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November 2009 
John Mackey's an Investor in Zaadz!
Gaia Team
“…follow your heart wherever it takes you. Choose love instead of fear. If you do, a wonderful life adventure awaits you! Carpe diem!” ~ John Mackey
Exciting news.
As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods. I can still remember when I first read his debate with Milton Friedman where he so powerfully and eloquently articulated my intuition and vision for a more conscious business. I was literally brought to tears as I read the comments from customers, team members and shareholders expressing their appreciation for his courage and compassion to build such an amazing business.
That was in November of 2005. (My raving blog post here. :)
About a year ago I got the opportunity to meet John (thanks Jeff and Michael!). We talked about Zaadz, conscious capitalism, FLOW, spiral dynamics, Integral, his recent presentation to his team. A lot of fun. But what really hit me was the fact that I had never heard a human being use the word “Love” that many times in a 2 hour span of time. Let alone a business meeting.
Blew me away.
Then, at the end of our meeting, he was giving us directions to a good vegetarian restaurant (we're both vegan). It was a bit confusing so he decided to just jump in his car and drive ahead of us to show us how to get there. Got there, jumped out, gave us a hug and I was hit with this remarkable sense of clarity of exactly how Whole Foods has become such a powerful business…Love.
Also made me think of this Emerson quote: An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
I can make this somewhat long story much much longer (lots o' blog posts here), but let's fast forward to today.John's officially an investor in Zaadz, Inc.
How hot is that?!?!
:)
Back to plerk,
-bri
…
“Entrepreneurs create their businesses for a diversity of reasons. However, I believe that most of the greatest companies in the world also have great purposes which were discovered and/or created by their original founders and which still remain at the core of their business models. Having a deeper, more transcendent purpose is highly energizing for all of the various interdependent stakeholders, including the customers, employees, investors, suppliers, and the larger communities in which the business participates. While these deeper, more transcendent purposes have unique expressions at each business they also can be grouped into certain well known and timeless categories. Philosophy dates back to Plato the timeless ideals of “The Good”, “The True”, and “The Beautiful” that humanity has been seeking to create, discover, and express for thousands of years. If we add the ideal of “The Heroic” to the above three we have the framework of higher ideals which most great businesses seek to express in some form or fashion.”
John Mackey Source: Conscious Capitalism: Creating a New Paradigm for Business
Access: Public
That's VERY hot.. strong work zaadz team.
ya know what's even hotter?
when there are fresh croutons at Mr. Mackey's salad bar.
hehe. :)
http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html
Does it cost 2,000 oil calories to produce one calorie of food? That would be about a ratio of one bottle of suntan oil per crouton.
In keeping with what you, John & Paul hawken advocate for conscious (or “natural) capitalism, at the core of change is the system one sets up to reinforce “good” behavior and not support “bad.”
In keeping with that notion I'll bet I am not the only member here who is hungry for successful examples of such systems. Perhaps you can host a blog on theat them. Then we could see which systems we might adapt for our use in our business, non-profit, community or government group.
To jumpstart that possible blog, I found one that started last labor Day in my S.F. Bay Area.
It is called LaborFair - and supports both under-employed independet - often poor - workers and time-pressed people who need to hire temporary, reputatble help…soon. Think of LaborFair as an eBay for household services with fair trade built into the business.
Those who seek workers can get real-time access to hundreds of local worker profiles, pictures, and professional references and contact them directly, confidentially. LaborFair goes to the heart of supporting the working poor - and connecting them with people with a social conscience who want their spending choices to support their moral ones.
I'd like to hear of other “good news” examples - and this seems an ideal community for such sharing.