The Entrepreneur’s Essentials: Foreword (by John Mackey)
Written by John Mackey on Oct. 13, 2019:
It has been a privilege to become friends with Brett Hurt over the past several years. Not only is Brett extraordinarily intelligent, with exceptional entrepreneurial talents and leadership skills, but he has also created six excellent companies that have all created tremendous value for millions of other people. His new book, The Entrepreneur’s Essentials, is also going to create even more value in the world by helping entrepreneurs launch and build better and more successful organizations. When I think back on my own journey as an entrepreneur and as a leader, I only wish Brett’s book had been available to me when I was starting out. It would have become my Bible and I would have hungrily lapped up its wisdom. It would have saved me from dozens of mistakes and provided me with the invaluable wisdom and guidance I needed to grow Whole Foods Market quicker and more skillfully.
One great example of this wisdom is Brett’s insight that the highly successful entrepreneurial journey goes through three distinct stages — “irrelevance to relevance to the must have”. This certainly was true of my own entrepreneurial journey with Whole Foods. Back in 1978, Renee Hardy and I started up a small natural and organic food store in Austin, Texas that we named “Safer Way” — which was a deliberate spoof on Safeway’s name. At the time of Safer Way’s birth there were no more than about 10 small natural and organic food stores in Austin. There was nothing unique or special about Safer Way, except for one thing — we were 100% vegetarian and a lot more purist than our competitors — minimal to zero refined sugars, refined grains, alcohol, or coffee.
While our youthful idealism did successfully appeal to a very narrow niche of health-oriented vegetarians, I think it is safe to say that Safer Way was at the stage of “market irrelevance”. We managed to lose $23,000 of our initial $45,000 in capital the first year of business and only made a whopping $5,000 in year two. Renee and I were only paying ourselves $200 a month and we moved into the store, which was an old Victorian home, and lived on the third floor to save money. We knew that we needed to do something radically different if we were going to have a successful business and become relevant in the marketplace. We made four major changes which brought us to “market relevancy”:
1. We relocated Safer Way ½ mile away to a different location that quadrupled the size of our store. This much larger space allowed us to open one of the very first natural food supermarkets in the United States. We were then more than twice as large as any of our other Austin natural foods competitors.
2. We expanded our product mix to include everything a dedicated natural and organic foods shopper might want including meat, seafood, coffee, beer and wine. Although we didn’t sell most conventional brands of food such as Coke, Pop-Tarts, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or factory farmed meats, we were a “one-stop shop” for all natural and organic foods.
3. We merged with one of our strongest Austin competitors, Clarksville Natural Grocery. This not only eliminated a tough competitor, but it also doubled our intellectual capital and our team members — both of which proved to be crucial to our success.
4. We changed our name from Safer Way to Whole Foods Market. This was a necessary change to make the Clarksville Natural Grocery entrepreneurs happy, since they didn’t want to be called Safer Way. That may have been the main reason to change our brand name, but in retrospective it is very clear that Whole Foods is a far superior brand name than Safer Way ever could have been.
The first Whole Foods Market was a tremendous success from day one, despite no advertising or any other marketing except for viral word of mouth (there was no social media back in 1980)! Whole Foods had higher sales on our first day of business than Safer Way and Clarksville combined would do in a week. And Whole Foods just grew and grew and grew from that point. Within less than six months we had the highest sales of any natural/organic foods store anywhere in the United States. We had definitely achieved “market relevancy” — at least in Austin Texas.
It is impossible (and quite inappropriate) to try to tell the entire 41 years of history of Safer Way and Whole Foods Market in the Foreword of Brett’s book on entrepreneurship, so that tale will need to wait for a different context. What is important to say here is that over the next 40 years Whole Foods transitioned to the third stage of the successful entrepreneurial journey to the “must have” that Brett writes about in this book. We had become the “category king” of dedicated natural and organic supermarkets. Today we have over 500 stores in three countries with annual sales over $19 billion. While Whole Foods did not invent the idea of natural and organic foods, and we did not actually open the very first natural foods supermarket, we did define and build the category itself. In building this category we have had a major impact on the way Americans eat today and have impacted the entire food retailing industry. Natural and organic foods are now “must have” foods found everywhere.
Although I have now known Brett for ten years now, I think I really got to know him better when he joined our Conscious Capitalism movement and eventually served on our Board of Directors. Conscious Capitalism has four major tenets:
1. Every business has the potential for a higher purpose besides only making money.
2. All of the major stakeholders in a business are interdependent and all are important — customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and communities. The business should be consciously managed to create value simultaneously for all of these stakeholders.
3. Organizations today need more Conscious Leaders — leaders who embody the higher purpose of the organization and are servant leaders to all of the major stakeholders.
4. Every organization should create Conscious Cultures that allow everyone working there to learn, grow, and flourish.
It was a natural fit for Brett to participate in and serve the Conscious Capitalism movement, because that is exactly what he has been doing as an entrepreneur since his first business startup. When he first began to be involved, I would have called him an “unconscious conscious capitalist” because he was instinctively already doing all the things that conscious leaders do, but he didn’t yet know the tenets or speak the language. Once he began to participate regularly in our CEO Summits and serving on our Board, he began upgrading our “source code” and our Board processes. Brett brought high self-confidence, good listening skills, creative ideas, and the same quality of wisdom to the Conscious Capitalism Board that he is now sharing with all of us in this book.
I was definitely sad when Brett decided to leave our Conscious Capitalism Board, but he had really good reasons for doing so, including starting up his sixth business — data.world. I have been so impressed with Brett as an entrepreneur, and with his intelligence and his integrity, that I jumped at the opportunity to invest in his new business. data.world is growing very well, and I’m sure it will end up moving from “irrelevancy, to relevancy, to must have” and will create great value in the world for all of its major stakeholders. One thing I’m completely certain about: the investors in this company will be some of the best-informed investors of any startup company that has ever been created. As I type these words, I recently received the 188th investor update that Brett and his team have put out. Just about every week, these investor updates go out to all the investors and advisers to the company and it enables all of us to see the steady progress, triumphs, as well as some of the challenges data.world faces.
The Entrepreneur’s Essentials discusses the importance of organizational culture. One of the first things that impressed me about Brett as a leader is how much he truly cares about culture. Soon after I had first met him, I remember him talking about the culture at Bazaarvoice and I told him, “I can tell you’ll always have a great culture there because of how much you personally care about it as CEO.” I’ve always believed that one of the CEO’s most important jobs is to focus on creating and growing healthy organizational cultures. The CEO needs to also be the CCO — the Chief Culture Officer — and Brett shares that belief. Bazaarvoice was named the #1 company in Austin to work for when it was small, then medium, then large. They won in all three size categories as they grew over time and no other company has ever done this in Austin. His most recent company, data.world, just won its fourth annual Best Place to Work Award in Austin and I have no doubt that they will eventually duplicate Bazaarvoice’s “Triple Crown” of cultural success.
One of Brett’s best qualities, as well as one of my favorite chapters in this book, is his intense curiosity and determination to continuously learn and grow. Besides his MBA at The Wharton School, Brett had the great honor to be selected to participate in the Henry Crown Fellowship Program where he studied with several other highly skilled, intelligent, and entrepreneurial leaders for two years. I know that Brett rates that as important to his growth as his MBA was. In addition, Brett is a very dedicated reader. As President Harry Truman said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”, and Brett is both. He reads widely in business, technology, history, philosophy, as well as keeping up with current events. Brett also learns directly from some of the smartest people in the world today, which he meets at various conferences such as TED.
Brett also understands the vital importance of mentors and coaches to help us avoid making foolish mistakes, as well as challenging us to break out of our ruts and our comfort zones. As entrepreneurs we have an ethical obligation to our companies and to ourselves to continually learn and grow. One of the things I learned at Whole Foods was that whenever I got stuck, the company would also get stuck. Whenever I broke out of any dysfunctional patterns then it freed the company to do the same. As entrepreneurs, we have a much larger impact on our companies than we realize — both our strengths and our weaknesses are magnified and reflected throughout our organizations. Brett understands this and is constantly working to become a better leader, entrepreneur, person, husband, father, and friend. From my perspective he is continually learning and growing and is setting a wonderful example for all of us. The Entrepreneur’s Essentials is one of Brett’s gifts to his fellow entrepreneurs as he shares the many lessons he has learned over the years. I believe you will find great value in this book and I hope you really enjoy it.
