John Mackey: Not Sure You're on the Right Path In Your Career? (Use THIS Framework When You Feel Lost About What's Next)

19:37Jay Shetty:Absolutely. And I always say to people, you either have the choice to envy people or study them. And if you envy them, then you don't get anywhere. But when you study them, you have the opportunity to. I like that a lot.

19:49John Mackey:That's a takeaway for me today. Thank you. Please do.

19:52Jay Shetty:Yeah, absolutely. I focused on that heavily because I always reflected on, I was in the same way as you, appreciating others, admiring others, but I saw the key part was studying them and wanting to learn from them. And all of a sudden you didn't feel that they were that far away. You felt so much closer to them and closer to that success for yourself and that abundance for yourself. Going to your point on ego death, I love that you use that language. could you describe what an ego death is for someone who may be new to the idea or may not be aware of how you're referring to it?

20:25John Mackey:We're very attached to our ego. I mean, we in fact think that's what we are. We believe we are the ego. We believe we're a body and we're an ego. And so the ego is the part of us that feels like it's separate. Hey, I'm John. You're you. That's a book. This is water. This is a microphone. These are different than me. They're not me. And so we have this great feeling of individuality and separateness. That is, it's so real to us that we think that's actually reality. And so with the ego death, or a better way to put it because death's a scary word, is sort of your ego disappearing. You don't have that sense of separation any longer.

21:17John Mackey:You don't identify with your separation. And the metaphor I like to use is like clothes. So I have clothes on today. They're not me. I'm not my clothes. And I'm going to go home and I'm going to take my clothes off. Maybe I'll wear them again. Maybe I won't. I'll wear something different the next day. That's not who I am. I don't identify with my clothes. Most people don't, but some people do. Some people actually feel really, really attached to their clothing. And so I'm not my clothes and I'm not my ego. And until you can actually have an experience where your ego is dissolved, you won't really understand what I'm talking about.

21:58John Mackey:But one of the great things about it is, is that once you realize you're not your ego, you can also begin to let go of your fear of death. because what we are at the deeper part of our being is the oneself, the one being. We all are. So in a sense, we are immortal, but not our egos aren't. So that's the thing that freaks people out. It's like, I always like to say, it's another metaphor. It's like, when I die, I'm going to, oh yes, I remember, here I am again. And I'm not John Mackey. I'm not that ego. I'm not that the body's going to dissolve and disappear. But the essence of what we are, the one being, the one self is there always.

22:39John Mackey:It always has been and always will be. And as you realize that, it's like our greatest fear, of course, is death. And you can begin to let that go. And by the way, once you begin to let that fear go, then you can really see your life as this adventure. Whatever happens, it doesn't matter. It's just like a dream. In fact, I do think life is really a dream. And I think that's a good metaphor to understand what we're doing here. I oftentimes will describe it as, have you had experience of a lucid dream before? So in a lucid dream, we become conscious that we're dreaming. And once you become conscious that you're actually dreaming, you can begin to take control of the dream and you can create it however you want it to be.

23:21John Mackey:And once you begin to realize that you're in a dream here, then you can become conscious. and then you can begin to create a happy dream, a dream of love, of forgiveness, a dream of on your own hero's journey, so to speak, a kindness, compassion. That dream begins to change. As you wake up, it becomes a happier and happier dream because that's the dream that you're creating. I always tell my friends, it's like, I believe in the multiverse. Because when I get to a doom and gloom that says we're all gonna destroy everything, I says, well, yeah, not me. That's not my dream. My dream is going to get better and better and better.

23:58John Mackey:But the multiverse is real because all possibilities are being realized. And I said, there'll be some version of John Mackey that goes down that horrible path with you. I'm just letting you know, it'll be a different one than this guy.

24:29Jay Shetty:I think C.S. Lewis wrote it best that you don't have a soul, you are the soul and you have a body. Yes, that's beautiful. It's one of my favorite, favorite. I'm a big C.S.

24:39John Mackey:Lewis fan.

24:39Jay Shetty:Yeah, me too. And it's one of my favorite, favorite statements that you don't have a soul, you are the soul and you have a body. And I loved your metaphor about the clothes. It reminds me of a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, which talks about that just as we put on clothes and take them off every day, the soul takes on new bodies and takes them off and takes on new ones. And that cycle continues. And I think that there's such a liberation to that acceptance as well in that ego death, as you call it, that if I start to think I am my clothes or I am my car, imagine how hard life becomes yes imagine how difficult it becomes if every time your clothes get a bit dirty or there's a little rip on them or there's you know someone knocks into your car and we even say that when someone hits our car we say someone hit me oh yeah i never thought about that they didn't hit us they hit our car but we go i got hit today uh and and so it's so interesting how quickly we identify with our material casing and yes and and what we operate in and i wanted to ask you that, how does that then translate to business and to building a life in the dream, as you called it?

25:50Jay Shetty:When you're now trying to operate in the dream, how does that realization actually help? Are you now visioning in alternate realities? Are you now strategizing differently? How does that make you approach building Whole Foods differently? Because Whole Foods is very tangible. It's very real.

26:06John Mackey:The way I think about it, and the first chapter in the book's called the game of life. And the very last chapter in the book is called the infinite game. And if the one self, the one being has always existed and I think Hinduism talks about this in the Vedanta, we're in the one, in the stillness, in pure beingness, in bliss. And then the big bang occurs and we explode into the multiverse on our adventures and then we come back together again. And that's the infinite game. We do it and we'll always do it. And so once you realize that it's all a game, that every possibility is realized, we're just gonna infinitely create, then you can frame it up so there's just this fun game.

26:52John Mackey:Games should be fun. And that's a better way to live. It's living your life as it's fun and loving and joyful and that you're creating. We are very happy when we're creating things. Watch children. They're endlessly creative. They're endlessly playful. I always tell people, you want to make a friend with a child? All you have to do is one thing. Just play with them. When you play with a child, they start to trust you. They begin to find that you're fun to hang around with. You're not like all those other mean grownups. I just think that is a good metaphor for existence itself, the metaphor of the game.

27:28John Mackey:But an infinite game that we are creating ourselves and playing, eternal play, because you have an infinite amount of time. I mean, there's no beginning, no end. There never will be. so yeah find your own connect with your soul find out what your soul wants to do and then do it and have fun and and do good in the world i think play is a great analogy because

27:52Jay Shetty:play is not mental and i think when you say find out what your soul wants to do i think the hard part is with we're up here going i don't know what my passion is i don't know what to do and And I'm speaking on behalf of, I know people's genuine troubles when they're listening to the show and they're like, well, Jay, like, I don't know what my passion is. I don't know where to start. I don't know what skills I have. And these are all mental arithmetic exercises, whereas what you're saying is not on that level. So how do we get out of our heads? Here's the thing.

28:23John Mackey:Those are clues. The best way is to go directly to the source. vis-a-vis breath work, meditation, do spiritual exercises. However, one clue is the things that give you joy, that's a clue to who you are and what your own heart is calling you to do. So I get asked all the time, I'll probably get asked that tonight when I'm doing this talk at this university, is like, well, how do you know what your heart wants you to do? And I said, you know you're on the path when you're happy. When you're listening to your heart and it's bringing you joy and discovery and creativity and play, you're on your path.

29:06John Mackey:And it's when you're not experiencing those things that you're not on the path. And so the things that draw you in, like for me, when I moved into that co-op and I had my food awakening and all I was interested in, I just wanted to learn about food. I want to learn about agriculture and organic and regenerative and sustainable and natural foods. And it was like I couldn't get enough of it because I was so interested in it. So those are all clues to what makes your heart sing. That's who you're being. That's in this dream. That's what you're trying to create. And you can get in touch with that through spiritual exercises.

29:44John Mackey:In my case, you know, my parents wanted me to be a professional. And I talk about in the book, my mother died feeling like I was a failure. She died in 1987 because for her, her son was a grocer. And for that, I was so downwardly mobile. I never graduated from college. I just have 120 hours of electives. I just studied philosophy and religion, whatever I was interested in, got a great education. I just didn't get credentialed. And for her, the credentials were what really mattered. But I was off on my pursuit. I was on my hero's journey and it was giving me happiness and joy. And that's how you know.

30:20Jay Shetty:How do you know the difference between the happiness and joy and the discomfort that comes even in the happy and joyful path versus the discomfort that is not your path? Because I think when people think of like, am I happy and joyful, then things get a bit harder. Or like you're saying, there were days when Whole Foods could have failed and it doesn't get easy. and then you're like, oh, well, is this bringing me joy now? So how do you...

30:45John Mackey:We have to introduce another character to the story. I mean, we talked about the ego, but part of our ego is what I and others call the internal critic. The ego really doesn't, it judges everyone. The ego is constantly judging. That's the part that's envious. That's the part that's angry. That's the part that somebody cuts you off in traffic. You know, you say curse words. And that's the one that's judging us all the time. Like, as I got deeper into my own spiritual journey, I saw that the critical life issue for me was I am not worthy of love because I'm not perfect. I do things that I regret.

31:27John Mackey:I do sometimes identify with the ego and I do things that later on I think, I shouldn't have said that. But then I have to go, you know, practice forgiveness to move through it. There is that part of us that is constantly judging. And that's what it does all the time. It judges everyone else. And it judges, and mostly it judges ourselves. And then those judgments for ourselves, we project out into the dream. And then the dream is manifesting all the time. Our emotions, our thoughts are always creating the dream. Here's the interesting thing about the dream. We're always a character in our own dreams, right?

32:02John Mackey:Who are the other characters that seem to be acting independently of us? we're the dreamer. How can they do things different? How does that even happen? And once you begin to realize, oh my God, I'm the dreamer, I'm creating those characters as well. And they're representations of some of my other inner thoughts, emotions, judgments, and whatnot. Once you realize that, then it's like you stop being a victim in your own dream. So if these things are not working out for you the way you want, the internal critic wants to projected out into the dream and say, I'm a victim. These people should be treating me differently.

32:40John Mackey:I feel righteous in being angry. But again, you're putting out those emotions that are not furthering your life and not bringing you joy and happiness. And then you get, you sort of get stuck in it. You get trapped in it. And I think that's the human condition in a way. The spiritual journey is to awaken, to realize, oh my gosh, it is a dream. I'm the dreamer. I'm a character in the dream. And so then how do I treat all the other characters the way I want to be treated? And that's with love, compassion, forgiveness, thoughtfulness. Then that dream begins to change is that's the energy we put out.

33:16John Mackey:But you know, it's a path because we will forget. Here's what I always tell people. You'll forget. You'll go back and you'll start listening to the ego and the internal critic and you'll judge. But you'll forget that, oh, yes, I remember now it's my spiritual path. It's just a dream. I guess one of the big lessons I learned, Jay, is that the past doesn't really exist. The past is gone. All that's real is right now in this moment. That is what's real. And in this moment, you can choose again. In this moment, you can choose love. In this moment, you can choose forgiveness. And then if you forget, that's okay because that's the past.

33:56John Mackey:And now in this next moment, you can choose again. We have this freedom. That's our freedom. We have freedom in the moment to choose love, to choose peace, to choose kindness, to choose forgiveness, to be alive, to be playful. And it's okay if we forget. If you get down on yourself for forgetting, then you're empowering that ego to judge you as not perfect. But when you're sharing love in the moment, you are perfect. So you can be perfect in the next moment by just choosing again to be present in the moment. And in the moment, there is love.

34:29Jay Shetty:How did you transfer that energy? Like, I'm imagining you, as you're building this huge company, before you're walking to a meeting, when you're leading a staff meeting, when you're meeting stakeholders, how was this translating into reality? What does that look like when you're leading a company? Because you may not be saying these words, but you're trying to live them?

34:53John Mackey:First of all, I didn't do it perfectly. I didn't stay in the love space all the time. I got angry. I got judgmental. I got afraid. I got all the, you know, fear, envy that they're, they're all there. I, I didn't claim that I did Whole Foods in any kind of enlightened way all the time. I always said Whole Foods was my ashram. That was the place where I got to practice. I get to practice forgiveness. I get to practice being, to returning to love. I did learn some good things we did. I always tell people, if you want to have a more loving business, the single thing, practice that I most recommend, we would end all our meetings at Whole Foods with appreciations.

35:29John Mackey:The two things that can shift, that make the mental shift, the emotional shift, the spiritual shift, one is gratitude. I start my days with gratitude because that opens the heart. And then you practice forgiveness. When you feel like somebody's wronged you, you practice forgiveness. But most importantly, we would end our meetings with appreciations. That's incredibly powerful. It's very hard for people to stay in a judgmental frame when you've just appreciated them in an authentic way. I always say people know the difference between somebody who's flattering them because they can feel like they want something from me versus somebody who's genuinely appreciating us.

36:06John Mackey:It's very hard to keep your heart closed to that. And so as we practiced appreciations in our meetings, I could see the love and the larger team and the larger group spreading. We did it at every level. And that one technique is very, very powerful. I always encourage people that are running businesses or even just running a team, if you end your meetings with appreciations, you will find consciousness begins to shift in the dream.

36:30Jay Shetty:I'm so glad you brought that up. I remember when I was among one of our practices after completing a service or completing an offering that we were doing, whether it was feeding the homeless or serving in our local communities, whoever led that project would go around the room and honor and appreciate each person who was serving with them. And so when I started my company, I would do that at like our Christmas or holiday dinners or at our team events or whatever. I would go around the room and individually speak uniquely about each person in the room who was doing something. And people found it so strange.

37:06Jay Shetty:And to me, it was the most normal thing I'd done growing up. And it's become such a beautiful ritual that we have because I find it so beautiful to reflect on people's individual contribution and the value that they've brought and to remind them of it.

37:20John Mackey:You're seeing their beauty. You're seeing the God part of them and you are helping them to see it because as you express that authentically, they can feel your love for them. And they begin to wonder, maybe I'm actually more lovable than my thoughts. Yes.

37:36Jay Shetty:Yeah, exactly. And I think we feel the most unloved when we feel unseen. And so if you really want to make someone feel loved, you can only do that by making them feel seen. When people feel seen for who they are and what they contribute and what they bring and how much they have to give and share, then they not only do they see it in themselves, but they feel truly seen, so they feel truly loved.

38:03John Mackey:That's why the greatest gift we can usually give anyone is just to be present for them in the moment, not lost in our thoughts. It's not, you know, we tend to, as we listen, we start thinking about what we want to talk about or what we're going to say, and we lose presence. But the greatest gift, when you can just be fully present for someone, you are loving them by just being present for them. And they feel that presence. So I absolutely agree. They feel seen. I like that expression of it.

38:33Jay Shetty:I don't want anyone who's listening or watching to be under any false pretences that I'm always operating from this space either. I love what you said about there are days when you're agitated and there are days when you're frustrated and there are days when it's not love, it's fear, it's insecurity, it's results. That's the normal human experience. And I think what I definitely learned is, and I love that you use the word ashram in that sense, because that's exactly what an ashram is. An ashram is a place to practice, a place to learn, a place to heal. It's a hospital, not a result center. I think a lot of people don't realize.

39:09Jay Shetty:I remember one of my first days in the monastery, my teacher told me, he said, don't forget, this is a hospital. Everyone next to you has got an illness and so do you. And the moment you start thinking everyone around you is perfect is when you won't like this place at all because you came here seeking perfection when actually you should have come here seeking practice.

39:29John Mackey:Obviously you found a good teacher.

39:32Jay Shetty:I do. I'm very lucky. I have a great set of teachers, but I love the use of the language appropriately. It functions so well. And I love that we're having a spiritual conversation about business. This is so fulfilling to me. So thank you so much for this opportunity because it's such a new take. We've had business leaders on the podcast before, but this is a very different thing. When you're thinking about growth, I think going back to that conscious capitalism point earlier, I do think a lot of spiritual people still feel hung up about being ambitious, about being results driven, about being focused on a goal.

40:12Jay Shetty:They feel in some way deep inside of them, we have that wiring that if you're striving for more, you're in some way ungrateful, unsatisfied. Well, you could be. Yeah, so let's talk about that.

40:26John Mackey:If that's your ashram, it's a more difficult path. You know the old saying, it's easy to be a saint on a mountaintop. I'm talking about being a saint while you're building a business. That's not so easy to do because shit happens. And how you respond to that, that's your opportunity. It's how you choose to respond to the circumstances you find in your dream. How will you show up? And I think the key is, you won't always show up well. You'll make some mistakes, but don't have to get lost there because you can remember who you are. Remember who you are. And then that next moment you can choose differently.

41:01John Mackey:We can snap back to it right now, whenever we want to. And that took me a long time to learn. Sometimes I might be lost in the dream for days and days, even weeks at a time. And then I remember, oh my God, look, I've been such a jerk. And then instead of beating myself up for not being perfect. It's like, yes, but this next moment, I'm no longer, I am present again. I'm back into the love space.

41:25Jay Shetty:People often ask me like, why, like how do you function in business? And obviously now I live in LA and everything else. I actually relish the battle because I'm reminded every day that I'm not a saint when I'm here. Whereas on the mountaintop, I could potentially believe that I've made it.

41:43John Mackey:If you think you're a saint, you've already forgotten. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The ego is always trying. It's like, oh, you're going to do this spiritual thing? I'm going to be the very best there is. That's the ego trying to maintain control, so to speak.

41:57Jay Shetty:I love the idea that I live in a universe that constantly holds up a mirror to me because I'm constantly reminded of my desires, my lower nature, my higher nature, the complexities of it. And I love that battle. I relish it because that's what reminds me to stay on the journey and stay on the path and stay committed. And I wanted to ask you, when you had moments of difficulty where you feel you are moving away from love in business and away from compassion, did you come up with any practices or habits or tools that locked you back in?

42:36John Mackey:People would oftentimes, when you have difficult situations, let's say you have to fire somebody or you have a business that you're going to shut down. These are very painful, very, very difficult things to do. You know, people are going to be hurt. and because we know people are going to be hurt, then the call and the only right call is compassion. But you have to think about what's the collective good for all and you have to make some difficult decisions because you're always thinking, what's my win-win-win solution? Good for me, good for you, good for all of us. And that sometimes means you have to do difficult things, but it's how you do that makes all the difference and how you show up.

43:11John Mackey:If you show up in your heart with love and compassion, you're probably going to have a, even though it's difficult, it's probably going to go well and you'll maintain a relationship because they can feel your genuine love for them. If you do it with judgment and anger, it's like, you know, you're just getting what you deserve, then you've missed it. That's another opportunity, we'll say, to be in the heart space and do the difficult things. It's like it's a skill that you have to practice. And if you practice it, you will get better at it. And you'll still make mistakes, but then you'll learn from those mistakes.

43:47John Mackey:If you just continue to view it all as an opportunity to learn and grow and spiritually evolve, and that you will make some mistakes and you will learn from them. And it's like you were talking about learning from those that, you know, instead of envying them, you study them. Well, it's the same thing with you learn from your own mistakes. One practice that's very helpful here, Jay, is to have people that love you, that you can talk about all this stuff with, and they will tell you the truth. They'll say, John, you were really harsh in that. You were not in a loving space when you did that, were you?

44:23John Mackey:And it's like, no, I really wasn't. And he says, well, what are you going to do about it? And I said, I'm going to go apologize. I really do think we underestimate the power of forgiveness. We will make mistakes, mess up, fess up. When you make a mistake, when you hurt somebody, when you're not in your heart, when you're in an angry judgmental space, the next moment you can choose love and part of choosing love is to go ahead the ego doesn't like to admit it made mistakes it doesn't like to apologize it doesn't like to ask for forgiveness but that will restore you into that love flow so you have to be willing to go ahead and admit that you're not perfect that you made mistakes and then as you do that you can then let go of it and then you can return

45:23Jay Shetty:John, you talk about the term servant leadership, and I feel like today, more than ever, we don't really have good role models of that. We don't have it. We don't have it in our presidential race, for sure. Yeah, it's so far away from that. And I feel like servant leadership, compassionate leadership, conscious leadership, all of these things you'd hope are in business schools and colleges and universities, but they're not. And if it does come up, it comes up because it's, hey, it would be profitable to be this way. Or we still haven't got to a place where people realize that we should create businesses because they'd be good for our kids and future generations, or we should create something that positively impacts the world.

46:03Jay Shetty:And we're still not there yet. I'm going to tell you

46:05John Mackey:something you've probably never thought about before. Who teaches in medical schools? Professors. They're doctors. Yeah. Who teaches in law schools? Lawyers. Lawyers, right. Who teaches in our business schools? Not business people. They're intellectuals. They're academics. And it's not that that's bad. It's just that they don't have the experience of actually leading. They have a theory about leadership. There's a reason why medical schools and law schools actually have real professionals that are teaching them the skills that they need to know. And I think it's part of where we've gone wrong in business.

46:41John Mackey:We have people that have almost no experience in business teaching our students. So they can't teach from actual experience of leadership. They don't really know about it because they have never really done it. So that's one reform that we need to do. There needs to be sort of a tradition, I think, that if you're passing your wisdom on, if you're a retired business leader, that you should be, it's one reason I'm going to go speak at this university tonight. I'm going to be talking to business students and I want to be sharing my experiences as we talk about this book. That's going to be invaluable to them because that's not something they're getting in an MBA program.

47:15Jay Shetty:Obviously, the decision to sell to Amazon was not one that you made lightly.

47:20John Mackey:No.

47:20Jay Shetty:Explain what was hard, easy about that decision.

47:23John Mackey:Of course, it's always about, you know, where do you start the story? And in this case, I won't give the background for how we got into this position, but the short answer is Whole Foods is being attacked by shareholder activists. Our stock had declined in the last couple of years. And then the shareholder activist is somebody that generally wants to make change to get the stock price up, and then they'll make money doing that. So they're very short-term focused. We had a shareholder activist called Jana Partners. They didn't want to work with us. They said, we're going to take over your board and we're going to, as soon as we get all control of the board, we're going to fire you, fire other parts of the management team, and then we're going to just sell the business to the highest bidder.

48:02John Mackey:And there's not anything you can do about it left. And a little bit stronger language than that. So for me, it was like, I kept asking this question. It was a spiritual question. What is the win-win-win solution here? What is the best thing for all of our stakeholders? How do our customers win? How do our employees win? How do our suppliers win? How do our investors win? How do the communities that we're part of win? And I looked at all the different alternatives, but I kept asking that question. I really do believe when you ask the question and you stay on it and you keep asking your soul for the answer, that it emerges.

48:40John Mackey:And I remember waking up one morning and it just popped into my brain right when I woke up and I knew it was the right answer. It said, what about Amazon? Because that was kind of a crazy idea. Amazon didn't have any grocery stores. I'd met Jeff Bezos the year before at a conference, and he and I had really kind of hit it off. We had a lot of common interests. Jeff loved to read science fiction and fantasy. We shared that in common. He liked to scuba dive. I've done a lot of scuba diving around the world. He's an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs generally can find lots of things to talk about, talk about their businesses.

49:18John Mackey:He was very interested in Whole Foods. We were on a panel together. And so I really liked him. I admire what Amazon had created. And Jeff is one of the smartest, most creative people I've ever met. We looked at other possibilities. Maybe Warren Buffett would buy the company and it'd be in friendly hands. He joked and said, I own Dairy Queen and I eat junk food. This isn't a good fit for me. And we talked to Albertsons and we realized, oh my God, that would be terrible for us to be part of that company. We thought about going private, but then you're taking on, you know, 12, $13 billion on your balance sheet and you have to pay that back and you take, and you have to pay interest on it.

49:58John Mackey:The economy has a downturn like it did in 2008. You might fail. And you're also giving control of your business over to private equity people and they'll have different, different motivations, just make, make money. So we didn't have a good answer. And we, we, the other answer was to fight Jana, but Whole Foods needed time to turn around its business. We needed time to lower our prices. If you're selling something for a dollar and all of a sudden now you sell it for 90 cents, in the short run, your sales fall, your same store sales fall, your profits fall. And when you have activists, you know, that want immediate quick turnaround, then that's not, we need it.

50:38John Mackey:That takes a couple of years before lower prices will help your customers see, well, Whole Foods is actually not Whole Paycheck any longer. I love the store. Now it's more affordable to shop there. When it popped in my brain about Amazon, we flew, they were very interested right from the beginning. And we flew out there and I met with Jeff and three of his leaders and I had three of my leaders and four on four. And we talked for about three hours just about what we could do together. And they were not your typical corporate types. These were extremely intelligent people, very creative. They had a lot of good ideas about what we could do together.

51:14John Mackey:And I remember when we left there, my team and I went to a restaurant and we're sitting around talking about it. And they said, that was an incredible conversation. Those guys are not anything like I thought they would be. They're so smart and they're so creative. It'd be fun to work with them. It'd be a blast. And then it was like, well, do you think they liked us too? And it turned out they did. And they flew to Austin just a few days later and they started due diligence. And six weeks after that initial meeting, we struck a deal. And when people ask me, do you have any regrets about selling to Amazon?

51:47John Mackey:And the honest answer is, you know, given the circumstances, that was the best solution. I regret that the circumstances were such that that was our best solution. But it was the best solution. If I had to do it again under the same circumstances, it would have been far better than Jana selling us to Albertsons or Kroger or some other supermarket chain that wouldn't understand our values, our culture. Amazon has largely, not completely, but it's largely that Whole Foods keep its culture and operate independently. Now it's, with me gone in particular, two years now, they've made more changes than they did when I was there, partly because I resisted a lot of the changes they wanted to do.

52:24John Mackey:Let me just point out how it was a win-win-win. We got to cut our prices significantly, four times in the first two years. It cost Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars for us to do that, but they think long-term. They're willing to make that investment, and put Whole Foods in a sound or long-term financial footing. They increased the pay of every hourly team member in Whole Foods within 30 days of the merger occurring. And that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. So it was good for our team members, good for our customers. It was good for our suppliers. Because one thing Amazon did was study every supplier we had.

52:57John Mackey:And they discovered we had all these suppliers they didn't know about that they put into their Amazon.com and started selling their foods and their products. And so it was a big boom. And they didn't tell us we had to get rid of anybody. They just studied and learned from us. It was good for our investors because the stock, we sold it for 30 % more than it was before we started talking to Amazon. And it was good for the communities that we were part of. Amazon did not change our philanthropic activities for the Whole Planet Foundation or the Whole Kids Foundation. In fact, they gave more money to it.

53:31John Mackey:There were lots of taxes paid to governments because of the capital gains that were done. So I think about every one of the stakeholders was better off as a result of the Amazon merger. But it wasn't perfect. I did fight with Amazon a lot. I would say Whole Foods is a more heart-based company. Amazon's a more professional culture. People are there to work there for a while, get in on their resume, and then get a higher-paying job somewhere else. There's not as much loyalty in that company. Whereas Whole Foods, that's the thing that surprised Amazon when they dug under the hood at Whole Foods. It's like, wow, you've had so many people work in 20, 30, even 40 years here.

54:06John Mackey:How do you do that? And I told him the truth. I said, guys, if you want longevity, you just give people two things. Give them purpose. People need purpose. They want to feel like their work is contributing to making the world a better place in some way or fashioners helping people. And secondly, they want to feel they're loved. They want to feel they're cared for. So if you give people purpose and love, yeah, why would they ever want to leave? Professional cultures don't generally give either one of those.

54:33Jay Shetty:Yeah. And then when you resigned as CEO in 2021 and you did a goodbye tour. I left in 2022. So it's been two years ago. I gave notice.

54:43John Mackey:Right, right, right. And I had a whole year of saying goodbye. Understood. But you did a goodbye tour. Which was an amazing last year. Yeah. Oh, it was incredible. So did you go to every store? No, that was impossible. But I got to every region. Right. I did literally talk to tens of thousands of team members. And what I did for that whole year was just thank people. thank you for what you've done for Whole Foods. I mean, I got so much love from people. It was a beautiful, beautiful letting go. And I'm still on really good terms with the leadership there. And also my gift to them was, you know what?

55:12John Mackey:I'm not meddling at all. I'm not judging you. Are they doing some things I don't agree with? Tons of stuff. But, you know, you've got to support the new leadership that comes in knowing that they got to make their mark and they've got to follow their own, their own hearts in a way. And also, here's the thing, Jay, I couldn't really do love life until I gave up Whole Foods. That's what my heart was telling me to do. It's like, you're not, I wasn't happy anymore at Whole Foods. I was fighting with Amazon some, and I wasn't being creative anymore. The game, the playfulness of it, the ability to create, that was all kind of disappeared for me.

55:48John Mackey:I was just running a huge corporation for somebody else that wasn't the same kind of, I didn't have the same kind of joy in it. Remember how I said earlier, you know when you're on the right path because you're happy? I wasn't happy. I loved Whole Foods. And I, but I wasn't experiencing that same joie de vries that I had before that was sold. And so, but it's hard for me to let go of it because I loved it so much.

56:13Jay Shetty:Yeah.

56:13John Mackey:But when I did let it go, then the new possibilities emerged.

56:18Jay Shetty:You said something beautiful there about what it takes to keep people purpose and love, I want to ask you for all the entrepreneurs that are listening, startups, new companies, founders, large companies, what is your best advice on hiring and attracting good people?

56:35John Mackey:I've always been good at attracting good people because I have a lot of passion, a lot of purpose, a lot of charisma, and people are drawn to that like moths to flames. But I've never been very good at hiring people. And I believe people's weaknesses come out of their strengths. And one of my strengths is I really see the beauty in people. I see the goodness in people. And that sometimes makes me a little bit blind to things that are not as good. I'm the same.

57:00Jay Shetty:I can relate to you in so many ways.

57:01John Mackey:But what I learned was, is that I had other people on my team that had really good bullshit detectors, particularly my chief financial officer, Glenda Flanagan. And she was so much better at hiring than I was. So I just learned to kind of trust her. It's like if Glenda was she didn't think they were going to be good. I learned the hard way. If I hired him anyway, I'd regret it. I really do believe that you need to create a team. CEOs and founders get way too much credit. They get too much credit and too much blame. You're always doing it in a team. If you look behind Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, remember I told you how great that Amazon team was and Jeff was brilliant.

57:44John Mackey:So were all those other people working there. There's just a lot of super smart people working for Amazon, highly creative people. So Jeff was able to attract and build a great team. And so you're kind of no better than your team. And I was good at attracting good people, but I wasn't good at discerning who was a good cultural fit or whose weaknesses weren't going to take them down and unharmed the organization. I depended on the other people to make those calls.

58:10Jay Shetty:What would be your best advice for firing someone? work?

58:13John Mackey:People procrastinate on firing for a couple of reasons. One is that they don't want to hurt the person. And secondly, they don't want to feel guilty about it. So my best advice is, Whole Foods had an interesting practice. I make a distinction between people you need to get rid of because they don't fit culturally and those who are just struggling at the job, particularly. What I learned is that when you, oftentimes people would get promoted because they had done a good job at a lower level, right? So they're ready for the, you think they're ready for the next step. For many people, they're not ready for that next step.

58:46John Mackey:And then they get fired. And what we had at Whole Foods, we call it recycling. And it was like, you know what? You were really successful at your previous job. I want you to go back there because you're not happy, you're struggling, and I want you to go back and then you'll get an opportunity in the future. That's fantastic. And if their egos couldn't handle that, you knew they needed to go. But the really good ones would say, yeah, I am struggling. I want to step back. But I'll show you. I'm going to learn. I'm going to be better. I'm going to get promoted again. Those that later on got promoted again, they were great because they took their failure, so to speak, as a learning opportunity to grow.

59:26John Mackey:And so then they became more effective leaders. So my advice in letting people go is you have to do it for the good of the company. And if you're not willing to do it, I used to tell myself, because I never enjoyed doing it. It was always a challenge for me. But it was like, if you're not willing to do this, then you should step aside. Because this is what needs to happen. And if you're not willing to do that, then you're not a very good leader. So you have to do what you really know is best for the organization. Other people are counting on you to make good decisions and build a great company.

59:55John Mackey:And as Steve Jobs used to say, which I really like what Steve would say, he'd say, A-listers hire other A-listers. But B-listers hire C-listers because they hire people that aren't as good as them because it makes them feel better about themselves. Good leaders hire people as good or better than themselves. They're not threatened by their strengths because they know that's what will make the organization better. I happen to agree with that philosophy. So you want to hire the A-listers. And if you have to fire people, that's regrettable. also one of the takeaways there is be more careful in who you hire so you don't have to fire

1:00:33Jay Shetty:john it's been such a joy talking to you today honestly i've had such a great time and i feel like we've talked about everything from spirituality to business to habits to mindfulness and we end every episode of on purpose with a final five these have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum okay so john mackie these are your final five The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received? Follow your heart. Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received? I don't know. Question number three, how would you define your current purpose?

1:01:09John Mackey:My current purpose is to fully awaken to love and to share that love with everyone I encounter.

1:01:16Jay Shetty:Question number four, how do you define love?

1:01:18John Mackey:Love is the essence of beingness.

1:01:21Jay Shetty:and fifth and final question we ask is to every guest who's ever been on the show if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be be kind everyone the book is called the whole story adventures in love life and capitalism john mackie co-founder and former ceo of whole foods market john it's been such a true pleasure to have you in the studio here today and uh i hope you come back for many many more and congratulations on an incredible journey, incredible book, and really excited to see what you continue to do with everything that you're building with Love Life.

1:01:56John Mackey:Thank you, Jay. It's been a pleasure. This has been fun. I'm into having fun. So this has been very fun for me. So thanks so much for having me here. Thank you, John. Thank you.

1:02:07Jay Shetty:If you love this episode, you'll love my conversation with Airbnb founder Brian Chesky on how to tap into your creative potential and the number one thing people get wrong about success.

1:02:21John Mackey:The best people in your life will be people who see potential in you that you didn't see in yourself. And I often wonder...