Love as a Leadership Strategy: Insights from Whole Foods Co-Founder, John Mackey

John Mackey (0:00)

This is the best time in the entire history of the human race to be alive is right now. If there are problems, hey, go out and solve them in caring, loving ways. That's your job. Take it on. Let us love, let us create, let us play again and again and again forever. Love, play, creation.

That sums it all up for me in a way.

Michael Gervais (0:31)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Have you ever wondered if profitable businesses can really change the world for good? John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, has proven the answer is a resounding yes. So John grew a single hippie grocery store in Austin, Texas into a global chain with $22 billion in annual sales and 540 locations worldwide. And he did it all with an unwavering commitment to sustainability and ethical practices.

He's showing us all what is possible when entrepreneurs embrace positive values and transformative leadership. And then he committed to put it in writing. He's got three books I want to mention, Conscious Capitalism and Conscious Leadership. And both of those serve as blueprints for integrating ethical values into successful businesses. And then his most recent book, The Whole Story, Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism.

It gives us an intimate look inside his adventure, his journey, the way that he fueled this groundbreaking approach. So in this conversation, John shares insights from his personal transformation. We dig into the ethos that drove the company's growth while he was at the helm. Get ready, get ready to be inspired. Get inspired by a true visionary, by somebody who continues to challenge us, to help us think differently about our responsibility towards each other and to the world.

So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation with John Mackey. John, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. You're a flat out titan in the industries. And I just want to start by humbly saying, how are you?

John Mackey (2:21)

Actually, I'm fantastic. Best day of my life.

Michael Gervais (2:24)

Oh, I feel like you've said that before.

John Mackey (2:26)

Because every day is a great day if you have the right attitude about it.

Michael Gervais (2:31)

This is going to be a great conversation because you do not suffer fools by any stretch of the imagination.

John Mackey (2:39)

I've suffered myself. I've suffered myself for a long time.

Michael Gervais (2:44)

Oh my God, that's great. Let me just start. OK, so congrats on your new book, The Whole Story. Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism. It's an awesome subtitle there. But I want to start with two things of the book, which I loved, by the way. You opened the book up with a dedication.

And that dedication, I love reading dedications. It's really cool, but this is yours. To all Whole Foods market team, members, past, present and future, we did this together and I will always love you. All right, so you've got love here in the subtitle. You've got love in your acknowledgements.

Is it fair to say that your culture at Whole Foods rested on love?

John Mackey (3:35)

Purpose and love, that was the foundation of the culture. And to me and in my book, Conscious Leadership, I put those as like two most important things for business.

Purpose is what, if you provide purpose and love in your culture, people don't wanna leave. They'll work with you forever because people wanna feel like they're contributing in some way, that their work matters. And if you can help people to see the bigger picture of how their work, in Whole Foods' case, how the healthy food where we're selling and making the customers feel better, their guests in our stores every day, that they're serving them, people feel good about that. They wanna feel good about themselves, that their work matters. And secondly, people want to feel like people care about them, that somebody cares about them.

In other words, people wanna care about something that they're doing and they wanna work with people that care about them and that they care about. If you put those two things into a culture and get it really at the essence of it, your culture is gonna flourish and your business is gonna flourish too. Those things are just so very important and I found those to be the most important things. Love is, in my opinion, is the most important thing in life and I've realized that multiple times. It's been something that my deeper, higher self communicates with to me and I actually think that's why we're here, to go deeper into love. That's the purpose of existence.