Whole Foods Founder on American Health Care, AI and Lack of Quality of Food w/ John Mackey | EP #112

28:44And I thought, oh my god, this is life works. I'm bringing it into actualization 39 years later after I abandoned the idea. And so looking backwards, you begin to see things. You see patterns. You see things you didn't see before. And just a gift that you give to your children and your grandchildren and other descendants. I agree. And then, honestly, you recognize your own resilience. Yes. That's exactly correct. That's that's thank you for bringing me back to the topic. That's one of the things I recognized. Oh my god I had all of the I had four co -attempts. I had the flood I had I had I had I had all of these big challenges that went on And I managed to survive all of them and and I know even in doing some podcasts people would ask me It's like well, how do you do that?

29:33And I thought well, I guess I just have a lot of resilience. I'm not a quitter It's like a setback is not a setback is an opportunity to think about okay I've made a mistake here. What is the lesson here that I can learn? How can I be better going forward? How can I avoid this in the future? So I actually reframed any kind of setback as an opportunity to make me better and growth. So so important, right? Not easily discouraged. And I think one of the lessons is if you don't love what you're doing if it's not your highest calling if you're not on heroes journey, then you're gonna give up when you hit those bumps.

30:11Right. Good point. I never thought about that before. Right, exactly right. The times, you know, another, you know, learning I've had a few times in my life just, I think twice, I went after something because I thought it was a get rich quick scheme. Good opportunity. Yeah. And it was the closer, I start investing time, investing time, and the closer it got, the more I realized this is not easy, this is hard, and I don't care about it. So I'm going to quit. And so everything looks easy from a distance. And unless you love it, when you get into and close and building, you're going to give up. And so it really needs to be your highest calling, your massive transformative purpose, your hero's journey, whatever it is.

30:56And if it's not, find what that is and go do that. Yes. Yeah. So that's a takeaway from me from our conversation. I'm not going to forget that. That's a very important insight. Thank you. Thank you pal. So take me back to so you pick your co -founders you have a general idea What do you do next? I really want to dissect this for for entrepreneurs wanting to learn from you Did you go head down writing a business plan? Did you start go pitching it around? How did you start putting meat on the bones and making this real? Well They write a business plan How important is the business plan? That business plan is valuable because it helps you think through the business in a more systemic way.

31:46And you have to answer the important questions. Entrepreneurs have a tendency to be a little bit flippant. It's like, I don't worry about that shit. We're fired already in. Yes, we'll deal with it when we get there. And while sometimes that's very, very healthy and you need to kind of energy to do a startup, You also need the people that are more careful thinking about what about this and what about that? You just can't blow it all off or you your your dream may creator before you've actually gotten it's like Elon Musk might have take take space X he might have a vision about rockets But you know what he has to bring a lot of people on the team that That lessen the chance of the rockets blowing up although Elon always gets excited when rocket blows up because it's like great We're not going to do that again, but that's expensive.

32:32It's expensive. It's expensive to blow up rockets. You don't want to do it Just as a matter of course. Yeah. Similarly, I think that the business plan does help us think through the business in a more detailed way. I've got I own about 60 % of love life. I put in 60 % of the capital and friends and family and acquaintances have put in the other 40 % at this point. I've got more dry powder so So you could have... So let's talk about that. You could have funded the whole thing yourself, but you brought you loud others to invest. How important was that for someone who's an entrepreneur? So at such a great question, because there's a lot of different ways to answer that question.

33:13So one of the things that I learned from doing Whole Foods was, I said in the book that When we did our IPO 14 years, we started Safe Away in 78 and IPO to Whole Foods in early 1992. So 14 years, and those 14 years, no one ever got a nickel back for their investment in the company. And by going public, I felt like, you know what, everybody that believed in me and believed in our dream, they can stay in now if they want to, or they can take a massive payday and most just sold some stock, Kind of got there Annie out you much say yeah, but then realize much bigger gains down the road I mean it's awesome.

33:51Well, I think it's just by letting other people invest I two interesting things happen One is I feel an obligation of them It's like can't let this thing fail. It's one thing for my own money to fail But now I have friends and people who believe in me again who want me to deliver and so I that's gonna get a better effort out of me honestly Let me let me double click on that because that is

34:17sometimes you are forced to persist. Sometimes you persist because it's your highest calling and because it's intrinsic drivers. But sometimes there's a safety line that keeps you going, like I don't want to lose my mom or dad's money or my friend's money and you push even harder. Yeah. And by the way, you know, everyone in my adventures that I consider a success was an overnight success after 11 years of hard work and dozens of near -death experiences. And you would never have gotten there had you given up. There's so many times it was easy to give up. Oh my god, I can't go forward. But that I don't want to call it guilt.

35:00But that sense of obligation is another just another motivator to have you focus. It's all about focus and energy and passion. There's a second other reason is that by letting my friends invest not only the first thing that I now feel like I can't let them down but when the business is financially successful I don't want them come to me and saying Why the hell didn't you let me in on this deal? That's a good one. I like that. So, you capitalized it initially, 6040, that's great. Talk about hiring. What have you learned about hiring? Who are your first hires? How do you think about hiring? How many people do you have on board now?

35:54Well, one thing I'm going to tell you about hiring, I'm not very good at it. That's not one of my superpowers. And so what I've learned, you know what, and I'll tell you why, because it comes into having one of my superpowers. I really believe in people. I see the best in people. I see their potential. Now that's good because people don't want to let me down, because John believes in me and they really want to give me their very best effort. But on the other hand, I oftentimes don't see the shadow side in them. I don't see the self -destructive. But so I, somewhat, have learned to count on other people.

36:27One of the things I learned in Whole Foods, we did a lot of group interviews. And I would say you can always bullshit one person, but it's hard to bullshit a whole group because other people look at it from different perspectives. So knowing that I'm not that great at hiring, I tend not to make important hiring decisions without having other people that I think are very good at that in the room with me. and we talk about it. So that's the thing I'll say about that. But I just got off a Zoom interview for a hire. And it's interesting to think about, can you hire someone on Zoom? The in -person cues are so much richer.

37:08Absolutely. I think you have to ultimately meet the person. But I don't trust myself like you on a one -on -one interview. So I really, what I've started to do is have at least two other people on the Zoom with me. And then after the three of us have a conversation, how did we feel? I know a friend of mine who used to be chief product officer at Amazon talked about, I don't know if it's true when you were there, that Amazon had something called a bar razor. So in the hiring function, there were individuals in the organization who represented the best in the organization. And so those individuals were nominated as barraisers.

37:55And there had to be one barraiser in every interview decision. And they had the ability to mix somebody against everybody else. In the words, you're trying to, it's a notion that A players, you know, higher A players and B players, higher C players. Yeah, that Steve Jobs said that. Yeah. And it's true. It's true. The very best. But so who were the first hires you start going after here? What kind of positions? The first people are hired were all the whole foods people. Yeah. And then so no, love life's done a few acquisitions. So we bought a restaurant in Miami. So we're going to be opening up first by the way.

38:43In the LA. Oh, okay, so right near me, we're in LA. El Segundo. Okay, okay. Our grand opening Peter is going to be on August 10th. We're actually open now, but it's a soft opening. We're not, we haven't publicized it. We just open our doors because that way we can work. It's a complex business model. And I didn't even get all the way done with the medical, by the way. I talked to you before to learn more. because I'm talking in the business a little bit when how we play together. Can I buy you a coffee when you come to town? Yeah, I'll be there coming out on the ninth. I'll buy you coffee at my place.

39:18I'll give you a tour. But I'll be there. I come on the ninth and I'll be there through the eleventh that weekend. Oh, basically. I was just there for a couple of weeks. I came back last Friday. Oh, congrats. So anyway, soft -dumping to work out the books. On that medical thing, does this finish that? Yeah, please. Talking about before. So one path would be a longevity path if you're for physical health. Secondly, if we do the work and we find out or people may already know it, if people need to reverse, the thing one of the things our medical system does a furry poor job of is actually curing people.

39:55The diseases that kill people today are chronic diseases. And they are so hard diseases has been the leading killer since about 1900. The infectious diseases, COVID being a sort of a notable but temporary exception, an outlier, for things like pneumonia and influenza and things like that that were leading killers a hundred years ago are way, way down in terms of the number of people that die from them. So you got heart disease first, you got cancer second. Ironically, you've got doctors are the third leading cause of death. It is so sad. You know, exactly, itra -denic deaths. Yes, exactly. But then you've got stroke, you've got type 2 diabetes, and it takes a while before you get down to any kind of infectious disease.

40:44So these are lifestyle dietary diseases that are killing people. So the first thing is, if people have a chronic disease, lycopycity, lyke type 2 diabetes, like heart disease and like most autoimmune diseases, we can help them reverse those diseases. So healing people is one of the functions or one of the past people can go down. Thirdly, we're going to appeal to young people and we're going to call them maximum performers. We can take people on a journey to get into maximum, to do the burn, to get absolutely as fit as they can. and their VO2 max to do the personal trainer to do the serious weight stuff, the endurance, and really get them as fit and healthy as possible.

41:30And then we have a Cone C -erge program so that people can be all in. So those are the way they can do in the medical. So the doctors are trained in functional medicine, integrative medicine and lifestyle medicine. So they can do primary healthcare, there. But the whole idea of their primary job is going to be to help people, whichever path they want to go down and help support them. We're starting with two doctors and hopefully we'll grow to more fairly quickly, but we have to just start.

42:01Amazing. Ten years from now in success, how many love life centers are there on the planet? You know, it's funny. People always ask me the 10 year question and I always try, I which is, it's very difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. You've heard that one before. But here's the thing. I get asked that question my journalist all the time about, we know what's the word gonna be like in 10 years. And I say, well, it's really hard to say because if you go back 10 or 15 years ago, people weren't using smartphones. We didn't know about AI. If you go back 20 years ago, the internet was just getting going.

42:41We didn't really have, most people weren't online. and they think, were they on AOL or dial -up? Modems. So, new things are always emerging, right? AIs the latest big thing to emerge. And it's, you know, the whole, it just came into people's consciousness a few years ago. So, the thing that's underrated by people is new emergence. New emergence is always occurring. And so, when you make a prediction about the future, you're predicting a static world without the changes. But the reality is, I don't think we'll have that many units 10 years from now, Peter, because A, we have to learn, we're going to have to be in dialogue with our members about what works and what doesn't work.

43:21Secondly, finding real estate is difficult. It takes a long time to find a great location, and then you have to build it out. You design it and build it out, and that takes a while. So I'll go out in the limon and say something like 10 years from now, we'll have 10 to 15 units. But 20 years from now, we'll have 100. It's very nice, interesting. And of course, you're into exponential growth. I am. And so am I. And so the exponential part kicks in once you get, once you really don't scale a business model, it doesn't work. Get your business model down first, then begin to grow it. And then once you take in, once you really have it, you take in massive, and you've proven it, you take in large amounts of capital, and you exponentially grow it.

44:06That's what leads you kind of. I love that and that's really important. And by the way, you lay that out beautifully in the book, where you were sort of experimenting and trying and churning. And then finally, when Whole Foods Market hit, you were able to grow. How many stores in the final result were there? There is no final result, but when I left, I was 500. There were 541 I retired. All right, that's what I meant. One of the things I think a lot about, and I write about this in my books, I call the six Ds of exponentials. I don't know if you've encountered them, right? When you digitize something in the early days, it's deceptively slow.

44:52Then you dematerialize, demonetize, democratize, and then it disrupts things. One of the questions, of course, I think about in my longevity companies and businesses is how do you fully dematerialize and digitize this? Because at the end of the day, that's where you get real true exponential growth. Though there are some things that bricks and mortar and physical elements are important. You may point out a couple things to you to please. So I agree with what you said. But here's what I've learned that contradicts a little bit what you're saying for scaling what you want to do. Most people can't change very easily.

45:35Most people need handholding. Most people need a community. There's a reason why AA has been more effective than most other therapies for addictions because you have a community of support. It's very difficult for people to change the way they eat. It's very difficult. Habits do not change easily. And you have all these enablers of bad habits called your family and your friends. And so it's been my experience like we had a program in Whole Foods. By the way, this was one of the things that triggered me to do this. So let me go back. I just love it. Well, we started something in Whole Foods about 15 years ago.

46:13We called the total health immersion. And so we're self -insured. So we're paying all the healthcare costs. There might be a re -insure that kicks in above a million dollars or something like that, but in general, we're paying it all. And so, and what we discovered was about 10 % of our team members would spend 90 % of our health care dollars. So if you target the 10th, some of that can't be helped. Somebody does get, Automobile accident or MotorSodox, and it has a premature birth, or maybe gets cancer by that time, it's too late. You can't do anything about those. However, the chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, exactly.

46:54These things are all targetable. And so what we did was we created a total health immersion. We did for a year around different places around the country. You had to sign up for it. We is free to the team members. We pay all their costs. And increasing, let me start paying for their spouse to come as well, because without the spouse meaningful change wouldn't occur. And so we did that. And you know what I discovered? That if people, even within one week, the human body is so resilient. If people will just change their diet and eat real whole foods for a week, they, all their biometrics begin to decline.

47:33The cholesterol begins to go down. Their blood pressure begins to go down. They start feeling better. And so, and then if they stay on the program and we saw so many people lose our over 100 pounds in a year or less. But here's what happens. Residivism is high if you don't have a community of support. It's all about your community. It's all about... Inhabits don't change unless you've got the reinforcement mechanisms around you. So I can't scale. I cannot scale love life the way you could scale a purely digital business. However, in the long run, well actually, we'll create the communities that you're going to send people to that will stay.

48:17What's your price point going to be at Love Life? I'm not going to tell you that because I can't find out your price point without talking to a salesperson. Oh, I'll tell you my price point. But it's a different level, right? Do you have MRIs and CTs and DEXA scans and all of that in your medical facility? Are you going that deep? We're not we have a Dexascane. We're gonna we don't have an MRI machine at this first one, but we can We can contract out for some of those services, but what are you gonna do the we have flabot and miss we doing our blood draws So we're not gonna go quite as deep as you do, but pretty deep.

48:52I mean the genetics the genetics is pretty is pretty powerful as a learning tool Well, I think we're gonna end up as partners versus competitors, so I love that I believe in the win -win -win relationships I know you do, and as do I, because the reality is so it, it found in, you know, we, people come and do a full body upload, right? We digitize you 150 gigabytes of data to a full body MRI, brain, brain vasculature, coronary CT with AI overlay for soft plaque, a low dose lung CT, a dexascane genomics, It's everything possible to answer a question. Is there anything going on inside? you need to know about like right now and what's likely to happen to you and how to prevent that.

49:37All of that's great. You get a concierge medical team to follow through the year. But what you're doing as well is the meat and potatoes, the fundamental elements, right? It's what I do for myself in terms of food diet, exercise, sleep. All of those things are like the most important things to be doing right now. Yeah. Yes, but knowledge is not enough. Yes, knowledge is not enough. Support structure around you is critical. That's what I learned from the total health Emergence is that the people that had to get support structure stayed with it, never looked back, changed their lives forever. Most people didn't have the support structure.

50:21They had their food addictions, particularly they're trying to overcome obesity that didn't get obese. The first day they were born, they ate their way to it and they got food addictions. people are underestimating how powerful food addictions are. It's very hard for most people to quit. I'm changing. They need support. So for example, I run after my abundance 360 program and after my platinum on Jebadi trips, I run a 22 day no sugar fast on a WhatsApp group and people are in a community digitally for 22 days just to give them power over their sugar addiction, which is a hugely powerful addiction, but I can imagine having a physical location and a coach and a community around you is even that much more.

51:10So we do have a few things online right now, just tell you what we're doing online. Sure. And we acquired two businesses. So we now have a telehealth business called Love Life Telehealth. And we were licensed in all 50 states to practice medicine. I think in 2023 we did business in 47 of the states, plus a lot of foreign countries. So we have that digital reach. And I think as we grow our brand, that the telehealth business will grow, that might even scale faster as we get the branding out there. We also have an online coaching business for diabetes and weight loss, type 2 diabetes and weight loss, called mastering diabetes and mastering weight loss.

51:51We acquired that business from a couple of entrepreneurs that I know that wrote a great book called Mastering Diabetes. And I see us opening up online coaching businesses for heart disease, for autoimmune diseases, for cancer, for a variety of different things and they get medical attention. And if we will be flying people in to or having people fly in for seminars and things like that, then when we, you do the same thing, you send people to fountain life gathering from longevity and whatnot and then they have their relationship with the doctors on an ongoing basis. We see it doing something similar to that.

52:32Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. Companies called Fountain Life. It's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day, when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician and they burn into your room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on.

53:05And you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time. But because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers We have four across the US today and we're building 20 around the world These centers give you a full -body MRI a brain a brain vascular chair an AI -nabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque dexascan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it's solvable.

53:52You're going to find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. Found life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 health years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to FountainLife .com -peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller life force, we had 30 ,000 people who reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to FountainLife .com backslash Peter will put you to the top of the list.

54:30It really is something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends, it's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy life spans. Go to fountainlife .com backslash Peter, it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. Alright, let's go back to our episode. But talk about what your biggest challenges or concerns were getting going in this business. So you're entering as a seasoned entrepreneur slash CEO, you've got the capital, which a lot of entrepreneurs don't necessarily have a beginning.

55:09But what were you, where were any doubts or what were your challenges? Yeah, of course. What are your challenges? Yeah, it's going to say we know where we'll know a lot more to answer that question about a year from now. But I going into it, I think the biggest challenge is When do most people go see a doctor? Yeah, when it's too late exactly when they're sick So we're trying to change that by having a the whole idea of the doctor is see the doctor so you don't have to see a doctor Right that the doctor's job is to not give you drugs for when to manage symptoms But to help you never get these chronic diseases in the first place and so but that's a that's a disruption That's a different way of thinking about it.

55:51How many times, if I had a dollar for every time people ask me, we'll insurance cover what you're doing. Well, they cover the membership. And the answer is no, it will not cover the membership. I mean, it won't cover that if you go see a chiropractor, maybe insurance will cover some of that. But so much medical that's preventative or helping people to avoid diseases is not covered. What's good? Because the pharmaceutical and medical device and the hospital industries are, you know, those are the gargantuan businesses that regulatory capture that are setting the rules in a lot of ways. So insurance will not cover it, and that's a change in thinking.

56:28They can get a super bill, and some of the testing will be covered, but we're not going to be taking their insurance and trying to collect payments. That's different. That's what I'm concerned about more than anything else. You know, I, I, I, any advice, sir? Well, I, I think people need, I mean, people need to realize it is the cheapest money they're going to spend. Exactly. And it's, and it's, you're going to spend the money eventually, right? And you're going to find out about your sickness eventually. When do you want to know? You know, I think that those, those are the, those are the bullets for me that are, are, are critical.

57:06You know, the numbers in the US are dismal in terms of current healthcare systems, right? It's just insane. Peter, do you know about this company that started up in Sweden by the founder of Spotify? Daniel Eck. It does. It's a full body scan. That's similar to what you're doing, but it's very inexpensive. and they're got three in Stockholm and they're opening another one up in London. I think maybe they've opened already this summer. I'm going to try to go get a scan there myself. Next time I'm in Europe and October, I'm going to go to London and get a scan there. Because I've talked to those guys, I think they charge, I think they get the complete scan, they do a blood test, they get all the results back to you within the hour that you're there, and then you meet with a doctor for 30 minutes to go over your results.

58:05And I think the total cost is like $750, which I have seen that. And it's, you know, the question becomes ultimately, I know the numbers on all of these areas. So I'm having a hard time, you know, even the CAPEX expense on the MRI machine and the doctor is sure you can get lower price per the hour doctor. But it's going to be interesting to see if you actually when you decipher it How how real is it for a US marketplace? Well, I talked to those guys and it was pretty interesting that they have a very high

58:47People sign up it's they got it. They got a three -year -awaiting list So it's probably worth checking it out a little bit. Yeah, I thought those guys were interesting when I talked to them What fears do you have right now in getting going? I mean, an entrepreneur has got vision, but is always sort of really aware of the challenges and the unknown areas. How do you think about that for yourself? Well, I think one of the challenges we've got is, is if you think of every blessing has a shadow side to it. And the fact that I have a lot of capital and I've been able to invest it, that's a good thing.

59:36The shadow side is people are not as frugal as they should be with capital. If you're scrapping start up, like we were in the early days of Whole Foods where every dollar is precious, you don't waste it. And I feel like I got my team, which is kind of seasoned executives of Whole Foods, but they're used to spending more money. And so they're not as frugal as a startup should be. That's one of my challenges. I think that's really an important insight. I've had a few companies. I had one company. I don't mention the name of it. I came in as a co -founder and vice chairman. Someone else took on the role of CEO who was a great scientist, but not a great CEO and plowed through cash.

1:00:22Yeah. Just and was able to raise money on my reputation his reputation and there's a point at which When you have too much money you buy solutions Versus innovating solutions. Yes. Yes. That's I had thought about that But that's true or you look for the easy path but mostly it's a state of mind. It's an attitude and I'm a little worried that that Love life is not scrappy enough. Yeah But I intend to change that. Well, I'm sure you can. I'm sure you will. How do you think about marketing in an organization? How do you think about creating a brand? That was an interesting journey went through in naming Whole Foods and building a meaningful brand.

1:01:18And how important is that for an entrepreneurial CEO to be thinking about? It's extremely important because all the great brands think about any great brand. They didn't build it through advertising. Brands are built through two things. One, you have to have, they're built by word of mouth, by very, very satisfied customers who go spread it. Yes. That's first and secondly they're built by good public relations. In other words PR builds brands. Advertising comes along later when you no longer have an interesting story advertising comes along to support the brand. But the brand itself is going to be built through excited.

1:02:01You want customers that are your biggest marketers because they tell everybody about it. You need rabid, fanatical fans. In other words, a really good brand is a cult. Yes. Look at Apple. People line up at the Apple stores when they're going to issue a new iPhone because they want to get the latest iPhone. That's what you want your brand to have. Fanatical advocates for your brand that love you, that love what you're doing, believe in your mission, that are aligned with you. Look at the Harley Davidson. That's a great brand. It's an iconic brand that was built. And then, you know, I mean, how often do you see television commercials for Harley -Davidson?

1:02:40They don't need to. They do, they do other, they promote in other ways. John, in this day of, of digital employment of, you know, virtual offices, how, where do you come out on that? Do you find, do you miss the days of having everybody to see them office and the energy of being co -located and working or have you allowed love life to go fully virtualized? No, I mean, when you read my book, that was my ultimate lead in my departure from Amazon. I'm a big fight about that because I remember that. I wanted to bring people back to my office and Amazon said it was too early and we had a big argument about it and that was that sort of was the catalyst for my departure.

1:03:25But it's got pros and cons, right? There's, it's wonderful that people can stay connected wherever they are. That's just so wonderful. That's something we haven't had before. But I don't think you can build a really healthy culture strictly from remote. People do not have the same kind of commitment. They're not all in. That's been my experience. So I think I think the hybrid models the way to go you have to figure out a way to to bring the band together frequently for the relationships to be Established and nurtured and grown trust. You know you're talking about you didn't like to hire just from just from a zoom interview Because you can't get all the cues.

1:04:10Well all those cues are important for building trust I mean that how can you tell somebody has integrity or not if you don't work with them and see them on a day -to -day basis the things they might say at a meeting or in lunch or just when you pop out of the office and you're talking, all of that stuff is instrumental for building relations. And there's no substitute for it. Did you go out to venture markets for this first financing, or did you keep it with friends and family? Yeah, but some of my friends, some of my friends are in the venture business, so I get a little bit of venture money, but I did not send out that business plan.

1:04:46What's your advice for entrepreneurs on where to get their early capital? I just did a whole course on fund your purpose and I'm opinionated about this. So, in my book, I talk about the VCs, I have a whole chapter on the VCs. They are, I call them hitchhikers with credit cards. As long as you help them get to where they want to get to, they will help pay for the gas. But if you wander off and you're not following the path, they will try to hijack the car, hire a new driver, generally from Harvard, or Washington, or Stanford, and throw you out on the side of the road. So I think my advice always to entrepreneurs is, it's the exact opposite of what the VCs tell them, which is don't worry, just grow sales.

1:05:38Don't worry about your investments. They're all trying to exponentially grow. And that's because that's very much in the VC. They've got their seven year window for their money. And they live on a blockbuster model. If you get a hit, it really, that can pay for all your failures. So they're willing to tolerate a high failure rate in order to get, so I think they try to scale these companies too quickly, and the entrepreneurs lose control of it. They bring in professional management. Then they do cram down rounds. I just find the VCs to be, I always tell the entrepreneur, these guys may seem like they really like you.

1:06:20Just remember, they have their own agenda, and it's not aligned with you. You have a longer term agenda than they do. You love what you're building. It's your mission. It's your purpose in life. So I generally urge them pick their VCs carefully. I learned the hard way, all money's not the same color. And pick your VCs, make sure they're aligned with your strategy. And if they're not, then don't take their money. Because they're going to try to change your business. You will regret it. I've had one time, particularly in my life, where I took someone's money because it was easy, but we had a different philosophy in life.

1:07:02And it came to haunt me terribly. I had to buy them out at the end in order for the company to continue to progress. So, Bezos, famously in the earliest days of the company was just focused on top -line revenue and not profits. And it was like his famous investor letter that said, that listen, I'm planning to grow this as rapidly as possible, profits be damned. And if you don't like it, go invest someplace else. Summarization of the letter. Yeah. How do you think about that? What do you think about growing revenues over profits versus some of the most extraordinary loving experience that I've had in business is actually building a profitable company from the beginning?

1:07:53Well, what's your philosophy on those two? Anything about that? Well, I think that Jeff kind of made it acceptable for businesses to do that, right? Because he proved the naysayers wrong. And there was a lot of Amazon skeptics out there, but Jeff kept growing the business and he was able to, he was so evangelical and he was such a bright guy that he was able to sell the market on it, at least enough of the market that believed it. And guess what? And he delivered at the end of the day, right? He created a bottle that he turned the dog in the knobs Went to you enough customers and enough volume and enough everything That's true in the digital world if you Facebook you can monetize at some point right so it's Twitter X similar thing so Bricks and more not so easily to do that you have to you have to have a business model that works you and relatively Relatively quickly so so do you do you You know, I remember reading in the book, right?

1:08:58You were clearly monitoring getting to profitability as soon as possible. Yeah, per store basis Is that still how you think? Yes. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Well for one thing So our strategy is to make this first unit Successful. Yes, I want to get as much members as possible because you're fixed overhead in the store or it's 45 ,000 square feet, you're rent, you're utilities, the labor that we have to pay for is all very high. So if you don't have the sales, then that's the end of the story. But, but, so this is a high fixed expense business. The variable expenses are there with labor, but relatively not not, they also will scale as you grow sales.

1:09:46So if we can gross sales, then the bottom line will partly take care of itself. So I do think we have to grow sales as rapidly as possible once we really get our launch underway after August 10th. And then after we do that, if we build a successful model, then it's going to be easy for us to raise money at favorable terms. I will raise money from venture capitalists in the next go around. Although another thing I might tell the, I learned this the hard way, that I'll tell other entrepreneurs, is start your company from the very beginning with class B shares that have 10 to 1 voting rights. At the end of the day, the VCs are just hitchhikers.

1:10:22They're not going to stay for the long ride. I love that line. Hitchhikers with credit cards. It's so true. Well, so we started love life with all the founding money that came in has been at that 10 -to -1 voting shares. But when we go route, raise our public round. After we've proven our business model works, it'll have class A shares with just one vote per share. You know, it is nice that you have the capital to tell someone to take a hike if they don't like it. I have a lot of fucking money. That is exactly the right term for it. It's interesting. John, I knew Bezos from college. I had started, I was at MIT and started something called Students for Exploration and Development Space.

1:11:09and grew it from this was my first entrepreneurial experience in my in my fraternity as a sophomore. I start this college group at MIT and then I write some letters and I hit a nerve and all of a sudden we have a hundred chapters around the world and Jeff was a president of the Princeton chapter. So I knew him as a space cadet during my career. Where were you? I was in MIT. MIT, so you're that's not too far from Princeton. But it was you know this was pre - So all the communications are over mail, right? And we have a annual conference in Washington, DC. And so I did not see him until, God knows, a couple of decades later in the mid late 90s.

1:11:52This is after Amazon has started. And so I have a coffee with him at a coffee shop. And like, Jeff, what's up with this Amazon business? I thought you wanted to do space and he goes, I'm going to do this first, make the money, and then go spend it in space. Yeah. But what's interesting about Bezos in this example, though, Peter, is that he goes against Tyke as an entrepreneur, right? He's not like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Michael Dell or Elon Musk. He started later. He was on Wall Street. He was in a financial markets. But he has an entrepreneurial temperament. I can tell you that so that he didn't probably start Amazon until he was in his 30s, right?

1:12:39Early 30s. Yeah, sure. That's that's a little bit unusual. It is, but I just want to be clear. I think you can be an entrepreneur at any age. It is, but entrepreneurs usually can't wait. True. True. I mean, but there is, okay, listen, I'm on my 26th act. I think you're on, and some variation of your - I'm on act two. I think your act one had a lot of sub -ax in it, but nonetheless, it was interesting. I won't go into it. I keep on, every time I see Jeff, I nudge him about why Blorge and his space company hasn't launched to orbit yet. I think that's the source part. He's got that rivalry with Elon.

1:13:24Oh my God, he does. And I think part of it is he's not running it. That's a good point. I think he's, you know, he's funding it, but he's not running it. The funny thing about Elon is how many businesses can that guy run as a CEO? He's disrupting the way we think about one pointed focus. He's able to juggle a lot of different businesses. Oh, it's crazy. I was a point, I remember in 2008. He was on my board at the Exprice Foundation. And it was great. He funded an ex -price for us early on in global learning. And he sends funded $100 million prize for carbon extraction from the atmosphere in oceans, which has been going great.

1:14:06But I got a call from one day saying, Peter, I really, I apologize. I have to step off the board. I've got to focus on SpaceX and Tesla. So I'm stepping off of everything. And of course, everything you do that for like a year. And now he's got a 27 different directions with all that he's doing. And thank God, I mean, putting the politics aside, the guy is pushing innovation at a speed and an audacity that is unparalleled by anybody. I think Elon Musk is the most important person alive. Yeah, I agree. You know what he needs, Peter? He needs to hook up with one of our companies because I'm a little worried about his health.

1:14:48Oh, I've had this conversation with him a number of times and I've said, listen, I will treat you at fountain like, please let me, you know, and we keep on teasing each other on, on, I'll call it Twitter because I, you know, that I say sugar is a poison and he like says, I just ate two donuts for breakfast and I'm like, okay, that's your choice. Well, you know what's interesting is his brother, Kimble. Yeah, he's in the whole field. Exactly. He feels the same way we do. And Kimble, he lives in Boulder, so I see him fairly frequently and he's very much into health. Wellness, by the way, very interested in psychedelics.

1:15:28I think he's probably the most healthy influence Elon has in his life as probably his brother. Elon's gone through many stages and the guy, he said this publicly and I've had long dinner conversations about this as well. He said, people think they want to be me, but they don't want to be me. They want, yes, exactly. I understand. Elon has his demons, right? He's got his shadow side. He does, but he can't, you know, someone at that stage can't go any place. He said, only place I could go is like a biker bar when he recognizes me, but that was five years ago. I think everybody would recognize him.

1:16:06I mean, he showed up at the thrust run I was eating at a couple of years ago, and because I was having dinner with Luke Nocick, That's just one of the big, look and Elon just walks in and joins us. And I said, well, this is fantastic. You know, where you're, you can still move about the world without bodyguards. I think that's so fantastic. He said, look to me, he said, John, you're nuts. I got all kinds of bodyguards out there. They're just not in here in this private dining area, but they're guarding the entrances and watching out for me. So you're right. I would hate, I still have the freedom to move around this world and not with enough anonymity where I'm free.

1:16:47I wouldn't train that. Yeah, I have what I call minor celebrity who I get. No, minor celebrity is good. It recognized in the street once or twice in a day, but God Almighty would not want what Elon has. Or Jeff, when we met with Jeff Paisas and his team to talk for the first time about Amazon I remember it just. They searched us, they searched our car, they checked it for bombs, and it was like, wow, he's at a level of security that I desperately hope I never have to get to. It is the dark side of success. Yes, exactly. Did you see the movie Oppenheimer? If you did, did you know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs, that they spent billions on biodefense weapons, the ability to accurately detect viruses and microbes by reading their RNA.

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1:19:02I've asked Naveen Jane, a friend of mine, who's the founder and CEO of Vioam to give my listeners a special discount. You'll find it at vioam .com slash Peter. You know, you mentioned psychedelics. Let's go there. I really enjoyed reading in the whole story your experience with psychedelic journeys. And I really enjoyed the transparency that you had there. And equally transparent, I've had, really it's been in the last five years, some of the most extraordinary experiences in my life. And as you describe it, you know, in dissolving the ego and being connected with the oneness of the universe, and love being the most powerful experience.

1:19:52It's a beautiful thing. And I wish I had experienced it earlier in my life. Would you mind recounting a little bit of what you've done and what it's meant for you? Well, I talk about psychedelics three separate times in the book. I start out with it because I'm 20, I just turned 22 and I took, I mean Austin, summer, I had a birthday just a couple of weeks before. And I took a dose of LSD. I'd taken LSD several times before. I did it by myself, but of course, back in the day, I had no idea how strong the dose was. This was the most powerful dose I'd ever taken, or half taken sense. It was like, I describe it as, it was so overwhelming that you had no choice but to let go.

1:20:38I mean, I tried to hold onto that ego, but it was like being on Niagara Falls, holding on with one hand or a rock. Eventually you get tired and you get swept over the falls. And then I, as only retrospect, I describe it as an ego death or ego dissolving. Simply because there was no separation any longer. There was just pure being. There was. And that felt timeless. I don't, for all practical purposes, it probably measured in this reality. It was measured by how how long the LSD before it started to decline my system, before my liver started detoxifying it. But psychologically, it seemed to be endless and it was amazing and it was ecstatic.

1:21:22And so that changed the direct trajectory of my life because as soon after that, I moved into this vegetarian co -op. I wasn't a vegetarian. I just wanted, I was interested in, I was a seeker, I was a searcher, and I wanted to get on with the adventure of my life. That was what I woke up to. I answered the hero's journey after that. That woke me up to it. So that's the first time I talk about it. Yeah, and you do it in a very beautiful fashion where you took you through this increasing intensity to a place of fear initially. Yes. and then extraordinary connection and blissful connection with the universe.

1:22:07We're very attached to our egos. We don't want to let them go. My journey of most profound and my mom listens to my podcast. So hi mom, yes I'm talking about this right now.

1:22:23Was when I did a DMT journey? Yes, I've done DMT as well. I didn't talk about it in the book. Yeah, and instantaneous right instantaneous. So it is But the most profound I've had you are and DMT is you know It's been called the guide molecule. It's released by the pineal gland. It is thought to be a molecule released at birth and at death and in that moment and also just to be clear mom there's no downside physical and medical effects. It's been done, I've done it with a shaman and with a physician on those occasions. And it is, it's called the entrepreneurs psychedelic as you're in and out of the experience in under 10 minutes, right?

1:23:1320 minutes sometimes. But it's a complete instant dissolution, your ego is gone. And it was extraordinary. Can I share you one of my, one of the images I had during that. So this was probably on the third occasion of doing it. I'm coming out of this blissful, loving experience, and I see this ocean of energy, and it's an infinite ocean of energy, a bubbling energy, almost like a quantum foam, and coming out of that ocean, almost a single plane of energy, are these two double helices that go up and then come back down. And I was like, oh my God, that's that's that is like, you know, we emerge out of the onus of the universe into life.

1:24:04And then we we come back into it at the end. And it was like the most profound experience. I still can visually remember that. And it gives me goosebumps thinking So, so, so in that experience that I have in the LSD, I experienced the, I experienced the big bang. Um, we're in the singularity or in this singularity and it, and it was, or the big bang was just a giant orgasm of self love, self singularity, exploding out, forming all the multiverses and, and, um, and then there's the breathing back in, it comes back into the singularity. This is the infinite game. It goes on forever, never, never, never, never, never.

1:24:50Every, every creative possibilities realized we're constantly an infinite game, infinite play. So I experience this on this journey. And that's when I realize after that, it's like, I am, I am an S, I'm part of all that is. I, not the ego, but the essence of me is immortal. And so is everything else, right? And so there's nothing to be afraid not death, not life, and that's when the hero's journey called came. And it was like, I am on a grand adventure. I even symbolized it by hitchhiking. I'm open for the adventure now. I'm going to create this amazing life for myself. You know, I had a complete loss of fear of death coming out of that.

1:25:37Because of the, you know, the connection with infinity. I want to live as long as I can, I want to live as long as I can, and what it's doing. It's an amazing life. It's like the most exciting time ever to be alive, right? At least I'm more excited. Maybe tomorrow. But yeah, it was an incredible experience. I have not had that level on, I've tried LSD once, but it was not in the same reflective. Right. I've only wanted to do this inside of a... of a Spiritual journey where it's not for play. This is for self Revealization. Yeah. Yeah How what's your advice to Entrepreneurs or or individuals Who haven't experienced this yet?

1:26:32I don't know if you want to give it advice well so So I'll just say two other times to talk about in the book. I'll get you to the second. So I first time I did MDMA was 1985. It was legal. And that was it. Had a big impact on me. It changed my life because I absolutely knew without a doubt. And I've never forgotten it. Love was the most important thing. We are here to love. We are here to love and to share love and connect with people and spread love. That is that is what we're here to do That was the connective fiber of the universe. Yes, the universe is built on love and we're but we're we're trapped in the ego to a certain extent and the ego is fear and Resistance and a belief in separation.

1:27:22So I I experienced that and then after that I began my spiritual journey and earnest I I started to meditate regularly. I started to do breathwork regularly. I started studying the course of miracles. I really launched on my own spiritual path with a more disciplined focus. And then the last time I talk about it in the book is towards the end of the book, when I'm about to, I'm gonna leave Whole Foods Market. And I've been so motivated by Michael Pollan's book, how to change your mind. Yes. And Michael's oftentimes, he did it with the omnivores dilemma. He's just he's he's he's right on the cusp of these things becoming more cultural the main stream And he helps orchestrate that cultural change in because after I read him doing your guided journey I thought you know what I'm gonna do a guided journey absolutely am and I set that up so that just a couple of months before I Retired from whole foods.

1:28:15I would do I did a five day Remember on live five day one on one where your your guide would not let you escape early believe in the process, believe in the process. Trust the process, trust the process. And that was a combination of breathwork, which I did five separate times. I got actually more out of the breathwork. I just kind of encouraged people enough. We're gonna do breathwork at lifeworks. When I talked a lot about lifeworks on the physical health side, but we're gonna be doing, we wanna really help people emotionally and spiritually as well. So we'll be doing breathwork, we'll be doing meditation classes.

1:28:53We will bring in speakers. I really want to help people on this part of their lives and when psychedelic therapy is legal in California Like it is now in Oregon and Colorado. We're gonna want to do that there Yeah, I do think that should be legal for therapeutic reasons. Yeah, so anyway That guided journey was huge for me because a I was able to let go of some anger I had towards Amazon I was able to heal on that and let it go because it's the negative emotions that block love Anger, fear, guilt, envy, these things prevent us from being aware of love as presents. And so as we practice forgiveness and we let those negative emotions go, we come into the love's presence more clearly.

1:29:41So that was very important for my healing and it also let me let go of whole foods. I saw that it was time that my hero's journey was calling me in a different direction now and that this was the right thing to do. I'd already made the decision, but I got really clear in my heart. My soul told me, yes, you're on your path. This is the right thing. So it was, and you're asking me, do I recommend it? I absolutely 100 % recommend a guided spiritual journey under a good therapist who's there, creates a set in setting matter, a safe place where you're totally safe. There's nothing to be afraid of where you can release.

1:30:18Go with intentions. Yes. Yes, it was very, very intentional, very spiritually focused and take it and work preparation before you go in and then and you have to do integration afterwards. You can't just have the experience you need to integrate it into your life. I highly recommend that. It's life changing. John, before we close out, where can people follow you? Where can they find out more about love life and about your work? Well, they can follow me at johnpmacchi .com. That's my personal website. JohnPimackie .com, they can find out a love life at love .life, www .love .life. Love that. And of course, the whole story, please, if you're an entrepreneur, if you love whole foods, if you want an extraordinary book, let me pitch this for you.

1:31:07Whole life was an amazing book. I really enjoyed listening to it. I'm sure the reading is equally pleasurable, but I assume on Amazon. available. The whole story adventures in love life and capitalism is available at on Amazon. It's Whole Foods is selling it. And some bookstores are. I'm a little bit unhappy that I feel like I defend capitalism so strongly in my book that I thought maybe I was offensive to some people. By the way I I brand myself always as a libertarian capitalist. So I think I think we both have that in common. We do. I definitely, I've kind of moved away from libertarian because it's beginning, the brand is beginning to be stained with not -see -fascism, which is the opposite of those things, right?

1:31:56Exactly. But from the original form. Classical liberal. Yes. People always want to know, what's a classical liberal? And that gives me a chance to expound on the classical liberal principles that really built our country. Yeah. Buddy, a pleasure. And thank you for spending the time with me. I learned a lot and hope you enjoyed it as well. Thanks Peter, I look forward to meeting you in person. See you.