Shoe Dog

A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
by Phil Knight | Scribner © 2016 · 400 pages

Phil Knight created Nike. This book is a *phenomenally* well-written, funny, tear-jerking, inspiring look at how he and his eclectic team of misfit geniuses made Nike one of the most iconic brands in the world. If you’re into sports, business and hero’s journeys, you’ll love it. I highly recommend it. Big Ideas we explore include: Crazy Ideas, victory, billionaires getting their credit cards declined (before they’re billionaires), optimal business, gratitude, luck and answering your calling.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki

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Big Ideas

“What remains, however, is this one comforting certainty, this one anchoring truth that will never go away. At twenty-four I did have a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite being dizzy with existential angst, and fears about the future, and doubts about myself, as all young men and women in their midtwenties are, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most—books, sports, democracy, free enterprise—started as crazy ideas.

For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasure or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.”

~ Phil Knight from Shoe Dog

Phil Knight created Nike.

This book is a *phenomenally* well-written, funny, tear-jerking, inspiring look at how he and his eclectic team of misfit geniuses made Nike one of the most iconic brands in the world.

If you’re into sports, business and hero’s journeys, you’ll love it. I highly recommend it. (Get a copy here.)

Memoirs and biographies—although not self-help per se—often provide the most valuable and authentically human (and entertaining) perspectives on how we can optimize and actualize. This one certainly does.

It’s packed with inspiring wisdom and Big Ideas. I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!

How's Your Crazy Idea? (Don't Stop!)

“So that morning in 1962 I told myself: 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.

That’s the precocious, prescient, urgent advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it’s the best advice—maybe the only advice—any of us should ever give.”

The Crazy Idea.

(Note: Capital “C.” Capital “I.” —> Crazy Idea.)

This is the central thread of the hero’s journey Phil takes us on.

Phil was a runner. He ran for Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon. Bowerman was one of the greatest coaches of the era (and any era) who would go on to become a business partner and co-founder of Nike. (Only, it wasn’t called Nike when they created it. It was the considerably less flashy/cool: “Blue Ribbon Sports.”)

In addition to being a runner, Phil got his MBA from Stanford. As part of a class on entrepreneurship, he had to create a business plan. His topic? The potential market for importing Japanese shoes to compete with the then-dominant German brand Adidas.

The class found his presentation incredibly boring. The teacher gave him an “A.” He became obsessed with his Crazy Idea.

It could be “HUGE!” he told his dad. His dad, although incredibly supportive throughout his life, was the respectable publisher of the leading newspaper in town who, in the early days, asked him when he’d “quit jackassing around selling shoes.”

But Phil said to himself: “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.”

That “precocious, prescient, urgent advice” he managed to give to himself and (very importantly) to take made all the difference.

—> “Half a century later, I believe it’s the best advice—maybe the only advice—any of us should ever give.”

So, what’s YOUR Crazy Idea?

Where do your passions and talents and abilities to serve the world come together?

Seriously. What’s your Crazy Idea?

If you could wave a magic wand (knowing it’ll take decades to make it come together—almost certainly in a form you can’t even imagine now), what would you do?

My Crazy Idea: ______________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________.

Fantastic. “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.”

Pre was most famous for saying, ‘Somebody may beat me—but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.’
Phil Knight
‘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 Ftizgerald

Nike = Victory

“On my left was the Parthenon, which Plato had watched the teams of architects and workmen build. On my right was the Temple of Athena Nike. Twenty-five centuries ago, per my guidebook, it had housed a beautiful frieze of the goddess Athena, thought to be the bringer of ‘nike,’ or victory.

It was one of the many blessings 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 don’t know how long I stood there, absorbing the energy and power of that epochal place. An hour? Three? I don’t know how long after that day I discovered the Aristophanes play, set in the Temple of Nike, in which the warrior gives the king a gift—a pair of new shoes. I don’t know when I figured out that the play was called Knights. I do know that as I turned to leave I noticed the temple’s marble facade. Greek artisans had decorated it with several haunting carvings, including the most famous, in which the goddess inexplicably leans down . . . to adjust the strap of her shoe.”

First, did you know Nike means “victory”?! Awesome.

Second: I love how Crazy Ideas have great, synchronistic myths connected to them.

But only if our eyes are open and only if we’re willing to listen to that quiet little voice within as we courageously (heroically!) head in the direction of our deepest truths (aka Crazy Ideas).

Here’s another hint on the origins of our Crazy Idea, btw: It’s connected to your bliss.

As Campbell says about his own discovery + journey: “Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. ‘Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, ‘I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.”

To re-cap: Three ways to jump into the ocean of transcendent awesome: sat, chit, ananda.

“Being”ness? Not sure what that truly is. Consciousness? Not sure what that really is either.

But my bliss? What fills me up with a sense of aliveness and joy? Ahhhh…. Now THAT I can feel.

So… What gives YOU great joy? Jump off from there. Follow your bliss.

… And, of course, remember that that’s simply the ticket in. Then? Then we need to, as Campbell likes to say and wished he had emphasized more, follow our grunt to figure out how we actually make ourselves useful to the world because the hero’s journey is *anything* but easy.

You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory.
Winston Churchill

A Billionaire Getting His Credit Card Declined

“The first time, the clerk at the rental car company declined my credit card. Then confiscated it. When Cale tried to smooth it over, offering up his credit card, the clerk said he wouldn’t accept Cale’s card, either, because Cale was with me. Guilt by association.

Talk about your deadbeats. I couldn’t bring myself to look Cale in the eye. Here we were, a dozen years out of Stanford, and while he was an eminently successful businessman, I was still struggling to keep my head above water. He’d known I was struggling, but now he knew exactly how much. I was mortified. He was always there at the big moments, the triumphant moments, but this humiliating little moment, I feared, would define me in his eyes.

Then, when we got to the factory, the owner laughed in my face. He said he wouldn’t consider doing business with some fly-by-night company he’d never heard of—let alone from Oregon.”

As I write this, Phil Knight is worth somewhere around $25 billion. The 15th wealthiest person alive, Forbes tells us.

But, alas, our heroes weren’t always heroes. In fact, they achieve their heroic feats BECAUSE they are willing to go through phases of appearing to be (and feeling like) a deadbeat.

The walk to the Hall of Fame goes through (not around!) the Failure Hall of Fame.

Who better to bring the point home than Mr. Nike himself, Michael Jordan?

(Now, I know you’ve heard this quote before, but let the words sink in. See how YOUR missed shots are the reason why YOU succeed.)

→ “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

One of the great things about Phil’s memoir is he shines a light on many of his missed shots and lost games. It’s incredibly inspiring to see the humanity involved in becoming the hero.

We echo this theme in so many Notes (see Choose the Life You Want + Black box Thinking + …).

Successful people have a different relationship with failure. They see inevitable (!) mistakes and failures as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks. They know they must learn to fail or fail to learn. It’s all in how we frame it. Let’s do so wisely. Fail fast. Get up. Learn. Get better.

How’s *your* relationship to failure and what can you do to optimize it 1%?

Once again I’m telling a roomful of people that something is possible, that something can be successful, when in fact I don’t really know. I’m speaking from theory, faith, and bluster, like every groom. And every bride. It would be up to me and Penny to prove the truth of what we said that day.
Phil Knight
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.
Phil Knight

Business, Red Blood Cells, Profit and Purpose

“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 the ‘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, or 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 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.”

Well, that’s amazing.

And it pretty much captures what I tried to share in our Optimal Business 101 class.

Plus, it echoes one of the primary metaphors I picked up from the Conscious Capitalism movement: A business needs healthy profits to survive (and thrive) just like we need healthy red blood cells to survive (and thrive).

But… We don’t live for the red blood cells. And, optimal businesses don’t live for the profits. We use those profits as FUEL for our higher purpose of making the world a better place one happier person at a time—striving to do it with as much grace, excellence and areté as possible.

THAT is what fires me up about business and what makes being an entrepreneur one of the most inspiring, creative, enjoyable, challenging and impactful things we can do with our lives.

P.S. That’s from a section on the process of creating factories in China. Phil chats about the “sweat shop” accusations Nike faced and how they used those challenges to become leaders in the industry. (He also shares how painful it was to see an effigy of himself burning in front of his office in his hometown and how the situation was more nuanced than the activists’ accusations.)

We’d kick around this question of ultimate goals. This question of winning and losing. Money wasn’t our aim, we agreed. Money wasn’t our end game. But whatever our aim or end, money was the only means to get there. More money than we had on hand.
Phil Knight

What's the Most Vital Human Emotion after Love?

“I always feel a thrill, a shot of adrenalin, when I drive through the intersection of the campus’s two main streets, each named after a Nike Founding Father. All day, every day, the security guard at the front gate gives visitors the same directions. What you wanna do is take Bowerman Drive all the way up to Del Hayes Way . . . I also take great pleasure in strolling past the oasis at the center of campus, the Nisho Iwai Japanese Gardens. In one sense our campus is a topographical map of Nike’s history and growth; in another it’s a diorama of my life. In yet another sense, it’s a living, breathing expression of that vital human emotion, maybe the most vital of all, after love: Gratitude.”

Gratitude. The most vital human emotion after love? I like it.

I got tears in my eyes reading the stories about the people who helped Phil at live-or-die pivotal moments in the company’s history. Truly heart-opening and incredibly inspiring.

I love the way John Maxwell puts it in The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: “A Chinese proverb says that those who drink the water must remember those who dug the well. Everything we do, every accomplishment we have, every milestone we pass has come in part because of the efforts of others. There are no self-made men or women. If we can remember that, we can be grateful. And if we are grateful, we are more likely to develop good character than if we aren’t. Confucius asserted, ‘Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.’ In other words, it paves the way for character growth. And that sets us up for personal growth. These things are definitely connected.”

The Nike campus as a topographical map of all the people who dug the well? That’s awesome. Begs the question: Who dug YOUR well? For whom will you name the streets and buildings and oasis in the map of your life?

P.S. Here’s a passage that got me all weepy. Backstory: Early in Nike’s history, they would have gone bankrupt if they didn’t get cash immediately. The parents of Phil’s right-hand guy (Bob Woodell) gave him their *entire* life savings to support the cause: $8,000. As Phil reluctantly took the check he asked, “Why are you doing this?” They said, “If you can’t trust the company your son works for, who can you trust?”

Years, later, when Nike went public, Woodell visited his parents to share the news. “‘What does that mean?’ they whispered. ‘It means your original $8,000 loan to Phil is worth $1.6 million.’ They looked at each other, looked at Woodell. ‘I don’t understand,’ his mother said.”

Wow. Again, who dug your well? How can you give them a 200x return on that love for and belief in and support of you—in WHATEVER form that takes? I know who’s on my list and nothing motivates me more than serving them as profoundly as I can.

We’re also finishing construction on a new athletic facility, which we plan to dedicate to our mothers, Dot and Lota. On a plaque next to the entrance will go an inscription: Because mothers are our first coaches.
Phil Knight

Luck + Hard Work + Faith

“Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.

Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your Tao. And since no one has ever adequately defined Tao, I now try to go regularly to mass. I would tell them: Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.”

The harder we work, the luckier we get. Drop in some faith? Magic. Or… Tao. Logos. Jñāna. Dharma. Spirit. God. Whatever you want to call it, hard work + faith is a winning combo.

Your Calling Is calling. (Hear the Ring?)

“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. 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.

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 twenties not to settle for a job 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 iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bulls-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bulls-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion, it’s a law of nature.”

These are some of the very last words of the book—as Phil gets insight into his next Crazy Idea—to write this memoir.

Ultimately, we all have the same dream, the same drive: To actualize. As Maslow tells us, what one can be, one must be. So……… What must *you* be?

And for 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.
Phil Knight

About the author

Authors

Phil Knight

Business magnate and philanthropist.
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