The transcript of John Mackey's Keynote address at the Whole Foods Tribal Gathering:

The Upward Flow of Human Development

Good, world-changing stuff for your Monday morning. :)

I remember around a year ago Brian asked me how he could download Think and Grow Rich on audio to put on his iPod.  At the time it was impossible.  Despite the fact that Think and Grow Rich is a classic audiobook there wasn't any way to buy a downloadable copy.  The only way to listen to it on an MP3 player was to buy the CDs, rip all the files to MP3 and then stick them on your player.  But even that was big pain...

No more.

As of today, LearnOutLoud is making Think and Grow Rich and a whole slew of Napoleon Hill and High Roads Media audiobooks available for audio download.  As far as I know we're the first site to do this and needless to say, we're pretty excited.  I've listened to Think and Grow Rich countless times in my life and each time I take something new away.  It's a classic that should be mandatory reading/listening for everyone, especially anyone interested in financial abundance.

If you've never heard any of these I'd encourage you to swing on over and listen to some of the free samples.  I'm excited to dive into some of the other Napoleon Hill classics.  This is good stuff and we're happy to be making it available on LearnOutLoud.

I was sad this morning to fire up ESPN and see this:

Tiger Woods' father, Earl, succumbs to cancer

Earl Woods was an amazing man, both for the influence he had on Tiger as well as for how he helped to create opportunities for minorites in the sport of golf.  If you haven't ever seen the Tiger Woods DVD set I'd highly recommend that you check it out.  Even if you're not a big golf fan it's a really intimate portrait of greatness and what it takes to be the best at what you're doing.  The first DVD is particular is great because it chronicles Tiger's upbringing.  Here's one of my favorite parts which was quoted by the article above:

"I tried to break him down mentally, tried to intimidate him verbally, by saying, 'Water on the right, OB on the left,' just before his downswing," Woods once said in an AP interview. "He would look at me with the most evil look, but he wasn't permitted to say anything. That's the frustration. He couldn't say a word, but he always had an escape word. He never used it.

"One day I did all my tricks, and he looked at me and smiled," Woods said. "At the end of the round, I told him, 'Tiger, you've completed the training.' And I made him a promise. 'You'll never run into another person as mentally tough as you.' He hasn't. And he won't."

It will certainly be strange when Tiger wins his next Major and Earl isn't there to give him one of those huge bear hugs.  Indeed, Earl will be missed by many people in the world of golf and beyond.

A step in the right direction...

Soda Distributors to End Most School Sales

The Immigration Debate

True...

In economics one of the first lessons that you learn is that demand curves are affected tremendously by the availability of substitutes in the market.  If you live in a small town and you only have one movie theatre with one screen and nothing else going on then Mission Impossible 3 is probably going to be a really hot ticket on a Saturday night.  On the other hand, if you live in LA with hundreds of theatres and thousands of other things to do it's not as likely to be tough to get a seat. 

This is pretty basic but I think there's another way to look at substitutes.  I have a theory that, in general, people will do what's best for them and for the environment, when presented with a good substitute for what they were previously doing.  A classic case of this is Whole Foods.  Whole Foods sells more organic produce, treats the environment much better than the typical grocery store and is general an all-around better-for-everyone company (IMHO) than a Ralph's/Von's/substitute whatever you have in your neck of the woods.

But health food stores have been around forever (or at least since the 70s I think...).  What has caused the incredible success of Whole Foods?  I'm sure there are many reasons but I'll offer that they made the shopping experience a lot more pleasant than the average trip to grocery store.  Just as Starucks turned the notion of a coffee shop on its head, Whole Foods did likewise when it came to buying food.  And so now you have an army of people who make the trek to Whole Food every week rather than whereever they used to go to buy their groceries.  And in my mind that's what I'd label a "positive consumer substitution" in that people are choosing to frequent a place that holistically more healthy without necessarily even consciously realizing that they're doing so.

Zaadz is another perfect example.  Let's say you wanted to join a social network pre-Zaadz.  What were your choices?  MySpace, Friendster, etc.  I don't have any particular beef with any of these sites but I'd definitely make the argument that Zaadz is holistically healthier than any of them.  After all, I'm pretty sure Friendster isn't asking anyone who their heroes are or how they are going to change the world.  Thousands/millions/billions of people will end up using Zaadz and some of them (especially the early adopters) will do it consciously because they see the differences between what's going on here and what's going on on the other social networks. 

That fires me up but that's not what fires me up the most.

I get fired up when I think about all the people who will eventually become Zaadzsters because their friends sent them an invite and they wanted to be where their friends were and oh by the way, they'll add some heroes and hmm...teachers.  Gee, hadn't thought about that...and goals, sure I'll add some of those.

It's the people that will accidentally stumble onto Zaadz that will cause the tipping point to happen.  Just as a lot of the people at Whole Foods who shop there for the first time don't quite realize that they're making the world a better place.  And then as these people discover more about this new grocery store or social network they've found then that's where the real magic happens.  They start to look at what this whole GMO thing is all about or what "conscious capitalism" entails.  They start to think.  They start to awaken.

It's something that's been a personal goal of mine with LearnOutLoud.  We're creating alternatives people to pass their daily commute.  Rather than listen to Howard Stern, they can listen to a podcast or audiobook instead.  They can learn while they're in the car or at the gym and get inspiration for the rest of the day rather than being feed the same depressing news or mindless advertising. 

But we've all got to be really darn good at what we do for this whole thing to work. 

John Mackey had to create a really compelling experience to get people to be willing to shell out some extra money for their food.  Brian and the rest of the gang here had to make really solid social networking tools in order for this thing to grow as fast as it has.  And we've got to do a great job at LearnOutLoud to give people stuff that's so compelling that bypassing most of the garbage that's on the radio is a choice they look forward to making.

It's not going to be easy.  There's a lot of marketing muscle behind the encumbents in all these different industries.  But together I firmly believe we can make a difference.  Look at what's happening with hybrid cars right now (My guess...$4/gallon gas this summer...ouch!).  Look at what's going on with clean energy technology.  It's a great start but we've got so much further to go. 

We need to get hundreds of thousands of people making uplifting films and music and writing inspirational books that are just as fun and interesting as everything else that's out there.  We need to have people who aren't afraid to open up more healthy restaurants that also have kick-ass food and environmentally sensitive businesses that also produce kick-ass products.  We need to encourage people to start companies that, like Native American tribes, think seven generations out with every decision that they make.

And then we need to do all we can to support these businesses and their products and services.  It might mean a very extra dollars today to buy the organic food or the hybrid car but in the long run it's really the only thing that makes any sense for our world and the world that our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will live in. 

I've pretty much kept out of politics since the recent election.  There's just too much negativity and I'd rather focus my energy on positive stuff that can change the world.  Having said that, I think this Rolling Stone editorial offers a lot of food for thought:

The Worst President in History?

And then today I see this:

Bush's best moment in office? Reeling in big perch

Groan...

That's all the best he can come up with?

OK, in the spirit of not saying anything if you can't say something nice I'm going to be quiet now.

A-maz-ing demo of the new game Spore.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/05/11/joystiq-video-wired-spore-event-featuring-will-wright-and-robi/ 

I'm not a gamer at all.  But found this fascinating.  And Robin Williams is hysterical as usual...

A very cool site and idea...

 

http://www.globalgiving.com/index.html