Shoe Dog

by Phil Knight

Worse, like the same shy, pale, rail-thin kid I’d always been.

Curious how many successful CEO's were shy as kids. Asking for a shy friend.

Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.

All is now - good way of putting it.

And a discus shoe, which they called a Throw Up. Do not laugh, I told myself. Do not . . . laugh.

Lol

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Leadership 101

“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.”

Again and again I learned that lack of equity was a leading cause of failure.

Sounds simple - most businesses fail because they run out of cash. But this book shows you how hard that really is.

In a column of otherwise unspectacular fours and nines and twos, he could discern the raw elements of Beauty. He looked at numbers the way the poet looks at clouds, the way the geologist looks at rocks. He could draw from them rhapsodic song, demotic truths.

Who knew there was poetry in accounting.

He made accounting an art.

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 he was living in his new office.

lol

The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.

I liked that they tried to add beauty to every part of life, from the tea ceremony to the commode. I liked that the radio announced each day exactly which cherry trees, on which corner, were blossoming, and how much.

I like this. We need more beauty in our culture.

“What’d you decide?” Woodell asked me at the end of the day. “Nike,” I mumbled. “Hm,” he said. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Maybe it’ll grow on us,” he said. Maybe.

Interesting he didn't love it from the start.

Shoe dogs were people who devoted themselves wholly to the making, selling, buying, or designing of shoes.

That’s a swoosh. The hell’s a swoosh? The answer flew out of me: It’s the sound of someone going past you. They liked that. Oh, they liked it a whole lot.

For eleven laps they ran a half stride apart. With the crowd now roaring, frothing, shrieking, the two men entered the final lap. It felt like a boxing match. It felt like a joust. It felt like a bullfight, and we were down to that moment of truth—death hanging in the air. Pre reached down, found another level—we saw him do it. He opened up a yard lead, then two, then five. We saw Young grimacing and we knew that he could not, would not, catch Pre. I told myself, Don’t forget this. Do not forget. I told myself there was much to be learned from such a display of passion, whether you were running a mile or a company.

This is cool. Pre is clearly a metaphor for how Phil views Nike. Makes me want to finally watch that Prefontaine documentary I remember seeing once - looks like its on Netflix too.

Supply and demand is always the root problem in business.

It was around this time, as Nike rolled out its first children’s shoes, Wally Waffle and Robbie Road Racer, that Matthew announced he would never wear Nikes so long as he lived. His way of expressing anger about my absences, as well as other frustrations. Penny tried to make him understand that Daddy wasn’t absent by choice. Daddy was trying to build something. Daddy was trying to ensure that he and Travis would one day be able to attend college.

Ouch

My life was about sports, my business was about sports, my bond with my father was about sports, and neither of my two sons wanted anything to do with sports.

I wonder if he pushed them too hard in some way or if this was just inevitable given his time commitments.

I was transitioning him from legal to marketing, moving him out of his comfort zone, as I liked to do with everyone now and then, to prevent them from growing stale.

I've learned from Amazon that this is a best practice - but cool to see him doing it so early - and between such different disciplines.

Lying atop Hayes’s giant underwear were twelve quarts of vodka. No one said anything for the longest time. Then Hayes heaved a sigh. “That’s for me,” he said. “You guys are on your own.”

Ha

We ate pounds of sea urchin and roasted duck, and at many stops we were treated to thousand-year-old eggs.

Thousand year old eggs? I had to search Google for this one, and it looks like its a Chinese delicacy that takes months, not 1,000 years to make.

If I live to be two hundred years old, I won’t forget the sight of those leviathans walking up and down the train car in their T-shirts and BVDs. Nor will any Chinese man or woman who was on the train that day.

How many exec teams have done this?

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.

We must all be professors of the jungle.

We must always be students of what is happening in the world.

But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.

This is absolutely dead on. We are all trying to live the most happy, fulfilling live we can.

Of course, above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons.

Everyones biggest regret at the end of their live is this. Good thing to keep in mind.