Whole Foods founder and former co-CEO John Mackey sold Whole Foods to Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017. He then led the business for five years through the transition to new ownership before stepping down in 2022.
“A lot of my friends thought I was going to retire,” McKee says. At the time of the sale, his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be more than $75 million. “I have this much money. I don’t have to do anything,” says the 73-year-old entrepreneur. Still, he says he has more to give. “I think everyone needs to create value for others, and I still have the ability to do that.”
His next venture is Love.Life, a health and wellness club he opened in Los Angeles in 2024. Named the “Longevity Club” by McKee and his team, Love.Life offers a wide range of services, from a fitness facility and health food cafe to customized nutritional plans and primary care medical care. It’s not cheap. Membership costs range from $400 per month to $28,500 per year, depending on the level of service and benefits a client desires.
Love.Life declined to share specific membership numbers with CNBC Make It, but McKee was candid about his frustration that his latest venture didn’t take off as quickly as he had hoped. He admits that building a team and learning how best to meet clients’ specific needs is a time-consuming process for new businesses.
McKee can also look back on Whole Foods’ long path to national success as a kind of roadmap that Love.Life eventually hopes to emulate. “The long-term vision is exactly what we did at Whole Foods,” McKee said. “It took us 14 years to develop 12 stores, and by the time I left we had over 500 stores…so Love.Life has a similar ladder to climb.”
Don’t be discouraged, here are the lessons Mackey is cherishing in round two of his entrepreneurial journey.
Remember to be patient
The first lesson McKee has for those trying to pull off a successful second act is that patience is even more important when you’re already used to success.
“Some of the lessons I knew when I was younger, I had to relearn,” McKee says.
One of those lessons is how intentional leaders need to act when it comes to building a new company culture from the ground up that revolves around a common purpose and mission. Employees are most motivated by leaders who “capture the passion they feel and can articulate it in purpose and vision,” McKee said. It’s an approach he admits is still being fine-tuned with “revamps” that will literally be displayed on Love.Life’s club walls, updating the message based on Mackie’s vision while also incorporating customer feedback, “to codify and articulate that purpose so that people can see it and constantly reinforce it,” he says.
Learn from mistakes and learn again
Another piece of advice he has for second-act entrepreneurs is to remain open to learning from your mistakes. That’s true whether you’re learning from new mistakes or relearning old lessons, he points out.
“Unfortunately, we’re relearning some of the lessons we should have learned in the first place (at Whole Foods),” McKee said. “So I’m making some new mistakes, but overall I’m making a lot fewer mistakes because I’m like, ‘Oh, we tried that[at Whole Foods]. That’s not a good idea. We don’t do that.'”
Solicit feedback and act on it
Companies also need to constantly talk to their customers to find out which aspects of their business are working well and which need to be adjusted.
“They always say what they like and what they don’t like,” he says. “(Customers) vote with their feet. They vote with what they choose. And when they come to Love.Life, they need to be alert and careful.”
Hire the best people and learn from others
Another area where leaders need to remain mindful of past mistakes is hiring employees, McKee added. Building a talented and motivated team is essential to the success of any business. McKee said he tends to follow the advice of former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs advised executives to only hire “people who want to hire A players (more A players)” rather than “compromising on B and C players.”
“We build the best team we can, but we’re always looking to upgrade…and to do that we have to have high standards,” McKee says, noting that building a team of the best employees first requires learning from past hiring mistakes. “You learn by hiring B-listers and then you become aware of them,” he says.
Show your team is important
The final key element to the success of Mr. McKee’s second act is that the best leaders are those who use authentic recognition to motivate employees’ passion for the company’s mission. Employees who demonstrate a genuine passion for the business have been found to be the most productive and most effective at winning over clients and customers, McKee says.
Love.Life borrows a tradition from Whole Foods where meetings end with a verbal “thank you” and managers and team members share positive feedback with each other. Importantly, the emotion has to be genuine, McKee added. “People know the difference between genuine, thoughtful gratitude and someone blowing smoke up your ass,” he says. “Genuine gratitude is good for both the giver and the receiver.”
Career experts say that when employees truly believe in the purpose of the business and feel genuinely valued by their leaders, they are typically happier, more productive, and less likely to leave for another job.
“People want two things: they want purpose and they want love,” McKee added. “If you practice these two things, no one will want to leave your company.”
