Shoe Dog

by Phil Knight

Don’t go to sleep one night, wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then.

Perhaps nothing ever revealed my mother’s true nature like the frequent drills she put me through. As a young girl she’d witnessed a house in her neighborhood burn to the ground; one of the people inside had been killed. So she often tied a rope to the post of my bed and made me use it to rappel out of my second-floor window. While she timed me. What must the neighbors have thought? What must I have thought? Probably this: Life is dangerous. And this: We must always be prepared. And this: My mother loves me.

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

At the final gun my Ducks were on top of the Bucktooths, 30–3. I always called them my Ducks, but now they really were. They were in my shoes. Every step they took, every cut they made, was partly mine. It’s one thing to watch a sporting event and put yourself in the players’ shoes. Every fan does that. It’s another thing when the athletes are actually in your shoes.

“No brilliant idea was ever born in a conference room,” he assured the Dane. “But a lot of silly ideas have died there,” said Stahr. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon

A FEW MONTHS later, muggy Montreal was the setting for Nike’s grand debut, our Olympic coming-out party. As those 1976 Games opened, we had athletes in several high-profile events wearing Nikes. But our highest hopes, and most of our money, were pinned on Shorter. He was the favorite to win gold, which meant that Nikes, for the first time ever, were going to cross an Olympic finish line ahead of all other shoes. This was an enormous rite of passage for a running-shoe company. You really weren’t a legitimate, card-carrying running-shoe company until an Olympian ascended to the top medal stand in your gear. I woke up early that Saturday—July 31, 1976. Right after my morning coffee I took up my position in my recliner. I had a sandwich at my elbow, cold sodas in the fridge. I wondered if Kitami was watching. I wondered if my former bankers were watching. I wondered if my parents and sisters were watching. I wondered if the FBI was watching.

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

It’s Bill and Warren. Gates and Buffett. We stroll over. Neither man is what you’d call a close friend, but we’ve met them several times, at social events and conferences. And we have common causes, common interests, a few mutual acquaintances. “Fancy meeting you here!” I say. Then I cringe. Did I really just say that? Is it possible that I’m still shy and awkward in the presence of celebrities? “I was just thinking about you,” one of them says. We shake hands, all around, and talk mostly about Palm Springs. Isn’t this place lovely? Isn’t it wonderful to get out of the cold? We talk about families, business, sports. I hear someone behind us whisper, “Hey, look, Buffett and Gates—who’s that other guy?” I smile. As it should be. In my head I can’t help doing some quick math. At the moment I’m worth $10 billion, and each of these men is worth five or six times more. Lead me from the unreal to the real. Penny asks if they enjoyed the movie. Yes, they both say, looking down at their shoes, though it was a bit depressing. What’s on your bucket lists? I nearly ask, but I don’t. Gates and Buffett seem to have done everything they’ve ever wanted in this life. They have no bucket lists, surely. Which makes me ask myself: Have I?