Akio is a great example of this maxim that all of history's greatest founders studied history's greatest founders.
Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, studied Akio,
as did James Dyson, as did Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.
And a few months ago, I was spending time with John Mackey, who is the founder of Whole Foods.
John also relentlessly studies the great founders that came before him.
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.
He had listened to over 100 episodes before we met,
and he told me that if Founders existed when he was young,
that Whole Foods would still be an independent company.
That since the podcast and all of History's Greatest Founders constantly emphasized the importance of controlling expenses,
that he would have actually put more of a priority on it,
especially during good times, during boom times.
I think it's very natural for a company and for human nature.
to just not watch your costs as closely because everything is going so well.
This is actually something that Andrew Carnegie noticed over 130 years ago.
Carnegie would repeat this mantra over and over again.
He said, profits and prices are cyclical,
subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace.
Costs, however, could be strictly controlled and any savings achieved in costs were permanent.