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>> you're watching c-span2 your unfiltered view of government. c-span2 was created by america's cable television company and today we are brought to you by these television companies who provide c-span2 viewers as a public service. >> good afternoon everyone i'm president of the american enterprise institute and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this afternoon's conversation with john mackey. john is the cofounder and ceo of whole foods market and the cofounder of the nonprofit conscious capitalism and he is here today to talk about his new book "conscious leadership" elevating humanity through business. i can't think of a better guess to have on thanks giving week then you and it's a pleasure to have you. welcome to our discussion this afternoon. >> thank you, robert. thank you for having me on the show. >> as i read your book and i loved your book and i recommend the book because you know, i'm now almost 18 months into my term as ceo of aei and while a

been a ceo in my previous businesses it's always good to be reminded of what makes effective leadership work in any institution of any size. give a lot of great lessons about how to be a good leader and one has to do with having a purpose and leading with love and another has to do with innovation and integrity but i want to ask you of all these lessons and of all these important what is the most important? which do you thank you rely on as you go to attributes that have made you so successful? >> the first chapter in the book is called put purpose first. i guess i better put it first. [laughter] yeah, right. the purpose part is important because you seem to address and want you to address for our listeners why you think it is true that even that for-profit

firms that are out to make money and develop a profit and pay shareholders they are more successful when they see a higher purpose. give us a sense of that? >> this is the single biggest misunderstanding about business and capitalism. i think there is until we get this corrected capital will always be sustained and criticized and attacked. it will be attacked for his motivations because his motivations are seen as impure and of course business has to make money and business does not make money, it will fail but that doesn't mean that's its purpose to make money. i mean, a metaphor or a good way to explain it is my body has to produce red blood cells and if i stop producing red blood cells i will die but just because i have to make red blood cells does not mean the purpose of my life is

to produce red blood cells. it is a necessary condition but doesn't define who i am. similarly, business has to make money or it fails but business is really about creating value for other people and that's why it exists and that's why it exists to create value for other people and if it does a good job creating good value and products and services that its customers want and the business will flourish and will make money for its investors but i think because business gets put in this narrow box that it is all about money and all about making money and i mean that so odd if you think about it because if you ask with the purpose of the doctor is, doctors make a lot of money in our society but i don't think they would say the doctor to make as much money as possible and even if that is true that's not be ethics that stand behind medicine. the ethics behind medicine are to heal people and teachers educate and architects design

buildings, engineers construct things, everyone of these professions refers back to some type of value creation and they are doing in the world to serve other people. business is the greatest value created in the world by far and so we should be talking about in terms of the value creation for its customers and the jobs it creates for its employees and the residual or tangential effects when it trades with suppliers and they are benefiting and prospering as a result. and it creates opportunities for investors in the large opportunities for all these constituencies and stakeholders we don't do ourselves a service by simply trying to explain business and its purpose is making as much money as possible and i think we lose the argument as soon as we say that for most people. >> in your business you start and you had a very straightforward purpose which

was i think i understand to bring better quality, wholesome natural foods to people to make a purchase and that's a great purpose and you accomplish that. do you feel as if you led to more people eating better, more healthy, isn't that something to be proud of? >> absolutely. our stated purpose today and let me explain a couple things first when i started a business with my girlfriend and ii was 24 and she was 20 and we were just couple of kids really and yeah, we do not have a stated higher purpose. we were just passionate about natural and organic foods and selling it to other people. if you ask me what the higher purpose of whole foods was back in 1978 i would have said yeah, we just want to sell healthy food to people and earn a living and have fun doing it.

guess what, those all things still exist at whole foods and the fun part is how it went in 2020 with covid but that's part of who we are and our purpose has a deep end and the last 42 years. our stated officials stated purpose now is to nourish people on the planet and that has different depth to that by how you define nourish and how you define people and how you define planets and they all have different layers to them. i do think every business that you admire the most has a higher purpose and i have known hundreds of entrepreneurs in my lifetime, hundreds and very, very few of them start their business just to get rich but sure, they want to make money and they would like to get rich but mostly they are passionate about something and if you read the biographies of people like steve jobs and the bill gates, elon musk, jeff baeza knows these guys were passionate about

something and something they wanted to create and so excited that they just had to get going on it and they made a lot of money because they created value for other people. >> now, when you tell the story of purpose in getting the message of the purpose of a company or institution or organization down throughout to every member and you tell a story i had never heard of and i think to myself a little bit of a story about the administration and when president kennedy was touring the space center he talked to a custodian who was mopping the floor and he said what are you doing and he said i'm helping to get a man on the moon. i wanted to ask you -- i've struggled with this at aei, how do you get everyone in the building to be united behind one purpose? how do you get that message out? how do you make that, you refer to your people who work at whole foods, how do you do that?

>> good question, robert. it is not easy. i think the first thing is the leadership has to embody the purpose themselves. if you are not living -- people pay so much attention to what you do and how you show up in the world and what you say and in fact, people and we have a very well tuned for hypocrisy and witnessed the governors full pot in california or nancy policies faux pas in the spots when we see hypocrisy we are always looking to call me a hypocrite and to see how i might make so it's important that i personally and other leaders embody the higher purpose of whole foods but you have to walk the talk or it's just talk. that being said, in a company like whole foods we have 100,000 people so we are hitting turnover and continued growth and adding on ten or 20000 team members every year and so how do

you keep the purpose and institutionalize it and the only way you can do it is you have to talk about or be part of the orientation and has to be something that you talk about all the time and important that the leaders reference what they are doing back to what the higher purpose of the organization is and you show up at all the time and talk about it all the time and because you have new people coming in all the time you can never take it for granted. when you have a very resilient powerful culture the culture does a lot of the work for you because other people that are there that have already internalized the values and purpose of the organization they will spread and they act like they're in immune system for organization. particularly an organization that has been around a long time and they have a culture based on their values and purpose and if it's a good, strong culture then you can expect the organization to do its work and getting people converted over pretty

don't have good culture or one that has hypocrisy and people don't think you're living up to it then it won't be effective. the purpose is something that you can never -- i'll give you an analogy right now. i have no doubt in my mind that the united states has a higher purpose. it has been and it's there in the declaration of independence and it is they are in our bill of rights and yet you know, it's not being taught in the is being forgotten. a lot of the country no longer resonates with what the founding purpose of america is in so we done a very poor job of continuing to communicate the higher purpose of the united states. >> i completely agree with that. we cannot, we have a great scholar who wrote during patriotism. you have to teach those values into talk about them all the time and if people recognize what is the source of our success as a country and it is in our founding documents.

give a whole unit of ai focused on that and we want to do more on college campuses and either with the younger students. communicate, communicate, communicate is exactly right from my perspective and works for me but it is a problem as a country. >> robert, the reason i love aei and contribute to aei is because of that very thing. >> i want to ask about leading with [inaudible] and you have a way in which you encourage positive collaboration and positive feedback from one worker to another and could you tell a little bit about that i think about practice meeting where you conclude by saying, tell us about that. >> sure, first i will say that love is oftentimes not associated with corporations which in fact are generally seen as heartless money grabbers. it is part of their image problem they have the world and

due to the metaphors we have about business as being hypercompetitive. we use war metaphors to expand business, darwinian metaphors to expand business and we use sports metaphors to explain business and when you are at work there's not much place for love so they check out of the door and say we have a thanksgiving, express love their or around christmas time but check it at the door when you come to work because we are at war and we've got to win and that is unfortunate because love is a very, very, it is not weak which is what many people associated with. it's not just a feminine virtue but also a masculine virtue and love is the glue that holds an organization together. i say if you give to things to people then they will love your organization and they stay with it decade after decade and whole foods has very low turnover zone of the first thing that went unnoticed is people have worked here more than 20 years and amazon has and the reason why is

because if you give people purpose and you give people a sense that they are cared about and loved then that is what people want and they want purpose and love. if you can meet both of those desires and needs then you will have a great organization. appreciate is one way you can release love and organization. this is something whole foods does and it's simple that if you have nothing else of the stock, remember this one thing. you will release love in your organization so what whole foods does is when we have a meeting we wrap it up by doing voluntary appreciations and they are not mandatory or no one is to do it but what happens is you do an authentic appreciation of someone else and you can't do an authentic appreciation without opening your hearts. people know the difference when somebody is just saying

something and when they are actually feeling that and expressing it from their hearts. when you have an authentic appreciation you will open your heart and love will throw from you and others will pick up on that. in addition it's very hard to stay in judgment of someone who has just given authentic appreciation to you. if tom and if i thought tom was a dark and tom is they are saying how much he appreciates of the things i do and is doing it in an authentic way then i will not just -- then he's not just sucking up to me that i will rethink who tom is and look at him with fresh eyes. appreciation has become such a big deal at whole foods that with my leadership and with our cedar senior leadership group a couple of years ago we were spending so much time doing appreciation at the end of the meeting that we had to set rules we had to limit the number of appreciations and said look, you can't appreciate everybody on the team here.

we will limit you to three appreciations and then that still took too long so then we said we've got one appreciation and make accounts and if you have other appreciations good but do them outside of this meeting and so we could get our appreciations with one down to about 30 minutes which is probably a reasonable amount of time. try it, it's very powerful and i've had other people and other organizations and other entre nous worse and ceo said we started doing appreciations are being changed after that. >> you mentioned a couple times in our conversation already the fact that you guys have merged with amazon and there has been this quite remarkable coming together of two iconic american companies and i want you to tell us about that and how that's going on how their bent intentions and also want to point out that you have another story about how jeff besos and i did not know this either wear when he had meetings he had an

empty chair for the customer and they're always represented and do i have that right? tell us about how the amazon whole foods market merger. >> empty chair is part of the amazon story whether they still actively do that or not, i'm not sure but it's part of the amazon mythology and probably based on real stuff that happened. one way to think about a merger between two large companies and whole foods was a fortune see hundred company when amazon bought us that it's a little bit like a marriage and i say that because you are coming together voluntarily for mutual gain and benefits and hopefully because you admired the other person and not acting up and i use the medical whirlwind romance and i told that story but at the same

time i won't retell that story but when you get married and most of the people know what i'm talking about if you will get married you will change. that's just inevitable because the other person will influence you and you will gradually become and let me move over to get this son off my face. there we go. you will gradually change and amazon has had a big impact on whole foods regarding the change but on the other hand have a very resilient culture and always say in a healthy marriage there is a me, there is a you and there is in us. they all three have to be healthy so whole foods -- we have to stay whole foods and we have to follow a higher purpose and we have to fulfill our core values and we have to be whole foods. we have to have the unique special culture. amazon has largely respected that.

now our culture is evolving but not because amazon is cramming things down our throat but because we are adopting a certain amazonian processes that are influence us. one is ample, whole foods tends to make previously their merger we would be more intuitive in our decision-making and amazon is very, very data-driven in their decision-making process. all lots of times we talk to amazon and we give our opinions and our theories and they would say show us the data. we will not make the decision unless you show us the data. they have a practice where you write up called a six pager and cement your arguments with data supporting them and if you do a good job of that then you'll get the decision that you want. if you don't do a good job then you will get or be sent back to the drawing board or told know so whole foods has begun to think more that way and more data-driven in our decision-making and that is a positive thing for us and we still have our intuition and our

entre nous real take on things but we are more data-driven. how is the merger going and it's going pretty well because whole foods is evolving, amazon thanks long-term and we are able to make three an hour working on our fourth price reduction, something our company badly needed to do premerger and amazon batted cool technology and i go through the book and talk about how it has been a win for every stakeholder and went for our customers to lower prices and a win for our team members, amazon pretty soon after the merger increased starting pay to $15 an hour which basically because you had a increase everyone else's pay because you had to level every one up and that was expensive. we counted the cost to amazon and said for sure it will cost $150 million and are you sure you want to do that and they did and of course that was great for morale and team members loved it and 85 or 90000 people, 85000 of

them got a raise in pay and they were pretty excited about that. when for our team members and a win for our suppliers and a lot of our suppliers got them selling to amazon that were not selling before so that's a good thing for them. greater distribution. a win for our investors. from the time we began talking to amazon to when the deal closed they got for billion-dollar increase in evaluation so that was a win for them. i think a win for all the community aspects of it as well and hopefully philanthropy and the things we're doing and they have supported that not trying to cramp that at all and added additional donations in some cases. win, win, win, very good. >> do you worry just generally not ingest your situation but generally about the negative or potential negative impact by large sizes that make it harder to lead the way you want to lead? >> i state the biggest challenge

as a result of this murder has been -- amazon has probably one or two or three or top three for sure companies in the world that gets scrutinized and everything they do is under a microscope. whole foods we were big but now everything we do is under the microscope and that's pretty bizarre and we've also got to think about anything we say or do we don't want that to negatively impact amazon and of course amazon doesn't want but what is interesting is that i think i was talking to the guy that i report to at amazon said you got to use might metaphor a marriage and yet, when you married into this family you know, you got in-laws now and yeah, some of them are and some people don't like the in-laws too much and you have to live with that because you're part of the family now. i think there was a very clever way of putting it that when

people are mad at amazon and they are mad at whole foods and vice versa. that's different being under the microscope so closely all the time. i have to be guarded to a little bit about what i say in an interview like this because somebody will here somewhere in the media could do a headline out of this so i got to be careful and i don't want headlines showing appear. >> well, you speak freely with us. [laughter] but i understand. >> in the book you have an appendix about who you called cultural intelligence in this now we shift a little bit from your company and we will come back to your company and leadership of companies but i didn't want to ask about this in an effort to what is your view of where we are as a country? you talk about three kinds of cultural intelligence, traditional, modern and then the progressives and that is the old

very focused on faith and church in modern is the liberals or liberal america that is open society believes in science and change and then progressive has a kind of, it's a step further but also a mild authoritarian bent and then he talked about post- progressive culture and could you just tell us about what that is and because it looks to be a little bit like the divide is something that gets us pass the division that are playing america? maybe i'm wrong. >> no, you're right. this is a good framework and those of you interested in following up we have an appendix to the very end of the book that goes into some detail about this and chances are the author is right in that book. [crowd boos] look like you are laying the seed for something bigger. >> yeah, we've got a book they were talking about called conscious america and that dives deeper.

to understand in the united states if you think about in terms of worldviews and there are three dominant worldviews in america and the first one is more traditional worldview which is based on faith, family and the country and it's got traditional values about religion, about family, about harkens back to the constitution and the declaration of independence. >> very ai. were comfortable in that world. >> and the heroes you might get in traditionalist world would be like ronald reagan and winston churchill and william buckley and people like that. the modernist worldview is and so traditional worldview would have a lot more believe in sort of sweetening the deal through revelation and where is the

modernist is much more scientific and more the enlightenment of progress through science, through reason, through capitalism and if you think about -- we estimate that about 30% of the population of the united states is traditional and that is where they are anchored in about 50% is anchored in modernism so some of the examples are modernist would be thomas jefferson, ben franklin, madison, john f. kennedy, einstein, edison, milton freedman in some ways is an architect archetype modernist and guys like bill gates is another strong modernist. the progressives which makes up about 20% of the preparation right now that we estimate so each of these comes out as the worldview evolves they partly

reject the worldview that became before them so modernism rejected faith. a rejected religion largely to so many modernists or atheists believe and reason and science and don't believe in scripture or revelation and things like that. part of them there's a rejection of what comes before but until progressivism arose you had this alignment between traditionalists, ethics and modern science that drove america for many, many decades and so progressives came along and then the new came about because their flaws are failures in the previous worldviews. modernism did not completely realize so some of the things progressivism comes out of his realizing the limitations of modernity and so the

environmental movement has come out of that because modernism does produce economic progress and there are externalities that come in out of that can negatively impact the environment and so people that are progressive tend to have environmental abuse. we know we have this year but in the last few years we've had antiracism which is very progressive and the whole woke ideology is a progressive mindset and basically arguing that america inconsistent with its founding values and equality of all and that we have not done enough good enough job in overcoming racism and having inclusive video and diversity so that's been obviously in the media a lot but of course you know, i see that we made progress in america but we still have problems so that helps

motivate it. i say the progressive view is also pretty globalist in the sense that it is very concerned about inequality, suffering by any place in the world really and so there is a strong anti- modernist streak to progressivism as well. a distrust of science except when it serves their ideology and a mistrust of progress because they -- >> they don't like capitalism. >> that's right. it's a rejection of capitalism and so there is an element of socialism and anti- modernist streak to it. those are the three. we've got 30% traditional, 50% modernist and about 30% progressives. progressives because they dominate academia, hollywood and

the media punch way above their weight class in terms of actual numbers. but that is the cultural war. these worldviews are struggling with each other so how will be moved past it? the authors argue that we have to go post- progressive and the essence of post- progressivism is to recognize that all three of these worldviews have dignities and disasters and they are good things about them and bad things about them and what we have to do is honor the good things in each of these worldviews so for example, we have to recognize that a lot of the progressives insights are important and they shouldn't go away but we can't throw off capitalism and replace it with socialism or it would be a disaster. socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years and 42 failures. it doesn't work the wrong way. we have to keep capitalism and i would argue we need conscious capitalism.

we need "conscious leadership" which is capitalism but done in a much more conscious way, taking into account higher purpose, stakeholders, human flourishing and done in a conscious way. so we need to take the best of all these worldviews and make sure the very bad things that we can recognize bad things so bad things that might be the disasters and might be in a traditional worldview are racism and bigotry and sexism and homophobia and that could be accusation and sometimes of traditional values. modernists can recognize that sometimes can be captured by special interests that it can be indifferent and elitist and can be uncaring and so to speak about -- >> materialistic. >> that's right, and then we look at the disasters in progressivism and time

modernism, reverse patriotism so we are no longer patriotic but it's the worst country that's ever existed and. >> very authoritarian. >> is, and be self-righteous and skulking and telling everyone that criticizing them and canceling people out that have different views and we clearly see a lot of the disasters from progressivism right now. they are on display but they are also the beauties of progressivism that we need to integrate to go forward in a healthy way so if america will get to the next place we need to integrate the best of each of these three worldviews and minimize the worst of these worldviews and we would call that post- progressivism or what we call in the book call it the integral worldview. >> i think it's fascinating and i'm encouraged for you to keep that work is going. we see that divide all the time and i wanted to ask you about where you see it in your stores. you know, if you look at the

map of america with regard to the last election with this red and blue thing, rural and urban divide and also the elites versus the non- elites and you have stores in both kinds of america and you have workers and customers in both kinds of america. i just wonder from your perspective after all these years of being right in the middle of that is that divide as pronounced and difficult and painful as it looks or do we exaggerate it because of the media attention? >> no, i think there's a pretty big divide. 2020 has been a terrible year because of covid and everybody being locked up and people getting lonely and angry getting frustrated and people losing their jobs and people and their businesses failing. it is people on edge and we saw the riots that happened the summer and whole foods had a number of stores that had been damaged but we were damaged just a couple nights ago in portland

a couple of our stores were damaged and that has happened i don't no, maybe 15 or 20 of our stores have suffered damage during the peaceful protests. [laughter] and so never team members and we had a big controversy old the summer about dress code and because whole foods has always had like we don't want to -- we want you to wear -- we don't want you to promote whatever your political causes art whether it be black lives matter or make america great again or whatever it is, check it at the door. we want you to be serving our customers and not bringing politics into the stores. that has been controversy over it with a big blowup just last week because we do not want our canadian team members to where top [inaudible] and we had the congress or the legislator of

canada condemn whole foods market for telling people they wanted them to her official company dress. you know, whole foods when you get the government threatening to shut you down you will change her dress code and we did for canada. i even wonder if that would've happened if amazon wasn't the owner of whole foods. i'm not sure it would've. everything is magnified because of the amazon connection. ... >> you know, we don't end of the time i worked there, we did believe in a certain kind of order in respect of the property. so lost. in the community .

>> i think challenged to put it that way. here's the thing we just want to sell - foreclosures . >> we have to do that . our team members have to be safe. if we had stores broken into. we get quick instructions. had people from chicago to new york and in seattle. also in portland and oakland. and several other cities as well. we have disturbances. we have protocols in place to protect our members targeted they're far important than the property. so we have members who have run out the back door. some people actually break into the stores and they in with baseball bats created the adjuster banging the cash registers and they just going to the wine department. and getting wine bottles and it just being destructive. so we need peace. commerce is based on peace.

in law the rule of law. we need the rule of law. i think that rule of law has been challenging those events . and being challenged. so we are kind of an iraqi place in america right now. we are defending the police and a lot of the communities. so does harder to do business. we have to hire our own security guards now. >> i didn't want to ask you about this innovation and startup culture in america. these are questions getting from our audience. do you think that you can do what you did all those years ago as easily. or is the restrictions, to do the start of business. and the establish a really enterprise. to think that is lost. john: is a good question robert

. don't really know 40s . easy to start back in 1978. i just open the doors for business monday. and guess what, the government bureaucrats can around and said where's your health department certificate prettiness indeed we need one of those . they said where is your building permit. they can run but they did not shut us down. they just that we have to get that. we have to pay a fee. and focus on the purpose. robert: they just kept focusing on what they wanted to achieve and they kept their eye on that goal. and ultimately got through to them. sue and businesspeople have to constantly innovate around bureaucracy and stupid rules and figure out ways so they can stan business. that is the reality. the whole history of business in one way is dealing with, you need to rules and regulations in

law so that our stores are not broken into. we need police. on the other hand, even overly regulate business so it's hard to do business. in the whole society a less will be and prosperous. >> i want to go back to the book again. because i do really like the book for his great lessons for leaders. but one of the things i love about it is that you don't always tell your story. you tell us a story of hot hundred others, the businesspeople who started these businesses. i guess i wanted to ask that is not your sense that these kinds of leadership values are on the rise. or more prevalent than you realize. where do you think that your fighting appeal against a culture that really needs to be changed dramatically in business world. john: it needs to evolve.

otherwise the socialists will take over is how i see it. that's the path of poverty. they talk about trickle-down wealth. socialism is trickled up poverty. his impoverished is everything. that is my fear. but the marxist in the academic community is generally hostile new business and always has been targeted you will see that all the minority groups that are businesspeople . they are being persecuted. in the chinese in the east and the best examples. the aristocrats . intellectuals, the clergy. they've always despised businesses sort of this tradesman view. their trading in making a profit.

there terrible people not gentlemen. they are not, the study the european history that the heroes, that this businessperson is become a jew if you are not jewish. that was an attack on business culture and away. so now, the universities are, you go through there and they're so anticapitalist . when i think of the university for example, sometimes i get they disinvited me. but more often, i watched the students particular from speaking in business schools. they love the message. you can do well and you can be prosperous and you can serve a higher purpose. but the professors are very skeptical. and they want to argue with me.

one of the interesting things to me about business schools is that if you think about it robert. who are the teachers in the medical schools. they are the doctors. who teaches in law school. the lawyers, former lawyers. it teaches and business goals. robert: nonbusiness people. john: non- businesspeople most intellectuals. they have never actually been in business at all. it is very interesting. we do not actually understand business. i don't understand entrepreneurship. and actually can often times we hostile towards the very think that they are teaching. so that's a particular challenge. we employ about a hundred thousand people. robert: that is valuable. does of the well-being's. that is a greater contribution to humans flourishing in

universities. in some ways print is tremendous. i'm a former welfare person as i mentioned earlier. i lived off providing jobs. that's what i count on the economy was strong. i'm people in all kinds of industries that hort hired low skilled workers, they were hiring for unit is the best thing that we can have. john: let me be clear, capitalism targeted for innovation is imparted it is the greatest thing humanity is ever created. if you go back 200 years ago in the innovation is him was really beginning to take up speed. 84 percent of everybody in the alive in the planet, earned less than $2 a day. only 6 percent made more than $2.8, that's in today's dollars. the average lifespan 200 years ago was 30 . and out is 72.6.

advanced countries, is closer to 80 years old. and illiteracy race 200 years ago was 88 percent another 12 percent. and if you read a book an appointment now, you will see documentation after documentation about how much the world has progressed. science and technology combined with innovation is him as the entrepreneurs took the scientific discoveries and operationalize them to make our lives better. it is the greatest things humanity has ever done. businesspeople are not the villains of the story, they are the heroes of the story. the entrepreneurs are the ones it creates the progress for unit they are universally vilified for the most part. if you look at the studies. if you look at the polls, people do not trust it. the thinking business, the motivation is on removing the businesses greedy and selfish all they care about is making money. and so can't be trusted.

the corrupt political culture. fundamentally bad thing so that is why we are this new move toward socialism . because capitalism is corrupt. that is wrong. cabell is the greatest thing that humanitarian is evident. in the enemies of business and capitalism, and put out a narrative about us that is wrong. it's inaccurate and is doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people. we have to count on that. so it is to counter it. robert: i think you're right and i also think that the victim of our - when things go bad. if the socialist policies take over the market, but the unemployment goes down. swordsmen in the past. and all of a sudden people will realize the benefits of us growing in a prosperous and prosperous cut it coming. john: the reality is that what

we have done the last 200 years, has never happened before. humanity for the most part has very slow progress. and that is because businesspeople basically so regulated that the gene never got out of the bottle until the enlightenment. so for a brief period of time, the intellectuals at least once natural business. and then we, another trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle and we will stagnate and we be given to progress. i'm not saying the whole technological situation will collapse but it will not progress. it will begin to stagnate and then declined jet gradually. we put in some of these green new deal policies. you will start to see us go backwards. robert: so you're looking at the longer-term. you are not caught up in this

crisis you have mentioned covid-19 a couple of times. i wanted to get your status of where we are in the communities that your sources are buried and is a businessperson in america. our we in your observation of the pharmaceutical industry and others that have moved so quickly to develop a vaccine. are you feeling that we are getting the light at the end of the tunnel here. things will get better. in the other thing is that i need to ask you mundane business question prayed i thought that some people in the grocery business, there were some uptics during covid-19. people were eating at more. did that happen your business. john: way up. the media reports things wrongs. the first one is that a

transaction count in the stores down. the traffic counts are down but are down for two reasons, there's a lot of businesses who prepared foods. and also for lunch. and with offices closed down, we did not get the traffic. so the average traffic counts are down . does that and secondly, our online business has tripled. the gun of 300 percent brightest of the actual sales are up. they are way way up. it's in accurately reported. i think they have done well because restaurants, people have made a transition temporarily i believe do not eating out. and eating a lot more at home. and that's been good for the supermarkets. all of them. even mark kroger all of them are doing better. robert: so you are not, what is

your view on it. it. john: personal whole foods of this the duty and responsibility to keep her team members and customers safe. so proud of the fact that our places were out in front in this. we ended up recognized in a couple of different publications has the safest supermarkets in america during covid-19. so most people have copied a lot of what whole foods went out and did first. from the masks to disinfecting in the cleaning. to temperature testing and things like that. and i think we have been successful in terms of the infections in the number of people. relatively small number. but let's make no mistake about it. it is been a difficult year even with our sales upgraded everybody is wearing a mask .

ravinia social distancing. whole foods is a very huggy culture and nobody is hugging. if you do elbows are you kick feet with each other. and people are not socializing as much. i say they made a block of cultural deposits for a number of years with whole foods . and 2020 making withdrawals on those deposits prayed. robert: to more questions. one is in your book, he said that you like to hire local and within. it is you don't like to overdo that. if there's a percentage like i think it is it 80 percent or 75 percent. because you felt it's bringing people from an outside his the bigger part of the culture. tell us about your hiring of team members. john: it is a balance between if you only fire within. in order the only promote

within, that really enhances the culture innocence of people know that they work hard and they can rise up and get ahead. and because whole foods has been growing, it's been a great place of opportunity for people. since the founding of the company. watch people start out and work their way up all the way up. because they acquire a college education to make a lot of money whole foods . you can rise through the ranks so to speak. on the other hand, if you only promote within, you will stagnate because not getting enough new ideas and enough innovations from outside and it sort of helps ferments. the innovation and creativity. on the other hand, if you from eight from the outside, and people began to think that you cannot get ahead in this company. in the way up to get ahead is to go work somewhere else for a newbie more greatly appreciated. so approximately, and our

leadership, about 25 percent get promoted from outside of the company and about sunday 5 percent are promoted within it. this worked out to be kind of the right number. and it varies with other companies i think. robert: i wanted to ask you another question related to the underlying business and your passion for wholesome healthy foods. we are going to have thanksgiving. we may have gatherings that are smaller than usual point of going still have gatherings. it sodas a product or food that a mainstay in your table. then you would recommend to those of us getting together with our menus. john: may be a bad person to ask simply because of plant -based. i am begin. robert: i know that. i didn't think you would say turkey. we all eat vegetables. so, what is your go to dish.

john: what is my go to dish. it generally is been stew with a ton of vegetables in it. that's my favorite. robert: so that will be under table i think seeming prey to. john: absolutely per unit honda vegetables from sweet potatoes, broccoli cauliflower okra whatever vegetable is in season. robert: thank you for all you've done and think you for your book. and for participating in a conversation. do you have any final words or anything else you would like to say. it always like to give people the chance that the they feel there's a message they want to convey. it. john: guess i will convey a message of hope.

an american is going through a difficult time. mark not nearly threw it . were not going to be through it anytime soon so i can't give you short-term help. but i'm a student of american history and we have faced bigger challenges than this one. and we have stumbled our way through it. we have gotten through it. and i think we will get through this one as well. it may take a few years. i do think america has a great capacity to renew itself. and sometimes were best when our backs are against the wall. it was forced to make changes. we are forced to make reformations. there's a great underlying love of the country by americans. i think we have seen it in this election cycle. in a very hopeful about the future. i'm not particular hopeful about the short-term future although i think we will get past covid-19. i think a year from now will be

faster. a lot of our normal behaviors will be returning. i will be a good thing. there will be a good thing. robert: yes we are going to get through covid-19. thank you so much for doing this and i really appreciate it . one thank you robert . you are a great institution proud to support you. robert: think you are much . >> you hunting season to, your unfiltered view of government predeceased and it was created by americans cable television company . and today were brought to you by the television coming, to provide "c-span2" two viewers is a public service. weeknights featuring book tvs programs on "c-span2". tonight, looking congressional biographies and memoirs are needed senator john mccain's former speechwriter and 80, mark, shares his thoughts on the

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