So a few months ago, I spent about seven hours at John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods.

And it was during one of our conversations that John told me one of the craziest things that anyone has ever said about the podcast.

By the time I met him, he had already listened to over 100 episodes.

And he told me that if founders existed when he was younger, that Whole Foods would still be an independent company.

That since the podcast

and all of history of greatest entrepreneurs constantly emphasized the importance of controlling

expenses, he would have made it much more of a priority, especially during good times, during boom times.

I think it is very natural for a company and for human nature to not watch your cost as closely

because everything is going so well.

In fact, you're going to hear something similar happens to Edwin Land late in his career.

After Edwin Land was semi-coaxed into retirement by Polaroid's board,

a decision that Steve Jobs, by the way, called one of the dumbest things that have ever heard.

Unfortunately, Cost got out of hand and Edwin Land left polar.

This is something that happens a lot.

In fact, when Steve Jobs was recounting some of the mistakes that he made in his own career,

he mentioned losing the discipline of cost control.

He was talking about his time at next.

And in one of his biographies, there's a line that says,

not only was time slipping by quickly,

but so too was the money. Jobs complained, allowed that we're not scrounging. We stopped

nickel and diming for the stuff, and it all adds up. This is something I talk about all the time

with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is now a partner of this podcast.

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