Whole Foods co-founder shares tips for launching a successful second act: 'I'm relearning some lessons'

Whole Foods founder and former co-CEO, John Mackey sold Whole Foods to Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017. Then he stepped away in 2022 after five years of leading his business through that transition to new ownership. 

"A lot of my friends just thought I'd retire," says Mackey, whose net worth at the time of the sale, Forbes estimated, clocked in at more than $75 million. "I have all of this money. I don't have to do anything," says the 73-year-old entrepreneur. And yet he says he has more to give. "I just think everybody needs to create value for other people, and I still can."

That follow-up venture: Love.Life, a health and wellness club he opened in Los Angeles in 2024. Dubbed a "longevity club" by Mackey and his team, Love.Life offers a wide range of services, from fitness facilities and a health-food cafe to tailored nutrition plans and primary care medical treatments. It's not cheap: Memberships cost anywhere from $400 per month to $28,500 per year, depending on the level of services and perks clients want.

While Love.Life declined to share specific membership figures with CNBC Make It, Mackey is candid about his frustration that his latest venture hasn't taken off as quickly as he'd hoped. He acknowledges that team-building and learning how best to meet your clients' specific needs are processes that take time for any new business.

Mackey can also look back on Whole Foods' long path to nationwide success as something of a road-map that he hopes Love.Life can eventually emulate. "The long-term vision is just like we did with Whole Foods," Mackey says. "It took us 14 years to get to 12 stores, and then when I retired we were [over 500]... So, Love.Life has a similar ladder to climb."

Undeterred, here are the lessons Mackey is holding dear in round two of his entrepreneurial journey.

Don't forget to be patient

The first lesson Mackey offers for anyone looking to pull off a successful second act is that patience is even more essential when you've already become accustomed to success.

"Some of the lessons that I knew when I was younger, I've had to relearn," Mackey says.

One of those lessons is how intentional leaders need to be about building a new corporate culture from the ground up — one that revolves around a commonly held purpose or mission. Employees are best motivated by a leader who "can take the passion that you feel and articulate it in purpose statements and vision," Mackey says. It's an approach he admits he's still fine-tuning with a planned "makeover" that will include updated messaging, based on Mackey's vision while also incorporating customer feedback, to be literally displayed on the walls of Love.Life's club "to get that purpose codified and explicit so people can see it and be reinforced all the time," he says.

Learn, and re-learn, from your mistakes

Another piece of advice he has for second-act entrepreneurs: Remain willing to learn from your own mistakes. That's true whether you're learning from a new mistake, or re-learning old lessons, he notes.

"I'm relearning some lessons that, unfortunately, I should have learned the first time [at Whole Foods]," Mackey says. "So, I'm making some new mistakes, but I'm making a lot fewer mistakes in general just because it's like, 'Ah, we tried that [at Whole Foods]. That is not a good idea. We're not going to do that.'"

Invite feedback and act on it

Companies also need to be constantly talking to their customers to learn which aspects of the business are working, and which need to be tweaked. 

"They're telling you what they like and they don't like all the time," he says. "[Customers] vote with their feet. They vote with what they choose to do. And when they come to Love.Life you have to be alert and paying attention."

Hire the best, learn from the rest

Another area where leaders need to be constantly paying attention to past mistakes is hiring employees, Mackey adds. Building a talented and motivated team is essential to any business' success. Mackey says he tends to follow the advice of former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who advised managers to only hire "A players [who] want to hire more A players," rather than "settling for B and C players."

"You field the best team that you can, but you're always looking to upgrade… and you have to have a high standard to do that," says Mackey, noting that building a team of the best employees requires first learning from past hiring mistakes. "You learn by hiring B-listers, and then you can recognize them," he says.

Show your team they count

Mackey's final key factor for a successful second act is that the best leaders are those who use genuine recognition to motivate employees' passion for the company mission. Employees who display an authentic passion for the business are found to be the most productive and are most effective at winning over clients and customers, Mackey says. 

Love.Life borrows a tradition from Whole Foods where meetings end with verbal "appreciations," where managers and team members share positive feedback with one another. The key: The sentiments must be genuine, Mackey adds: "People know the difference between an authentic, caring appreciation and somebody that's blowing smoke up their butts," he says. "Authentic appreciations [are] good for the giver and good for the receiver."

When employees genuinely believe in the purpose of the business and feel sincerely valued by their leaders, they are typically happier, more productive and are also less likely to leave for another job, career experts say.

"People want two things: they want purpose and they want love," Mackey adds. "If you do these two things, no one's ever going to want to quit your company."