What I learned from having dinner with John Mackey and reading his autobiography The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism.
To make this episode, I got to spend about 7 hours with John Mackey over two days.
And I read his great autobiography twice.
And it was during one of our conversations that John told me one of the craziest things anyone has ever said about the podcast.
He had listened to over 100 episodes before we met.
And he told me that if founders existed when he was younger, Whole Foods would still be an independent company.
That since the podcast and all of history's greatest entrepreneurs constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses, he would have put more of a priority on it, especially during good times, during boom times.
It's very natural for a company, and I think for humans in general.
I think this is part of our nature, to not watch our costs as closely because everything is going so well.
In fact, this is something that Andrew Carnegie talked about a lot.
In one of his biographies, it says, Andrew Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and time again.
Profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace.
Costs, however, could be strictly controlled.
And in Carnegie's view, any savings achieved in costs were permanent.
Andrew Carnegie's idea it was something I was talking about with my friend Eric, who's the co founder and CEO of Ramp.
Ramp is now a partner of this podcast and a sponsor of this episode.
I've gotten to know all the co founders of Ramp, and I've spent a ton of time with them over the last year or two.
They all listen to the podcast and they've all picked up on the fact that the main theme from the history of entrepreneurship is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend, and how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage.
That is the main theme for ramp.
That is the reason that ramp exists.
The reason ramp exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend.