John Mackey

This is what someone with a zero-sum mentality would think about business people. If someone is gaining, then someone else is losing. If someone is getting rich, somebody else is getting poor. It’s very good and evil, light versus darkness. Very binary, very polarized.

It’s quite inaccurate, however, and so far from reality. Most businesses are not playing a win-lose game. They’re playing a win-win-win game.

They’re creating value all the time. They’re creating value not just for their investors. They’re creating value for their customers; otherwise, they don’t make profits. They can’t create value for their customers if they’re not also creating value for their employees. They have to work with suppliers in order to have the products and services to sell. So, they’re creating value for those suppliers.