John Mackey Quotes
120 John Mackey Quotes
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No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the marketplace for their purchases…
John Mackey
[On FLOW = Freedom Lights Our World] What is FLOW? To sum it up in one simple phrase: FLOW is about liberating the entrepreneurial spirit for good.
John Mackey
Do we need a new way to think about business, corporations, and capitalism for the twenty-first century? Do we need to create a new business paradigm?
John Mackey
Corporation are probably the most influential institutions in the world today and yet many people do not believe that they can be trusted. Instead, corporations are widely perceived as greedy, selfish, exploitative, uncaring, and interested only in maximizing profits.
John Mackey
Have you ever asked yourself what is the purpose of a business? Most business people never ask themselves this interesting question. If you think about it, what is the purpose of a doctor or hospital? Is their purpose to maximize profits?
John Mackey
Most of the greatest companies in the world also have great purposes that were discovered and/or created by their original founders and that that still remain at the core of their business models. Having a deeper, more transcendent purpose is highly energizing for all of the various interdependent stakeholders, including the customers, employees, investors, suppliers, and the larger communities in which the business participates.
John Mackey
Whole Foods Market… aspires to express the great ideal of service to others as its primary purpose.
John Mackey
A company that expresses beauty enriches our lives in numerous ways.
John Mackey
[In 2006] The organic-food lifestyle is not a fad… It’s a value system, a belief system. It’s penetrating into the mainstream.
John Mackey
Business has a broader goal than just making money, and yet many see that as its only goal.
John Mackey
Virtually all of our societal organizations seem to have either forgotten or have never really known why they exist and what their higher purposes are…
John Mackey
Our health care system too often seeks to maximize the profits of pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies rather than the health and wellness of patients.
John Mackey
Many of our corporations primarily exists to maximize the compensation of their executives and, secondarily, shareholder value rather than value creation for customers, employees, and other major stakeholders.
John Mackey
Whole Foods has never lost to a competitor a top executive that we wanted to keep since the company began more than 30 years ago.
John Mackey
Please forgive them [parents] for their mistakes and imperfections and fully love them and honor them while you can, because the simple truth is that you won’t always have them with you as you move further along your life journey.
John Mackey
We… frequently make the mistake of believing that if we forgive others we are also condoning their harmful behavior. However, forgiveness simply means to relinquish our resentment and anger towards others, it doesn’t mean relinquishing our values and ethics. When we forgive others we free ourselves from the past and allow our hearts to be fully in the present moment, which is where love exists.
John Mackey
Self-pity is a remarkably self-destructive emotion, which you should consciously work to eliminate from your emotional life because it dis-empowers you and moves you away from being able to follow your heart.
John Mackey
The virtue of generosity does not merely apply to giving money, but primarily to the gift of ourselves – our time and our service to others. True generosity should not be thought of as some kind of self-sacrifice where what we give to others comes at our own expense… Rather it is an extension of love from our own hearts, which takes genuine delight in the flourishing of other people.
John Mackey
Being alive is absolutely extraordinary and there are endless things to be thankful and grateful for. I try to take a few minutes early in the morning to be very quiet and to appreciate the people I love and to express gratitude in my heart for the many wonderful things that fill my life with joy.
John Mackey
No one will ever love you quite like your parents do, and although they have no doubt made plenty of mistakes in helping you to grow up, they’ve also done the very best job that they knew how to do. They’ve also made far more sacrifices on your behalf than you will ever really know.
John Mackey
[In 2008] At Whole Foods we practice appreciations at the end of all of our meetings, including even our Board Meetings – voluntarily expressing gratitude and thanks to our co-workers for the thoughtful and helpful things they do for us. It would be hard to overestimate how powerful appreciations have been at Whole Foods as a transformational practice for releasing more love throughout the company.
John Mackey
I never took a single business class. I actually think that has worked to my advantage in business over the years.
John Mackey
Despite working many eighty plus hour weeks… I initially took salaries of only about $200 a month and lived in the office above the store. There was no shower or bathtub there, so we took ‘showers’ in the store’s Hobart dishwasher when we needed to clean up (I’m pretty sure that violated several city health codes).
John Mackey
After operating Safer Way for two years, we decided to relocate to a much larger building, merge with another small natural food store, and change the name to Whole Foods Market in 1980.
John Mackey
I believed that the co-op movement was the best way to reform capitalism because it was based on cooperation instead of competition. If a store was owned by its customers, rather than by profit-hungry investors, it would be both less expensive and more socially just… However, I ultimately became disillusioned with the co-op movement because there seemed to be little room for entrepreneurial creativity.
John Mackey
I thought I could create a better store than any of the co-ops I had belonged to, and decided to become an entrepreneur to prove it.
John Mackey
Business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win game – and I really like that.
John Mackey
[On setting up Whole Foods Market] There were many challenges… Our customers thought our prices were too high; our team members thought they were paid too little; our suppliers would not give us good prices, because we were too small; the local Austin nonprofit sector was continually asking us for donations; and various governments were slapping us with many fees, licenses, fines, and various business taxes.
John Mackey
In our first year… we managed to lose more than 50 percent of the capital entrusted to us - $23,000. We discovered that creating a successful business isn’t easy. Despite the losses, we were still accused by anti-business people of exploiting the customers with high prices and our team members with low wages…
John Mackey
[On losing $23,000 in his first year in business] Despite my good intentions, I had somehow become a selfish and greedy businessman.
John Mackey
I was still very much an idealist who wanted to make the world a better place, and I thought I could best do so by operating a store that sold healthy food to people and provided good jobs.
John Mackey
Free enterprise, combined with property rights, innovation, the rule of law, and constitutionally limited democratic government, results in societies that maximize societal prosperity and establish conditions that promote human happiness and well-being – not just for the rich, but for the larger society, including the poor.
John Mackey
I had discovered that business and capitalism, while not perfect, were both fundamentally good and ethical.
John Mackey
It is possible to live in this world with an open, loving heart… We can channel our deepest creative impulses in loving ways towards fulfilling our higher purposes, and help evolve the world to a better place.
John Mackey
Business leaders can liberate the extraordinary power of business and capitalism to create a world in which all people live lives full of purpose, love and creativity – a world of compassion, freedom, and prosperity.
John Mackey
Wondrous technologies have shrunk time and distance, weaving us into a seamless fabric of humankind extending to the remotest corners of the planet.
John Mackey
Without profits, entrepreneurs cannot make the necessary investments to replace their depreciating buildings and equipment or to adapt to the always evolving and competitive marketplace. The need for profit is universal for all businesses in a healthy market economy.
John Mackey
Business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.
John Mackey
Free-enterprise capitalism is one of the most powerful ideas we humans have ever had.
John Mackey
The dream of creating a business that enriches the world by its existence and brings joy, fulfillment, and a sense of meaning to all who are touched by it.
John Mackey
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