Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Best. Bloomberg Best is about the insight
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Speaker 1: seven hundred journalists and ennalysts in more than a hundred
Speaker 1: twenty countries around the world. I met Baxter and I'm
Speaker 1: Denease Pelly Green. On this weekend edition of Bloomberg Best.
Speaker 1: I had my food awakening where I really understood for
Speaker 1: the first time that what you a affected how you felt.
Speaker 1: John McKee, CEO of All Foods, asked my girlfriend living
Speaker 1: in the cow off whe her we ought to start
Speaker 1: up our own little store, and she said she thought
Speaker 1: that would be a lot of fun cool the birth
Speaker 1: of the nation's biggest natural foods change turned out there
Speaker 1: it wasn't just selling food to hippies, and how it
Speaker 1: turned out to be so much bigger. All this and
Speaker 1: more coming up in the next hour of Bloomberg Best.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to get right to it, because
Speaker 1: what a story let's go back now to Austin, Texas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and David Rubinstein asked John Mackie what propelled him to
Speaker 1: start Safer Way and then Whole Foods after dabbling at
Speaker 1: being a college student. And here's what Mackie said on
Speaker 1: the David Rubinstein Show Peer to Peer Conversations. What propelled
Speaker 1: you to start Safer Way and then Whole Foods. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were at the University of Texas, and did you
Speaker 1: drop out to do this? I dropped out of school
Speaker 1: like six times. I've got a hundred twenty hours of electives.
Speaker 1: I just study whatever I was interested in. But I
Speaker 1: did not drop out to start this company. I was
Speaker 1: living in a vegetarian co op when I was twenty
Speaker 1: three years old, and that's when I had my food awakening,
Speaker 1: where I really understood for the first time that what
Speaker 1: you ate affected how you felt and your health and
Speaker 1: your longevity. And then I became the food buyer at
Speaker 1: that co op. And then I went to work for
Speaker 1: a small natural food store in Austin, and I had
Speaker 1: found the purpose of my life. I was on fire
Speaker 1: for healthy eating, organic and natural foods. Came home one
Speaker 1: day and asked my girlfriend living in the co op
Speaker 1: whetherr we ought to start up our own little store,
Speaker 1: and she said she thought that would be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Cool and uh. Six months later, we'd raised
Speaker 1: forty dollars from friends and family and we found a location,
Speaker 1: a small store location in Austin, and we were in business.
Speaker 1: So when you started the company, though, did you have
Speaker 1: the vision of building a global or national company or
Speaker 1: did you just say I'll do a couple of stores.
Speaker 1: What was your original vision? Original vision was to break even.
Speaker 1: We were losing the month when we started out. The
Speaker 1: first year, we raised forty dollars in capital. We managed
Speaker 1: to lose twenty three thousand of it, so we were
Speaker 1: lucky to survive. We did much better in the second year,
Speaker 1: relocated two Whole Foods. No, we had no grand vision.
Speaker 1: The best way to understand it is we were just
Speaker 1: passion and about selling natural, organic foods. There was no
Speaker 1: we weren't. We weren't. We didn't take any business classes.
Speaker 1: We we didn't have we weren't NBA's. We just were passionate.
Speaker 1: We were on five. We were young. I was twenty
Speaker 1: four years old when we started the first store. Renee
Speaker 1: was twenty, so we were just having an adventure. We
Speaker 1: were we were playing and having a grocery store. It
Speaker 1: was so much fun. And then and then we started
Speaker 1: learning business and we've got pretty good at it, and
Speaker 1: then we started to grow it. I will tell you
Speaker 1: a story, David. So when we did our I p O.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that the investors want
Speaker 1: to know. They're trying to build a model of your company,
Speaker 1: so they want to know what's the potential. How big
Speaker 1: could it be. We had twelve stores when we I
Speaker 1: p O. And I thought, I think we could sunday
Speaker 1: have a hundred stores, and uh, you know, we might
Speaker 1: even someday, we might even be able to do maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a billion dollars in sales. Someday someday we could
Speaker 1: have that. And they weren't. They weren't that impressed with that.
Speaker 1: They didn't think that was gonna be that bigger company.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, we're doing twenty billion in
Speaker 1: sales now, I would have five twenty stores or thereabouts.
Speaker 1: So I was very wrong about the upward potential of
Speaker 1: the business at the time. Um, when you were doing
Speaker 1: this in seventy eight. In the early eighties was natural
Speaker 1: food and well known as what natural food was organic foods.
Speaker 1: What what we're what weren't the view of them. Then
Speaker 1: when we were trying to raise venture capital money, I
Speaker 1: mean only we had three venture capitalists and invested, and
Speaker 1: we had a dozen or more turned this down. And
Speaker 1: I remember one of the guys turning me down saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think this business has much of a future.
Speaker 1: I don't know why he felt so motivated to tell
Speaker 1: me why he wasn't going to invest, because usually they
Speaker 1: just say we're not interested. But he said, I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to explain to you. And he said, you
Speaker 1: guys are just a bunch of hippies and you're selling
Speaker 1: food to other hippies. I ran into that guy like
Speaker 1: eight years later. He told me that was the biggest
Speaker 1: mistake he'd ever made in his venture capital career. Turned
Speaker 1: out that it wasn't just selling food to hippies, that
Speaker 1: it caught on in the in the upper middle class
Speaker 1: US and then and then it spread from there and
Speaker 1: and uh and yeah, the rest is history. As I say, So,
Speaker 1: when you dropped out of college, did you say to
Speaker 1: your father, I'm gonna be like Mark Zuckerberg er Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna build a big company, and did he
Speaker 1: have a lot of confidence in here to do that? Well.
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg wasn't alive when I started the company. Saw
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have referred to him. And Bill Gates was
Speaker 1: just started Microsoft two years before I started a safer way,
Speaker 1: so my dad had never heard about UM. My dad
Speaker 1: was very supportive. Uh. He he was just wanted his
Speaker 1: son to do something. He was passionate about that. I
Speaker 1: really he could see I was very excited about this.
Speaker 1: So he was actually very supportive. In the early years,
Speaker 1: he helped you somewhat as an accounting professor. He gave
Speaker 1: you some advice. My dad was my mentor. Uh, since
Speaker 1: I didn't have that business background. I always say that
Speaker 1: from the year of nineteen seventy eight to nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: I never made a move at Whole Foods without checking
Speaker 1: with my dad. In nineteen four, I turned forty years old,
Speaker 1: and uh, we'd gone public two years before, and my
Speaker 1: dad was now wealthy, you know, on pay per pose
Speaker 1: with the wholefing stock that he had bought, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to hold onto what he had, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to grow the business. I just saw, we can really
Speaker 1: grow this thing. And so we had to. We used
Speaker 1: to fighting our board meetings. We were screaming each other
Speaker 1: at public board meetings. And finally I said, Dad, here,
Speaker 1: here's what I want you to do. I want you
Speaker 1: to sell half of your stock tomorrow. I'm firing. I
Speaker 1: don't want you on the board anymore. I want you
Speaker 1: to sell half your stock tomorrow and take the other
Speaker 1: half and leave it in the company because we're gonna
Speaker 1: grow Whole Foods. It's gonna be a big enterprise someday.
Speaker 1: So he did that, very took my advice, sould half
Speaker 1: the stock the next day. He was very hurt. His
Speaker 1: feelings were hurt. I remember him telling me. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm forty years old. I'm ready to run the company
Speaker 1: by myself without you, And he said, forty years old.
Speaker 1: You don't know anything. You're only forty, you know. It
Speaker 1: turned out he was right. I didn't know very much
Speaker 1: when I was forty. I know a lot more today
Speaker 1: and I knew then. But he was wrong about the
Speaker 1: potential growth of Whole Foods because the company took up
Speaker 1: after that, and he made a lot more money on
Speaker 1: that half that he kept in. So when you're growing
Speaker 1: the company and making it a national company in a
Speaker 1: well known brand. Was the biggest problem that people still
Speaker 1: weren't convinced that natural foods and organic foods were good
Speaker 1: for you. Was it that the price you had to
Speaker 1: charge was somewhat more expensive than that's a safe way,
Speaker 1: or was it the safe ways of the world that
Speaker 1: we're gonna compete with you and they were gonna have
Speaker 1: organic foods, or it was just getting cash from investors
Speaker 1: to help you grow. What were the biggest problems. The
Speaker 1: biggest problem was the limitation of the marketplace. Initially because
Speaker 1: it's a consciousness thing. So if when we opened up
Speaker 1: in a hip area where he had a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: younger sort of counterculture people the store or bohemian people,
Speaker 1: the stores would take off from the very beginning. But
Speaker 1: we when we went into suburb, like when we opened
Speaker 1: a store in in Greenville Avenue in Dallas, it took off.
Speaker 1: But when we went up to Richardson, a suburb North Dallas.
Speaker 1: Back this, it was really slow. The stores started really slow.
Speaker 1: The suburban stores just didn't have enough what we'd call
Speaker 1: natural food consciousness to really be successful. It took us
Speaker 1: years to grow those those businesses. Now, when whole Foods
Speaker 1: came along and it was very popular in many areas.
Speaker 1: It became known in some circles as whole paychecked. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've heard that before, and so that the implication
Speaker 1: was that your prices were expensive. But um, I assume
Speaker 1: that your responses. But you're selling higher quality or more
Speaker 1: complicated things, and your prices are not a big drag
Speaker 1: on your overall ability to get people to come into
Speaker 1: the store. Is that right. It's a it's a very
Speaker 1: good question, of course, I do hear that all the time,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's a little bit of a complex answer.
Speaker 1: So for most of our history, in the forty year history,
Speaker 1: we probably only got serious competition in the last fifteen years.
Speaker 1: So the first twenty five years we existed, very few
Speaker 1: people sold the same products that we sold, so um,
Speaker 1: there was no big deal. But then as we got
Speaker 1: more successful, we got more competition. And one of the
Speaker 1: ways they competed with us was to undercut us in price.
Speaker 1: And of course, one of the things Whole Foods knows
Speaker 1: it needs to do is it needs to meet the
Speaker 1: competitive marketplace in terms of price, and that is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons we wanted to merge or sell the
Speaker 1: Amazon is. Jeff and his team think long term. So
Speaker 1: it was gonna be very difficult for us to lower
Speaker 1: our prices and hold on to our company because it
Speaker 1: was when you lower prices initially, it actually hurts your
Speaker 1: sales and hurt your profitability. Something you were selling for
Speaker 1: a dollar now you're selling for ninety cents, So it
Speaker 1: looks like your business is declining. Now you'll get it
Speaker 1: back over time as people realize that they get better prices.
Speaker 1: But it's a painful transition. Now with Amazon, we've already
Speaker 1: dropped our prices three times and we're gonna keep dropping them,
Speaker 1: so Amazon is, and that that's another great benefit of
Speaker 1: the merger for us. We are getting more and more
Speaker 1: price competitive, and Amazon is willing to be patient and
Speaker 1: let that play out over time. So a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, you had, as you wrote in your in
Speaker 1: your book on Conscious Leadership, I hedge fund, kind of
Speaker 1: an activist Hedge fund came along and they were agitating
Speaker 1: for a higher price, and ultimately you looked at some
Speaker 1: about alternatives and one of them that seemed the best
Speaker 1: was selling the Amazon. Is that right, that's correct. We
Speaker 1: had the activists Investor's Janna partners wanted to. I met
Speaker 1: with them and they basically said, we're gonna take over
Speaker 1: your board and and we're gonna throw you out. We're
Speaker 1: gonna sell the company, So why don't you just save
Speaker 1: us all a lot of a lot of anguish and
Speaker 1: just let's just agree to do that. So, of course
Speaker 1: we we didn't want to sell the company uh to
Speaker 1: the highest bidder, and we had to think about our
Speaker 1: different alternatives. So one was going private potentially. Another one
Speaker 1: was to put the company in friendly hands like we
Speaker 1: contacted Warren Buffett for example. Another one was to maybe
Speaker 1: fight Janna and fight to maintain control. And then as
Speaker 1: I was trying to think about what the best solution
Speaker 1: and was, one morning I woke up. I just woke
Speaker 1: up and it popped in my brain, what about Amazon?
Speaker 1: What about Amazon? I've met Jeff a year before, really
Speaker 1: admired him, still do. I thought these guys would be perfect.
Speaker 1: I've heard they want to get into grocery business. This
Speaker 1: would be a good opportunity for them to get into it.
Speaker 1: Their technology could help Aul foods. So we contacted Amazon.
Speaker 1: A couple of days later, we flew up to Seattle
Speaker 1: and met with Jeff and his team. We had an
Speaker 1: amazing first conversation lasted about three hours. It was like
Speaker 1: we were finishing each other sentences, all the things we
Speaker 1: could do together. We got super excited. Just a few
Speaker 1: days after that, they sent a whole team to Austin
Speaker 1: to continue the conversations. Six weeks after that first meeting,
Speaker 1: we signed a merger agreement. We negotiated the price, signed
Speaker 1: the mergery agreement, and and we were we were on
Speaker 1: our way. So every acquisition looks great at the time
Speaker 1: you do him. Now you've had a couple of years
Speaker 1: behind you. Is it working out? And are you happy
Speaker 1: with you know? The metaphor I like to use for
Speaker 1: a merger is it's uh, it's like a marriage, particularly
Speaker 1: between big companies. So we had to love at first
Speaker 1: sight in a whirlwind romance. It's a fair question to ask,
Speaker 1: how's that working out now? It's about three years later now,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, and is it perfect? You know? No,
Speaker 1: It's like I I sometimes say when people ask me
Speaker 1: this question, I said, you know, do I love absolutely
Speaker 1: everything about my wife? I've been I've been married thirty
Speaker 1: years and the answer is no, I love about nine percent.
Speaker 1: But it's two percent that you know it really bothers me,
Speaker 1: And I'd say it's kind of similar with Amazon. Do
Speaker 1: we love everything about Ama? There's about two percent we
Speaker 1: know love, but we love almost everything. Is pretty good.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty good marriage. And in Amazon, the merger
Speaker 1: is working out great for us. We're a much better
Speaker 1: company today than we were pre Amazon. So Amazon is
Speaker 1: about getting people to buy things and ship into their home.
Speaker 1: You've been about getting people to come into your stores
Speaker 1: and buy a lot of things that they might see
Speaker 1: while they're walking around. So is that a different kind
Speaker 1: of culture and how has it worked out in that respect?
Speaker 1: There's overlapping the cultures. We're both very customer focused. There
Speaker 1: are difference in cultures. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: Amazon has done, which has been fantastic and one reason
Speaker 1: the mergers worked well, they respect our culture. They're not
Speaker 1: trying to change our culture. Now our culture is changing
Speaker 1: because we're taking on lots of attributes that Amazon has
Speaker 1: and that has a change in our culture. But they're
Speaker 1: not forcing us to coercing us. We're doing it voluntarily
Speaker 1: to make our company better. So that's why we're evolving.
Speaker 1: But I think in a healthy constructive way. People ask me, hey, John,
Speaker 1: if you could do it all over again, would you
Speaker 1: make the same decision, And the answers, yes, we make
Speaker 1: the exact same decision. So I know, whenever I go
Speaker 1: to Whole Foods, which is about a mile from my house,
Speaker 1: and I go there very frequently, they always asked me,
Speaker 1: are you a Prime Member? So it's being Prime helped
Speaker 1: a lot in your business. The Prime Membership club. High
Speaker 1: percentage of our custom as our Prime members, and so
Speaker 1: they like that. Now there is a minority of customers
Speaker 1: who are not and and of course every time they
Speaker 1: get asked with their prime member, of course they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily like that. They keep, you know, getting asked that question. Um.
Speaker 1: But on balance, remember the majority of our transactions are
Speaker 1: coming from Prime members, so that's been that's been a
Speaker 1: good thing for them. They're getting better prices and better deals.
Speaker 1: The main way Amazon's health Toll Foods though, is technology.
Speaker 1: I mean, particularly now with Covid, the amount of deliveries
Speaker 1: that we're doing and pick up store pickups and deliveries,
Speaker 1: I mean it's triple in the last year. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're doing a large percentage of our business online now
Speaker 1: and we didn't really have a small percentage before Amazon
Speaker 1: acquired US. So let's talk about COVID for a moment um.
Speaker 1: And COVID came, many people are worried that retail stores
Speaker 1: would have to shut down, but actually food retail stores
Speaker 1: have benefit, and you could argue because people need to
Speaker 1: eat a lot more, I guess, or at least to
Speaker 1: going to the buy staples. What was it like to
Speaker 1: manage under COVID at the outset. So the main thing
Speaker 1: to understand is almost all food retailer sales are up,
Speaker 1: primarily because restaurants sales are down so much. Right, people
Speaker 1: aren't eating out as much, so they're eating at home
Speaker 1: more and that's been good for pretty much all food retailers.
Speaker 1: That's been good for whole foods as well. Maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit less good for us because we do a
Speaker 1: lot of prepared foods in our stores, and so that's
Speaker 1: way down. People are not going to our salad bars,
Speaker 1: are hot food bars, they're they're not going in our
Speaker 1: offices are shut down around our stores, so we're not
Speaker 1: getting that traffic that we used to get in. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, overall sales are up substantially because
Speaker 1: everything else is up so much as it made the
Speaker 1: way you're going to manage in the future different. Again,
Speaker 1: it helps us tremendously for being online sales and so
Speaker 1: and that will continue. I don't well ever, when we
Speaker 1: won't go back to Once people get a taste of that,
Speaker 1: they like it in Amazon if you're Prime member, delivery
Speaker 1: is free. So I think that's gonna be a permanent
Speaker 1: shift for many people. You know. The hardest thing about
Speaker 1: managing the business now it's it's there's an element of fear.
Speaker 1: Right people are scared of the virus. Everybody's masked up.
Speaker 1: We would require mask for all of our team members
Speaker 1: and all customers in those masks. If you're I'm in Austin.
Speaker 1: It's a hundred degrees outside right now and we're in
Speaker 1: a mask around is not not very fun or pleasant
Speaker 1: thing to do. Um and people have been shut down
Speaker 1: in their homes and that's you know, we see what's
Speaker 1: happening is unrest around the country. So it's been a
Speaker 1: hard This is this is I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I'd have to say is the weirdest year of
Speaker 1: my entire life. When you go to a Whole Foods
Speaker 1: anywhere in the country, you have at five hundred stores
Speaker 1: or so in the country. Now, I assume you're instantly
Speaker 1: recognized to have a picture of you there when you
Speaker 1: walk in, so they know who you are. Now I
Speaker 1: go in, I'm wearing a mask, nobody knows who I am.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna have a perfect disguise, but no, they've
Speaker 1: recognized me, mostly because they know I'm coming. Generally, I
Speaker 1: do some surprises, it's occasionally, and it's just I get
Speaker 1: recognized very quickly. So when you go in and you
Speaker 1: if you say, well, this is not set up the
Speaker 1: right way, or you should charge something different, that they
Speaker 1: listen to you. You know what I've learned, David, I've
Speaker 1: learned painfully that, uh, whether I like it or not,
Speaker 1: I'm the father of Whole Foods, and the team members
Speaker 1: really want Dad to love the story. So I've learned
Speaker 1: to to sort of moderate my criticisms because they really
Speaker 1: tried to make the store look good because he knew
Speaker 1: I was coming. So I just try to stay positive
Speaker 1: and connect with the people, and then maybe after I leave,
Speaker 1: I will tell the the leadership of the region, I
Speaker 1: didn't like this, this or this. You've built one of
Speaker 1: the most famous companies in the United States. But you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't own a lot of it relative to what
Speaker 1: some of the other founders of large companies have done.
Speaker 1: It does that make you, uh, lose sleep at night
Speaker 1: or you're okay with that? You know something I learned
Speaker 1: pretty early in life. One of the most destructive emotions
Speaker 1: there is in the world is envy. Envy will poison
Speaker 1: your soul. I learned to deal with envy of people
Speaker 1: envying me, and I learned to deal with my own
Speaker 1: envy a long time ago. And it's far better to
Speaker 1: to just be grateful. I've had an amazing life. I
Speaker 1: am a very wealthy man by any objective standard. So
Speaker 1: other people wealthier than me. There are other entrepreneurs have
Speaker 1: made more money. So what I mean? I have everything
Speaker 1: I need or could ever want. So agreed, and those
Speaker 1: things poison our souls, and so I have. There's no
Speaker 1: place for envy. I am happy for them. I'm happy
Speaker 1: that they've had successful lives, and uh, yeah, so have I.
Speaker 1: Life is good. In your book, you talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of a certain type of leadership where you are
Speaker 1: trying to be what you call a conscious leader, which
Speaker 1: is to say, worry about long term purpose of a company,
Speaker 1: not just profit. Is that right? Yes, I mean in
Speaker 1: the book we talked about purpose first. Put purpose first.
Speaker 1: That that Whole Foods has always been purpose driven since
Speaker 1: the very beginning. We always um, you know, wanted to
Speaker 1: make the world a better place and natural organic foods.
Speaker 1: You want to people lead healthy. And then what we
Speaker 1: learned over time is the importance of leading with love,
Speaker 1: to care about your people. And so we have a
Speaker 1: chapter about leading with love. And then we learned, of
Speaker 1: course the importance of integrity in business, in life in general.
Speaker 1: Integrity is so important. You have to be you have
Speaker 1: to do what you say. You have to be trustworthy,
Speaker 1: you have to be authentic, you have to be honorable,
Speaker 1: you have to have honor. When you talk a lot
Speaker 1: about the importance of culture and having a certain culture,
Speaker 1: you developed the Whole Foods culture. Has it changed under
Speaker 1: Amazon or you've been able to keep your culture? And
Speaker 1: what is that culture? Well, cultures are like living there
Speaker 1: like they're like living entities, and they change over time.
Speaker 1: They evolve. So yes that at mergers three years ago,
Speaker 1: our culture has evolved in the last three years. But
Speaker 1: culture comes from your values, it comes from your purpose.
Speaker 1: And it comes from the way you lead the company,
Speaker 1: what your leadership principles are. So Whole Foods cause of
Speaker 1: very healthy culture. We were named one of the Hunter
Speaker 1: Best Companies to work for for twenty consecutive years, and
Speaker 1: our culture is still very healthy. I will say Covid
Speaker 1: is challenging the culture. For one thing. We can't get
Speaker 1: around and visit the store so easily right now, So
Speaker 1: more stores are kind of on their own than ever before.
Speaker 1: And and we're to mask every day is stressful for people,
Speaker 1: and and so there's a lot of fear. And we're
Speaker 1: in urban areas, and there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: protests this summer. It's a it's a restless world out
Speaker 1: there right now. You've been the CEO of this company
Speaker 1: for forty two years. UM. Very few people are CEO
Speaker 1: so have publicly traded companies or companies as large as
Speaker 1: yours for that long. Is it your expectation to do
Speaker 1: this another five, ten, fifteen years? Or what else might
Speaker 1: you do? Would you go into government, would you run
Speaker 1: for office? Would you what else would you do? I
Speaker 1: will not run for office and I will not go
Speaker 1: into governments. Think about it this way. Whole Foods is like,
Speaker 1: I don't have biological children, so Whole Foods is like
Speaker 1: it's for me. It's the equivalent of my child. It's
Speaker 1: kind of grown up now, right, it's a it's not
Speaker 1: a Mayby anymore. But parents love their children their whole lives,
Speaker 1: even when they're grown up. Um, I will leave Whole
Speaker 1: Foods sometime in the next few years, but I haven't
Speaker 1: announced the retirement date yet. And Covid, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: Covid is it's a crisis, Like I'm dealing with the
Speaker 1: crisis here for that and uh uh I always make
Speaker 1: this joke that it's like, Whole Fridge is my daughter,
Speaker 1: and I literally married my daughter off to the richest
Speaker 1: man in the world, and uh, I just kind of
Speaker 1: came along to to make sure the marriage settled in well.
Speaker 1: And I've I'm still here, but I know that the
Speaker 1: time will come eventually for me to leave. It's just
Speaker 1: not yet and I'm not quite sure when it will be.
Speaker 1: So what I tell people all the time is the
Speaker 1: hardest thing in life is to be happy. Happiness is
Speaker 1: the most elusive thing in life. And you seem like
Speaker 1: a very happy person. The secret to happiness is gratitude, right,
Speaker 1: you wrote that in your book, Yes, gratitude, and it
Speaker 1: was like you asked me that question earlier about you know,
Speaker 1: how do you feel you could have made a lot
Speaker 1: more money as big as your corporation is. Other encouragement,
Speaker 1: more money any poisons happiness. Gratitude is the key. And
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for what I have, not envious for what
Speaker 1: I don't have. I mean, I have good health, I
Speaker 1: have an amazing marriage, I have great friends. I have
Speaker 1: this amazing business that I'm part of. I have materially
Speaker 1: and financially everything I'll ever need. Life is blessing. It's
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy to be alive. It's an amazing
Speaker 1: life is beautiful and amazing. And I'm just grateful every
Speaker 1: day and I get up happy to be alive. And
Speaker 1: and uh so there you there you have that's my game.
Speaker 1: Well you should bottle that and put that in your
Speaker 1: and your stores. If I could bottle that, I would
Speaker 1: be a billionaire. You've been listening to John Mackie, CEO
Speaker 1: at Whole Foods on the David Rubinstein Show peer to
Speaker 1: peer conversations. And that's it for this hour of Bloomberg Best.
Speaker 1: I'm at Baxter and I'm Denny Spelton. This is Bloomberg.