"Rule Breaker Investing" Mailbag: A Different Way to Score Your "Magnificent Seven" Exposure

On the road and looking at a light mailbag, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner writes his own beautiful question this time, using it as an opportunity to highlight five favorite moments from the Rule Breaker Investing podcast in 2024.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our beginner's guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

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This video was recorded on Sept. 25, 2024.

David Gardner: True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. That is the fourth lesson of self knowledge from fantastic leadership author Warren Bennis. We might mention the other three, but true understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. That to me is what the heart of the Rule Breaker Investing mailbag is about month in and month out. True understanding comes about from reflecting on what we've shared in the month, and in this case, the year that was. True understanding coming your way, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Happy Autumn, now officially in the Northern Hemisphere. Meteorologically, it starts on September 1 each year, but astronomically on the 21st or 22nd. Happy Autumn and happy spring to my Southern Hemisphere, listeners. Let's look back on the podcasts that have formed up September 2024, for Rule Breaker Investing. I kicked it off on the fourth of this month with essays from yesterday, Volume 6, reading off past essays without being able in any way to change them. To have to truly read you back what I wrote 15 or 10 years ago about investing in the stock market and reflect on those, always fun. That was Volume 6 in that series. A week later, my friend, and I hope now yours, Rand Stagen on long-term leadership, business, and life. That was on September 11th, and then September 18th, last week, the Market Cap Game Show, Matt Argersinger, and Yasser El-Shimy. I have so much fun. I could probably do the Market Cap Game Show every single week on this podcast. Maybe we should turn this into the investing podcast world equivalent of jeopardy. From one week to the next, I don't think I will, but I'm often tempted to, especially as much fun as we had last week. Matt Argersinger sealing the deal, setting himself up for March Market Cap madness, March of 2025, four coveted seats, he is now one of the final four. I hope you played along. I think Matt scored seven, Yasser scored three. I hope you beat at least one of my guests, because the Market Cap Game Show is played for you. Well, two things.

First of all, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia this week. I'm not in my normal habitat. That means that thing number two, which is that I just didn't get that much mail in my mailbag this month, those two things dovetail together well to make it a simple mailbag podcast. What I believe is the 107th consecutive monthly mailbag on Rule Breaker Investing. I have one item this week.

Let's get started. Hi, David. Since you didn't get many mailbag notes this month, I thought I'd write in and ask, what are some moments, some bigger insights that have come out of your podcast in 2024? There are 52 weeks in a year. You do 52 podcasts, at least every year. I'm not looking for a full highlight reel. This is not your annual December besties. But just a few, let's call it five highlight moments of Rule Breaker Investing so far in this year of 2024. Thanks in advance. This comes from not a first time listener or first time caller, or first time writer. It comes from David, and that was me writing myself the mailbag to serve as a platform for this week's podcast. I let off with the fourth lesson of self-knowledge. True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. That's what we're going to do this week looking back over 2024 before we move into that. Warren Bennis had three other lessons of self-knowledge and I've memorized them because I think they're worth memorizing. Here they are, rattling them off one to four again. Number 1 is you are your own best teacher. Number 2 is accept responsibility, blame, no one, which is such a good way to go through life. Lesson number 3 of self-knowledge is you can learn anything you want to. That's always felt so important to me because what the Motley Fool does, what I do on Rule Breaker Investing, is to teach people something that I think everyone should know, or at least know a little bit about, a little more about.

That's the stock market. I truly believe you can learn anything you want to, and my personal mandate is to help you invest better, to help make you smarter, happier, and richer. That's what we're doing every week on this podcast, every day at fool.com. You can learn anything you want to. Then the question is, what's worth learning? For all of us, I think, understanding how to make our money grow. In the words of Mark Reagan, our former employee, who was raised by a mother has said, Mark, there are three ways to make money in this world. She said, number 1, with your mind. Number 2, with your body, and number 3, with your money. Three ways to make money in this world with your mind, your body, or your money. Mark said, "Tell me about that third one." That's what we're doing, telling you about that third one every week. But the fourth and final lesson of self-knowledge is the platform for this week's podcast. True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. There is so much of a 24-hour news cycle in our world today. It's driven by for-profit companies, some of which I've sometimes been invested in. I'm certainly a fan of for-profit news, but I'm also aware of the unintended consequences of for-profit news. What that generally means is they're looking for clicks. That's part of what we do with the Motley Fool as well, and I understand how we're trying to get people engaged with our subject matter, whoever we are. But it also means, especially for investing, it very much fights against successful investing when you have a 24-hour news cycle because most of your financial news is driven to make you care about what's happening right now. What is the Dow doing right now? What is the market going to do this season, this quarter, this new autumn? You need to care, we need you to care.

The Motley Fool is on the one hand, helping drive that, on the other hand, we're very conscious of that. I hope this brief reflection on my own part shared with you shows that we're very conscious that ultimately, we think you need to not listen to the 24-hour news cycle. I think that works in a lot of ways these days. I spend very little time looking at election news myself, or all of the 24-hour cycle that drives so much of our media today. But getting back to investing, you really have to reflect on your experience, ignore today's or tomorrow's headlines, think beyond the quarter, be invested for years, we'll talk about that a little bit going forward. Be invested for years. That's the cycle of the investor, and it really aligns with your whole life. I think you should be invested your whole life. I don't think you should be jumping in and out of the market, I think you should just keep saving and adding and saving some more. As your life comes to an end, I hope that you have a lot to show for it, including something that you can pass on to those you love to help the future of our world. That's the real cycle that we operate on as investors, whatever the news cycle thinks. True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. I have five highlight moments that I want to call out from what I've learned, what I've experienced on the podcast this year that I hope will be powerful for you as well. Number 1 is the power of the long game. I'm hailing back to earlier this month, that's what we do on mailbags. I'm thinking of my friend Rand Stagen and his comments on long term leadership, on business, and in life. Clearly, Rand tapped into something special because there were some great tweets about this podcast. Matt had at 307 Fool said, "Great episode.

Love the feeling of being a fly on the wall." During a wonderful conversation between some awesome, long term leaders. Thank you, Matt, and you were linking in Rand Stagen's podcast. Add hail to stocks. You wrote that tidbit on Cava @davidgfool. Love these podcasts as they provide a reading between the tea leaves view on investing. Having conversations with good hearted people. Well, thank you for that as well, add hail to stocks. Both Rand and I emphasized the importance of taking a long-term perspective. I just spoke to it. Anybody who's listened to this podcast or been a Motley Fool member for years, well, already know that the only term that matters for your money is the long-term and always be playing the long game, but it's so refreshing to speak to somebody who advises business leaderships, who lives a life in long-term cycles, and my friend Rand Stagen beautifully exemplify that on our September 11 podcast this month. In his leadership programs, you may remember, he requires a minimum of 52 weeks to even begin the development process. That probably means, well, he talked about this a little bit, he turns away all business. If someone wants him to do a one day seminar or a three-day corporate offsite, he turns them down because he's not looking for quick fixes, he's looking for long-term relationships, just the looking I hope you're doing with the investments in your portfolio. That mirror I was able to put up to investing just so beautifully reflected back by Rand and how he approaches business. The true rewards come from holding investments and relationships for years or decades, not chasing short-term gains. Before we move on to number 2, Rand also spoke to something else, I think it's worth underlining a couple of weeks ago. He said, modern life needs to move more toward integrating work and personal purpose, rather than compartmentalizing these aspects. He was challenging the conventional notion of retirement, suggesting that future leaders and individuals, you and me of the future might pursue continuous learning and purpose-driven work throughout our lives, rather than stopping work entirely. He was hammering back against that concept of retirement, especially if it's a retirement from lifelong work you didn't enjoy. You were paddling forward madly in your canoe exhaustively, trying to get to that place down the river with a Capital R retirement. Rand was saying, rather than lead that life, how about look for continuous learning in your job and the purpose-driven work that attracts you throughout your life.

I realize, sometimes it's easy to say or point to, not so easy to find or do. But I can at least say this, as long as you're aware that that is worth striving for, as long as you're trying toward that, I bet you will get there. I would say maybe enclosing an evolving view of the so-called work life balance, a phrase I've never liked and seeking fulfillment throughout. There were many other lessons besides in that time with Rand Stagen. I completely recommend that podcast to you, especially if you're going for a long walk or a ramble sometime. We went a little bit more than an hour longer than your average Rule Breaker Investing podcast and I thought it was totally worth it, I hope you do too, if you haven't yet gotten to hear that. That was a highlight real moment from this podcast for me so far in 2024. Let's move on to number 2. Onto number 2. Number 2, well, it was about eight months ago, because I'm thinking back to the January mailbag of this year. We talked about FAANG stocks and the "Magnificent Seven". I always enjoy thinking in terms of baskets of stocks. Obviously, the 35 stock samplers that I've produced in this podcast that we continue to track and watch. The market crushing 150 stocks picked on this podcast over the course of years is a good example of one basket after another. People tend to basket up. I think, again, it serves the 24-hour news cycle. Years ago, maybe 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago, you might remember FAANG stocks. The news media was talking about Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, and saying F-A-A-N-G, FAANG stocks, and that became a thing.

People were talking about how the FAANG stocks did today. Did you own some FAANG stocks or not? FAANG stocks? Now, no one's really using that phrase much anymore, because within the last couple of years, it's been replaced by yet another new catchy phrase that itself shall one day vanish into what I'll call [inaudible], but for now, the Magnificent 7 has center stage in the media's mind. Especially if you're a stock market investor, you've come across this phrase. This is now seven stocks that are regularly described as dominating the market, leading the market with its gains, etc. These are all popular catch phrases, just to quickly capture several, not too many winning stocks, and have a conversation at the water cooler. It's all very well to have cute phrasing around a small bundle of stocks or think about those stocks themselves. But I was saying eight months ago, and I'm going to rehighlight it for you this week, I think the real test of investors is not how many of the stocks that you might now own, the FAANG stocks, the Magnificent 7 and whatever is coming next. Although good on you, by the way, if you have, because these have been some of the great performers of the last 5, 10, and more than that years. But I think the real test is, how long you have held any of these stocks, how long you've held them. Starting with the FAANG stock some years ago, I started asking a new question. I think this is a more important question, it's an interesting question. This question is a little gift that I give to you, dear listener for listening to me this week. You might have heard it before if you're a longtime listener. What is your FAANG score? Or these days, what is your Magnificent 7 score?

Because let's be clear. It's not about chasing yesterday's returns or trying to hit on the hot group of the latest stocks. People are no longer talking about FAANG, and a few years, as I mentioned, people won't be talking about the "Magnificent Seven" anymore, but what I want you, dear Fool to talk about is your score, and your score, your "Magnificent Seven" score is the number of years that you've held these stocks.

There's a phenomenon called window dressing, which is occasionally indulged in by some of the mutual funds, especially some of the more popular mutual funds out there. Near the end of each quarter, when that mutual fund needs to officially report its holdings, mutual funds are required to show what they hold in their fund at the end of each quarter, near the end. Those last few weeks, some fund managers will buy into certain hot or popular stocks, so they can say, we have Nvidia in our fund too. While that's pretty superficial, it's been given the casual phrase window dressing to describe this behavior, these activities. You could certainly window dress your way into any fang or "Magnificent Seven" stock. That's why I think the real test is actually how long you've held any of these. I want to share with you, one of my small points of pride as I think back on 28 plus years of stock picking at the Motley Fool. That is that through our services, what we've tried to do is get you get our listeners, get our members, invested in great companies like these as early as possible. Stage Number 1. Before everybody's talking about them, when people are skeptical about them. When people are saying things like Amazon will never make any money, or Tesla is a pipe dream. When people are reacting that way early on, that's when I've tried to pick these stocks. From stage 1, we go to what I'll call stage 2 or stage infinity, which is that we keep holding those stocks, well past 24 hour news cycles, well past when people think they're hot, well past, when their popular names are up there in lights. We keep holding. Often, these companies just keep going up over time. They'll have some dramatic drops, which each of the "Magnificent Seven", so called has had.

But eventually, you get to a stage where they're world beaters. They move from Rule Breakers to becoming the makers of rules, rule makers, and that is the dream investment that I've always pursued. Each of the companies that I'm about to mention to you, and going briefly over these "Magnificent Seven", I'm going to share with you the number of years that Motley Fool members who followed our advice, who followed my advice from the earliest days right through to now, what their magnificent 7 score is in years, so here we go. Alphabetically, the first one of the Mag7 is Alphabet, and Alphabet was recommended to Motley Fool Rule Breakers in 2008. I'm going to give us a plus 16 for the number of years that we've held Alphabet. The second alphabetically, is Amazon. Amazon, I first picked in 1997, and we're still holding. We can add 27 years on top of that 16, and we're now at 43. The third Mag7 stock is Apple. Apple, I brought to Motley Fool Stock Advisor in 2008. If you were around, I hope you bought. It really took me quite a while to get to Apple. Apple had been winning company. The iPhone had come out the year before, but things like the iPod, and, of course, Steve Jobs had been around years before that. I actually felt a little late to the dance in 2008, but 16 years later, I'm glad we're still holding Apple, so we can add on top of 43 years, we can add 16 more. We're now at 59 years as we hit the fourth of the Mag7 stocks Meta Platforms. Meta Platforms came public in 2012. That's the year I picked it in Motley Fool Rule Breakers. 2012 is 12 years ago. Let's give ourselves another 12 for our Mag7 score. We're now up to 71. The fifth stock is Microsoft. When did I recommend Microsoft? Never. For years, I felt good about that, especially during the Steve Balmer years, but I've completely missed the Sacha Nadella era. I'm happy to say many Motley Fool members haven't.

I'm just reflecting on my own record through Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers. But a lot of people probably came to the Motley Fool already owning Microsoft in some cases, and you've done fantastically well over the last decade holding Microsoft. You've held it without me. I give myself a zero, and we'll keep that number, that "Magnificent Seven" score at 71. The final two stocks. The first is Nvidia stock Number 6. I recommend that on tax day of 2005. That's 19 years ago, 71+19 is 90, and the final "Magnificent Seven" stock is Tesla. Tesla, I recommended in 2011 just weeks after Elon Musk had visited Motley Fool headquarters and given a stump speech about Tesla. I remember Elon saying at the time he was interviewed by my good friend, longtime Motley Fool co-conspirator Bill Mann. I remember Elon saying, Tesla at that time was the third most shorted stock on the Nasdaq, which I took to be a very bullish signal because you could look at Elon's past with PayPal and his success. You could see the dream. Back 13 years ago, electric cars were still more of a dream than not. You could look forward and see, I could see this happening. Look at all the shorts who are already betting against Elon. Weeks later, I picked the stock. The year was, of course, 2011. That was 13 years ago. To close this shaggy dog story out 90+13 is 103. I'm very happy to note that all six of those seven stocks were picked using Rule Breaker principles. Specifically, the six traits of Rule Breaker stocks that I've talked about and written about many times on this podcast. The six traits have consistently enabled me to find these companies, not just one of them, in this case, six out of seven, but it's one thing to find them. It's an entirely different thing to actually hold them.

The measure of your "Magnificent Seven" score, or that guy on TV's "Magnificent Seven" score, or your mutual fund manager, private wealth manager, whatever his or her "Magnificent Seven" score is all about at the heart of it, it's not just their ability to find these companies, but to hold them. To hold the great companies of your time, hold them to the great value they will produce for you if you just let them. The next time you hear somebody mention "Magnificent Seven", I would encourage you to teach them about the magnificent 7 score. You can ask them the simple, compelling water cooler question, as it seems like increasing numbers of Americans are returning more to the workplace. Speaking of Amazon, you may have seen Amazon's announcement that all Amazon employees will be full time in office on January 1st, five days a week, which I think is very interesting and influential. Anyway, as people in some cases, go back to work, there's that water cooler. Right at the water cooler or the coffee machine, you can turn to your friend and you know invests. That person might have mentioned the "Magnificent Seven" to you, and you could raise an eyebrow, have a little fun and say, "By the way, what's your "Magnificent Seven" score?" They probably won't know what you're talking about, but now you know exactly how to explain it to them. You can share yours. You can ask them theirs, because to me, that's the real measure of investing. If you want to talk about what's really winning out there in the public markets, it's finding these companies and holding them for years and years. Plus 103, by the way, for me, will flip over and add six more next year, because, of course, I and we still hold all of these stocks through our Motley Fool services, both in some cases, personally in our portfolios, but right out there for our members as recommendations.

One hundred and three will become 109 in just a few more months. On to Number 3, Bill Burke came on this podcast and threw down optimism on April 3rd earlier this year. Just a couple of days after April Fool's Day. It was a delight to have Bill on. He mentioned Kevin Kelly, who in his book, Excellent Advice for Living, and Kevin Kelly past guest on this podcast a couple of times. I'm so glad that Bill pulled this line and reminded me, and I now remind you of this outstanding highlight reel line from Kevin's book. Bill said, I wish I'd had this when I was younger. Roughly, it goes like this. If you only read the news, you'll think things have never been worse. But if you read history, you realize things have never been better. Well, I already spoke to what I think about the 24 hour news cycle, whether it's for our election or for your money. I think it's worth removing yourself from it. I think you'll be a happier, more successful, more productive person. But that admiration for where human beings are now, we're so faulty. We've made so many mistakes, and yet, if you look back over history, by most measures, things have truly never been better. Pinch yourself, therefore, that you were alive in 2024. I think it was former President Obama, who's credited with this concept, it's a really good one. If you were randomly, there have been approximately 108 billion human beings. We know this over the course of history, approximately 108 billion of which about eight billion are alive today, so 100 billion humans precede us, and if you were given a lottery number, you were randomized into one of those people at any point in history, virtually all of us would and should take the I would like to be born in 2024, as opposed to 1924 or the year 24 or the year BCE 1024, or, frankly, hundreds of thousands of years before that, and yet often you couldn't necessarily tell that if you're paying attention to the news.

The news scares people out of investments. A lot of people come to me and say, well, I sold because I thought the market was going down, or things looked so bad, either right now or at any point in the last 10 or 100 years. I've heard that many times. I have friends who say this election is the most important American history, which, by the way, I don't think it is. Some people are worried about this upcoming election. But you know what isn't? What I think is a truer indicator of where we are at any given point, the stock market. The stock markets at all time highs. Now, I'm not here to say that that means this is the best day ever or the best week ever, but I am here to say, people who are invested in the stock market are always looking forward. I've always said the stock market looks about six months forward. We're at all time highs right now. If you find yourself down in the dumps or upset or worried, just realize that's a real disconnect from what the rest of the world is seeing as expressed through the stock market. I realize the stock market is but one particular measure of human well being, but I also think it's a very important and relevant one that has guided me throughout my life, because, frankly, if people really did think the world was going down, they would be selling, and the market would not be at all time highs.

I'm also not here to say that the market will go up from here over the next year. I don't know where the market's headed over any given year, but long time listeners know that I think market's going up over the next year, but I just want to point out that important connection between how the market's doing and what that probably tells us about what the Smart money thinks about where we are in the world today, and so I will restate all time highs. Bill Burke said one other thing before I move on to Number 4 on that podcast. He clarified, he provided a clear distinction between optimism and hope. A lot of us tend to intermix those words I certainly have in the past, but I really appreciated Bill's distinction, which if you didn't get a chance to hear, here it is. He said, optimist assumes that the odds are in her favor. While hope, by contrast, is often present when the odds are stacked against us. This distinction for me, helps frame how we approach challenges differently. Your approach with optimism when you assume that the odds made the odds always be in your favor. When you feel like the odds are in your favor, it's still not a done deal. You're still thinking forward to where you hope things will be, but you feel like the odds are in your favor. That's optimism. Hope, which is also such an important thing in this world. Hope is often present when you feel like the odds are stacked against you. A beautiful distinction by Bill Burke, a highlight reel podcast, and a couple of moments from April 3rd, 2024. Onto Number 4, and the fourth high moment that I can think back to over the course of this year. It was just an entire podcast and maybe the point that it made. This one was also in January. It was entitled Calculating Risk.

Foolishly, and I have a 25 point system that I use to rate risk on stocks. It's something we haven't played up that much of com. You may or may not find this as you're clicking around our site, whether on the free side or as a member, but it's something I built up over the years, and I really love. Every few years in this podcast, I bring it back, I bring on analysts, and we go through the 25 yes or no questions, which we apply to every stock we're looking at. The goal of calculating risk capital Foolishly is to give you not just a phrase, that stock is medium risk, which to me, has always been a meaningless phrase. I'm not really sure what medium risk tells me or whether that helps me in any way. I would much rather be able to say the risk of that stock, is nine, or the risk of that stock is 15. When you have a 25 point system like the one I developed and have built up over years and years, you know exactly the number that you're putting on every stock when you're calculating the risk of holding that stock, which is a helpful measure to have. Now, risk can be defined in different ways. The way I define it is, real risk with investing in stocks is, if you were to hold that stock over a meaningful period of time, let's say five or more years. What is the risk of substantially losing your capital by holding that stock over five or more years? A lot of people equate risk more with volatility. How risky is that stock, how much will it jump up or down? Usually, they mean down. But I think it's much more helpful to think in terms of what is the risk of you losing a lot of your money on that stock? Especially if you hold it for a longer period of time.

That's the risk I'm trying to avoid that happening. Starting with that clear definition and asking 25 yes or no questions, of course, I'm not going to summarize those on this podcast. You can go back, and I hope you will, and listen if you haven't heard it before January 24th of this year, where I teach you, along with a couple of talented analysts, we use two example stocks, and we go through all 25 points. To me, that week's podcast, it'll probably be a bestie too, but that week's podcast was worth listening to on any given week. But since I've been promising highlight real moments, that's what we're really talking about on this mailbag, I think here's the highlight real moment from that podcast. It's that we discover together that higher risk does not necessarily equate to higher reward. A lot of people think, risk and reward are the same, so if you take a lot of risk, you get a lot of reward, if you take a little risk, you get little reward. That's a common place in the investing world. But as a Fool, somebody who likes to challenge commercial wisdom, I feel as if we clearly arrived at an exciting realization, which is that lower risk stocks, some of them, I would say the Rule Breakers actually show greater returns. Risk does not always correlate with reward. There's a highlight real moment, a lot more in that one, if you want to go back and listen. Which brings me answering my friend, David's question for this podcast. What are five highlight real moments? Here's the last one I want to cover this week. This was from August.

Authors in August, I enjoyed it once again as always. But in particular, a story that John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods Market told on this podcast, stays with me. Some of you will have heard this already, some of you are just tuning in this podcast for the first time, and you don't know the story. It's my pleasure to share it again, and I'm pretty much going to just read the transcript, shared in John's own words because this is one to take away with you as you go through life going forward. It's about, I would say it's John's story about conscious capitalism and how he awakened to conscious capitalism in the world and what it meant to him. It's the story early days of Whole Foods Market when their big flagship first store was completely ruined by 100 year flood moment. They had opened up the store in Austin, Texas knowing that they were on the 100 year flood plain, and John figured, well, that only happens once every 100 years. It probably won't happen to us. Shortly after opening the store, it did. John went on to say, the store was completely ruined. We have some pictures of a flood in the book, John's book, The whole life, and we were completely ruined. That's John said, when I learned about stakeholders, although, again, I didn't have the language for it back in 1981, because the stakeholders were people that loved us. They didn't let us die. The very next day, we're cleaning up the store, and all these strangers, they weren't strange. I recognized them, but they didn't work for us. They were helping us clean up the store, and I remember talking to them. I was like, why are you helping us clean up the store? The man near me says, I love you guys. You guys have got to survive this. Well, I'm doing everything I can to help you guys get through this. Then John went on, our team members were working for free, because we couldn't make payroll, but nobody quit. They all stayed. They all had faith. We could get back open again. Of course, we did pay them once. We were able to get open again.

Our suppliers fronted us hundreds of thousands of dollars in new inventory on our credit. Our investors put in more money. But the biggest thing John said was, we got this $100,000 loan from our bank, which surprised me at the time. Because it was just on my signature, and my signature was worthless. I couldn't believe it. The bank usually wants all this collateral. I remember being really grateful for that. Well, about, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I'm at this conference, John Mackey said, and this guy comes up to me. He looks familiar, but I didn't really recognize him, and he said, hey, John, you may not remember me, but I used to work at City National Bank. I said, I love City National Bank. They really came through for us. In that flood. They loaned us $100,000. He said, that was a great thing Marc Monroe did for you; wasn't it? He was our banker. Well, I said, it sure was. If we hadn't gotten that money, I don't know what would have happened. But it always surprised me that they gave us the loan because I didn't have any net worth, and it was just his signature. This guy starts laughing and says, you don't know what happened, do you? I said, well, they gave us the money. He said, John, the bank turned down the loan. You guys were not worth the credit risk. I said, well, no, the bank didn't turn us down because we got the money. He said, No, Marc Monroe personally guaranteed the loan. I said, well, why the heck would he do that? He answered, he really liked you guys. He said, I know they'll pay me back. John Mackey will pay me back for taking this risk for the rest of his life. He took a risk on us, and I didn't even know. He never told me. Well, I immediately thought, of course, God, I'd like to get hold of Marc and thank him. I asked this man, do you have his contact information? He says, that's too late. He passed a few years ago, an unsung hero. John went on to conclude, that's what stakeholders mean.

There are people that care about your business, they have a stake in it. People don't understand this about business really, that business is this win game, where you're creating value for all of these different stakeholders. You're creating value for your customers. If they don't like you, they don't have to shop with you. They can go somewhere else. But if they do shop with you, then they're getting value out of the exchange. People don't have to work for you. They're working for you voluntarily. They can get other jobs. Many of them do, but they're winning because they're getting paid. They're getting opportunities, to be promoted, to gain new experiences. Suppliers don't have to trade with you, but they do, and you win with them as well, and investors don't have to invest. John said, Whole Foods was a public company for 25 years. If you didn't like us, you could sell the stock, if you didn't like what we were doing. Then you're also part of the communities. The community you're trading with. In many ways, you're paying taxes to your local community. You're helping out philanthropically in the communities you're in. The point I'm making is, John said, with his final line, these are all the stakeholders, and I didn't know about them back then. We were saved by our stakeholders. That's who saved Whole Foods Market, and I've been trying to pay them back ever since. Well, there you have it, a travel week for me and a light mailbag and an opportunity to reflect on our experience together. I want to close by saying, finally, this week, the world lost a good man. I might even say a fellow Fool since he appeared as my guest on this podcast as an author in August just last year, 2023.

The Podcast was an American Ramble with Neil King Jr. Neil was lost to complications from cancer this past week. Neil, who, in his 60s, walked out of his front door in downtown Washington, DC, and walked to New York City. An American Ramble, he called it as he visited with the land and the people. He encountered fellow Americans all from the rural Mennonites to the sometimes distracted City slickers. Neil wrote a beautiful book, his only book, Following a distinguished career with the Wall Street Journal, and I loved our time together. Among other things, he held a capacity for awe, and he was a fisherman too. I read you back this brief quote from American Ramble as a close out to my September 2024 mailbag this week, a tribute to Neil King Jr. He wrote, "What we bring to the river and to the world that is supremely human, or so we think is this ability to stop, drop everything, forget the fishing, let the line go slack and just stand there in awe. Perhaps our ability to behold is what sets us apart, our ability to feel the immensity and power of the river as it washes over us, to turn all our senses not to detecting danger or eyeing prey, but to absorbing wonder. Our ability to step out of our deliberateness may be our greatest gift, our ability to be distracted, to gawk in awe at the river for four or five minutes, tingling, all but holding your breath, reverential before getting back to fishing." Well, fish on. Fool on, Neil King Jr.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, PayPal, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short December 2024 $70 calls on PayPal, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.