#358 I had dinner with John Mackey, Founder of Whole Foods

**David Senra** (0:00)
To make this episode, I got to spend about seven hours with John Mackey over two days, and I read his great autobiography twice. And it was during one of our conversations that John told me, one of the craziest things anyone has ever said about the podcast. He had listened to over 100 episodes before we met, and he told me that if founders existed when he was younger, Whole Foods would still be an independent company. That since the podcast and all of History's greatest entrepreneurs constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses, he would have put more of a priority on it, especially during good times, during boom times. It's very natural for a company, and I think for humans in general, I think this is part of our nature, to not watch our costs as closely because everything is going so well. In fact, this is something that Andrew Carnegie talked about a lot. In one of his biographies, it says, Andrew Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and time again. Profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie's view, any savings achieved in costs were permanent.
Andrew Carnegie's idea, it was something I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is now a partner of this podcast and a sponsor of this episode. I've gotten to know all the co-founders of Ramp, and I've spent a ton of time with them over the last year or two. They all listen to the podcast and they've all picked up on the fact that the main theme from the history of entrepreneurship is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage. That is the main theme for Ramp. That is the reason that Ramp exists. The reason Ramp exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your costs. Those last two words, cost control. I'm going to pull another line out of Andrew Carnegie's biography. Cost control became nearly an obsession. In this episode that you're about to hear, there is a shocking idea that John Mackey told me about, about the role that Walmart played in Whole Foods' success. And it has to do with how impossible it was for other people to compete with Sam Walton and Walmart. Now, I'll give you a little hint. This is what Sam said in his autobiography. Our money was made by controlling expenses. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient. Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. Ramp is everything you need to control spend and optimize finance operations all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business control costs. That is ramp.com. I'll also leave a link down below. I hope you enjoy this episode. I put a lot of time, energy, and love into making it. And I'm very thankful to John Mackey for sharing so much of his story. I truly believe when entrepreneurs do that, it is an act of service for the next generation. Enjoy the episode.
By the end of the first trading afternoon, Whole Foods Market was valued at $100 million.
Even though my shares had been diluted over the years, my own net worth was now over $7 million.
I was rich!
How did that happen?
It seemed to me like a crazy amount.
It was exciting, even shocking, to suddenly be worth so much after so many years of having no money. That evening, after the markets closed, I slowly drove home, still in something of an altered state.
I opened my first beer in several weeks and sitted slowly on the porch, breathing in a sense of gratitude and wonder for how far we had come.
I thought back to that little Victorian house where Safer Way, that was the original name of the business that eventually turns into Whole Foods, I thought back to that little Victorian house where Safer Way had begun, and the modest dreams of success that Renee and I had shared as we woke up each morning on the top floor, took our showers in the dishwasher and converted our bedroom to its daytime form as the store's office.
I thought about Craig and Mark taking the leap of faith to merge with us and build an entirely new store, bigger than any natural food store in the state.