John Mackey
John Mackey
John Mackeyis an American businessman. He is the current co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, which he co-founded in 1980. Named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003, Mackey is a strong supporter of free market economics, has strong anti-union views, and co-wrote the best-selling book Conscious Capitalism, which was released in 2013. He is one of the most influential advocates in the movement for organic food...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth15 August 1953
CountryUnited States of America
People need to eat whole food plant foods, primarily... whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. That diet supports our lives. We ought to live to be 90 or 100 without getting any diseases.
A healthy diet is a solution to many of our health-care problems. It's the most important solution.
I think for any small business that's bootstrapped, the overwhelming challenge initially is getting to positive cash flow.
I tell students and young professionals all the time to follow their hearts, do what they truly love, and if it's business, run it by being grounded in ethical consciousness.
I think for leadership positions, emotional intelligence is more important than cognitive intelligence. People with emotional intelligence usually have a lot of cognitive intelligence, but that's not always true the other way around.
I was in my early 20s and open to alternative lifestyles. I thought, 'I bet you get a lot of attractive, interesting women in a vegetarian co-op.'
I was proud of them in the second half because we came out and attacked the basket. We had some looks and if some went down we could have cut the lead to under 10. We didn't quit and we're not going to quit.
People in America are addicted to sugar and to fat and to salt.
Starting my own business was kind of a wakeup call in a number of different ways. I had to meet a payroll every week, and we had to satisfy customers, and we had competitors that we had to compete with in order to have those customers come into our stores, and we had to compete with other employers for our employees.
Some of the greatest businesses operating from a deeper purpose have a real commitment to service, like Four Seasons, Joie de Vivre hotels, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue.
I was looking for the meaning of life when I was in college. And my deal with my dad was as long as I was taking a full course load, then he would pay. And the times that I wasn't taking a full course load, then I was off the dole and I was working.
I would say you have an ethical obligation to pay the taxes that you owe, but you don't have an ethical obligation to pay taxes that you don't owe. In fact, you should be seeking ways to legally minimise your taxes.
I think it's absolutely essential that the people that work for a company need to feel that they're part of something bigger - that it's not just a job.
One of the sad things about retiring is that you just become increasingly irrelevant. The world flows around you, and you don't seem to be impacting it any longer.