A few months ago I got to spend seven hours over two days with John Mackie, the founder of Whole Foods.

And it was during one of our conversations that John Mackie told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about the podcast.

By the time we had met he'd already

listened to over a hundred episodes and he said that if founders had existed when he

was younger whole foods would still be an independent company that since the

podcast and all of history's greatest entrepreneurs constantly

emphasize the importance of controlling expenses he would have put more of a priority on

it especially during good times it is natural for a company and for human nature to not

watch their costs as closely because everything else is going so well.

The importance of that idea was noticed over 150 years ago by Andrew Carnegie.

He would go around repeating this mantra.

He would say profits and prices were

cyclical subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace.

Costs, however, could be strictly controlled and any savings achieved in costs

were permanent.

This is something I was talking about with my friend Eric,

who's the co-founder and CEO of RAMP.

RAMP is now a partner of this podcast.

I've gotten to know all the co-founders of RAMP and have spent a ton of time with them over the last year or two.

They all listen to the podcast and they picked up on the fact that the main theme from the

podcast is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend.

And how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage.

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