John Mackie, the founder of Whole Foods. It's my favorite place to shop for food or at least order from Insta Kart from. It's such a great story.

This guy was a young hippieish sort of guy living in a commune working in a food co-op and he says hey I could do this and he starts

his first store is called a safer way it's kind of making fun of Safeway. And, you know, gradually this goat, you know,

turns into the mega empire we know as Whole Food stores,

which eventually was bought by Amazon, and John was at Amazon for a while.

And anyway, he writes this book. It's a great book. It tells the story, the ups and downs of being

an entrepreneur, and, but also here's the interesting thing.

Despite this kind of almost hippieish sort of background, he becomes an arch capitalist along the way because he understands that basically

innovation comes from the type of competition that capitalism inspires and and I don't know, we have a great talk about all this stuff,

but also we talk about how personally, you know, he's evolved

through the decades and he gives me some really good advice that I appreciate

toward towards the end so here's John Mackie the whole story adventures in love life and capitalism story, Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism. your show.

This is the James Altager show. I think the last time we spoke you were still at Amazon and enjoying it.

Well I just retired a little over a year and a half ago now.

And how are you enjoying that?

I'm, you know, I enjoy being because I started another company, right?

So I'm still working, but I'm not working as hard as I used to work and I'm in startup

mode so I don't have a big bureaucracy. I'm an entrepreneur so it's I'm in the

fun creative side. I'm not managing a big business. I'm creating a new one and that's so I'm having fun. It's a blast.

When you've you know just reading in in in the book when you first started Whole Foods or safer way the original name or the first name

There's that enthusiasm where you haven't quite made the money yet, but I get this sense you're feeling like this is going to be successful.

Like your first store on Lamar was good and growing and you were making money and you finally started taking a salary.

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