John Mackey

Secondly, I'm a voracious reader.

So once I got interested in business, I may not have taken any classes, but I read hundreds of business books, accounting, marketing, finance, strategy, pretty much everything I could get my hands on, I read.

And then my father, there was a good business

and he became my mentor for the first 16 years of the company's history.

So yeah, I learned a lot and got better.

One of the secrets is to keep improving all the time.

You never can let up.

You have to get better and better and better.

But I've always had a competitive side to me, which just talking about Erwan, it comes out a little bit.

I mean, it's like, that just means I want to be the best.

I want to reach the highest potential possible.

It's not competitive in the sense that I hate my competitors or they're evil or bad.

I mean, someone like Erwan, I got to be good friends with the former president of Trader Joe's, Doug Rao.

And he actually and I were deeply both involved in conscious capitalism.

And Doug said the

Whole Foods taught Trader Joe's more than any other company.

And Trader Joe's made Whole Foods a better company.

That's what competition does.

It makes you better.

So Erwan, viewed in that way, is someone that can make Whole Foods better if we would engage with them in that way.