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Phil Knight

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2021-06-16

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2021-06-16

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1. “and those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up charlatans sometimes you have to give up sometimes knowing when to give up when to try something else is genius Giving up doesn't mean stopping. Don't ever stop And that is where I'll leave it for the full story read the book. If you want to buy the book using the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that has 186 books down, 1,000 ago, and I'll talk to you again soon.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I'd tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I'd tell men and women in their mid twenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it. If you're following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you've ever felt. I'd like to warn the best of them. The iconoclast, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have bullseye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bullseye. It's not one man's opinion. It's the law of nature. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. They've always fought uphill.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Short of that, I'd like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so that some young man or woman, somewhere going through the same trials and ordeals, might be inspired or comforted, or warned, some young entrepreneur, maybe, some athlete or painter, or novelist might press on. It's all the same drive, the same dream.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “to do and the book ends with him getting the idea to write the book. And again, just fantastic writing, and here's where we'll close. I think about the few things I want to do. It's not so much things I want to do as things I'd like to say and maybe unsay. It might be nice to tell the story of Nike. Everyone else has told the story or tried to, but they always get half the facts, if that, and none of the spirit. I might start the story or end it with regrets the hundreds, maybe thousands of bad decisions. Of course, above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons. Maybe if I had, I could have solved the encrypted code of Matthew Knight, and yet I know that this regret clashes with my secret regret that I can't do it all over again God how I wish I could relive the whole thing”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Good God, I thought yes, regret because I honestly wished I could do it all over again. I fell asleep for a few hours when I woke up it was cold and rainy. I went to the window. The world was the same as it had been the day before, as it had always been. Nothing had changed, least of all me, and yet I was worth a hundred and seventy eight million dollars. I showered, ate breakfast, drove to work. I was at my desk before anyone else.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “And we're edging closer to the IPO, which is the end of the book. And this is just perfect. I redefine winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me or my company. We wanted as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers making them happier or healthier or safer or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is, you're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping others to live more fully. And if that's business, all right, call me a businessman. grow on me.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “enough to justify his salary for its founder right before my thirty first birthday I made the bold move so he quits his teaching job and I went full time at my company Just pause and think about that. How many people would have given up before that? He's spending every free minute. He's working full-time every free minute he has on his business for seven years before he can work on a full-time.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Skipping ahead, so I was wrong. I think I said it took five years before he could work on a full time. Seven years. It was seven years. Rising sales enabled, this is 1969. Rising sales enabled me to hire more and more reps. Most were ex-runners and eccentrics, as only X-Runners can be. But when it came to selling, they were all business. This is also important too, because all the people he's hiring, he's not paying a salary. It's all commissioned salesmen. Because they were, this is not very different. It made me think of, we did that book on Bill Gates, the early days of Microsoft. You know, a lot of people would be surprised. The first 30 employees of Microsoft, 28 programmers, one secretary and bill. And Bill spent almost all his time on sales. So it's almost like we have Phil doing everything here, and then he's got a bunch of people selling the product. Because they were inspired by what they were trying to do and because they worked solely on commission, they were burning up the roads, hitting every high school and college track meet within a thousand mile radius. And their extraordinary efforts were boosting our numbers even more. I decided that blue ribbon was now doing well.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “And he's constantly comparing and contrasting the way he felt with the way outsiders did. To outsiders, nothing he's doing is making sense. But his discomfort was his soul. I confess that Blue Ribbon was tenuous. The whole thing might go bust any day, but I still couldn't see myself doing anything else. My little shoe company was a living breathing thing, which I had created from nothing. I breathed life into it, nurtured it through illness, brought it back several times from the dead, and now I wanted, needed to see it stand on its own feet and go into the world. I told her he's on a date talking about this. I told her flat out I didn't want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.”

   2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “So he tells his dad this decision, and we're going to see difference between inner scorecard and outer scorecard. He stared. I'm sorry, this is his boss first. His boss and his dad react the same way, so he tells him I'm quitting. He stared. I'd gone off script, way off. Why the hell would you do something like that? I then told my father. He was pretty pissed. I was still jackassing around with shoes, he said. Teaching at Portland State was downright disrespectable. What am I going to tell my friends? So outer scorecard. This is how Phil thought about this. I was following a path that felt like my path, and though I wasn't sure where it would lead, I was ready to find out inner scorecard.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Find a different day job when they would pay my bills but require fewer hours, leaving me more time to my passion. This is when he decides to become instead of being an accountant to teach accounting at, I think, Portland State University. So before I move on to the next page, I'll just read my notes to you. So many lessons in just a few paragraphs. Find what you love to do and no one can keep up. And I always think of the way to find that is This is a quote from Naval Ravicant and he says, what feels like play to you but looks like work to others. Another note, no multitasking. Focus on the most important task and then the end goal should be to be yourself full-time, which I love that sentence. I want it what everyone wants to be me full time.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “I didn't care. In fact, I wanted even more imbalance, or a different kind of imbalance. I wanted to dedicate every minute of every day to Blue Ribbon. I'd never been, okay, so I'm going to read the whole section. I'll finish reading it, and then I'll tell you my interpretation. I've never been a multitasker, and I didn't see any reason to start now. I wanted to be present always. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered. If my life was to be all work and no play, I wanted my work to be play. I wanted to quit Pricewaterhouse. Not that I hated it, it just wasn't me. I wanted what everyone wants to be me full time, but it wasn't possible. Blue ribbon simply couldn't support me, though the company was on track to double sales for a fifth straight year, it still couldn't justify a salary for its co founder. So I decided to compromise.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And then I love what he says here because he realizes he is a crazy person. As I gradually moved my inventory out of my apartment into my new office, the thought crossed my mind that it might make more sense just to give up the apartment altogether, just move into the office since I'd basically be living there anyway. When I wasn't at Price Waterhouse, this is where he's an accountant, making the rent, I'd be at Blue Ribbon and vice versa. I could shower at the gym. But I told myself that living in your office is the act of a crazy person. And then I got a letter from Johnson saying that he was living in his new office. Okay, so let me give you, there's a lot happening on this page. Let me give you an update to what his schedule is like. This is now five years into the company. I was putting in six days a week at Price Waterhouse, spending early mornings and late nights and all weekends and vacations at Blue Ribbon. No friends, no exercise, no social life, and wholly content. My life was out of balance, sure.”

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14. “So around this time, they wind up getting their first office. He had been running things out of his parents' house, then he got an apartment and ran things out of there. And he's like, okay, now we're going to have our first office. I love reading descriptions of companies first offices. It wasn't much. A plain old workspace with high ceilings and high windows, several of which were broken, meaning the room was a constant, brisk, fifty degrees. Right next door was a tavern, the pink bucket, and every day at four PM, promptly, the jukebox would kick in. The walls were so thin you could hear the first record drop and feel every thumping note thereafter. But the rent was cheap. We couldn't afford to fix the broken glass. We couldn't afford to fix the broken glass in the windows, so on really cold days we just wore sweaters.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Founders number 109. It's a book called Sneaker Wars. It's about the enemy brothers so that one brother founded Adidas, the other brother founded Puma, and they hated each other. I didn't really like the brother that founded Puma, but I thought the founder of Adidas, Adi Dosler, he's an obsessive, he's a genius, he is worth time studying for sure. And part of that infighting caused the family infighting that distracted Adidas and actually opened the lane for Phil Knight and Nike Tocupi, which was a lot of lessons in there too. So if you're interested, the book's interesting, but you can also listen to the podcast. Of course, it's possible that they weren't arrogant at all and that to motivate myself, I needed to see them as a monster. In any event, I despised them. I was tired of looking up every day and seeing them far, far ahead. I couldn't bear the thought that it was my fate to do so forever. Being legally checked by them irritated me to no end. It also drove me hard.”

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16. “Try to name the shoe. Adidas has something called like the Aztec of Gold. So Adidas sues them. And this is, you know, Adidas is one of the main motivating factors in Phil Knight's drive. He hated the fact that they were bigger and better and could kick him around. But I just want to read the story because Bauerman's hilarious. I was aggravated. I drove up to the mountain to Bauerman's house to talk it over. We sat on the porch looking down at the river. He took off his ball cap, put it on again, rubbed his face. Who was that guy that kicked the shit out of the Aztecs? he asked. Cortez, I said. He grunted. Okay, let's call the shoe Cortez. I was developing an unhealthy contempt for Adidas, or maybe it was healthy. That one German company had dominated the shoemarker for a couple of decades, and they possessed all the arrogance of unchallenged dominance, so I actually covered.”

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17. “I think important takeaway from the book is just how tenuous the early days of Nike was. And I would say probably the early days of any company. Five years into the company still has no money. The Weechers brought the check and I told Woodow, so he's had a, there's another person that was a track star wound up having a freak accident, winds up getting paralyzed in a wheelchair. He's going to be one of the first employees of Nike, one of the most important employees of Nike. So they're having like lunch or something or maybe breakfast. And this is their job interview. The check came and I told Woodow gladly that lunch was on me. I pulled out my wallet and found it was empty. I asked Blue Ribbon's full-time employee number four if he could float me just till payday. So around this time, Bauman is doing all kinds of innovations in shoes, some of which are patentable. That comes later, but they wind up wanting to name a shoe the Aztec.”

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18. “First thing the next morning I received a call summoning me back to Onasuka. They awarded me the exclusive distribution rights for the United States. He gave me a three-year contract. I tried to be nonchalant as I signed the papers and placed an order for 5,000 more shoes, which would cost $20,000 I didn't have. They said they'd ship them to my East Coast office, which I also didn't have, and I promised them I would wire them the exact address.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Athletes. So he says Nike's ads don't talk about their products. They celebrate great athletes. We are going to do the same. And so in that ad, they celebrate great people, Einstein, Dylan, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, just on and on. There's a bunch of people in there. So I just love that idea that Steve noticed what Nike was doing, noted how effective it was, and then adopted that same idea for his company. I'm fast forwarding the story, his contract's up. He wants to see if they'll renew it again. He's constantly taught the whole book. He's constantly worried that he's building on top of sand is the way I would think about it because he does not have the control that his contract would not be renewed. And then so he has to fake it until he makes it. They're like, well, we don't know if we're going to give you the contract. The East Coast is really important. You don't have offices there. He's like, yes, I do. He didn't. So he winds up getting offices there, but basically he just faked it till he made it. I walk back into the hotel and spent a second night pacing. This is more technical.”

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20. “Johnson's Frankenstein flat had space age, full length, midsole cushioning, which is today standard by the time didn't exist. Johnson's customer posted a personal best in Boston So Johnson winds up convincing Phil to open the very first showroom. He runs, Johnson runs it in Santa Monica. And this section is going to remind me about a quote from Steve Johnson, which I get to in one second. In all the world, there never been such a sanctuary for runners. A place that didn't just sell them shoes, but celebrated them and their shoes. Johnson, the aspiring cult leader of runners, finally had his church. Services were Monday through Saturday, nine to six. There's a great speeches available on YouTube. It's Steve Jobs right after he came back to Apple in 1997, and he's unveiling Here's the Crazy Ones. He's talking about how marketing is communication, how you need a busy world. We have limited time to tell people what the important thing is about us and our company, right? And he talks about the greatest marketing company of all time is Nike. He's like, they don't even, their ads don't talk about their product. They celebrate great.”

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21. “He sent them Christmas cards, he sent them birthday cards, he sent them notes of congratulations. Many upon pulling yet another Johnson letter from their mailboxes must have thought the same thing I did. Where does the guy find the time? Most wrote him back. They tell him about their lives, their troubles, their injuries, and Johnson would lavishly console, sympathize, and advise, especially about injuries. Few in the nineteen sixties knew the first thing about running injuries or sports injuries in general, and so Johnson's letters were often filled with information that was impossible to find anywhere else. Johnson then began aggregating customer feedback, using it to create new design sketches. One man, for instance, complained that Tigers didn't have enough cushion. He wanted to run the Boston Marathon but didn't think the shoe would last for 26 miles. So this is the level of detail. Really, this is the main point of just like how if you love what you do, you're going to care. Now you're going to care about it more than anybody else. It's hard for people to compete with you, but you're going to be obsessed with that detail. So Johnson hired a local cobbler to graph rubber shoes from a pair of shower shoes into a pair of Nike, or excuse me, Nike, into a pair of Tiger flats. Voila!”

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22. “So, grace under pressure. One lesson I took from all of my homeschooling about heroes was that they didn't say much. None was a blabbermouth. None micromanaged. Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. He's going to apply this to what his management of Johnson, so I didn't answer Johnson and I didn't pester him. Having told him what to do, I hoped that he would surprise me and he would definitely surprise him. One of the ideas we just went through this Caesar Ritz, Augustafier did what Johnson's doing here, and so did Izzy Sharp, founder of four seasons. Just freshest on my mind. This idea that you constantly keep a catalog of customer behavior, this is what Johnson's doing. Each new customer got his own index card, and each index card contained the customer's personal information, shoe size, and shoe preferences. This database enabled Johnson to keep in touch with all of his customers at all times and to keep them all feeling special.”

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23. “Jogging winds up selling over a million copies. So, the next thing I want to tell you is really interesting. This is on the influence of historical figures on his management style. I look back now and wonder if I was truly being myself or if I was emulating Bauerman or my father or both, or was I adopting their man-of-few words demeanor? Was I maybe modeling all the men I admired? At the time I was reading everything I could get on my hands, I could get my hands on about generals, samurai, along with biographies of my three main heroes, Churchill, Kennedy, and Tolstoy. I had no love of violence but I was fascinated by leadership or lack thereof, under extreme conditions. War is the most extreme of conditions. Business has its warlike parallels. Someone once said that business is war without the bullets and I tended to agree. I wasn't that unique. Throughout history men have looked to the warrior for a model of Hemingway's cardinal virtue which he's going to call pressurized grace.”

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24. “Nor did he flag in his experiments. He continued to tear apart tigers, continued to use the young man on his track team as lab mice. Barrowman would note how the arches held up, how the soles grip descenders, how the toes pinched in the instep. Then he'd airmail his notes and findings to Japan. He then handed these experimental shoes so they would do some updates, and then he'd use them again, the updated product line, he would test it with his runners at Oregon. He then handed these experimental shoes out to all his runners who used them to crush the competition. I once asked him how he fit everything into a 24-hour day, coaching, traveling, experimenting, raising a family. He grunted as if to say it's nothing. Then he told me on top of all everything else he was also writing a book about jogging, he said gruffly. So Phil's like, who the hell's going to read a book about?”

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25. “phoned, never visited, never invited him to Oregon. I also never miss an opportunity to tell him the unvarnished truth. Though our growth has been good, I owe the bank eleven thousand dollars. Cash flow is negative. He wrote back immediately asking if he could work for me full time. I shook my head. I tell the man blue ribbon is sinking like the Titanic and he responds by begging for a berth in first class. So in the late summer of nineteen sixty five, I wrote and accepted Johnson's offer to become the first full time employee of Blue Ribbon. So let's go back to Phil Knight's main asset this time, and this fact that you have Bauman running all these experiments, completely obsessed with how people are shod, he's sending Bauman's taking notes on the Tigers and sending them to Japan. Sometimes they don't respond. And so says Bauerman wasn't me. He didn't take rejection of heart. Like Johnson, when his letters went unanswered, Bauerman simply wrote more.”

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26. “Running wasn't even a sport. It wasn't popular. It wasn't unpopular. It just was. To go out for a three-mile run was something weirdos did, presumably to burn off manic energy. Running for pleasure, running for exercise, running for endorphins, running for live better and longer, these things were unheard of at the time. People often went out of their way to mock runners. Drivers would sound crazy to me. Drivers would slow down and honk their horns. Get a horse, they'd yell, throwing a beer or soda at the runner's head. Johnson had been drenched by many a pepsi. He wanted to change all this. Above all, Johnson wanted to make a living doing it, which was next to impossible in nineteen sixty five. In me, in blue ribbon he thought he saw a way. I did everything I could to discourage Johnson from thinking like this. At every turn I tried to dampen his enthusiasm for me and my company. Besides not writing back.”

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27. “Tell me how many tigers he'd sold that week. He's extremely good at what he does, though. He wrote to tell me how many tigers he'd sold that day. He wrote to tell me who warned tigers at which high school meet and what place they finished. He wrote to suggest that we open a new retail store in Los Angeles. He wrote to tell me that he was considered placing ads in running magazines and what did I think? He wrote to inform me that he had placed those ads in running magazines and their response was good. He wrote to ask me why I hadn't answered any of his previous letters. He wrote to plead for encouragement. He wrote to complain that I hadn't responded to the previous plea for encouragement. I always meant to answer Johnson's letters, but before I got around to it, there was always another one waiting. He wrote to say that he quit his job. He'd always hated it. He wrote again that now he understood himself and his destiny. Social work wasn't it. He was put on this earth to fix people's problems. He wasn't put on this earth to fix people's problems. He preferred to focus on their feet, and this is the most important part of this entire section.”

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28. “his shoes, and eventually he offers, he's like, hey, do you want to come work for me? So he says right away accepting the offer. And then the letters didn't stop. On the contrary, they increased in length and number. At first, there were two pages, then four, then eight. At first they came every few days, then they came faster and faster, tumbling almost daily through the mail slot like a waterfall, and I wondered what in God's name I had done in hiring this guy. I liked this energy, of course, and it was hard to fault his enthusiasm, but I began to worry that he might have too much of each with the twentieth letter or the twenty fifth, I began to worry that the man might be unhinged. I wondered if he was ever going to run out of things he urgently needed to tell me or ask me. I wondered if he was ever going to run out of stamps. Every time a thought crossed Johnson's mind, seemingly he wrote it down and stuck it in an envelope.”

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29. “We see terror followed by euphoria. I ran all the way back to my hotel. Halfway there I started skipping, then leaping through the air like a dancer. I stopped at a railing and looked out on the bay. None of its beauty was lost on me now, so he decides before he leaves he's going to climb Mount Fuji. This is one of my favorite quotes in the book. He's reading the guidebook on Mount Fuji. There were many ways down the mountain, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. And another life lesson from the same experience. Unlike the climb up, the climb down took no effort and no time.”

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30. “It's just the most wonderful thing ever. Another fitful night. I got up several times, went to the window, I watched the ships in the bay. Beautiful place, I thought, too bad all the beauty is beyond me. The world is without beauty when you lose, and I was about to lose big time. So it winds up going the next day, meeting with the actual owner, Mr. Anasuka himself. He's a very passionate person, just like Phil is. Without preamble, he launched into a long, passionate monologue. Some time ago, he said he had a vision, a wondrous glimpse of the future. Everyone in the world will wear athletic shoes all the time. He's saying this in 1964. Everyone in the world wear athletic shoes all the time. They wind up having a connection. He says, you remind me of myself when I am young. He said softly. Then he gives the punchline of the meeting is, yes, all right, you can have all the Western states.”

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31. “And I now remind myself of that fact you must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, not one more step. And when it's not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it. Yes, you raise some excellent points, but let's keep going anyway. See how he repeats that? Keep going. Don't stop. Over and over again. Whatever you do, don't stop. I told myself that I needed to summon that old skill quickly or lose. And I could not bear the thought of losing. So he's in the hotel in Japan the night before his meeting and we see more terror. Now there's going to be terror followed immediately by euphoria. Now pay attention to this part because the same experience, it's interesting how perspective is so important. The same experiences he's having he can enjoy because this is unresolved. Once this is resolved, he has that same experience.”

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32. “To Benny, he's like, you know what the best thing about startups is, and Ben's like, what? And this sentence is perfect. The best thing about startups, you only ever experience two emotions. Euphoria and terror. And I find that a lack of sleep enhances them both. So we're going to see constantly as we go through this book, these alternating states of euphoria and terror and nothing in between. So now we're in the terror part. Got this letter. Now he's depressed. I went into a deep funk. I became such a grouch, such poor company that my girlfriend dumped me. Each night I'd sit with my family at dinner moving my food around on my plate. Then I'd sit with my father staring in the TV. Buck, my father said. You look like someone hit you in the back of the head with a 2x4. Snap out of it. But I couldn't. So he takes the drastic step of flying back to Japan and trying to get some resolution of this. The art of competing I learned from track was the art of forgetting.”

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33. “Have you excited? He's got a partner. He's got a bank. He's got a product. Then he gets a letter in the mail. And it's a letter from another guy on the East Coast saying, hey, he sent him a cease in this letter saying, hey, I have a contract with Anatsuka. Stop selling the shoes. And he's like, what is going on here? And this is like the very first of many warning signs that if something's important to your business, you have to control it. That's a main lesson that we've learned by studying the history of entrepreneurship. He's at the whims of his manufacturer, right? Which is going to take him multiple years to get out from underneath this. And he winds up, they try to screw him over, which winds up also counterintuitively being the best thing that ever happened to him. But he gets this letter and he thinks everything is over. And another main theme of this book is the idea of the entrepreneurial emotional roller coaster. Mark Andreessen has a quote that I think just nails it. And at the time, he's running a startup with his partner, Ben Horowitz.”

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34. “And ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place. And I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief I decided. Belief is irresistible.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “So now I want to tell you about his early sales strategy, selling him out of his trunk. So you go to where your customers are, and then he has this idea that belief is irresistible, which is fantastic. My sales strategy was simple and I thought rather brilliant. After being rejected by a couple of sporting goods stores, they would say, what does the world does not need another track shoe? I drove all over the Pacific Northwest to various track meets. Between races, I chat up the coaches, the runners, the fans, and show them my wares. The response was always the same. I couldn't write orders fast enough. Driving back to Portland, I'd puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I had been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I despise it to boot. I had been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I felt dead inside. Because I realized it wasn't selling. I believed in running. I believe that if people got out.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Giving away to colleges and all kinds of charities, but he dedicates a building and the plaque at the entrance says mothers are our first coaches. And I think this what happens next is part of the inspiration for that. I shouldn't have been too surprised by my mother's next move when my father accused me of jackassing around. Casually, she opened her purse and took out seven dollars. I'd like to purchase one pair, please, she said, loud enough for him to hear. So he talks about the fact that not only she buys them, but she wears them proudly. It never failed to move me. The sight of her standing at the stove or the kitchen sink, cooking dinner or washing dishes in a pair of Japanese running shoes size six.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “And his dad, this is where if he listened to the advice that his dad's about to give him, it would cost him $50 billion. He hadn't sent me to Oregon and Stanford to become a door-to-door shoe salesman, he said, jackassing around. That's what he called it. Buck, he said, How long do you think you're going to keep jackassing around with these shoes? I shrugged. I don't know, Dad, and so while he's having this conversation with his dad, his mom is overhearing it. It's not going well. Later in his life, he dedicates a building because at the point he's writing this book, he's giving away like $100 million a year.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Okay, so his partnership with Bauerman secured, it's go time. He winds up getting a contract. The company he is reselling shoes for, they're called, the shoes called Tiger. The company is called Anasuka. And they give him Exclusive, he's an exclusive distributor of”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “He says, Next page, I mulled over Bauman's eccentric personality, which carried over to everything he did. He always went against the grain, always. For example, he was the first college coach in America to emphasize rest, to place as much value on recovery as on work. But when he worked you, brother he worked you, Bauman's strategy for running the mile was simple. Set a fast pace for the first two laps, run the third as hard as you can, then triple your speed on the fourth. There was a zen like quality to the strategy because it was impossible, and yet it worked. Bowerman coached more sub four minute milers than anybody ever.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Bauman scolded the trucker, threatened to punch him in the nose, but the trucker paid no heed, so Bowerman rigged the mailbox with explosives. Next time the trucker knocked it over, boom. When the smoke cleared, the trucker found his truck in pieces, its tires reduced to ribbons. He never again touched Bowerman's mailbox And so now he's driving up to Bauman Mountain. And this is where they wind up becoming partners. He said, I pulled up to Bauman Stone Fortress and marveled. Bauman had built it with his bare hands. I wondered how on earth he managed all that backbreaking labor by himself. The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. So there's that quote again.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Despite this lofty mission, or perhaps because of it, the facilities at Oregon were Spartan, dank wooden walls, lockers that hadn't been painted in decades. The lockers had no door, just slats to separate your stuff from the next guys. We hung our clothes on rusty nails. We sometimes ran without socks, complaining never crossed our minds. We saw our coach as a general to be obeyed quickly and blindly. In my mind he was patent with a stopwatch, that is, when he wasn't a god. Like all ancient gods, Bauman lives on a mountain top. His majestic ranch sat at the peak high above campus on his private Olympus he could be vengeful as the gods. One story brought this fact pointedly home. There was a truck driver who often dared to disturb the piece of Bowerman Mountain. He took turns too fast and frequently knocked over Bowerman's mailbox.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “And he talks about like he had to just heaving and sobbing. And he talks about how athletes you'll see him like they have to cover their head with towels. He went the same way. He had a deep love and respect and fear of Bill Bauerman. I would say outside of his family, Bill Bauerman's probably the most important person in his life ever. Sometimes the fear was let, but this is why you also have to love this guy. Books take you on an emotional roller coaster, man. This is now I'm going to laugh. Sometimes the fear was less, sometimes more. Sometimes it went right down to my shoes, which he'd probably cobbled with his bare hands. Love and fear.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Going back to Bauman. I loved Bauerman and feared him, and neither of these impulses, neither of these initial impulses ever went away. So I'm not going to cover it. There's, if you listen to the podcast I did on the Founder of Four Seasons, man, you get to the part where his son dies. I just lost. I can't read that. I had to pause and stop because you just think about the devastation. He had to endure. So there's a part where the same thing happens to Phil Knight. I'm not going to cover it. His son dies in a scuba diving accident when he's 30 years old. And I want to start crying on every podcast. I mean, I have kids, so immediately you put yourself in their shoes. But anyways, the part where he talks about I loved him and feared him and never went away. When Bauman dies, Bauman dies in 1999. And Phil talks about his reaction.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “So Shackleton saying, I studied the outcome of past expeditions, optimize for speed over total being totally prepared, speed first. Bowerman's optimizing for lightness which gives which helps him achieve speed. All right, let me go back to Bowerman. It is possible that everything this is so important. It is possible that everything I did in those days was motivated by some deep yearning to impress, to please Bauman. Besides my father, there was no man whose approval I craved more. And besides my father there was no man who gave it less often. Frugality carried over to every part of the coach's makeup.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “And this is a really, really important point one ounce slice off a pair of shoes, he said, is equivalent to 55 pounds over one mile. Lightness, Bowerman believed, directly translated to less burden, which meant more energy, which meant more speed, and speed equaled winning. Bowerman didn't like to lose. I got it from him. Thus lightness was his constant goal. So I'm going to rub myself. I have no idea why these things pop into my mind as I certain things pop into my mind as I read. But this whole obsession that Bauerman has with lightness, lightness is a way to achieve his end goal, which is speed. It reminded me of Ernest Shackleton in that fantastic book Endurance because he had that same obsession. Let me read this quote from Endurance. From studying the outcome of past expeditions, and I think this applies to not only track, not only to, in the case, in...”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Since it was Bauerman who first made me think, really think about what people put on their feet. Bauerman was a genius coach, a master motivator, a natural leader of young men, and there was one piece of gear he deemed crucial to their development shoes. He was obsessed with how human beings are shod. Bowerman was constantly sneaking into our lockers and stealing her footwear. He'd spent days tearing them apart, stitching them back up, then hand them back with some minor modification, which made us either run like deer or bleed. Regardless of the results, he never stopped. He was determined. He always had some new design, some new scheme to make our shoes slinker, softer, lighter, especially lighter”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Leaf through it while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a bench in the park. I'd ask the pigeons, can you believe it was only a year ago that it was surfing Waikiki? And then he starts talking about his inner monologue. Are the best moments of my life behind me? Was the trip around the world my peak? That is how I spent nineteen sixty three quizzing pigeons and writing letters. Dear Carter, did you ever leave Hawaii? I'm an accountant now and giving some thought to blowing my brains out.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Another thought for you. This time he's in Italy, and this really is going to echo because a large part of what drove Phil Knight was his hatred for Adidas. And at the time, Adidas is a much larger company. And so he's standing in front of the Statue of David. And really, this is a metaphor for how he saw Nike's fight against Goliath, which would be Adidas. I stood before David, shocked at the anger in his eyes. Goliath never had a chance. And this continued. These are not all on the same page. This goes on for a while. It was really fascinating how he drew these parallels from great people in history and applied it to his own journey. Now he's in France. I was thinking all the while of Patton. Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. That sentence right there, he repeats over and over again, that is Phil Knight's management style. Don't tell people what to do.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Just a few more examples of these thoughts that he's having. He actually journaled his entire trip around the world, which is why he knows what he was thinking. He talks about regretting, and I'll get to that more later. Regretting not doing the same as he was building the company because he says you have these thoughts when you're living through them. They're so impactful at the time. You're like, there's no way I'm going to forget it. You're going to forget it. Write it down, document it. It would be advice from Phil Knight. So at this point, he's talking about work and crafts and life's purpose. And he says, why would we work so hard, I thought? And yet the first century rabbi, not even going to try to pronounce this guy's name, said our work is the holiest part of us. All are proud of their craft. God speaks of his work, how much more should man.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “That's a line he'll constantly reference throughout the story of building Nike. You're remembered for the world as you break. He's moving on. Now he's in, he's standing in front of a 600-year-old Buddha statue. And again, I just want to bring to your attention the constant wandering about his purpose in life. What is my life going to be? The fact that he does not have the answers like everybody. He does not have the answers. He's just wondering about it constantly. Standing before its face, I asked it, why am I here? What is my purpose? I waited nothing. Or else the silence was my answer.”

    2021-06-16 · Founders · #186 Phil Knight (Nike) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source