure fat of that food. And what is sugar? Sugar is taking a whole carbohydrate food and stripping away the fiber and the germ until you're just left with pure carbohydrate. The biggest challenge humans have with our diets is that we evolved. Our genes preclude us, or our genes, um, we evolved in scarcity. We evolved with, with starvation was our biggest problem. Not for just the last few thousand years,…

AI assessment note: “When I say whole foods, I mean a food that's as close to its natural state”

Q Why do you think we're still, we as a society, not we as individuals, are drawn to it still? I mean, there's talk about price caps, there's all of this stuff, and it seems to be this time is different. We're smarter than all the other 41 times it's been tried and failed.

A It's very, in a, in a, in a capitalistic society, uh, where you have economic freedom and free markets, no one's actually running things. Markets are self-adapting and correcting. Many people are very uncomfortable with that idea. They think somebody has to be in control of it all. That, and so, they're, they're willing to give up their economic and personal freedoms for the security of thinking somebody's in control. Someone's doing it. Um, and they believe that Despite all the other failures, which by the way, they're not aware of. They, they just can rationalize those failures away. Well, that was Stalin, or that was Mao, or that was Castro, or that was Hugo Chavez. These were dictators. If, you know, we just got to get the right people in. If we get the right people in running things, it'll be different this time. What they don't understand is the right people never get in, because the people that are most drawn to power and control of others are The monsters, they eventually eliminate all the well-meaning professors and put them in the gulags, and the, and the dictators end up in power and in charge, and you lose your economic freedom, and you end up these totalitarian nightmares that started well-intentioned, with good intentions, but when you take away individual freedom, by, almost by definition, socialism doesn't, cannot allow economic freedom. You can't allow individu…

AI assessment note: “they're willing to give up their economic and personal freedoms for the security”

Q Where I was going with this is like the outside people are always like, oh, you need to bring in a professional grocer. You need to bring in an MBA. You need to bring in all these people from the outside, and what do they want to do? I think they tend to be more structured, more organized.

A Well, you need both. You need That's the, that's the, that's the paradox. You do need creativity, but you also need structure. You need, you need generative people, and you need structural people. I, for example, Very generative. I needed more structural people around me, and also needed people to tell me when my ideas were full of shit, and, uh, cause sometimes they really were, and I needed people that, that I had a high enough trusting relationship with me, and they trusted me enough where they could come in and just say, John, this is not gonna work, and here's the reasons why it's not gonna work. We can't figure out how to make it work. Now, every once in a while, I would say, I'll figure out how to make it work and go forward with it and figure it out. But oftentimes, it's like, you know, you're right. I can't figure out how to make this work. We'll let it go.

AI assessment note: “You do need creativity, but you also need structure.”

Q What do you think of activist shareholders having been a public company CEO and founder at that?

A Yeah, it's like, um, I'm not opposed to shareholder activists trying to help, you know, help companies in constructive ways to become more successful and profitable, but I think it's a flaw in the current, in the United States, flaw in our system, because we treat short-term shareholders with the same type of respect that you treat long-term shareholders. I think that long-term shareholders That are really making long-term bets on the business and lets the team execute over the long term. That's really what you need. When you have short-term people that are, that are just trying to make a, a pop to the, to the stock price in a short period of time, which are what shareholder activists are trying to do, get a sale. Um, I don't think that's good for the economy. Um, and there's a, there's pretty simple solutions to it. We need to make a distinction in tax policy. Right now, A short-term capital gain is anything less than one year. What I'd love to see is that if you held something for, say, 10 years, maybe your taxes, capital gains taxes went down to close to zero, and if you sold it in less than a year, maybe they'd be much higher. Maybe they'd be 50 or 60%, so that you'd create these incentives to hold longer, and that would make a shareholder activist at least have to hold a stock for A couple of years, so they, they'd have less, lower gains. Also, those gains that they, they …

AI assessment note: “I'm not opposed to shareholder activists trying to help... but I think it's a flaw”

Q No problem. What qualities do you think the most successful entrepreneurs have?

A I think, I think different entrepreneurs have different, and I think there's not one size that fits all, but I'll talk about it in general terms. I think there's some, a lot that have a lot of overlap. Well, most entrepreneurs are very creative. You know, I think the average intellectual does not understand how creative entrepreneurs are, or how frequently intelligent they are, because they're not maybe intelligent the way the intellectuals are. Uh, they're street smart. They also see opportunities. They see connections. Um, Entrepreneurs are very future-oriented. They oftentimes see the world and the way the world could be. They see possibilities when others see problems. An entrepreneur oftentimes sees a problem as an opportunity to be solved. Wow. And, and they frequently do solve it. So entrepreneurs also are, um, they have to be very resilient. Really, you are gonna, it's just nature of the beast. There's trial and error. There's failure. You're, you're, you're groping your way. You have an idea that could be a very successful idea, but you don't exactly know how to put it into practice. And so, Also, entrepreneurs are quick to see things that are working elsewhere, and, and, and it's like, they can take ideas from one context and add it to another. That's something I happen to be really good at. I see an idea here, and it's like, wow, we could apply this to Love Life, or …

AI assessment note: “most entrepreneurs are very creative... future-oriented... they have to be very resilient”

Q That's a clever solution. I like the fact that, you know, often we're not ready for that next leap, that next level. We just finished, you know, maybe we just finished the acquisition or something, but it doesn't come up again, right? If you didn't buy that, you weren't going to get another chance.

A Yeah. You have to, one of the secrets to success in life and business, you have to seize the opportunities when they're there. If you don't, these great opportunities only come, or they don't come around every day. And he who, you know, he who hesitates lost, if you're not willing to seize that opportunity, somebody else will. You have to, you have to know when to go all in. It's, you know, when to make the bets. I knew, they were very profitable. They had a great brand, very successful. Uh, did not want to lose those guys. And plus, they were, if we didn't get them, somebody else would, and they would end up being this great competitor for us down the road. We just had to make that deal. We paid, we paid a really rich price for it, too.

AI assessment note: “You have to, you have to know when to go all in.”

Q As you acquired more wealth and power and fame, as you guys grew, how did you stay so grounded?

A Um, well, of course, other people might tell you that they didn't think I stayed that grounded, so, but I think I did stay pretty grounded, and I think it's because, um, you know, I have this whole background in philosophy, and, you know, my book is just kind of about my own spiritual journey, and I got really clear at a pretty young age, like, back in my existential days, back when I was in my late twenties, and then the psychedelics took it to another level, um, I got really clear about death, and what I mean about that is that, um, we're all gonna die. I got that at a varying age, and most people, they're always in denial. There's this big denial of death, and that when you're young, it's like, well, that's what old people do, but I'm not old, and then I got my whole life ahead of me, and, and, and they just put it out of their mind. I was just aware that I only had so much time, that, that, what do I want to, so my big question is, what do I want to do? With the time that I have. And, so I always had this, um, Awareness that time was running out, and, ah, that I needed to get on with stuff. And so, the successes I had, it's like, I once heard that somebody asked Picasso what his famous, his favorite painting was, and he said, the one I'm working on right now. And so, I never, I don't think that stuff corrupted me, because I didn't care about it. To me, it was creating the n…

AI assessment note: “I don't think that stuff corrupted me, because I didn't care about it.”

Q That's kind of the ideal, though, isn't it? You have capitalism, and it propels you forward, but then you have a social safety net.

A I always tell people, it's like, if you want to use Sweden as an example, you got to take the whole shooting match. I would take the Swedish. If you gave me everything Sweden has, But they don't want to take the low corporate taxes. They don't want to take the universal, um, uh, healthcare. Healthcare. They don't, they don't want to take all the things of Sweden. They don't, they, they want to lock down the economy, and they don't want to take all of Sweden. They just want to cherry pick it. But if you took it all, I'd probably, I'd be, because what the trade-off is, you're going to have those big social welfare programs that Sweden has, and you're going to have higher personal income taxes. But you're going to have lower corporate income taxes, and you're going to have more economic freedom. I'd probably take the Swedish package if you could, but you'd have to give me the whole thing, and people don't see it that way.

AI assessment note: “I'd probably take the Swedish package if you could, but you'd have to”

Q Why is produce the first part of the store you walk into?

A Because that sets the tone for the whole store. People oftentimes pick their store by how good the, how, how good the produce is, and it's not easy to do it well. It takes a lot of skill to To be able to manage your produce so that you keep your in-stock position while you keep freshness. It's, it's, uh, it's part, part science and part art. Um, and, I mean, I just think produce is, is, it's also the healthiest part of the store. Produce is, is the most important foods that we eat. Fruits and vegetables are the healthiest foods we can eat, and if you want to have a strong immune system and you want to have high longevity, you You're going to have to learn to like vegetables and fruits.

AI assessment note: “Because that sets the tone for the whole store.”

Q How do you learn to love yourself? There's always like an inner critic, right?

A Yeah. To love yourself unconditionally. Of course, I, you know, you're, you're asking great questions, and you're also leading me through the book pretty well. So, um, in my case, my whole life, in some ways, has been an attempt to be able to totally accept myself, because I have, and I think everybody has an internal critic. We don't just have internal critic. That internal critic is judging everybody else, And then frequently judging ourselves as inadequate, not perfect. And in my case, in some ways, the, the whole life adventure, and you get back into the deep thing about the way I was raised, my parents, my, you know, um, I was kind of raised where if I brought home a report card and had all A's and one B, it was like, what are you going to do about that B, son? It's like, there was no, like, that's really great, fantastic report card. Um, and then, I mean, when I'd have failures, You know, my own self-judgments would be pretty intense. So I think you come to love yourself, and what I, what I experienced when I finally did it, and it was just a few years ago now, was a little over two years ago, on a guided spiritual journey, I experienced, I got really in touch with my, like my inner child, um, this little boy that was so very beautiful and so idealistic. And so loving, and just wanted to help people. And, um, it, it, it, it had been hurt. As we go through life, we get wou…

AI assessment note: “on a guided spiritual journey, I experienced, I got really in touch with my, like my inner child”