John Mackey opens up to founder Chris Benguhe in a conversation that covers the essence of conscious capitalism and the interconnection between personal and business life.

[From the Insider vault: a look back at an interview with John Mackey in May 2024.]

Chris Benguhe: I love how you talk about responsibility there, and we just don’t hear that enough, I think. We certainly hear from you a lot in a lot of the talking and writing that you’ve done. But the idea of the responsibility of entrepreneurs or the responsibility of businesspeople and founders — and you connect it to so many things in this book, your family and the other people that are invested. But again, it’s all connected to this whole life story that you tell, and you talk about so much of how business and life is intertwined. You talk about your relationships. There’s an amazing juxtaposition in this book between the relationships that you were having — the romantic relationships at the time — and the company and the growth, and how those are interrelated. I think the big takeaway of that is there’s no way to separate that personal life and that personal world from your business life and your business world.

John Mackey: I want to underscore that, Chris, because there’s a tendency for people to create these separations between … It’s like, well, that’s the business part and this is the personal part, and it’s like, hello, they’re both the life part or alive, and you can’t separate those two. It took me a while before I made the decision [that] I’m not going to have another girlfriend that works for the company. I did it three times, and all three times I had bad breakups.

When I met Deborah, she had nothing to do whatsoever at Whole Foods except shop there. I didn’t meet her shopping there. I met her [on] a blind date. She didn’t work there. That’s the important thing. Of course, it was a different era back then. I would advise people today to not ever date anybody that works for the company, because the accusations that can be made to you in the breakups, particularly if you’re male, can be completely ruin your life.

But that was a different era and different time. It was possible to have a workplace romance and not worry that you’re going to get fired, your reputation was going to be destroyed, and you’ll never get another job. Yeah, the work and the personal family — it’s what it means to be a human being.

Chris Benguhe: That’s really a wonderful segue into one of the last things I wanted to talk to you about today, which is that whole connection — the conscious capitalism that you then wrote a book about in detail. The idea of this very responsible perspective on being a founder, of being a businessperson, being a leader, I think, is a natural extension of [the idea] that whole life and work are inexorably connected.

Let me just say thank you, first of all for how you did that and what you did, because that was the philosophical underpinnings of the whole idea of this network that we’ve created of social capital; and finding the actual proof, the capital that comes from being a conscious capitalist. It’s extraordinary. Looking back now — and it’s been a few years since you coined that term and since you wrote that book — I see a world in the CEOs that we interview and we find more and more every day that adhere to those ethical principles of trying to make the world a better place with capitalism.

I see every day how that is exploding and growing and creating so much opportunity out there. But yet, I hear from so many people how, “Oh, no. Business is terrible. The majority of businesspeople don’t operate that way. Capitalism is bad.” You’re not in that category or group that believes that. Do you believe that capitalism and business is and can continue to make the world a better place? Why do you believe that?

John Mackey: Well, first, I don’t make this distinction between good capitalism and bad capitalism or conscious capitalism and non-conscious capitalism. I think of it as more on a continuum. I think capitalism … Not saying there are not bad actors in business. There are bad actors in business. There are evil people in business, but there are evil people that are doctors, and there are evil people that are in government, and there are evil people that are lawyers. I don’t think there are more evil people in business than there are in other professions.

The amazing thing about businesses is that whether you’re conscious of the fact that stakeholders exist or not is irrelevant. They do exist because you’re in this business ecosystem that has customers, has employees, has suppliers, has investors within communities that we exist in and with the larger environment that we’re all part of. Whether you like it or not, we’re all connected or the interdependencies are there. The wonderful thing about any type of business is that it has to ultimately create value for its customers.

By doing that, it is, arguably … You can find exceptions to this, that some businesses make products that harm people, but they are providing things that people want, even things that are bad for them. Sugar may not be good for you, but most people do eat it. You can argue that their market’s giving people what they want.

But not to get us too far afield on that one, I do just want to say that business has to satisfy customers. It has to create value for people or it fails. And then it usually has to do that, sometimes single proprietorships where some guy’s just working by himself. But usually if a business has any scale to it, it has employees. So you’re providing jobs for people and then they get paid money, and they help satisfy customers. And then the money that those employees get, they can buy houses, they have families, and it ripples out.

And then the suppliers that are trading with the business, when you trade with those suppliers, they’re not forced to trade. Just like no one’s forced to work for you. They do it voluntarily because they think it’s in their best interest. So, the ripple effects of business trading with whatever it be — paper supply companies, a gas company, all that, whatever. If you’re a food retailer like Whole Foods Market, then you’re not growing all your food and manufacturing it. You have a network, in Whole Foods’ case, of literally tens of thousands suppliers around the world that are partnering with you for mutual gain. And then you have these communities that you’re providing taxes for, you’re making donations to that you’re part of, and you provide jobs in those communities that you’re part of. So, you have these community impacts.

My point is that as business does all of these things — as it creates value for customers, as it provides job for its employees, as it trades with suppliers, as it creates profits for investors — that in a sense can compound over time, you’re creating wealth, which is not to be underestimated.

It’s one of the most important things business does: create prosperity and wealth. And then where do governments get their money? Ultimately, it all comes from business. Ultimately, because if you’re taxing people, where do they get their money? They got it from jobs. So, business makes the world go ’round. Capitalism is inherently good because it … If you do it consciously, you can make it a lot better. You can make it as good as business is. I think it is inherently good, and I think capitalism is good. When we’re conscious capitalists, when we understand these interdependencies, these connections, and we try to act in a very ethical, caring way towards all of our stakeholders so that they all flourish, business can do even more good. If it’s consciously philanthropic and if it’s involved in its communities to try to help improve its communities that it’s part of, then business is this powerful force for good in the world.

If you think about it, if you look at the objective facts, business is instrumental to improving our world. Most of the judgments about business are ultimately judgments about people, that people want things that they shouldn’t want. If you think about pornography, you say, “Well, that’s a bad industry.” Except that again, if people didn’t want pornography, it wouldn’t be produced. Same thing could be said about cigarettes and tobacco or almost any of the vices. Business is often judged for being evil because it produces these things, but yet it’s producing it because people continue to buy them. So, the judgment about business is really a judgment about people’s preferences.

Chris Benguhe: Yeah, yeah. And you’re right.

John Mackey: That might alone …

Chris Benguhe: You’re right that …

John Mackey: … improve it. Yeah. That is an awesome conversation that we could have another time for about half an hour, and I really actually like that idea. I think we may have to have you back to have that one, because that would be great. I would enjoy it. I’ve enjoyed our conversation today, Chris.

Chris Benguhe: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Likewise. Thank you so much. I just want to wrap up real quickly, then, by letting people know, what are you doing now? What’s John Mackey doing now?

John Mackey: I’ve co-founded another business with some people from Whole Foods that are about my age that are also retired from Whole Foods, including Walter Robb and Glenda Flanagan and Jim Sud, who were key executives at Whole Foods for a number of years, Betsy Foster, and it’s called Love.Life. You can find our website at www.love.life. There’s no .com, just love.life.

I’m particularly excited because it’s really what we’re going to be opening up are these one-stop holistic health centers. The first one we’re opening up is going to be in the L.A. area, July 9th. We’ve almost got it built out now. July 9th, it opens up, and it’s in an old Best Buy in El Segundo, California, in the L.A. area, south of the airport in the beach cities area. It’s going to have a healthy restaurant. It’s going to have a fitness center, a gym, yoga, Pilates. It’s going to have a spa. All types of recovery modalities that’ll be there.

We have three pickleball courts, and we’ve got a medical center. We’re trying to re-envision what doctors do because most of the time people go see a doctor when something’s wrong, when they’re sick, right?

Chris Benguhe: Mm-hmm.

John Mackey: Or something’s failing. Our vision is that the doctor … We now have the testing, the assessments and the technology that we can get somebody to come in and go through our programs. We can give them a report card of where they are on the health continuum. We’re all on a health continuum. Once you understand your baseline, then you can work with a doctor and a wellness coach to develop an individualized precision plan for you, personally, that will help you take your health and wellness to a higher level. You can become healthier. It’s inevitable you’re going to die, but it’s not inevitable that you have to be diseased and have a long portion of your life in chronic illness such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease. Things like these are really preventable and, in many cases, reversible diseases.

Our vision is that the doctor’s real job is to keep people from getting sick, to keep people from needing a doctor. That’s the vision. We think over time, we’ll disrupt. The goal is in the next 20 years for people to be thinking about doctors in a completely different way. I’m very excited about it. We have some great doctors that we’re working with in El Segundo.

I’ll tell you something, Chris. About the first 20 years Whole Foods Market existed, people would come into our stores for the first time and they’d never been in a store like that. People don’t realize what grocery supermarkets were like 30 or 40 years ago is totally different than they are today because so many of them have changed because of Whole Foods.

But people would say, “I’ve never been in a grocery store like this. I’ve been looking for a store like this my whole life, and now I’ve just discovered it.” When they come into Love.Life for the first time, people are going to look around and they’re walking around and they’ll turn around and say, “How come nobody’s done this before? This is such a terrific idea. I want to be part of this. This is exciting.” So, July 9th. I don’t know. Where do you live?

Chris Benguhe: I’m in Phoenix, which I’m right down the road, so I might have to come by and say, “Hi.”

John Mackey: Yeah, don’t come on July 9th because … But let me know when you’re coming, and I’ll give you a personal tour. I’ll make sure I’m in L.A. when you visit.

Chris Benguhe: Okay. That sounds like a very exciting thing to do, and we definitely want to give some great notoriety to that. Our most-read article of the year was on well-being as it relates to business and businesses that helped to improve the well-being of their customers or employees, so on and so forth; people in the community. It’s on everybody’s mind. I am sure that with you being in that field now and doing what you’re doing with this new company that you will revolutionize that the way you did the retail grocery market as well.

John Mackey: What’s going to happen is we’re going to get a lot of imitators because, again, people are going to be excited by what they see. One of the Whole Foods’ impacts was it just influenced others. Not only did we have our own customers and our own very successful business, but other businesses copied what we did. That’s going to happen with Love.Life, probably.

We live in a world today where people see new things quicker than they used to because of smartphones and the internet. I’m pretty sure people are going to be coming in with their cameras. Love.Life is going to … Our location will be a secret about 15 minutes after we open up.

Chris Benguhe: Well, I can’t wait to see that and to hear about it more. So, we’ll definitely have to have you back to talk about that as well, as soon as that’s up and running, because we want to hear all the exciting …

John Mackey: Chris, it sounds like you have a great organization, so let me congratulate you on what you’re doing. It sounds like you’re doing …

Chris Benguhe: Thank you.

John Mackey: … a lot of good. You’re doing a lot of good in the world, and I appreciate that. Thank you.

Chris Benguhe: Thank you very much. Like I said, you’re a big part of why and how we did this. So, I look forward to a long relationship with you and talking to you more about all kinds of things in the future.

Everybody out there, make sure you go and read this book, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism. You’ll know John Mackey in a way that you never have before, and you will like him even more because of it.

John Mackey: I hope so.

Chris Benguhe: Thank you, John. Thank you, John, very much. I really appreciate you taking the time.

John Mackey: Thank you, Chris. I look forward to our next conversation.

Chris Benguhe: Absolutely. Bye-bye.

John Mackey: Okay. Bye-bye.

(Part I was published September 25, 2025.)

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