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

When Whole Foods started, I didn't think I was entering the grocery business. Really. If you're not old enough or too old, as old as me, you don't know how bad supermarkets were 40 or 50 years ago and how they've changed so much in the last 40 or 50 years, partly because of Whole Foods Market.

I really enjoyed reading in the whole story your experience with psychedelic journeys.

While sometimes that's very, very healthy, and you need that kind of energy to do a startup, and you also need.

Your next creative journey. You're on your next startup, you exit Amazon.

I had to let go of Whole Foods to really do love life, to get all in.

Everybody. Welcome to Moonshots. On today's episode, I'm going to be having a conversation with an extraordinary entrepreneur and CEO, John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. He built the company to $22 billion in sales. 540. 40 locations before selling it to Amazon. And then that was Act 1. Today, he is starting his next company, Love Life. During this episode, we're going to talk about a number of things. How does he think about starting a company? A lot of incredible lessons here for entrepreneurs on how he hires, how he funds things, who he brings in, his co founders, his conversations around marketing. This is somebody who built an extraordinary organization starting his next company. And we dissect step by step what he's doing. It's a masterclass for entrepreneurs. We from there, we go on to talk about Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, what life is like for them, how they think about the world. And then we close the conversation talking about psychedelics, something that he's been very open with in his new book, the Whole Story. Powerful technology that has shaped his life. We'll discuss what it means and where he's going next. By the way, if you enjoy conversations like this with Moonshot entrepreneurs, subscribe. All right, let's jump into the episode with John Mackey and the whole Story. Hey, John. I just finished reading the Whole Story. It was an amazing book. It's a book of entrepreneurial journeys. And really, it's the whole startup story, which I think anybody listening about to start your company or. Or facing incredible uphill battles. It's a book, a masterclass in how to overcome things. So amazing job on that. First off.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. Question for you. You had zero background in. I still calling you a grocer feels very underwhelming. He had zero background in starting a global, you know, you know, health food store. And the question I have is, do Real disruptions come from entrepreneurs who enter a field, from right field. Right. Who have no background and don't know what can't be done. You know, does it, does it really take that level of naivete to come in and disrupt an industry? Because that's what I'm seeing in so many different places. Right. Bezos had no information on the, on the bookselling business. Elon was not in the automotive or rocket business. You weren't in the, you know, Whole Foods business. It's a category by itself. How do you think about that?

Well, I think that's mostly true. There's always going to be exceptions, right? I mean, you could say Steve Jobs was doing some computer stuff before he started Apple, and Bill Gates was doing some programming before he started Microsoft. So they were in the industry, but they were both very young industries, right? So they, they, they disrupted them. They didn't. I know, say Jeff Bezos, knowing Jeff a little bit from working at Amazon for 5 years after whole Foods was sold to Amazon, he actually believes that industry think is one of the things that holds innovation back. There's sort of a. This is the way we do things. And I know Jeff's philosophy is let's rethink, go back to first principles. I think first principles is a way Elon Musk thinks as well. What are the first principles here? What are the limitations? In other words, let's not be stuck in a box. And oftentimes coming from the outside, you have. You're able to see things. Like that child who said, hey, the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. You're not stuck in sort of a blindness that comes from things being too familiar. So, yeah, I agree with you.

So, you know, talking to those entrepreneurs who are like, okay, I'm super excited about this industry, but I have no background in it. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And how do they enter, in your opinion, as you know, how should they be entering this?

Well, for one thing, most of the time, the entrepreneur doesn't think they're entering into an industry at all. I mean, they're just excited about something. They're passionate about something. And I mean, when Whole Foods started, I didn't think I was entering the grocery business, really. I mean, I was, but I thought Whole Foods was so different than people don't know. What if you're not, if you're not old enough or too old, as old as me. You don't know how bad supermarkets were 40 or 50 years ago and how they've changed so much. In the last 40 or 50 years, partly because of Whole Foods Market. Walmart obviously had a big influence as well, as did Costco. And we didn't think, we just, we were passionate about selling healthy food to people, passionate about natural organic foods, helping people to live longer, helping people to feel better. And so we actually did differentiated ourselves. We didn't know how the grocery industry worked. None of us had an experience in it. So we kind of reinvented the wheel in some instances, but we weren't trapped in that industry. Think.

Yeah, for me, you limit your own thinking when you're too knowledgeable in an industry. I mean, I was there when elon was starting SpaceX and he just came to it from two different emotional energies. Frustration about what existed and then passion about what could exist. And I think that was probably true for you as well, right? I mean, I think the ingredients then are really a vision and frustration. Is that fair enough to say?

Yeah. I think though, that you may be giving me too much credit in the sense that when I started the business with my girlfriend Renee, we were so young. I was 24 and Renee was 20. And we really, initially we just wanted to sell, we just wanted to have a natural food store. It was totally wrong. We had it in an old Victorian house. It wasn't on a commercial road. We lived in the store on the third floor, I remember that took showers in the Hobart dishwasher. And so we were just, you know, people said, well, why did you start it? I thought, and the answers are, well, I wanted to sell healthy food to people. I wanted to earn a living and I wanted to have fun. And so we did all three of those things. And in some ways that's still happening for Whole Foods today. And so the, the, the dream, you might say, grew. It wasn't, I didn't have it initially. I just wanted, I had a little dream. And gradually the dream got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yeah. You know, I was curious in reading your book about the fact that you, you didn't fulfill your parents dreams of going and getting these advanced degrees and such and you pursued your passion. And I know I had a. Not quite the same, but I went to medical school but never practiced medicine. And for like, for like 20 years after that, my mom was like, when are you going to go and actually go and practice medicine? I was like, mom, I'm not going to go practice medicine. I'm doing my space thing. And for parents listening or for kids who are entrepreneurs at the beginning of their career and they're struggling with that, what's your advice? How important is the education side versus if you found your purpose or passion early pursuing that?

Well, it's a good question. I think in my case, I've always been so passionate. I'm so curious, and I'm a bibliophile. I read incessantly. Once I get interested in something, I absorb information on it quickly. Once I got interested in business, I read hundreds of business books, and I asked a lot of questions. I made mistakes and learned from them. So if I hadn't been interested in business and I was taking classes in it, I wouldn't have absorbed nearly as much information. So I think that's. That's partly overlooked. I think, in addition, that in this case, I really felt I had. I didn't get the advanced degree that my mother wanted me to do in particular, or I didn't even graduate. I mean, I have 120 hours of electives. I just studied courses, classes I was interested in. But here's Peter, what I. Here's what I believe. I really believe in Joseph Campbell's the Hero's Journey.

I love Joseph Campbell.

So do I. And I think. I think everyone's called to a hero's journey. And most of the time, we don't answer the call because of fear. Fear of failure, fear that our parents will disapprove, fear that our friends might reject us. And so people play it safe in life. Like, I tell the story of one of my closest friends, really wanted to be a writer, but he was afraid he would live in an attic and fail. So he became a lawyer. He made a lot of money, and he wasn't happy. He didn't answer the call. I think when you answer that hero's journey's call, then you're on your own path to purpose, meaning. And so that's what I wanted to do. To hell if my mother didn't want me to do it. It wasn't her life. She could do what she wanted to do.

You figured that out earlier than I did. I had to actually get my diploma and ship it to my parents before I figured that out. But when? When do you think? I think that's one of the most important things that any entrepreneur can hear is when you hear that calling, go for it, right? And there's some incredible elements in Campbell's work. One of them I remember is like, you know, pursue it as if a man whose hair is on fire pursues water. I love that phrase, you know? And there's an Indian parable. You'll come Across a. A gulch. Jump. It's not as far as it seems. Talk about answering that journey. Does a person actually know when they have it? When they've heard the calling?

I didn't know I'd had the calling for that until I looked back, until I read Joseph Campbell many years later. And then I thought, hey, that's what I've been doing. I've been on a hero's journey and didn't know it, but I. In my own opinion, one of the ways you can know if you're on your hero's journey is how much vitality do you have, how much passion do you have? How happy are you? Because when you're fulfilling your purpose, every day you feel great. Every day you're excited. It's not that you don't fail sometimes or make mistakes. There are setbacks. Every hero's journey has trials and tribulations that need to be overcome or it really wouldn't be a hero's journey. Right. You have to overcome the obstacles, but it's an adventure. And adventures call forth the best that we have within us to answer that call, to answer the adventure. And you know you're on it because you're excited. Every day you get up and you just can't wait to get going.

Amen. So I talk about having a massive transformative purpose that wakes you up in the morning, keeps you going through the day. Right. It's my favorite quote is Mark Twain, who said, there are two important days in your life. The day you were born, the day you found out why. And did Twain originate that?

We quoted him in conscious. Quoted somebody else in conscious capitalism. Well, but Twain was. He's older, so maybe he should get credit.

I'm pretty sure it's him. So, you know, I think measuring your own level of excitement, like, are you. What are you talking about? What are you reading? What are you watching? Where do your feet take you? Is the way of discovering that I would assume?

I think so. I mean, you know, you're on your path when you're excited and you're full of energy and vitality and you just cannot wait to get on with it. Entrepreneurs, by the way, tend to be very future focused. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about the past or going over our mistakes other than to say, well, I made that mistake. I'm not going to make it again. We're about creating the future. We're all into what we're creating. You know the story quote about Picasso? Someone asked Picasso once what his favorite painting was. And he said, the one I'm working on right now.

Yeah, my next one.

And that. And that speaks for creative people, right? It's not what they've done in the past, it's what they're doing now that gets them excited and energized.

Yeah, for sure. So what's got you energized and going now? So you're on your next, you know, your next creative journey, you're on your next startup. Let's talk about that. And if you don't mind, you know, pick me up, you exit Amazon and then are you like hanging out doing nothing or did you pregnant with this idea?

I'd already started on this idea before.

I left as an entrepreneur should.

What I was hoping I could work out. I was hoping that I loved Whole Foods. I mean, I did it for 44 years. You got pretty good at it by then. I might have stayed there and I thought I could bring my, my capital, my wisdom, my leadership to Love Life. But I thought I could juggle both balls. And what became increasingly clear is that I had, in order to really, I had to let go of Whole Foods to really do Love Life, to get all in. I was trying to be in trying to do both. And it was, I was not doing good enough in either one. So the answer was, in some ways, I've been thinking about Love Life most of my adult life. I've been excited about this idea. In the book I talk about way back in 1985, we almost did a smaller version of it called LifeWorks. I really believe in the human potential movement. I really believe in that humans are capable of evolving and growing and becoming the best version of ourselves. And that's really what Love Life's about, helping people become the best version of themselves.

So let's define it and again, what I'd like to do, because we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening who are in the midst of starting their companies or growing their companies. And you've had an incredible 44 year university at whole Foods and presumably you're bringing all of your experience and learnings to this new startup. So let's talk about how you did that and what you're doing there. So what was the, the sort of the seed crystal that ignited that, what was the founding principle around it about for Love Life?

Yeah, you know, I think the founding principle has been that I just believe we're on a journey, we're on a continuum, that each one of us can be healthier than we are, each one of us can be more conscious than we are. Each of us can have higher degrees of emotional and spiritual intelligence. We have this limitless capacity for growth. And yet most people settle, they don't continue on it. They don't know how to. But I've been growing myself my entire adult life. And part of what I try to do in the book, the whole story is talk about with all candidness how many mistakes I made, what I didn't know when I was younger, what I've learned, how I grew because I really wanted. And I'm still learning and I'm still growing. The seed of that in some ways is this is what like any good entrepreneur, this is, this whole topic is something I'm very passionate about. I'm very passionate about people being as healthy as they possibly can. I'm very passionate about people getting more emotional intelligence, higher degrees of spiritual realizations and, and love Life aims to do all those things. On the surface it looks like we're, we're going to have. Let's talk about the components. We have a healthy restaurant. We have a state of the art fitness center. It's a gym, so we have yoga studio, we have Pilates, we're going to do all kinds of wellness from physical therapy room to personal trainers to. We're going to do everything we can to help people to be physically healthy as possible. We'll have all these recovery modalities. So we have a spa. So in the spa we'll have massage and facials. Not a medical spa. You can't do Botox. Then we have lots of recovery modalities from cold plunges to cryotherapy to red light therapy to infrared saunas to steam and regular saunas. Then we have, we play. We have three pickleball courts. You have three. This is an old, it's big, it's 45,000 square feet. Used to be a best Buy.

The multiple centers at different locations, very much like a Whole Foods model. Grow it.

That's what I hope. We, we know real estate, we know how to build a chain, we know how to operate a large spread out company. This is. So I'm taking all that knowledge and wisdom and I've got a lot of my old Whole Foods team working with me on it that have retired from Amazon, from Whole Foods and Amazon. And then the most important part though Peter, is the medical center. So we're starting out with two medical doctors, nurse practitioner and wellness coaches. So the idea being similar to some of the work that you're doing is first we got to test people. You've got to know your baseline if you're going to improve on it. So most people have no idea. And then we have got a good app. And so one of the problems, most people, when they go to see a doctor and they do blood test or they do some other kind of testing, it stays in the doctor's files and they lose track of it. In this case, this is information is going to be on our platform that they can access whenever they want. They can give the doctor authority to access it and possibly their wellness coach. So once we get your baseline established, the then we can take them in different directions depending on what they want to do. So let's say that they are an aging baby boomer like I am. I'm going to be interested in our longevity program. I want to extend my health span and my lifespan. If you ask people, would you like to live to be 100? Most people say, no, I don't think so. Because they think of somebody as 100 as being like, with dementia.

And I usually ask them, do you want to live to 150? And they say, no, but. But how old do you want to live, John?

I want to live as long. I want to live as long as I possibly can while maintaining a high degree of mental and physical wellness. So I'm not going to put it, I believe in the singularity that we're gaining longevity. So it's possible that I'll spend all eternity at age 100.

You and I are on the same page there. I used to, I used to set a goal, ridiculous goal of 700 years because I had heard that sea turtles could live that long. And then, you know, and people, of course, dismiss and it's laughable and such. But, you know, a lot of people say, I want to live to 100, 120, 150. And the realization was what I really want to do is live till what I call, you know, longevity, escape velocity. Live to that point where you can live as long as science is continuing to extend your health span. And it's an exciting time. I think this is one of the most exciting times to be in this, in this. I don't call it a business. I'll call it into this, in this domain. And it's the greatest gift you can give anybody, right? I mean, health is the new wealth.

I agree. And it's something people take for granted. And it's unfortunate.

And partly I think they take it for granted because a lot of people don't think, think they can do anything about it. And they're not willing to put in the extra work. Everybody's got sort of like, oh, my dad and my granddad died at this age, so that's how long I have. And I think that's just a false premise and it is. And that you can modify that. Okay, so you've been cooking this for a while. It's been a passion play for some time. But there was a point at which you transitioned. Was it when you. To focus on that and this was after you exited Amazon?

Yes, correct. That's when I really. I was focused on it before then, but that's when I really went all in.

Are you playing the CEO role here in this one?

I am the CEO.

All right, good. That's good to know. And by the way, I think anybody who's an entrepreneur and a baby boomer, I mean, I'm on my 25th or 26th company and I plan to keep going for the next 50 years. I mean, I love building businesses. It's a creative art form.

What's more fun than that? I haven't found it.

Nothing. It's extraordinary. And by the way, entrepreneurs are the individuals who find and solve problems and ultimately make the world a better place. And I think I know your philosophy because I've heard it in my audiobook, by the way, I enjoyed the whole story as an audiobook. So for those who. Who are reading audiobooks, definitely a fantastic.

My only regret on the audiobook, Peter, is I only read the prologue.

I know when I was on that.

LSD trip, and I wish I'd read the whole thing, but I didn't. And we'll call that a minor regret.

By the way, I found that same experience. I didn't read my first book, Abundance, and then when I listened to it, I was like, oh, I don't like the author's voice, the reader's voice. And so I've read my book since then. And your next one, you should read it yourself. It's not bad. I mean, I like your voice better, but the other person who reads the book is excellent.

Well, he's the professional reader, Adam Barr. He could do one thing I couldn't do, because, as you know, it reads kind of like a novel and we have a lot of dialogue in it. He got the other voices, the accents down in a way I never could have done that. So that's the one plus for having him do the reading.

For sure. For sure. Real quick. I've been getting the most unusual compliments lately on my skin. Truth is, I use a lotion every morning and every night. Religiously. Called One Skin, it was developed by four PhD women who determined a 10amino acid sequence that is a senolytic that kills senile cells in your skin. And this literally reverses the age of your skin. And I think it's one of the most incredible products I use in it all the time. If you're interested, check out the show notes. I've asked my team to link to it below. All right, let's get back to the episode. So you took the CEO role and that's great. And I think by the way, one of the best longevity therapeutics in the world is being an entrepreneur and being a CEO and having those challenges and having to learn and having to get up and having that passion every day. Right. I mean that's what keeps you young.

Yeah. Because you're basically telling your body, hey, you can't get old because you know, I have this purpose I have to fulfill. So you got to stay with me, baby.

Yeah, exactly. If you ever want. And I tell people who use the word retirement, it's a four letter word. I Google the correlation between retirement and death. It's way too high. It's like an average like five years after retirement you die. So just don't ever retire. You did you co found it? Did you bring it?

Oh yeah.

So talk about that. Who'd you bring in?

Oh, I co founded it with some of my Whole Foods Markets executive team. So the Walter Robb who was my co CEO for 7 years and President before then as a co founder, as is Betsy Foster, she was a senior executive at Whole Foods for a long time. And then I have those are the three designated co founders because I started everything with them. But I have other executives at Whole Foods that were there at the beginning. Glenda Flanagan who was my long term chief financial loss officer, A.C. gallo who was president and Jim Sutter did real estate. So I kind of got the, I got the old gang back together. I made them an offer they couldn't refuse. I gave them, I said I know you don't want to work like you used to work, so just I'm going to pay you this much per hour and you just work whenever you want to. And then secondly, I gave them a lot of stock options so that if it hits, they'll get a good payday.

How do you think about choosing a co founder? So that's a story I'm asked often, okay, like should I have a co founder when I start my company? What should be their attributes? And I have a philosophy about it. I'd love to hear yours.

Well, I don't think about it quite the way most people do. For me, the co founders and I mean, I always felt like I'm the visionary. It's my ideas that are being actualized. I just feel like I can share that co founder title. It, it makes a big difference to people. They, they, when they have that title, they have more commitment and more passion in the business. And so I feel like you can be somewhat generous with it.

By the way, that's a, it's a really good point. Psychologically, someone who feels, you know, they're not going to say I'm the SVP of this or the director of that, but if they say I'm a co founder with John Mackey or whomever, psychologically, it's a lot more responsibility and you care more about it and it costs you nothing to get the co founder role away.

Exactly. It costs nothing, but increases commitment and morale tremendously.

And, you know, I. My mental image and tell me if it's yours, is the people that you start this with, you're going to spend more time with them than you do other members of your family or your other close friends. Because it is a. You're jumping in the deep end and it's a 247 experience. So I assume. Assume people that you like and like to hang out with.

Oh, yeah.

Is important.

It is. I mean, one of the reasons I stayed so long at whole foods for 44 years was I was doing it with people that we shared. We shared the setbacks and the failures and we shared the triumphs and the gains. And that creates a sort of bonding that maybe like a Marine has when they go into combat together. They bond with their fellow Marines. And of course, we're not actually killing people or it's not life and death. However, there's some intense times you go through. Have you ever heard the saying that there are two emotions that all entrepreneurs have at one time or another, which is complete ecstasy and utter terror?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's true. I mean, as soon as things get comfortable, you stretch yourself to the point of like, breaking. And as soon as things get. Anyway, it's just a constant oscillation. Hopefully up and to the right on the way. And you tell the story in, in the whole story about the Hundred year flood that took out your massive store. I mean, talk about just overcoming disaster. I mean, you think you've made it, everything's going amazing, and then nature comes at you.

So, Peter, one of the reasons why Actually, I'm so glad I wrote the whole story, because as an entrepreneur who's very future oriented, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the past.

Yes, but.

But you know what? When you. I almost recommend everybody write a memoir, because looking backwards, you start to see threads continue through your life. I didn't Even make the LifeWorks love life connection until I started working on the book. And I thought, oh, my God, this is. This is LifeWorks I'm bringing 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 it's a gift that you give to your children and your grandchildren and other descendants.

Agreed. Down the road, honestly, you recognize your own resilience.

Yes, that's exactly correct. 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 coup attempts, I had the flood. I had all of these big challenges that went on, and I managed to survive all of them. And I know even in doing some podcasts, people would ask me, it's like, well, how do you do that? And 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 a hero's journey, then you're going to give up when you hit those bumps. Wow.

Good point. I never thought about that before. You're exactly right.

The times, you know, another 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, you know, and 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. And if it's not, find what that is and go do that.

Yes. You know, that's a takeaway for 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 heads 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, I did write a business plan.

How important is a business plan?

A business plan is valuable because it helps you think through the business in a more systemic way and 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'll deal with it. Yes, we'll deal with when we get there. And while sometimes that's very, very healthy and you need a kind of energy to do a startup, you also need, you also need the people that are, that are more careful thinking about what about this and what about that. You just can't blow it all off or your dream may crater before you've actually gotten. It's like Elon Musk might have to take SpaceX. He might have a vision about rockets, but you know what, he has to bring a lot of people on the team that lessen the chance of the rockets blowing up. Although Elon always gets excited when a rocket blows up because it's like, great, we're not going to do that again. But that'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, so, so let's talk about that. You could have funded the whole thing yourself, but you brought, you allowed others to invest. How important is that for someone as an entrepreneur?

So that's such a great question because there's a lot of different ways to answer that question. So 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 safer way in 78 and IPO'd whole foods in early 1992. So 14 years. In those 14 years, no one ever got a nickel back for their investment in the company.

Yeah.

And by going public, I felt like, you know what, everybody that believed in me and believed in our dream, they're, they're getting, they can, 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 their ante out, you might say, but then realize much bigger gains down the road.

Amazing.

Well, I think it's by letting other people invest, two interesting things happen. One is I feel an obligation to 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 that's going to get a better effort out of me.

Honestly, let me double click on that, because that is, you know, sometimes you are forced to persist. Sometimes you persist because it's your highest calling and because its 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. And by the way, every one of my ventures 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, 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 call it guilt, but that sense of obligation is another, just another motivator to have you focus. It's all about focus and energy and passion. Right.

There's a second. 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 coming 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 60, 40. 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?

Well, one thing I'm going to tell you about hiring I'm not very good at it. That's not one of my superpowers.

Okay.

And so what I've learned, you know, 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. I've learned to count on other people. One of the things I learned at Whole Foods, we did a lot of group interviews and I always 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 you know, it's interesting to think about, can you hire someone on Zoom? The in person cues are so much richer.

Right.

So I think you have to ultimately meet the person. But I've been, you know, 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, 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 raiser in the hiring function. There were individuals in the organization who represented the best in the organization. Those individuals were nominated as bar raisers. And there had to be one bar raiser in every, in every interview decision. And they had the ability to nix somebody against everybody else. In other words. Wow, you're trying to, you know, it's the notion that A, players, you know, hire A players and B players hire C players.

Yeah. Steve Jobs said that.

Yeah. And it's, it's true. The very, the very, the very best. But so who were the first hires you started going after here? What kind of positions?

The first people I hired were all the Whole Foods people. And then, so now love life's done a few acquisitions, so we bought a. We bought a restaurant in Miami.

So were you opening up first, by.

The way, in 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. It's a soft opening. We're not. We haven't publicized it. We just open our doors because that way we. We can work. It's a complex business model and I didn't even. I didn't even get all the way done with the medical, by the way.

I'm looking forward to learning more because I'm in the business a little bit.

Yeah.

How we. How we play together. Can I buy you a coffee when you come to town?

Yeah, I'll be back. I'll be there coming out on the 9th. I'll buy you coffee at my place. I'll give you a tour, but I'll be there. I come on the 9th and I'll be there through the 11th that weekend.

Basically.

I was just there for a couple of weeks, but I came back last Friday.

Oh.

So congrats. So anyway, soft opening to work out the bugs on that medical thing. To just finish that.

Yeah.

We were talking about before, so. 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 very poor job of is actually curing people. The diseases that kill people today are chronic diseases, and they are there. So heart disease 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 100 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. Iatrok. Yeah, exactly. Iatragenic.

Exactly. But then you've got stroke, you got type 2 diabetes, and it takes a while before you get down to any kind of infectious disease. So these are lifestyle, dietary diseases that are killing people. So the first thing is, if people have a chronic disease, like obesity, like type 2 diabetes, like heart disease, and like most autoimmune diseases, we can help them reverse those diseases. So healing people, people is one of the functions or one of the paths People can go down. Thirdly, thirdly, we're going to appeal to young people and that we're going to call a maximum performers. We can take people on a journey to get into max, get their maximum, to do the burn, to get absolutely as fit as they can, their VO2 max to get the, to do the personal trainer, to do the weight, to do the serious weight stuff and the endurance and really get them as fit and healthy as possible. Then we have a concierge program so that people can be all in. Those are the way they can do in the medical. The doctors are trained in functional medicine, integrative medicine and lifestyle medicine. Perfect. They can do primary health care. But the whole idea, 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 two to start.

Amazing. 10 years from now in success, how many Love Life centers are there on the planet?

It's funny, people always ask me the 10 year question and I always quote back Yogi Berra, 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 by journalists all the time about what's the world going to 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. We didn't really have. Most people weren't online and they think where are they on AOL dial up modems? So new things are always emerging. AI is the latest big thing to emerge. And it just came into people's consciousness a few years 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 gonna have to be in dialogue with our, with our members about what works and what doesn't work. Secondly, defining 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 limb and say something like 10 years from now, we'll have 10 to 15 units, but 20 years from now, we'll have 100.

Nice. Interesting.

And of course, you're into. You're into exponential growth, and so am I. And so the. The exponential part kicks in. Once you get. Once you really don't scale a business model that 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 group, and you've proven it. You take in large amounts of capital, and you exponentially grow it as quickly as you can.

I love that. And that's really important. Right. And by the way, you lay that out beautifully in the book, right. 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, there were 540 when 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 that 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. Then you dematerialize, demonetize, democratize, and then it disrupts things. So one of the questions, of course, I think about in my longevity, companies and business 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, you know, bricks and mortar and physical elements are important.

Let me point out a couple things to you, please. 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. Most people need hand holding. 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 thought of it. Well, we started something in Whole foods about about 15 years ago, we called the Total Health Immersion. And so we're self insured, so we're paying all the health care costs. There might be a reinsurer that kicks in, you know, above a million dollars or something like that. But, but in general, we're paying it all. And, 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 10, some of that can't be helped. Somebody does get automobile accident or a motorcycle accident, has a premature birth or maybe gets cancer. By that time it's too late. Yeah. And you can't do anything about those. However, the chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome. Exactly. These things are all targetable. And so what we did was we created a Total Health Immersion. We did four a year around different places around the country. You had to sign up for it. It was free to the team members. We'd pay all their costs. And increasingly we started 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, all their biometrics begin to decline, the cholesterol begins to go down, their blood pressure begins to go down, they start feeling better. And then if they stay on the program, and we saw so many people lose over £100 in a year or less. But here's what happens. Recidivism is high if you don't have a community of support.

It's all about your community. It's all about. And habits don't change unless you've got the reinforcement mechanisms around you.

Yeah, 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 want to.

What'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.

I'll tell you my price point. So, so, but it's a different, It's a different level. Right. Do you have MRIs and CTs and DEXA scans and all of that in the, in your medical facility? Are you going that deep?

We're not. We have a DEXA scan. 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 we're gonna do the web phlebotomist, we're doing our blood draws. So we're not gonna go quite as deep as you do, but pretty deep. I mean the genetics, the genetics is pretty, is pretty powerful as a learning tool.

Well, I think we're going to end up as partners versus competitors. So we'll.

I love that. I believe in the win, win, win relationships.

I know you do. And as, as do I. Because the reality is so at fountain, you know, we people come and do a full body upload, right? We digitize you 150 gigabytes of data. It's a full body MRI, brain, brain vasculature, coronary CT with AI overlay for soft plaque, low dose lung CT, ADEXA scan, genomics, metabolomics, everything possible. To answer a question, is there anything going on inside you you need to know about, like right now and what's likely to happen to you and how do we prevent that? All of that's great. You get a concierge medical team to follow you through the year. But what you're doing as well is the meat and potatoes. The, the fundamental elements. Right? It's what I do for myself in terms of food, diet, exercise, sleep, all of those things are the most important things to be doing right now.

Yes, but knowledge is not enough.

Yes, knowledge is not enough. The support structure around you is critical.

That's what I learned from the Total Health Immersions, is that the people that had a good support structure stayed with it, never looked back, changed their lives forever. Most people didn't have the support structure. They had their food addictions, particularly if they're trying to overcome obesity. They didn't get obese the first day they were born. They, 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 and change it. They need us. They need support.

They do. And so for example, I run at, after my Abundance 360 program and after my platinum longevity 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, 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.

So we do a few things online right now, just tell you what we're doing. Online, 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. And 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. We 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, we will be flying people in to or having people fly in for seminars and things like that, then when you do the same thing, you send people to Fountain Life gatherings from longevity and whatnot, and then, and then, and then they have the relationship with the doctors on an ongoing basis. We see doing something similar to that.

Everybody, 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. Company is called Fountain Life and 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 in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on and 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 vasculature, an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, DEXA scan, 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. You're going to find out eventually. You 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 healthy 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 LifeForce, we had 30,000 people who reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com Peter we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is for me, one of the most important things I offer my Entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. Friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com Peter it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. Talk about what your biggest challenges or concerns were getting going in this business. So you're entering as a seasoned entrepreneur CEO. You've got the capital, which a lot of entrepreneurs don't necessarily have at the beginning. But what were you, where were any doubts? Or what were your challenges? What are your challenges?

Yeah, I was going to say we don't, we'll know a lot more to answer that question about a year from now. But going into it, I think the biggest challenge is when do most people go see a doctor?

When it's too late.

Exactly. When they're sick. So we're trying to change that by having 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. How many times if I had a dollar for every time people ask me, will insurance cover what you're doing? Will they cover the membership? And the answer is no, it will not cover the membership. I mean, it won't cover the, 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 because the pharmaceutical and medical device and the hospital industries are, you know, those are the gargantuan businesses that regulatory capture, they're setting the rules in a lot of ways. So insurance will not cover it and that's a change in thinking. They 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 get collect payments. That's different. That's what I'm concerned about more than anything else.

You know, I, any, any advice there? Well, I think people need, I mean people need to realize it is the cheapest money they're going to spend.

Exactly.

And you're going to spend the money eventually and you're going to find out about your sickness eventually. When do you want to know? I think those are the bullets for me that are critical. The numbers in the US are dismal in terms of current healthcare systems. It's just insane.

Peter, do you know about this company that started up in Sweden by the founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek? It does, it's a full body scan that's, that's similar to what you're doing but it's very inexpensive and they're, they're, they've got three in Stockholm and they're opening another one up in London. I think maybe I've opened already this summer. I, I'm going to try to go get a scan there myself. Next time I'm in Europe in October, I'm going to go to London and get a scan there because I've talked to those guys and I mean I think they charge, I think they get the complete scan, they do a blood test, they give 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. And so I think the total cost is like $750, which is huge.

I have seen, seen that. And it's, you know, the question becomes ultimately I know the numbers on, on all of these areas so I'm having a hard time. You know, even the capex expense on the MRI machine and the doctors, sure you can get, 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 real is it for us Marketplace?

Well, I talked to those guys and it was pretty interesting that they have a very high people sign up. They got a three year waiting list in Stockholm so it's probably worth checking it out a little bit. 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 Is got vision, but is always sort of really aware of the. 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 if you think of every. 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. The shadow side is people are not as frugal as they should be with capital. If you're a scrappy startup 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've got my team, which is kind of seasoned executives at Whole Foods, but they're used to spending more money and so they're not. They're not as frugal as a startup should be. That's one of our challenges.

I think that's really an important insight. I've had a few companies. I had one company, I won'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 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. I hadn't 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 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 sort of creating a brand? I mean, that was an interesting journey you went through in naming Whole Foods and in building a meaningful brand. 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. You 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 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. Yeah, look at the Harley Davidson. What a. You know, I mean that's a great brand. That's an iconic brand that was built and I mean how often do you see television commercials for Harley Davidson? They don't need to. They do other, they promote in other ways.

John, in this day of digital employment of virtual offices, where do you come out on that? Do you miss the days of having everybody in the same 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 ultimately led my departure from Amazon a big fight about that because I wanted to, 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. But it's got pros and cons, right? 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 the hybrid model is the way to go. You have to figure out a way to bring the band together frequently for the relationships to be established and nurtured and grown. Trust you were talking about. You didn't like to hire just from a zoom interview because you can't get all the cues. Well, all those cues are important for building trust. 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 by 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 and.

Yeah, but some of my friends, some of my friends are in the venture business so I did get a little bit of venture money. But I did not send out that business plan.

What's your advice for entrepreneurs on you know, where to get their early capital? I just did a whole course on fund your purpose and I'm opinionated about this, but so am I.

In my book I talk about the VCs. I have a whole chapter.

Yeah, I remember that.

And 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 get, 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 Wharton 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, don'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 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. Just remember they have their own agenda and it's not aligned with you. You have a longer term agenda than they do.

You learn what you're building. It's your mission, it's your purpose in life. It's everything for you.

So I generally urge them pick their VCs carefully. As I learned the hard way, all money is 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, they're going to try to change your vc.

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 and in and 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, listen, I'm planning to grow this as rapidly as possible, profit to 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 experiences I've had in business? Is actually building a profitable company from the beginning. Well, what's your philosophy on those two? How do you think 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 in the market that believed it. And guess what? And he delivered at the end of the day, Right. He created a volume.

He turned the knobs. Once you have 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 Twitter X similar thing. So bricks and mortar. Not so easily to do that, you have to have a business model that works and relatively quickly. So talk to me.

So do you. You know, I remember reading in the book, right. You were clearly monitoring getting to profitability as soon as possible on a per store basis. Is that still how you're thinking about it?

Yeah, 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 your fixed overhead in a store is 45,000 square feet. Your rent, your 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. They also will scale as you grow sales. So if we can grow 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 you, 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. They'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 the 10 to 1 voting shares. But when we go raise our public round after we've proven our business model works, it'll be. They'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 fuck you money.

It's true. It's great. That is exactly the right term for it. It's interesting, John. I knew Bezos from college. I was at MIT and started something called Students for the Exploration and Development Space and grew it from. This was my first entrepreneurial experience 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 100 chapters around the world. And Jeff was the president of the Princeton chapter. So I knew him as a space cadet during my college years.

Where were you?

I was at MIT at the time.

Okay, mit. So that's not too far from Princeton.

But it was, you know, this was pre Internet, so all the communications are over mail. Right. And we have an annual conference in Washington D.C. and so I did not see him until, God knows, a couple of decades later in the, in the mid late 90s. This is after Amazon has started. And so I have a coffee with him at a coffee shop and I'm 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 type as an entrepreneur. Right. He's not like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Michael Dell or Elon Musk that start. He started later. He was on Wall street, he was in the financial markets. But he has an entrepreneurial temperament, I can tell you that. But he didn't probably start Amazon until he was in his 30s, right? Early 30s, yeah. 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, you know, some.

Variation of I'm on Act 2.

I think your Act 1 had a lot of sub acts in it, but nonetheless, it was. It was just. It was interesting. I won't go into it. I. I keep on. Every time I see Jeff, I nudge him about why Blue Origin, the space company, is. Hasn't launched to orbit yet.

That's. That's the sore spot. He's got that rivalry with Elon.

Oh, my God, he does. And I think part of it is he's not running it.

That's a good point.

I think he is. 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.

It's crazy. It was a point. I remember in 2008, he was on my board at the XPRIZE foundation, and it was great. He funded an X prize for us early on in global learning, and he's since funded $100 million prize for carbon extraction from the atmosphere and oceans, which has been going great. But I got a call from him one day saying, peter, I really. I apologize. I have to step off the board. I've got to focus on SpaceX and Tesla, and so I'm stepping off of everything. And of course, he did that for like a year, and now he's got 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 either he needs to hook up with one of our companies, because I'm a little worried about his health.

Oh, I've had this conversation with him a number of times, and I've said, listen, I will treat you at Fountain Life. Please let me. And we keep on teasing each other 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, Kimball.

Yeah, he's in the whole field.

Exactly. He feels the same way we do. And Kimball, he lives in Boulder, so I see him fairly frequently. And he's. He's Very much into health and wellness and, by the way, very interested in psychedelics. And I think he's probably the most healthy influence Elon has in his life, is probably his brother.

Yeah. And Elon's gone through many stages, and the guy, you know, 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.

Be me. They. They want. Yes, exactly. I. I understand.

He. Yeah.

Elon has his demons. Right. He's got his shadow side. He does, but.

And also, he can't. You know, someone at that stage can't go any place. Said the only place I could go is, like, a biker bar when no one recognizes me. But that was five years ago. I think everybody would recognize him now.

That's. I mean, he. He showed up at this restaurant I was eating at a couple of years ago, and because I was having dinner with Luke Nosek, which was one of the.

I know Luke, of course.

Yeah, Luke. And Elon just walks in and joins us. And I said, well, this is fantastic. You know, where are your. You can still move about the world without bodyguards. I think that's so fantastic. He said. He looked at me and 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. That's. I wouldn't trade that.

Yeah. I have what I call minor celebrity, who I get.

You know, minor celebrity is good.

Recognizing the street once or twice, you know, in a day. But God Almighty would not want what Elon has.

Or Jeff. You know, when we were. When we met with Jeff Bezos and his team to talk for the first time about Amazon Foods Market, they searched us, they searched our car, they checked it for bombs, and it was like, wow, this is. He's at a level of security that I desperately hope I never have to get to.

Yeah. It is the dark side of success.

Yes, exactly.

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Well, I talk about psychedelics three separate times in the book. I start out with it because I'm 22, I just turned 22 and I took. I'm in Austin, summer, had a birthday just a couple of weeks before and I took a. 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 had no idea how strong the dose was. This was the most powerful dose I'd ever taken or half taken since. It was like I describe it as, it was so overwhelming that you had no choice but to Let go. I mean, I tried to hold on to that ego, but it was like. It's like being on Niagara Falls, holding on with one hand to 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. For all practical purposes, it probably measured in this reality. It was measured by how much, how long. The LSD before it started to decline in my system, before my liver started detoxifying it. But psychologically, it seemed to be endless. And it was amazing and it was ecstatic. And so that changed the direct trajectory of my life because it was soon after that I moved into this vegetarian co op. I wasn't a vegetarian. 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, that. That woke me up to it. So that's the first time I talk about it.

Yeah. And. And you do it in a very beautiful fashion where you. It took you through this. This increasing intensity to a place of fear.

Initially, yes.

And then extraordinary connection and blissful connection with the universe.

We're very attached to our egos. We don't.

Oh, my God.

We'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. Was when I did a DMT journey.

I've done DMT as well. I didn't talk about it in the book. Yeah, Instantaneous, right?

Instantaneous. So it is. But the most profound I've had. You are in 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's called the Entrepreneur's psychedelic because you're in and out of the experience in under 30 minutes, 20 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, bubbling energy almost like a quantum foam. And coming out of the, out of that ocean, almost a single plate plane of energy are these two double helices that go up and then come back down. And I was like, oh my God, that is like, you know, we emerge out of the oneness of the universe into life and then 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 about it.

So in that experience that I had in the lsd, I experienced the. I experienced the Big Bang. We're in the singularity. We're 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 then there's the breathing back in. It comes back into the singularity. This is the infinite game. It goes on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And every, every creative possibility is realized. We're constantly an infinite game, infinite play. So I experienced this on this journey. And that's when I realized after that, it's like I am, I am in the essence. 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 of. Not death, not life. And that's when the hero's journey call 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 because of the, you know, the connection with infinity. You know, listen, I want to live as long as I can. I want to live as long a healthy life as I can. I want to do.

Because it's a good life.

It's an amazing life. It's like the most exciting time ever to be alive, right? The only time more exciting is maybe tomorrow. But. But yeah, it was incredible experience. I have not had that level on. I've tried LSD once, but it was not in the same reflective right. You know, I've not, in the right context, only wanted to do this inside of a, of a spiritual journey where it's not for play. This is for self reflection, self realization. Yeah, yeah. How? What's your advice to entrepreneurs or, or individuals who haven't experienced this yet. I 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 and I'll get to the second. So first time I did MDMA was 1985. It was legal and that was a. Had a big impact on me, changed my life because I absolutely knew, without a doubt, and I've never forgotten it, that love was the most important thing that 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. So I experienced that. And then after that I began my spiritual journey in earnest. I started to meditate regularly. I started to do breathwork regularly. I started studying the course in miracles. I really launched on my own spiritual path with a more disciplined focus. 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 going to leave Whole Foods Market. And, and I'd been so motivated by Michael Pollan's book how to change your mind.

Yes.

And Michael oftentimes he did it with the omnivore's dilemma. He's right on the cusp of these things becoming more culturally mainstream. And he helps orchestrate that cultural change in. Because after I read him doing a guided journey, I thought, you know what? I'm going to do a guided journey. I absolutely am. And I set that up so that just a couple of months before I retired from Whole Foods I would do. I did a five day retreat.

Five day, one on one where your guide would not let you escape early. You were like, believe in the process. Believe in the process.

Trust the process. Trust the process. And that was a combination of breath work which I did five separate times. I got actually more out of the breath work. I just cut. Encourage people enough. We're going to do breathwork at LifeWorks. When I talked a lot about LifeWorks on the physical health side. But we're going to be doing, we want to really help people emotionally and spiritually as well. So we'll be doing breath work, we'll be doing meditation classes, we 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 going to want to do that. There's. 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.

Yeah.

Anger, fear, guilt, envy. These things prevent us from being aware of love, his presence. And so as we practice forgiveness and we let those negative emotions go, we come into the love's presence more clearly. So 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.

Yeah.

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 and setting matter. It do a safe place where you're totally safe. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Where you can go with intentions.

Yes. It was very, very intentional, very spiritually focused. And that take and with 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.

Well, they can follow me@johnpmackey.com that's my personal website. Johnpmackey.com they can find out at 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. Whole 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.

Yeah.

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 was offensive to some people.

By the way, 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, you know, Nazi fascism, which is the opposite of those things.

Right, Exactly. But from its original form.

Classical liberal.

Yes.

People always want to know what's a classical liberal, and it gives me a chance to expound on the classical liberal principles that. That really built our country.

Yeah, buddy. A pleasure. And. 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.