John Mackey Quotes
120 John Mackey Quotes (Whole Foods Market Quotes)
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Great companies have great purposes.
John Mackey
I never took a single business class. I am convinced now that this gap in my formal education actually worked to my advantage in the business world.
John Mackey
I had no way of knowing how many accepted business practices I was ignoring and that gap gave me the opportunity to innovate freely without the burden of too many legacies to overcome.
John Mackey
Just as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don’t live to eat, and neither must businesses live just to make profits.
John Mackey
Every person alive has the potential to learn and grow to contribute their unique creativity toward making the world a better place.
John Mackey
Let us not be afraid to climb higher.
John Mackey
The heroic business is motivated by the desire to change the world, not necessarily through service to others or through discovery and the pursuit of truth, or through the quest for perfection, but through the powerful promethean desire to really change things – to truly make the world better, to solve insoluble problems, to do the really courageous thing even when it is very risky, and to achieve what others say is impossible.
John Mackey
[On Whole Foods Market Team Leaders] The team leader at every store can spend up to $100,000 a year without asking for permission. We want them to try different things, and the things that are successful we’ll study and copy and improve on.
John Mackey
Business must view people not as resources but as sources.
John Mackey
When we forgive others we free ourselves from the past and allow our hearts to be fully in the present moment…
John Mackey
The insight that has personally helped me the most when dealing with fear has been to understand that fear is primarily a creation of the mind. I create it in my mind – it doesn’t really exist outside the mind. I can dissolve it there as well.
John Mackey
Since death is real and inevitable for all of us, how then should we live our lives? For me the answer to this question has been clear since I was young: We should commit ourselves to following our hearts and doing what we most love and what we most want to do in life.
John Mackey
While [Milton] Friedman believes that taking care of customers, employees, and business philanthropy are means to the end of increasing investor profits, I take the exact opposite view: Making high profits is the means to the end of fulfilling Whole Foods’ core business mission. We want to improve the health and well-being of everyone on the planet through higher-quality foods and better nutrition, and we can’t fulfill this mission unless we are highly profitable. Just as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don’t live to eat, and neither must businesses live just to make profits.
John Mackey
Business is based on cooperation and voluntary exchange. People trade voluntarily for mutual gain. No one is forced to trade with a business.
John Mackey
Business can be a wonderful vehicle for both personal and organizational learning and growth.
John Mackey
Life is short and… we are simply passing through here. We cannot stay. It is therefore essential that we find guides whom we can trust and who can help us discover and realize our higher purposes in life before it is too late.
John Mackey
Entrepreneurs are the true heroes in a free-enterprise economy, driving progress in business, society and the world. They solve problems by creatively envisioning different ways the world could and should be.
John Mackey
Bill Gates did not start Microsoft with the goal of becoming the richest man in the world. He saw the potential of computers to transform our lives and was on fire to create software that would make them so useful that eventually all of us would own one. He followed his passion and, in the process became the richest man in the world – but that was the outcome, not his goal or purpose.
John Mackey
There is no more powerful source of creative energy in the world than a turned-on, empowered human being.
John Mackey
Nothing is ever the same once you discover your true purpose, your calling.
John Mackey
Clarity of purpose… leads to bolder decisions.
John Mackey
Everyone in our executive leadership team (the seven top executives) is paid exactly the same salary, bonus, and stock options. There is a great solidarity and a high degree of trust within the group, and we want that to continue.
John Mackey
We know that when our team members are healthy, they have more energy to do their jobs and give better service to our customers, and the company, in turn, needs to spend less money on their health care.
John Mackey
A conscious business knows that treating its people well is the right thing to do; it does not need to be coerced into doing so.
John Mackey
We’re naturally attracted to people who embody the qualities, ideals, and character virtues we most want to realize within ourselves.
John Mackey
To learn and grow, one must take chances and be willing to make mistakes.
John Mackey
Whole Foods Market’s strongest competitive advantage is that we are an innovative, creative company in an industry that is not particularly innovative.
John Mackey
Imagine the impact if every single person working for a company were able to be a creator and innovator.
John Mackey
One of the pivotal events in Whole Foods Market’s history occurred over thirty years ago on Memorial Day in 1981, when we had only one store. We had been in business for only about eight months as Whole Foods… But that day, Austin experience its worst flood in seventy years… Our store was eight feet underwater. All the equipment and inventory in the store were destroyed; our losses were approximately $400,000. The flood basically wiped us out. We had no savings, no insurance, and no warehoused inventory. There was no way for us to recover with our own resources; we were financially bankrupt.
John Mackey
When the founders and team members came to the store the day after the flood and saw the devastation, many of us had tears in our eyes… As we despondently started trying to salvage what we could, a wonderful, completely unexpected thing happened: dozens of our customers and neighbors started showing up at the store. Since it was Memorial Day, many had the day off and had come in their working clothes, bringing buckets and mops and whatever else they thought might be useful. They said to us, in effect, ‘Come on, guys; let’s get to work. Let’s clean it up and get this place back on its feet. We’re not going to let this store die. Stop moping and start mopping.’ You can imagine the galvanizing effect this had on us…
John Mackey
[After being devastated by a flood in their early days] We felt so loved by our customers that we were determined to open again.
We were bankrupt when that flood occurred and couldn’t make payroll, so many of our team members worked for free. Of course, we paid them back when we reopened for business, but there was no assurance that we were really going to be able to reopen… Reopen we did, a mere twenty eight days after the flood.
John Mackey
It is humbling now to think about what would have happened if all of our stakeholders hadn’t cared so much about our company then. Without a doubt, Whole Foods Market would have ceased to exist. A company that today has over $11 billion in sales annually would have died in its first year if our stakeholders hadn’t loved and cared about us – and they wouldn’t have loved and cared for us had we not been the kind of business we were.
John Mackey
How many ‘normal’ businesses would attract a volunteer army of customers and suppliers to help them in their hour of need?
John Mackey
I spent my late teens and early 20s trying to discover the meaning and purpose of my own life.
John Mackey
Before I started my business career, I serially attended two different universities, the University of Texas at Austin and Trinity in San Antonio, where I accumulated about 120 hours of various electives, majoring in philosophy and religion. After dropping out of school for the sixth and final time in 1977, I had earned no degree. During my tour of duty in higher education, I never took a single business class. I am convinced now that this gap in my formal education actually worked to my advantage in the business world.
John Mackey
I studied eastern philosophy and religion in college and on my own, and still practice both yoga and medication. I studied ecology and developed a strong commitment to living lightly on the planet. I was drawn to the concepts of organic farming and natural foods early on.
John Mackey
I chose a vegetarian lifestyle (I am currently a near vegan – only deviating by eating eggs from my own chickens), lived in communal housing, and grew my hair and beard long. I was, and still am, one of those crunchy-granola types.
John Mackey
My initial business, a small natural foods market called Safer Way, was located in a charming, rickety Victorian house in central Austin. I started Safer Way… using $45,000 in initial capital that we raised from friends and family for the venture… I continued to have a great time running Whole Foods Market, the business that Safer Way evolved into, over the last 28 years.
John Mackey
I believed that ‘profit’ was a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole. However, going into business as an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business turned out to be wrong!
John Mackey
The most important thing I learned about business in my first year was that business was not based on exploitation or coercion at all. Instead I realized that business is based on voluntary exchange.
John Mackey
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