Shoe Dog

by Phil Knight

I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful.

The secret of happiness, I’d always suspected, the essence of beauty or truth, or all we ever need to know of either, lay somewhere in that moment when the ball is in midair, when both boxers sense the approach of the bell, when the runners near the finish line and the crowd rises as one.

Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, and I didn’t want that.

It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line.

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.

It was my first real awareness that not everyone in this world will like us, or accept us, that we’re often cast aside at the very moment we most need to be included.

Japan’s dominant religions, Buddhism and Shinto.

I marveled at the concept of kensho, or satori—enlightenment that comes in a flash, a blinding pop.

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.

There is a primal urge to compare everything—life, business, adventures of all sorts—to a race. But the metaphor is often inadequate. It can take you only so far.

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones—

All is vanity, says the Bible. All is now, says Zen. All is dust, says the desert.

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

“nike,” or victory.

Athena bestowed. She also rewarded the dealmakers. In the Oresteia she says: “I admire . . . the eyes of persuasion.” She was, in a sense, the patron saint of negotiators.

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.

happiness can be dangerous. It dulls the senses.

Emotion would be fatal. I needed to remain cool.

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 . . .”

“happiness is a how, not a what

As ever, the accountant in me saw the risk, the entrepreneur saw the possibility. So I split the difference and kept moving forward.

Running track gives you a fierce respect for numbers, because you are what your numbers say you are, nothing more, nothing less.

Both still approached everyday life as a battle.

Looking down at his wooden platter, at the underside of an octopus’s leg, he thought a similar suction cup might work on the sole of a runner’s flat. Bowerman filed that away. Inspiration, he learned, can come from quotidian things. Things you might eat. Or find lying around the house.

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

But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.

It occurred to me also that I had high value for Kitami. I wasn’t a big client, but I wasn’t small, either. Location is everything. I was selling shoes in America, a market vital to the future of Onitsuka. Maybe, just maybe, Kitami didn’t want to lose me just yet. Maybe he wanted to hold on to me until they’d transitioned to the Marlboro Man. I was an asset, I was a credit, for the moment, which meant I might be holding better cards than I thought.

Thinking on the feet and making a situation better than you thought it would be

placed an order for five thousand more shoes, which would cost twenty thousand dollars I didn’t have.

Decide "what" and "how" will be sorted

Assets equal liabilities plus equity. This foundational equation, I said, must always, always be in balance. Accounting is problem-solving, I said, and most problems boil down to some imbalance in this equation.

She hadn’t found herself involved in many negotiations, and she didn’t know that the basic rule of negotiation is to know what you want, what you need to walk away with in order to be whole.

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

My psyche was in true harmony when I had a mix of alone time and team time.

Yes, I thought. Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs.

The thought crossed my mind that some of the hardest things ever said in our lifetimes are said softly.

Shoes were their way of connecting with humanity.

What better way of connecting, shoe dogs thought, than by refining the hinge that joins each person to the world’s surface?