Shoe Dog

by Phil Knight

History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most—books, sports, democracy, free enterprise—started as crazy ideas.

You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break.

I read in my guidebook that Michelangelo was miserable while painting his masterpiece. His back and neck ached. Paint fell constantly into his hair and eyes. He couldn’t wait to be finished, he told friends. If even Michelangelo didn’t like his work, I thought, what hope is there for the rest of us?

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

You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory . . . without victory, there is no survival.

Set a fast pace for the first two laps, run the third as hard as you can, then triple your speed on the fourth.

Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out 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.

People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded 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. I thought over all the races in which my mind wanted one thing, and my body wanted another, those laps in which I’d had to tell my body, “Yes, you raise some excellent points, but let’s keep going anyway . . .”

Onitsuka asked what we thought it should be called. Bowerman liked “Aztec,” in homage to the 1968 Olympics, which were being held in Mexico City. I liked that, too. Fine, Onitsuka said. The Aztec was born. And then Adidas threatened to sue. Adidas already had a new shoe named the “Azteca Gold,” a track spike they were planning to introduce at the same Olympics. No one had ever heard of it, but that didn’t stop Adidas from kicking up a fuss. Aggravated, I drove up the mountain to Bowerman’s house to talk it all over. We sat on the wide porch, looking down at the river. It sparkled that day like a silver shoelace. He took off his ball cap, put it on again, rubbed his face. “Who was that guy who kicked the shit out of the Aztecs?” he asked. “Cortez,” I said. He grunted. “Okay. Let’s call it the Cortez.”

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 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, 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 he was living in his new office.

I’d never witnessed anything quite like that race. And yet I didn’t just witness it. I took part in it. Days later I felt sore in my hams and quads. This, I decided, this is what sports are, what they can do. Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete, and in that convergence, in that transference, is the oneness that the mystics talk about.

“Sure there will be a lot of pressure,” he told Sports Illustrated. “And a lot of us will be facing more experienced competitors, and maybe we don’t have any right to win. But all I know is if I go out and bust my gut until I black out and somebody still beats me, and if I have made that guy reach down and use everything he has and then more, why then it just proves that on that day he’s a better man than I.”

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.

We also gave him a business card that said National Director of Public Affairs. People often narrowed their eyes and asked me what that meant. I narrowed my eyes right back. “It means he can run fast,” I said.

I went to Penny’s room and met my new boy, whom we named Travis. Then I did a bad thing. Smiling, Penny said the doctors told her she could go home after two days, instead of the three they’d required after Matthew. Whoa, I said, hold on there, the insurance is willing to pay for another day in the hospital—what’s your hurry? Might as well kick back, relax. Take advantage. She lowered her head, cocked an eyebrow. “Who’s playing and where is it?” she said. “Oregon,” I whispered. “Arizona State.” She sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Phil. Go.”

Fear of failure, I thought, will never be our downfall as a company. Not that any of us thought we wouldn’t fail; in fact we had every expectation that we would. But when we did fail, we had faith that we’d do it fast, learn from it, and be better for it.

I looked at the suits on either side of Holland. “Gentlemen,” I said, standing. Gentlemen. Sometimes that’s Business-ese for: Take your FBI and shove it.

“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

My fatherhood style, my management style. I was forever questioning, Is it good—or merely good enough?

More, Bowerman wanted it for his experiments, and my policy was still WBW: Whatever Bowerman Wants. If Bowerman requisitions a Sherman tank, I told Woodell, don’t ask questions. Just dial the Pentagon.

Just before getting on the plane home we signed deals with two Chinese factories, and officially became the first American shoemaker in twenty-five years to be allowed to do business in China. It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher—and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money.” For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying aliv...

I walked out of the room, barely hearing the beeping machines, the laughing nurses, the patient groaning down the hall. I thought of that phrase, “It’s just business.” It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.