 Well, welcome to the show, John. We're so excited to chat about your book, Conscious Leadership. Johnny and I enjoyed it, and we'd love to just hear the backstory of how this book came to be. You know, the backstory is no big deal because we wrote Conscious Capitalism back in 2013, and we had two chapters on Conscious Leadership in that book, and I got a lot of questions. A lot of leaders really want to be conscious leaders, and they want to be conscious capitalists, and they just wanted more, how do I do this stuff? And so in a lot of ways, this book was an answer to those requests. That's kind of the backstory. And what do you think is the difference between what we typically think of leadership and what you call conscious leadership? Conscious leadership is a lot more internal. It's about the last chapter is called Contingency, Learning, Grow, and a lot of ways the whole book is about that. And most leaders are very, they're doers. They're action people. They have checklist, and they have self-confidence, and they move forward, and they're bold, and we have sort of this idea of a leader in our minds. And certainly that is a leader, but a conscious leader can still have that. But it's doing the inner work to develop their emotional intelligence, their sense of purpose, their integrity, their love. These are all skills that people have to work on to develop them. They don't happen automatically. You're not born with integrity. You have to develop it because all little children are like pathological liars. And from the moment a child learns to talk, they learn how to lie, I think. And deceive, yeah. And deceive, exactly. A lot of the leadership books that I have read, a lot of them begin with doing a lot of myth busting because there's these ideas of what conscious capitalism is, or what conscious leaders or just leaders in general, who they are, and how they operate. And you had just mentioned about leaders always moving forward, stepping in, stepping forward, and a lot of times boldly, with no idea how things are going to go down, but they understand that if they're going to grow, they have to step into these positions. AJ and I certainly have to deal with it in our own company of constantly stepping into uncertainty. How in the book did you want to approach busting some of these myths? Well, we do bust some of the myths. I mean, particularly when we start talking about leading with love, because I can already tell you on this tour, whenever I start talking with sort of conventional media, the whole idea of leading with love, it's like, well, come on, everybody knows business is just cutthroat. It's this cutthroat thing. So how can you be leading with love? And that's one of the myths that you have to bust, that it's this the kind of metaphors that we used to think about business or war, Darwinian, sports, games, all hyper competitive. And competition is part of business, but it's not the essence of business. And so to bring love is hiding out in the corporate closet until we bust the myths and create a space for people to feel like love actually is a good strategy in business and life. It's not something we have to check at the door, because do that at home, because we're going to war today. So that's that's a myth we had to bust. And you have to bust the myth on the win, win, win, because we are so locked in to sort of win, lose, binary thinking. And people if people somebody's getting rich, somebody else is getting poor, if people are either good or they're evil, they're light and darkness. And we those those kind of binary dichotomies really are myths, that it's always on a continuum. It's always more complex. You can have win, win, win scenarios. It doesn't have to be one person winning and everybody else losing. These are myths. These are the way and we construct the way we experience the world by the narratives that we tell ourselves that this is the way the world is. And so we we act and react based on what our hypothesis or our theory of how the world is. And if you have a crummy story, then if your narrative is not a very functional narrative, then you're going to suboptimize. So a conscious leader has to do some myth busting. You're absolutely right. Now, many in our audience have heard of win, win scenarios, but win, win, win scenarios is a little odd to many of us who've never heard it. How do you break down a win, win, win situation or scenario? Well, a win, win is it's good for you and it's good for me. We both win. But you can imagine situations that might be harmful for society. We have a win, win. Somebody pays somebody to go drop toxic waste in the river. They get rid of the waste. That's a win for them. They get paid money for it. So when for the person doing it, but definitely a loss for the environment and society. So the win, win, win is good for me, good for you and good for the larger community. However, we might define that larger community. And when we think about most scenarios in business, as you're saying earlier, competition jumps to mind. And of course, shareholder value, profitability. How do you square those two where business is a very competitive space? And of course there's going to be losers along the way. There's another way to reframe competition up besides war or our survival of the fittest and Darwinian metaphor. I prefer to think of our competitors as helping Whole Foods market to innovate and help us get better. Because that's one of the secrets to why business creates so much progress in the world and so much innovation. It's because of competition. If you're not getting pushed, then there's a tendency in human nature to sort of get lazy, rest on your laurels. That's why when something has a, when you have something that's a monopoly like the post office, you may not get good service. But when you've got choices and you can go down the street, Whole Foods has to, we know our customers, we don't own them. They come in because our particular mixture of products and service and price and quality for some people is what they're looking for. And others, they don't like us. But we know that we have to keep getting better and serve our customers better because they can just walk out the door and go really just down the street to a competitor. So we have to continue to earn their loyalty and competitors keep us. It's like, I prefer to think of them as helping us to get better, helping us become more excellent. I think that's a more better way to think about competition rather than we're going to kill them or they're going to kill us. The innovations that Whole Foods did that were pretty radical. In the early days, we were one of the very first natural food supermarkets. It was a completely new idea that you could open up a whole supermarket that was basically just trying to sell whole foods, primarily produce and natural meats and seafoods. That was, that was a revolutionary idea and it's time. Nobody done it before. So it was a huge innovation. And then making, making your stores beautiful was kind of an innovation because most of the time people wanted their stores to look like warehouses because they didn't want people thinking it was expensive. And I remember when Walmart was really getting going. I actually always say Walmart really did Whole Foods a big favor because they were the 900 pound gorilla that all the supermarkets were scared of when Walmart got into food. So they just tried to figure out how to cut their expenses back and to make their prices lower to compete with Walmart. And one of the ways they spent less money on their stores, they made their stores less attractive. And we had a lot, that Whole Foods initially, we were just mostly early in the early days, we were selling to hippies, we were selling to counterculture people that were young baby boomers who were kind of out of the mainstream. And then the big breakthrough occurred when we started appealing to more middle class people who never would have gone into an upper middle class people who never, who were older, who these women would start showing up in there. They weren't in, all our other customers were coming in on bicycles and VW beetles and, and Dotsons, you know, with the precursor to Nissan's and, and, and then all of a sudden these people started showing up in Cadillacs and Mercedes Benzes and like, who are they? And they were these basically sort of upper middle class women primarily that hold they like coming into Whole Foods because the stores were pretty. And, and people were real nice to them, even though they had long hair and maybe they, you know, eventually tattoos and piercings, but you know, they were so nice. And they just didn't experience that in conventional supermarkets for a long time, I think primarily because of Walmart. And that really helped Whole Foods start to penetrate into the mainstream. And we were surprised that these people were shopping with us because, and when we talked to them, I said, why, why are you here? And they said, well, you just have the best produce and your people are so nice. And gosh, your meat tastes better. So they were just there because they liked being there. And that really helped us break through kind of into the mainstream. Well, growing up, I'm 46 years old. And I certainly remember the foods that we used to get when I was a young person, a young child. Hey, you're still a young person by my standards. I wish I was 46. Well, I appreciate that. But I could certainly remember the shopping experience in the Midwest in the 80s. And certainly what Whole Foods had offered and how not only the foods that had come out with that, but that experience that went along with it. And also I could, I could also point to the employees of Whole Foods. And you've also mentioned it in your answer there, but the employees really regarded their jobs there and loved working there because of the experience that they were creating for the community and for how well they were taken care of. So if you're speaking about a win, win, win, you've, you've basically put it together in that answer. Yeah. And I think that's a very, Johnny, that's very, very astute observation. I think you're exactly right. We didn't have the language for that back then, but we just sort of intuitively or instinctively did it. And I always say, in some ways, the retail business is kind of simple. Retail food business is simple. You just hire the best people you can find, make sure they're well trained, get some high quality food in the store. And the team members make the team members happy because if they're happy, they're going to make the team, they're going to make the customers happy and the customers are happy. They're going to keep shopping with you and your business is going to flourish because so many times customers don't like shopping and for food because they don't feel like they're treated very well. And they're not treated well because the employees don't feel like they're treated very well. And one of the big points in the book about being a conscious leader is developing that vision. And if we could think back to when you first co-founded Whole Foods, did you have this vision of a multinational multi-billion dollar grocery store in your head, or is that something that evolved over time with your leadership? No, I was just a kid. I mean, the origin story is when I was 23 years old, I moved into a vegetarian cooperative in Austin because I wasn't a vegetarian. I just really was interested in counterculture stuff. And I thought I'd meet interesting people and there were about 18 people in this communal living situation, moved in, started to become a vegetarian, started to learn how to cook, got super interested in all things natural and organic, became the food buyer for the co-op, fell in love. And then one day I talked to my girlfriend and said, let's start our own store. And she thought that was a super cool idea. She was 20 at that time, 20 or 19 or 20. And so we did it. It was fun. And I didn't know it, but I'd kind of launched myself on my major path in life. No, I had no master plan. I had no big vision. In fact, the only reason after we opened the small store, we were too small, the store was too small, and we relocated it, merged with another small store, and changed the name to Whole Foods Market. That was back in 1980. That store was hugely successful. And the only reason we ever got to a second store is that store was built in the 100-year flood zone in Austin. And in the first year it was open, we had 100-year flood. And the store was eight feet underwater. So we opened a second store so that we wouldn't have all of our eggs in a basket that could float down the river in another flood. And that second store was successful and that led to a third. And I suppose we began to think about growth when we took Inventure Capital money back in about 10 years after we opened up the first store, 1988, we took Inventure Capital money. That's when we thought we're going to grow this puppy. We went to California, we opened the store in Palo Alto, California, went to New Orleans, and then Dallas, and we started to start rolling. So there's a lot more to it, but those are the highlights of the early days. And along with that journey, you've had to strengthen and grow your leadership skills to execute on that vision. The only reason I've been a semi-successful leader is because I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've been smart enough to learn from them. And I had a good mentor. My dad was, I don't have any business background. I studied philosophy, the literature, and the humanities when I was in college and just took electives really. But I learned quickly. I'm a really dedicated reader, so I just read hundreds of business books and lapped up information from my father and made a lot of mistakes, but then learned from them, didn't repeat them, at least not more than twice. And Whole Foods managed to survive my idiocy. And we got the big decisions right. Locations were good locations, and we built a good team of talented people. And then once you get a good team around you, they started compensating for my mistakes and my foolishness. And then together, we were able to build, I think, a great company. I think it's that resiliency of allowing yourself to make mistakes and to learn from them. I know even for myself, a lot of people tend to think of as a leadership role as a role that I can get into where no one's going to tell me what to do, because now I'm the leader and everything will be good. But if you're an effective leader, you're throwing yourself into uncertainty. You're looking at things boldly knowing that you're going to be making mistakes. And I even know for myself, there has been times where I feel bad, maybe we have let down AJ or maybe I've made a mistake publicly. And I get mad at myself, but it's also in that moment that it's like, oh, if I'm not having these moments, I'm not gaining anything out of this. And to try to reorient myself of, look, life's not going to be perfect. And you're never going to be in a position where it's going to be easy breathing if you want to create, if you want to build things, if you want to lead people. In fact, the more you're getting knocked around, the more you're getting out of this experience, which you're going to be able to put in a book to help other people to be a mentor. So what is it in your leadership style that you can maybe look towards that allows you to be able to continue making those mistakes? And it's funny, you've even mentioned the role where you are now. You guys are still working on getting the best stuff to your customers. And that's an ongoing process. So I would say maybe there's a bunch of things, but three just popped in my brain. So I think the first one is, is that I got my face slammed in the ground so many times. I stopped having any thoughts that I was any kind of big deal. And I felt very just, you know, I'm just a guy. And maybe, maybe a little smarter than average, but I was just a guy. And, but I, if I wanted to be successful, I needed to learn and I needed to get better. So I never thought that I was better or smarter and more able than other people. And that has always enabled me to learn from other people. And I've always assumed that people on my team are all smart, capable people that oftentimes see things that I don't see. So I've often, you know, I learned the second thing is I learned that if you have a really good team, they'll make you look good. And if you have a bad team, I don't care how smart you are, the team's going to, you're only as good as your team. And that's why we have a chapter in this book called constantly evolve the team. Because if you can get the team evolving and getting better than that, then the, you're going to flourish and the organization is going to flourish. So I've been always very dependent. I've been successful because I've always had a great team around me and they've compensated for my weaknesses. And I think the third thing is, is that I've always deeply cared about the people I work with. I mean, these are people I love, they're my friends. They're, they're, they're on the journey with me. And we're doing this together. And I think they feel my love. They think they know that I care about them. I want them to flourish. I want them to be happy. And I do everything I can to help them be successful. And that, you know, that creates loyalty and commitment. And so we're all, we're all learning together. It's been whole foods, what I will say, it's not been a lonely journey. It has been a journey I've done with a lot of people that, that I love and love me. And that's what's made it such a deeply rewarding and satisfying thing. That's why I've been doing it for 42 years, honestly. And in the book, one of the things that really struck us was, as a conscious leader, you are developing your own emotional intelligence, but also looking for high emotional intelligence in your team members. Can you talk a little bit about your own personal development of emotional intelligence? And then what are the signals that you look for, the markers that you look for in team members who possess that high EQ? I would say that if you'd known me 35 years ago, you'd have thought I had almost no emotional intelligence whatsoever, because I don't, and I don't think I had very much. The honest way that I've gotten more emotional intelligence is I married. I don't know how this woman ever married me, but she did. And she's extraordinary. And she took me on as a project that needed a lot of attention in terms of helping me to be a little bit more away, emotionally. My wife has been my greatest teacher that I've ever had in my life. And, but I think in general relationships are the way we learn and our friends and the people that we love and that care about us, the people that really care about you will be the ones that tell you when you're out of line. And those are our friends will say, Hey, John, you should never said that you really hurt her feelings. You need to go apologize to her. And their first reaction is, Hey, you know, listen, I didn't mean anything. She should, you know, toughen up. I didn't mean to hurt her feelings. You know, stop being so sensitive. But if there's somebody that's caring about you that's telling you that it's like, geez, yeah, you're probably right. And okay, I'm going to go apologize. And, and so our friends help us to learn and grow. And they, and I think a lot of my development emotional intelligence has come from a lot of people helping me. But the other part of emotional intelligence is self awareness. And I've always been interested in trying to understand myself better. So I've been willing to do the spiritual work. I've been willing to do the meditation. I've been willing to do the journaling. I've been willing to take workshops. I've been willing to read books about my wife teaches me says, you know, why John is so much more diplomatic than he used to be. He read a bunch of books about communications and saw what he was doing wrong. And he stopped doing it. He got it from a book. And people and she's partly right. Because I mean, I read a book and I'd say, gosh, that's the kind of thing I would say. And what a jerk. And I, I still make mistakes by just make a lot fewer of them than I used to. So that's my journey of emotional intelligence has been people helping me and me really wanting to learn. If you want to learn how to play guitar, you got to practice. And if you want to get emotional intelligence, and you don't have much, you got to practice it too. Because it's a skill. And that leading with love is a skill. And then in fact, our whole book is about developing skills to be a more conscious leader. And it involves practice. It's Malcolm Gladwell, I think is the one that said you got to work 10,000 hours to be to master anything. Why should we think we're going to master conscious leadership and just to reading a book or, or, you know, doing something for a few hours? No, it's a journey you have to work at it. And it's going to take you a long time to get really good at it. So I'm older than most people. So I've been just working at it longer. And I've been, I've been a, I really, the last chapter is about contingency learning grow. And I've been trying to contingency learning growth since, since I can remember. And I'm, I'm going to continue to do that until I'm dead because life's a lot more fun if you're learning and growing. Absolutely. And being open to feedback and open to that growth, I think many people, when they think of taking on that leadership role, they may enjoy bossing others around or being in control or power. And it's hard to receive critical feedback, especially of your leadership and the way that people are perceiving you. And it sounds like your journey has been no different. You've certainly made some mistakes and gotten some feedback along the way that's been difficult. I don't like bossing people around, to be honest, that's never been, this power has not been something that's driven me. I actually like empowering people. I like a team that I don't have to boss them around. I like a team that's, that, that's self directed. And that we share a similar purpose. They're adults, they're smart, they're talented, we have discussions, and then they just, they just do their job. And I don't have to tell them what to do. I don't get a big kick out of, I mean, I still have to occasionally fire people, but I don't enjoy it. I find it quite unpleasant to do that, but it's just necessary sometimes. So there are people that are, that are attracted to power over others. That's not, I have, I have different challenges. That's not one of the challenges that I have personally. I've had other challenges, plenty of them, but that's not one of them. I tend to think you can see those people rather quickly, because if you're not one of those folks, the way you choose your path is so much, so incredibly different than the way the paths that they chose in order to operate and the gains that they want to get in for life. Are you able to recognize that in the, in when you're in the hiring process? Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit, because hiring is, is so critical. If you're going to, if you're going to develop a great team, then hiring really makes a big difference. You know, one of the things that I got self-aware enough about myself is I'm actually personally not that good at hiring people. And the reason why I'm not, I'm actually good at leading people, but I'm not so good at hiring them. And the reason I'm not good at hiring them is because I always see the, I see the beauty in people. I see their potential. I see somebody and I see what they could do. And that's actually makes a good leadership skill, because I, people want, they don't want to let me down. John really believes in me, so I'm going to, I'm going to make sure I deliver. So that's a leadership skill, but it's not a good hiring skill. And so I surrounded myself with other people who I thought were good judges of character quickly. I wasn't. And I, I have had people and Whole Foods developed a group hiring process. I, we always, we always have the larger team interview people. I always say you can fool one person, but it's very difficult to fool the whole team because people can, you know, somebody can be charming and charismatic, but other people have good bullshit detectors, and they can pick it up right away and say, that guy's a phony. I can't believe he said that bullshit. I never, you thought he was good. I'd never, I'd never vote for that guy. So I think there's a, there's a wisdom in that collective mind that, that can, and I think that's one secret to hiring well is to not do it by yourself. And in fact, who at Whole Foods, whoever's going to be responsible will make the final decision on who to hire. But we always want the larger group to do what we call a straw poll, a secret straw poll, rate these candidates because say there's three candidates and we'll do a straw poll and we'll get a ranking for those. And then the person will announce the straw poll and then we'll talk about the candidates and then we'll do another kind of secret poll to see if anybody's persuaded or changed their mind. Now the leader can override that group. They can still make the call. They're responsible. Occasionally they'll go against the larger group. I'll tell you something, whenever I've gone against the larger group, without exception, it was a mistake. The group saw something I didn't see and I was foolish. Probably my ego just said, I'm in charge. I'm irresponsible. But I've learned over the years to really trust the wisdom of the larger group. And I think that's helped Whole Foods hire better. Well, I have to say, I think it is that process is why your employees take so much pride and honor of working at Whole Foods. I mean, it's the only, it is one of the only grocery stores where I see people posting about going to work and posting about going to work at Whole Foods and showing that pride in serving their community. Yeah, you know, I always say people, because I'm on this book tour and I've been getting asked a lot of questions about this, I realized I started thinking about it. I think there's two main reasons why our team members work first so long and they're so loyal. And the first one is purpose. And that's the first chapter in a book is put purpose first. And a good leader is able to communicate purpose to people. Because one of the things we know, people want to feel like their work's making a difference. You know, nobody wants to just make widgets. And I mean, and you can earn a living, but people would prefer to earn a living and also feel like this is actually helping people. I see where my work is making a difference. And people like helping people, it's a high to make people happy. So we spend a lot of time making sure people understand how their work is actually contributing to people's well-being and their life satisfaction. And the second thing is people want to be cared about. Nobody wants to go to work at a place and nobody cares about them so that it's kind of an alienating process where you're there and you feel like not only don't people care about you, but most people don't like you even. And so at Whole Foods, we create kind of a warm and fuzzy place where the team member, we care about our team members and they care about each other. And if people feel loved and they have a sense of purpose, they're going to be pretty fulfilled at work, even working in a grocery store. And so we have so many people that work. One of the questions I ask when I tour stores, when people are always nervous when they're meeting me, is I always ask them and get a little bit of their story, tell me your story and how long have you worked for the company? And so often it's 10, 12, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years. I haven't seen you in 10 years, but I met you when I was living in LA and now they live in Florida. And they remember that encounter. I don't remember the encounter, but people have that because they know they're cared for and they know their work's making a difference. They're much more deeply fulfilled. So that's my, those are two tips I will give other owners, give people a sense that their work's making a difference and just make sure they feel that they're really care, that they are cared for. And if they do, if you get both of those things right and you treat people reasonably fairly, you're probably, they may work for you the rest of their lives because people are so hungry for those things. And it's not that common that people get that in the workplace. Absolutely. That's what I was just gonna say. And many in our audience are at a point in their career where they're moving into leadership roles for the first time. And there are movies about horrible bosses. And we've all had those negative experiences with leadership. What have you done to create this empowering environment for your staff to speak up when they say, Hey, this person's not a good fit or Hey, there's an issue that I want to solve. As many in our audience are becoming leaders now, they're struggling with how to create that environment to empower instead of just being that terrible boss. Well, the first thing to realize is people pay a lot more attention to what you do than what you say. So you can't talk your way into empowerment. What you have to do is actually do it and mean it. And you have to embody it yourself. And then people will begin to take it seriously. And if they see that they're not going to be, if you truly mean to empower them and you trust them to make a decision and if they mess up, they don't get fired. But you talk about the mistake and they learn from it and you encourage them, then you truly are empowering them and people start to feel safe. Because if people don't feel safe, if they feel afraid, they're never going to make a risky decision. They're just going to keep their head down. So if you really want to unleash creativity and people's energy, they have to feel safe. And they feel safe when they're not punished for making a common mistake. I mean, you should be punished if they're doing something egregious. They couldn't even get fired if you're doing something egregious. But if people are just trying to do their best and there's an honest mistake, they need to feel like you've got their back, that you're going to protect them. And if they feel that way, then you really are empowering them to come out of their safe place and to do what's right by the business. Take care of the customers. Yeah, I think that's so important. And when it comes to creating that longevity in your staff who want to stay there for 10, 15, 20 plus years and be a part of the team, that environment is crucial to that longevity. Yep. You mentioned in the book a few examples of some private gratitude practices and appreciation practices that you use with your team. I'd love if you could share them with our audience. Well, I'll do, I'll do appreciations first because that's the simplest thing to do. And it's completely transformative to an organization. In fact, if you got nothing else out of this talk, but you remember what I say about appreciations, you will have gotten an incredibly important nugget here that'll help make your organization better. What Whole Foods does is we just end our meetings with appreciations and they're voluntary, nobody has to do them. But they're incredibly powerful for releasing love because when you do an, when you give an authentic appreciation to somebody and that's really heartfelt, that person, they may not even have liked you before, then they might have thought you were a jerk and had all these judgments, but you've just given this authentic appreciation and they feel the care behind it, that relationship's going to change. They're going to say, you know, I think I, I think I misjudged AJ, you know, actually he's a really good guy. If I can see that he really cares about me and they start to reframe you and their minds and they let, they start to drop judgments. But of course the real beneficiary in an appreciation is the person doing the appreciation because you cannot do a real appreciation. I don't mean a fake one, a pretend one, a real one, unless you open your heart. And when you open your heart, the appreciation is based on love and you just feel really good. You feel really, really good when you appreciate other people. And I can tell you at Whole Foods, appreciations are such a powerful unifying force that in our leadership group at Whole Foods, we used to do unlimited appreciations and sometimes they go on for a couple of hours and it's like, this is ridiculous. We're over, we're spending too much time appreciating each other. We got to get some work done too. So then we limit it to three. You can only appreciate three people. And that still took too long because they spend too much time on the free people. So now we just say, look, here's the deal, just do one appreciation, one appreciation. And then you can get the appreciations done in a reasonable period of time. But then they have to really think through the appreciation. Who do they really want to sing a lot for appreciation? And then we can encourage them. You know, if you have other people to appreciate, just do it anyway. Just don't do it here with the larger group. Just do it in private or send them a text or an email or give them a hug, pre-COVID, post-COVID. But appreciations really don't unleash love. If you want to lead with love, start appreciations. It's sort of a, I will tell you a story. It took me about a decade before I could get the board of directors at Whole Foods, back when we were before the Amazon merger, took me about 10 years to get the board of directors to begin doing appreciations. After we started doing appreciations, I never had a director ever leave. I mean, I had one retired. He got too old. No director ever left. They loved coming to our meeting so much because they felt so, they loved the management. They loved the other board members. They just loved Whole Foods Market. And it's kind of ironic when we got attacked by the shareholder activists, their biggest criticism they came up with is, this board is, this board is, they've been here too long. They're all too cozy with management here. And I guess if that's a bad thing, then guilty is charged because we had a lot of directors that have been there 12, 14, 15, over 20 years in some cases because they just really love the company. But that was apparently not a good thing in corporate governance by people who I don't think know much about corporate governance. Well, I think that's an example of the ultimate win, win, win in that the person receiving the feedback feels incredible. You giving that genuine appreciation feel incredible. And the entire team feels supported. And many of us in our careers feel unseen, unheard. We're working our hardest. And maybe we're not getting the big goals that our boss or teammates are expecting of us. But even those small, indelible efforts that we're putting into our job every day, when they go unrecognized, you could feel unsupported and lose motivation. So creating that supportive environment and noticing even the small details to appreciate are so huge. And we've brought that to our meetings as well. And it's been a huge deal. I mean, many people think you have to celebrate just the big wins. That's important. But even those small moments of appreciation where effort is well spent and someone went above and beyond go a long way. It unifies and connects the team. So I'm really thrilled that you guys are doing that. We've been doing them in our live programs for years. And one of my favorite results of implementing that is everyone is so insecure about what other people are thinking about them and how they're being perceived. And when you get that appreciation, all of a sudden, other people are calling to attention attributes that perhaps you have not known about yourself or been thinking about yourself. And now, all of a sudden, you start to walk with a little bit of swagger because people are starting to see things in you that you have been trying to hide or trying to cover up or have not even thought about that people are seeing and enjoying and appreciating. Yeah. You know, one of the things about human beings that we're always not conscious of is sometimes we can be our own worst critic. We have an internal critic that's always busting our chops for not being perfect, for doing, making mistakes and having somebody else let us off the hook and just tell us how much they appreciate us and seeing special things about us that we're not even maybe willing to admit to ourselves. And then they tell us about it and it's like, you know, I guess that's true. I never really thought about myself that way. So we actually, it's a gift to appreciate people because we in some ways are giving them permission to love themselves 100%. Now, you mentioned something before we get to the gratitude practice that I think is also important because many of us are afraid of criticism and afraid of negative feedback. And obviously, along the journey, you have had your fair share of criticism as a leader. How do you handle those outside forces and that negativity and reframe it for yourself to be constructive and grow? Great question, AJ. And first, let me say that's still a growing edge for me. I'm a lot better and more skilled than I used to be. But I would say definitely when I was younger and still to a certain extent that the human reaction is when you feel like you're unjustly accused is to defend yourself, right? It's like, that's not true. And that's unfair. And they don't, that's just completely inaccurate. And one thing is to see yourself very clearly and to look at that information and say, is it true? And if it's literally not true and you know it's not true, then you have to let it go and not bust your chops about it. But if you also look at it and say, you know what, there's some of that's true. And I gotta own up to it. And then you can reframe it to see that criticism is actually a way to help you grow. It's a way for you to, it's a challenge. I'm going to be better. I'm going to make sure that criticism disappears and I don't hear about it anymore in the future. So we can either react defensively or we can open ourselves to it and use it to help us transform ourselves. So obviously the second strategy is better, but I'm not going to say that's always easy to do. And it sounds like with the support of your wife and your team, you also have that opportunity to ask them, give me some reference here. Is this really true? Do I have this blind spot that I might not see in myself? That's right. And we talk about that in the book because we talk about the shadow. The shadow is the part of our being that we're just not conscious of. Other people see our shadow, make no mistake about it. We may not see our own shadow, but other people see it. And the people that love us the most are the ones that can help us deal with the shadow in constructive ways. And I really think the significant others that are we're closest to, they see all the bullshit about us and they still love us despite that. And if we are open to it, they can help us deal with that part of us that needs to be dealt with because we're oftentimes, we're not conscious of it frequently because we don't want to be conscious of it because it's it's ugly because it's a part of our being that we don't want to admit is there. And so we just push it out of the way, we just push it out of the way, we refuse to see it. So part of being a more conscious leader is simply taking more things out of the shadow and shining a light on it and getting them integrated into our fuller self. And the shadow can be our friend if we're willing to not be afraid of it or just deny it but begin to slowly accept it. And that's part of who we are. Guess what? I'm sometimes that way. I admit it. I'm sorry. And I'm doing I'm doing I'm going to do better. I'm going to try harder. I'm going to become more conscious of that. That's why I make a joke that my always been her wife's biggest project because she's always working on the shadow stuff in me every day seemingly. But I know she loves me. So it I don't feel like her criticism is coming from judgment. It's coming from love. And that makes all the difference, right? I don't feel attacked. I feel like she's just really trying to help me be a better person. And even in your response, what I loved was your openness and candor that I'm still working on this area. And, you know, many in our audience look up to everything that you've accomplished in your life and may not believe that people in positions of power and leadership view themselves that way. And I think that's really important that you can recognize that it's still an area that you're working to improve. And you're taking that feedback constructively to grow. And I think our audience can learn a lot from that. The private gratitude practices are another thing that Johnny and I preach on the show here. And I know it's had a big impact in your life as well. You know, you know what? Let's talk about gratitude. It's one of the aspects of leading with love. And it's unlike appreciations, which is more of a thing you do with groups. You can do some gratitude exercises with groups. And I do encourage that. But doing the private gratitude stuff, I will tell you, it's one of the most important keys to happiness. Because what so many of us experience most of the time is we experience problems. Every day, we face problems. We face judgments. We have criticisms. We are things we're anxious about. And there's a tendency for ourself to contract. When we're under stress, the natural intention is to get a little bit down. And when we get down, we are basically shrinking in a way. We're contracting. And gratitude, and we start thinking about our problems and we start feeling sorry for ourselves. We go into a victim's stance. And when we do that, we're not happy. We're not happy when we're contracted down on our problems. Gratitude reverses that. With gratitude, it reverses the contraction. We start to open up because when you start reflecting upon what you're grateful for, the universe is getting bigger. We start reflecting on the beauty of life or how fortunate we are to have friends or to be somebody that loves us or for having good health or music, the beauty of music or touching or seeing or just that there's so many beautiful things in life. And just even as I'm talking about it now, I start to feel my being expand some. And gratitude leads to happiness because when we're grateful, we are more open to the universe. We are more awake and we just feel better. So what I do, I basically, I do two major things pretty much every day. The first thing I do is I do gratitude in the morning. So I wake up pretty early. I have a little inner practice where I'm going to read some spiritual literature for maybe five or 10 minutes. And then I'm going to do a gratitude exercise for two or three minutes. It doesn't take very long. And then I'm going to meditate. And the whole thing probably takes 30, 35 minutes, not that long. But if I do that every day and I've got a good rhythm and good routine, I know my day is going to be a pretty good day because I'm getting it off to a really good start. And then I also do gratitudes before meals. And it's a good thing to do with a group. It's like, hey, let's just do a little round of something we're grateful for. And it's a really good thing to do with children. It's really good for children to do that, by the way. It's a great practice for them, but it's good for adults to do it as well. And you just go around and name one thing you're grateful for, or two or three if you feel like it. And you don't want your food to get cold. So people shouldn't go on forever. But I always do it if I'm by myself. I just spend, you know, 15 seconds thinking about what I'm grateful for. And it helps me relax. And I don't wolf my food down quite as quickly either. And if I'm doing it with my wife or somebody I love, then we're having that gratitude connection, which is beautiful. Now, those are the only two things I really do. But I know a lot of people do the other third thing, which we talk about in the book, which is doing gratitude exercise before you go to sleep. Usually by the time I get in bed, I am just so calm. I just want to go to sleep. I go to sleep almost instantly as soon as I get in bed. But some people journal doing a gratitude journal can be very powerful, because if you do a gratitude journal and you start to get down in life, if you go back and open the journal, you see all these amazing things that you're grateful about for in life. And it's really hard to stay down. So the gratitude journal is a great tool to develop. And I could probably and should do it some other time. I might could do it in the morning, for example. In fact, that's a pretty good idea. Maybe I'll start doing that. But some people do it at night. I just can't stay awake. Whether you start your day or end with it, it is that reset button for a lot of the stress that we carry with us and a lot of the negative focus that our mind tends to stick to in those stressful moments when we're contracting. We love asking all of our guests what they believe their X factor is. And we define X factors when a mindset unlocks a unique skill set for you. What would you say your X factor is? Is X factor kind of like your superpower? Some people say what's your superpower? I think my superpower, I got maybe two partial superpowers. One is I'm very creative, meaning I generally can come up with win-win-win solutions. I generally see a way out of a situation. And it's like I did when the Amazon was when I can't just popped in. It's kind of like I put my subconscious mind working on something and it just a solution pops up and it's like, that's it. And I think that's kind of a superpower. And then I say the other sort of superpower is that I'm able to really express truths about people in a loving way. I see deeply into people's souls and then I can tell them what I love about them. And I frequently bring them to tears because I'm telling them such a beautiful part of their being that maybe they don't fully see themselves. But when I express it, they see it. And I think that's the superpower. That's a gift that I have. That's beautiful. John, your company and yourself have changed the shopping experience for all of us. As we move into the future, is there anything that you can tell us that we should be looking out for that will continue that evolution? I can tell you that we're going to do some really cool stuff in the next couple of years, including something very cool in LA. So in the greater LA area. So and when you hear about it, you'll remember what I was talking about. So I think it's going to be super cool. And I do think it's going to change grocery shopping in the long run. So just remember, I'm just giving you a teaser, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. I didn't think you were going into detail. Thank you so much for joining us, John. We really appreciate it. It was a wonderful talk. Thank you. Hey, you guys are awesome. You guys are great. Let me do a quick appreciation. You guys are very conscious guys. So it's not often when I'm doing this talk about conscious leadership and I'm talking to a couple of conscious leaders. So it's, you guys ask great questions and it's obvious to me you've got a really good business here and I wish you wish you the very best. Thank you. Thank you so much. Likewise, greater success with Whole Foods is on the way and we appreciate all of those lessons from the conscious leadership book and we've been implementing them in our own business with great results. Thanks. If you guys decide to move to Austin, make sure you contact me. Got it. Yeah, definitely. All right, guys, you take care.