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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.
Whole Foods founder and former co-CEO, John Mackey sold Whole Foods to Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017.