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
The great thing about a culture is that once you really get it going, it evolves on its own. It's self-organizing. It's dynamic. It just feeds on itself.
I kind of have this sense of mission now when we talk about success: I'd really like Whole Foods to contribute to the healing of America, and the success of that may be measured in decades rather than in months, but I think we're on the way to doing it.
I like games that are complex - the deeper you get into the game, the more there is to learn.
Human beings are made up of many different values, and sometimes those values are in tension with each other.
I always like to say that our brand or our philosophy has always been kind of this marriage between the 'food as indulgence,' and it's also been about 'food as health,' that food is vitality.
The right actions undertaken for the right reasons generally lead to good outcomes over time.
Free enterprise capitalism has been the most powerful creative system of social cooperation and human progress ever conceived, but its perception and its role in society have been distorted.
I love my cooking tools because I enjoy cooking - a Vitamix for smoothies and a rice cooker for steel-cut oats. I travel with a small rice cooker. I soak oats overnight, and when I get up, I just turn the rice cooker on, and it cooks the oats perfectly every time.
Whole Foods has a good health care plan.
Whole Foods Market tries to embody all of the principles of conscious capitalism all the time, but like any person or company, we sometimes fall short.
We knew it was going to be a market, and we knew it was a food market. Well, what kind of food market? It's kind of natural foods, kind of organic foods. So, we eventually settled on Whole Foods Market.
We've always tried to be good citizens in the communities that we do business in.
We believe that 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.
When I'm hiring leaders, I pay a lot of attention to what their peers and what people who report to them say about them. We want people who relate well with their peers and cooperate in an exchange of information rather than being overly competitive.