Hello, and welcome to how to take over the world. This is Ben Wilson today We are talking about Phil Knight the founder of Nike Nike as of today has a market cap of  Nike has a market cap as of this recording of 112 billion dollars Phil Knight as of this recording has a net worth of approximately 34 billion dollars This is a story of great business and financial success But look lots of people make a lot of money I think the Phil Knight story is different, and I would really recommend his autobiography, Shoe Dog, to anyone, especially to young men, because it's a story of adventure, of seeking and experiencing everything that the world has to offer.

It's a story of competition and the meaning that can come from the past.  It's a story of competition and the meaning that can come from the pure spirit of winning. It's a story of connection and the meaning you can find with the right relationships and friendships. It's a story of belief and how commitment to a certain set of values and beliefs can drive success.  And all of that is brought out beautifully in this book, Shoe Dog. I highly, highly recommend it. Phil Knight, in addition to being one of the great American executives, is an incredible writer, and it's a true joy to read his autobiography.

And so I think there's a ton to learn from Phil Knight, both in terms of how to have a successful career, but also how to live a fun, adventurous, and meaningful life. So with all that said, let's get into it. This is the story of Nike founder, Phil  📍 Knight.

But first I want to take a minute to tell you about Particle. I mentioned that this is a story about competition. Phil talks a lot about how  But first I want to take a minute to talk about Particle. I mentioned that this is a story about competition. Phil talks a lot about that and how competition drives him to achieve the things he did.

Well, if you are in e commerce and you want to be able to see how you're performing compared to the competition, You need particle.  Particle is a competitor intelligence platform. It's trusted by leading brands in e com like Skims, Hexaclad, Fashion Nova. And it helps you uncover new revenue opportunities.

It gives you real time competitor data and insights on market trends from over 10, 000 brands.

So with their competitive intelligence insights, you can use it to increase your market share by identifying consistently growing products in your category and understand how you compare to your competitors. It helps you answer questions like, how can I increase my market share? Which products in my category are consistently growing?  What variants are trending? Where are the branding or pricing opportunities? So imagine having real time competitor data and market trends from over 10, 000 brands at your fingertips.

So it really helps you understand your market and where the opportunities are to grow as a new partner to the podcast. Particle is offering an exclusive two week free trial and a 20 percent discount off your first month with code takeover. So discover new ideas and market insights with particle by visiting particle.

com that's just like the word, but without the E P A R T I C L particle. com and use code takeover at checkout. 📍  

Phil Hampson Knight, Philip Hampson Knight was born on February 24th, 1938 in Portland, Oregon.  He came from an upper middle class family. His father was a newspaper man who ran the Oregon journal. Phil discovered running early on and discovered that he was quite a good runner. So he attended the university of Oregon, where he ran for the legendary coach, Bill Bowerman.

He majored in journalism and wrote for the school newspaper following in his father's footsteps.  But, he didn't want to be a full time journalist and newspaper man. Phil Knight respected his father and had a good relationship with him. But he resented his father's obsession with respectability. His dad had come from a poorer family, and so his major preoccupation in life was respectability.

Appearing proper, like he had things together to his neighbors.  Well, Phil had a slightly more chaotic personality than that. And besides, he graduated in 1959,  so we're right on the cusp. of the 1960s and that feeling of rebelliousness was already starting to rise in his generation. And even for his generation, I think Phil was a seeking personality.

He loved to read, especially history, and he had this thirst to see and experience the world. So Phil joined the army for a year and then went to Stanford Graduate School of Business where he got his MBA. And these were steps that helped him delay his future until he could figure things out what he really wanted.

But even when he graduates from Stanford, he feels that something is still missing. Here's what he says about it. Quote, On paper, I thought, I'm an adult. Graduated from a good college, University of Oregon. Earned a master's from a top business school, Stanford. Survived a year long hitch in the U. S. Army, Fort Lewis and Fort Eustis.

My resume said I was a learned, accomplished soldier, a 24 year old man in full. So why, I wondered, why do I still feel like a kid? Maybe because I still hadn't experienced anything of life, least of all its many temptations and excitements. I hadn't smoked a cigarette, hadn't tried a drug, I hadn't broken a rule, let alone a law.

The 1960s were just underway, the age of rebellion. And I was the only person in America who hadn't yet rebelled. I couldn't think of one time I'd cut loose, done the unexpected. I was searching for something else, something more. 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, and purposeful, and creative, and important. Above all, different.

So he does some soul searching.  So he does some soul searching about what he really wants in life. And he has an epiphany as he's running one day. Here's what he says. And then it happened. As my young heart began to pump. As my peak  And then it happened, as my young heart began to thump, as my pink lungs expanded like the wings of a bird, as the trees turned to greenish blurs, I saw it all before me, exactly what I wanted my life to be.

Play. Yes, I thought, that's it, that's the word, 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 runner's near the finish line and the crowd rises as one.

Play. There's a kind of exuberant clarity in that pulsing half second before winning and losing are decided. I wanted that, whatever that was, to be my life, my daily life.

Now he realizes that's

Now, he realizes that that sort of competition isn't going to come from athletics. He had worked his guts out at Oregon, and he had come to the realization that he was a good runner, not a great one. So, if not athletics, then what? Okay, here's another quote. The world was so overrun with war and pain and misery, the daily grind was so exhausting and often unjust.

Maybe the only answer, I thought, was to find some prodigious, improbable dream that seemed worthy, that seemed fun, that seemed a good fit, and chase it with an athlete's single minded dedication and purpose. 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. More than anything, that was the thing. I did not want.

Okay. So what does that mean in practice? Well, at Stanford business school, he had written a paper on the possibility of bringing Japanese running shoes to the U S market. Japan was a burgeoning manufacturing hub. They were the China of their day and no one else was really doing this. And so, you know, it's an odd mismatch the way he talks about a prodigious, improbable dream on the one hand, and the relatively simple goal of bringing Japanese manufacturing to the American shoes  and the relatively simple goal of bringing Japanese manufacturing.

To American shoes on the other hand, right? That doesn't seem like a prodigious dream, at least in my mind.  But one, it would involve him in the world of athletics and sports, which he loved, and it would also give him a chance to travel internationally. The 1960s were not like today. People didn't travel nearly as much and international business was a difficult in person job.

You know, today you can get something manufactured halfway around the world and never visit, just do communication online. But obviously that's not the case in 1962, but I also think doing anything with a lot of potential is always exciting. And he sees potential.  And then I think this is a very interesting part of the story.

So he's out for a morning run when he has this epiphany that importing Japanese shoes is his crazy idea.  That's what he calls it.  He says, it seems so obvious, so simple, and so potentially huge. And I liked the way he describes this feeling of epiphany. He says, quote, I was suddenly smiling, almost laughing, drenched in sweat, moving as gracefully and effortlessly as I ever had.

I saw my crazy idea shining up ahead and it didn't look all And it didn't look all that crazy. It didn't even look like an idea. It looked like a place.  It looked like a person, or some life force that existed long before I did. Separate from me, but also part of me. Waiting for me, but also hiding from me.

That might sound a little high flown, a little crazy. But that's how I felt back then.

And by the way, this idea of your future as something that's already real, something tangible waiting for you. I think this is another theme of great leaders and achievers. Listen to this quote from Novak Djokovic. He said this just a couple of days ago after winning the gold medal in men's tennis at the Olympics.

He said, I would just like to send a message to every young person out there, whatever you're pursuing in the world, whether it's tennis, sports, or anything else. You know, I was a seven year old dreaming that I could win,   you know, I was a seven year old dreaming that I could win Wimbledon and become number one in the world one day.

One thing is for sure. I feel that I had the power to create my own destiny. I tried to visualize every single thing in my life, not only believe it, but really feel it with every cell in my body. If you want a better future, you create it.

And this is something that I've touched on in the last few episodes, is this idea of belief. I talked about it with Michael Jordan, that his self belief allowed him to excel under pressure, because his self worth wasn't riding on these clutch shots. He already believed he was the man, this was just a chance to prove it.

And so I think, you know, You have a somewhat similar phenomenon with Phil Knight here. He had such a strong belief in this dream It was something tangible, something that already existed, though only in his mind for the moment, that it would allow him to persevere through moments of extreme difficulty and pressure, because after all, why not?

The dream is already real. You just have to get there. So I think that this immense belief is a superpower. If you really believe in what you're doing, if you can visualize it, Like Phil Knight did. And if you view it as real to you, you're just pulling it into the world, that's extremely powerful.

So Phil has this idea about Japanese running shoes. And what he wants to do is go on an around the world trip and see everything that the world has to offer, and then as part of the trip, stop in Japan and talk with some of the shoe manufacturers about becoming their distributor in the United States.

And so he asks his dad for a little cash to help with the trip and for his blessing. And even though his father was obsessed with respectability, Phil senses that there was some part of him that wished he could have seen the world when he was younger. He always had an adventurous side that he mostly suppressed.

So he's right about this. His father gives his blessing and some money, and he also convinces his friend Carter to go with him. They leave from San Francisco and their first stop is in Hawaii.  And they stop in Hawaii and they're like, we're not going anywhere else. I mean, you just have to imagine what a paradise Hawaii was back then.

I mean, it's still a paradise. Why is unbelievable. Gorgeous Island, perfect weather, beautiful, warm beaches. And back then it didn't have the traffic and crowding issues that it has now. And so Phil and Carter decide to ditch the rest of the trip and make a home in Hawaii. How could life get any better? So they get jobs selling encyclopedias door to door and Phil hates it.

He's bad at it. He doesn't like pressuring people to pay for something that he doesn't really believe in. And then he gets another job selling investments with a company called investors overseas services. And he actually excels at that because they have good products that he actually believes in. He's not a great talker, but he really knows his stuff and he really believes in it.

So he's quite successful at iOS.  So he's quite successful at this company. iOS is what it's called.  It's not a vocation. He's not in love with the job. He's doing it just to be able to make enough money to stay in Hawaii and go surfing every day.

And after a few months, he gets the itch to keep moving, keep seeing the world. So he quits his job and keeps going. His friend Carter decides to stay in Hawaii. And Phil now is going to be traveling the world alone. So he does, he leaves from Hawaii. His first stop is Japan.  And of course, this is not just a sightseeing trip.

It is that he goes and he sees, um, you know, some of the great temples he sees Tokyo, but the primary purpose of this stop of the trip.  So he meets up with some connections that his father had, and they refer him to some importers who in turn refer him to a company called Onitsuka in Kobe.  Uh, the company is now known as Asics.

So he meets with Mr. Onitsuka, the owner of the company, and a few higher ups, a few executives. And Phil is nervous. I mean, can you imagine how nervous he would be? Onitsuka was a very big company. These were their top executives and he was really kind of bluffing, right? And he was just a kid with an idea  and he's hoping that they'll take him seriously, even though they really have no reason to,  and this is his moment.

And this is his chance to make his dream reality. And

you can just imagine you're just, you're a kid who's been selling encyclopedias in Hawaii for months. And you've got these real professional executives looking at you. I mean, just imagine what that would feel like. And then the first question, the first thing they ask before you can even get started is a total gut punch.

They ask, what company are you with?  Japan was a very hierarchical society. It's a place where size and prestige matter a lot. And he's got nothing, right? There is no company. So he stalls. He pauses.   Ah, yes. Good question. His life flashes before his eyes. He takes a couple breaths. His adrenaline surges.  And in that moment, he thinks back to his room in his parents house with all his trophies and blue ribbons.

In the U. S., blue ribbons are given for first place finishes. I think that's true everywhere.  I'm not sure.  So he's thinking of that room and his trophies and blue ribbons. And he blurts out blue ribbon and composes himself a little bit and says, gentlemen, I represent blue ribbon sports in Portland, Oregon.

And the men murmur their approval. Ah, yes. Blue ribbon, very distinguished sounding. And he then pitches them his idea of importing and distributing their line of shoes called tiger shoes. Now he's able to sound prepared and well thought out. Because  he just gives his report that he had given in Stanford business school, basically verbatim. And so they all leave the room and discuss what he's saying. And they come back and they start explaining their position to him and how they've been thinking about entering the American market.

And he realizes against the odds that they are pitching him.  They, they have believed him about this blue ribbon sports. And I think, Oh, there's blue ribbon sports. We need to work with them. And so now they're, Trying to make sure that he's interested in distributing their shoes. And they finished by asking, would blue ribbon be interested in representing Tiger shoes in the United States?

Yes. He answers blue ribbon would be very interested.  They give him a model of a new shoe they're developing. And he says, this is a good shoe. I can sell this shoe.   And he asks them to ship him samples right away. And he promises to send a money order for 50. And he goes to the nearest American express office and sends a letter to his dad,  dear dad, urgent, please wire 50 right away

to Onitsuka Corp of Kobe.

And with that, the first and most important part of his grand around the world journey is finished.

So he doesn't go straight home. He continues on his journey. He goes to India and sees the Himalayas and the Ganges. He goes to Egypt and sees the pyramids. He goes to Rome, where he takes in the Colosseum and hears a performance of Nessun Dorma, which is my favorite piece of opera music. Not that it's much of a competition, not like a big opera head here, but um, it's one of the few pieces of opera music that I know and love.

It's incredible. In fact, let's take a listen while I tell you about the rest of his journey. This is the soundtrack of Phil Knight's life during this time of his life. 📍  

    This is the soundtrack of Of Phil Knight's life during this time period.  So he goes to Florence. He sees the famous Florence cathedral and the David.

He goes to Paris and he sees the Louvre and the Champs Elysees. He goes to London and sees parliament and big Ben. He sees all these amazing things. But at the end of the journey, he reflects back and he asks himself what the highlight was.  And he thinks Greece, no question. Greece. 📍     When he had left Oregon, he was most excited about two things on his itinerary.

First was pitching his crazy idea in Japan. And the second was seeing the Acropolis in Athens. If you've never seen the Acropolis, it is perhaps the most magnificent thing in this world. I say that without hyperbole. I just saw it for the first time last week, actually. And it's just unbelievable. It's this magnificent outcropping of rocks in the middle of Athens that just jut into the sky and overwhelms you.

The physical,  the physical geographic feature would be enough to take your breath away. And then you see how man has been able to tame and even beautify it further.

You see these stone supports at the top that support this temple complex on top of this outcropping of rocks. And then you climb the hill, and as you do, uh, you enter these gates, and it's like you're entering a new world. Most, once you're there, on top of the Acropolis, most people are drawn to the largest and most famous temple, the Parthenon, which is beautiful.

But Phil was  📍 instinctively drawn to the smaller temple that precedes it, a temple dedicated to victory. The temple, the Parthenon. Nike.

Here's what he said about that moment. Hours before boarding my flight at Heathrow. I meditated on that moment, looking up at those astonishing columns, experiencing that bracing shock, the kind you received from all great beauty, but mixed with a powerful sense of recognition. Was it only my imagination after all?

I was standing at the birthplace of Western civilization? Maybe I merely wanted it to be familiar, but I didn't think so. I had the clearest thought, I've been here before. Then, walking up those bleached steps, another thought. This is where it all begins. 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. 25 centuries ago, per my guidebook, it had housed a beautiful frieze of the goddess Athena, thought to be the bringer of Nike, or victory. I don't know how long I stood there, absorbing the energy and power of that epical place. An hour? Three? Three? Three? I don't know how long after that day I discovered that Aristophanes  I don't know how long after that day I discovered that Aristophanes play, set in the Temple of Nike, in which the warrior gives the gift a  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 on her shoe.

By the way, Nessun Dorma means let no one sleep. It's sung by a prince, Caliph,  It's sung by a prince, Caliph, who falls in love at first sight with the beautiful princess Turundot. Caliph is singing his assurance that he will find a way to win her love and her hand. The song ends, Al alba, vincero, vincero, vincero.

At dawn, the sun rises. I will win. I will win. I will win.

Will Phil come ho Ahem.  Will Phil comes home to Oregon after this amazing life changing adventure. His family is hugging him and so excited to see him, but he can't wait. As his dad is hugging him, he asks, Dad,  The answer, distressingly, was no.  He sends a follow up letter asking where his shoes are. The response comes back from Onitsuka, Shoes coming in just little more days.

Well, eventually the shoes do come, of course. Twelve pairs of beautiful tiger shoes.  Phil sends the first two pairs to his old coach, Bill Bowerman. Bowerman was obsessed with shoes. He was always  modifying his runner's shoes and messing around with them. Most of all, he liked to strip things out, uh, making them lighter.

He did the math and was fond of saying that a couple extra ounces,

he did the math and was fond of saying that a couple extra ounces added up to more than 50 pounds of weight over the course of all the strides taken during a mile long race.

So Bill Bowerman is obsessed with his runner's shoes and he likes the shoes. And actually he even eventually asks Knight. If they could partner and they agree that Phil Knight should be the one who's ultimately in control of the company. So they agree on a 51 49 split.  This is not a job. There's not even a startup at this point.

It's basically just the hope of a dream.

They've got this agreement with Onitsuka and that's it. So Phil Knight takes some more courses at Portland state university.  So Phil Knight takes some more courses at Portland State University in accounting. He takes the CPA exam and becomes an accountant with one of the nation's big accounting firms.  He's a very good accountant. He's got a mind for numbers. He's smart. But the work is boring, and most excruciatingly, it takes him away from his beloved tiger shoes.

As an aside, he writes of a dream of a letter to his old friend who he had left in Hawaii. Dear Carter, did you ever leave Shangri La? I'm an accountant now, and giving some thought to blowing my brains out.  But more than anything, working for a big accounting firm, yes it's boring, but it gives them a great education.

He has the opportunity to see a lot of businesses, how they work financially, what makes them tick, what makes them succeed, what makes them fail, and he actually works as an accountant for years, for a long time. You know, focus is one of those things that is a key to making any endeavor succeed. So I think some people think that they need to be able to devote all of their focus to something right away.

But there are a lot of advantages to hedging your bets and not putting the pressure on your baby, you know, this new startup, this new thing you're excited about to pay for your life right away. You need to give it some time to grow at its own pace, which is exactly what Phil Knight does.

So he's working, so he's working as an accountant by day, and he's selling tiger shoes in the evenings and weekends. And he quickly starts selling more and more tigers. He takes a thousand dollar loan from his father to buy his first inventory. And he's rejected by retailers, so he sells the shoes out of the back of his car at track meets.

And he's amazing at selling shoes. In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight wonders why he was so good at selling shoes out of the back of his car when he'd been so bad at selling encyclopedias. And the answer, he says, is, quote, Belief. Belief is irresistible.  I think that's a really good way of thinking of it. Belief is irresistible.

He also gets a decent mail order business going, not on purpose, but because people hear about him selling tigers and send him requests. Word starts spreading like wildfire. He also posts flyers all around town. He's just doing anything he can to get the word out about these new tiger shoes. And so things are going really great.

He decided things are going so well, uh, that after a year, he decides to hire a salesman in California to expand. He ends up hiring a guy named Jeff Johnson, but he has this question of how to get down to California. He's got a decent job and he's living with his parents, but he's still spending everything he has on the business.

And like most great founders, he's incredibly frugal. So he doesn't want to pay for the airfare.  And what he ends up doing is going to the army base in his uniform and acting like he belongs. He just boards a military transport bound for a base in California.   So he's taking free flights on a military transport back and forth from California.

This is back when people were free and not everything was a bureaucratic nightmare, or at least, I mean, I guess it probably was, but at least the bureaucracies were inept enough that they could be manipulated. So things are growing great.  

So anyway, things go on like this for a few years. Things are going great. He's on a roll. Um,  Things are going great. He's on a roll. Nike is,  things are going great. He's on a roll. Blue Ribbon Sports is growing. And then one day he gets a letter from a high school wrestling coach. And this coach claimed he had just returned from Japan, where the Onitsuka Corporation had just given him exclusive distribution rights for their running shoes.

Orders Phil Knight to stop selling shoes

and he orders, orders Phil Knight to stop selling tiger shoes.  So Phil is of course, very disturbed to hear this. And when he writes to Japan, he finds them very evasive and non responsive. And so he can feel his business being pulled out from under his feet at the very moment.  So he goes to Japan and he forces a confrontation with Onitsuka.

When he arrives at their headquarters, he can tell that they are uncomfortable. This was not an oversight or an accident. These were people who wanted him out.  Once again, he's under pressure to deliver. And once again, he does. It turns out that the exclusive, It turns out that the executive he had negotiated the deal with was no longer with Onitsuka and his replacement had hired this,

and his replacement is the one who had gone and talked to the wrestling coach on the East coast. You know, his replacement didn't care for Phil Knight at all. And, uh, and was trying to replace him.

But Phil is able to directly pitch the owner and executive of the company, Mr. Onitsuka, who feels a personal connection with him and allows Phil Knight to continue as the exclusive distributor of Tiger shoes in the Western United States.  So he comes back to the U S and sales are better than ever. He is however, having trouble with his bank.

So in their early days, Nike was always having trouble with their banks. The problem was the more they grew, the larger their purchase orders became and financing constantly became a problem. And these banks were making loans on debt. They didn't have any equity in blue ribbon sports. Venture capital wasn't a thing yet.

And so, you know, you would think if you're a bank, You're looking at blue ribbon  and their sales are growing every year. So that's a good thing, right? But no, the company is,  but no, for these banks, blue ribbons, rapidly increasing sales were actually concerning. Uh, it was totally backwards. They tell him that he should slow down sales because his growth rate was too fast.

For his equity.  So anyway, he says in response, no, you grow or you die. Life is all about growth. I have to grow. He has this just like insatiable desire to grow, not necessarily because it made business sense. Although he may have believed that, but because he wanted everyone to have these tiger shoes, like what stopped growing.

That means stop evangelizing, stop getting more of these shoes in on more. Uh, in  Uh,  of runners. Uh, he just couldn't imagine it. So anyways, they have to switch banks a couple of times. At one point he finds out later that one bank only accepts him because one of their senior executives really believed in him and personally guaranteed the loan.

In other words, the bank says no, but he says, look, I'll guarantee,  uh, this company, if they fail, you know, I'll be on the hook.

So for now, this is sort of a, a minor to medium sized headache, but it will become a major problem as time goes on.  They're doing things. That don't scale in order to succeed. So for example, one customer complains that he doesn't think the Tigers would last the 26 miles of a marathon. He thinks they're, they're too thin.

And so Jeff Johnson hires a local cobbler to graft rubber soles from a pair of shower shoes into the Tiger shoes. So, so, and like, they're doing all sorts of stuff like this, all sorts of experiments, all sorts of modifications, you know, handwritten letters to customers who buy a pair of shoes.

They're just, you know, elbow grease, hand to hand combat. Um, you know,  they're just elbow grease, hand to hand combat, you know, selling shoes one by one. You know, the thing that's interesting to me about this time period is, I had always taken for granted that you need to start off with a vision, right? An end point.

But that is not what Nike was like.  And by the way, if you like learning about Phil Knight, let me recommend episode one 86 of the founders podcast. That is an episode about Phil Knight.

Founders is like how to take over the world, but specifically for and about founders of great companies. It's hosted by my friend David, and I think he is genuinely one of the best in the business. It's one of the few podcasts that I listened to and get jealous of. If you're a founder, if you aspire to be a founder, you have to listen to founders.

He's able to get so many actionable insights from these stories. It never ceases to inspire and motivate me. So if you love this show, I'm sure you'll love that show. So check out founders wherever you get your podcasts.  So, this first employee, Jeff Johnson, he's not making very much money. He's really only doing this because he loves running, he loves the shoes, he loves what they're doing. And so he asks Phil, where is this going? And here's what Phil Knight writes about his response, quote, I didn't lie, exactly.

Maybe out of pity, maybe haunted by the image of Johnson, single, lonely, his body wrapped in plaster. Gamely trying to keep himself and my company alive, I sounded an upbeat tone. Blue Ribbon, I said, would probably morph over the years into a generalized sporting goods company. We'd probably have offices on the West Coast, and one day, maybe, in Japan.

Far fetched, I wrote, but it seems worth shooting for.  Okay, so, he doesn't really have the long term vision worked out yet. Obviously, the company does have a short term vision, , but you don't have to have a long term vision figured out from the very beginning. In fact, when Phil Knight thinks about the long term, he has no idea what is going to happen.

In fact, he's quite pessimistic. Blue Ribbon is always so close to being dropped from their bank or dropped by Onitsuka that he assumes that it's only a matter of time before the whole venture fails.  But, he writes, quote, 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  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.  Well eventually Blue Ribbon wins the contract to expand beyond the West Coast and they take over distribution for Tiger Shoes all over the United States.

And by the way, I say distribution, but at this point they are sending designs to Onitsuka, and those shoes designed by Blue Ribbon are very successful. Despite all this, Phil Knight is still, still an accountant by day. He's now working for Price Waterhouse, a big accounting firm. He's now on his fifth year of running Blue Ribbon, but he just can't see how he can afford to pay himself a salary.

And so what he does instead is take a job as a part time professor. at Portland State University. It pays far less than his accounting job, but it was also fewer hours, and it allows him to dedicate more time to Blue Ribbon.  Another thing I found interesting is that Blue Ribbon, which obviously becomes Nike, is a great story of compounding times time.

So we're in five years.  So we're five years in. And Blue Ribbon has doubled their sales every year. So year one was about 8, 000 in sales. And now they're at about 150, 000 in sales. And they do have a few breakthroughs, but nothing too far outside of that trend. This is just a company that doubles every year for a couple of decades.

And that's interesting to me because,  and that's very interesting to me, but this is just a company that their, their growth rate doesn't get too out of whack. They just double every year for decades. And it's interesting to me. And I'll get a little personal here because I'm someone who is always looking for that home run, right?

What can I do that will 10 X how to take over the world?  But reading this helped caution me towards patients. I've been doubling every year for five years and  maybe I just need to be like Phil Knight and focus on the fundamentals because compound growth is very powerful.

Think of what this podcast will be if I can double it every year for five more years. So the lesson there is as long as your fundamentals are good and you're growing. Be patient and let compound growth do its thing.   Okay. So after five years, blue ribbon has three employees, two of whom  Phil Knight later finds out are not cashing their checks.

They really love blue ribbon and they could tell that it's financially precarious, so they want to do whatever they can to help it succeed. And over the next few years, they hire aggressively, mostly in sales to help them move more shoes. They have 40, they have 40 employees by 1970.

So they're growing quickly. They're taking on employees in 1970 and it's in this same year. That Phil Knight gets a call from a shoe distributor on the East coast. And he's confused because they were distributing shoes from blue ribbon, but Onitsuka corporation had asked them if they would be interested in becoming their new us distributor.

So this guy isn't even trying to help out blue ribbon. He's not trying to threaten them either. He's just legitimately confused. Like, wait a minute. I thought you guys were the us distributors for Onitsuka. Am I wrong about that?  So Phil is like, no, you're right about that. Thank you. And so he forces a showdown with Onitsuka.

He tells them, Hey guys, you need to give us some clarity here. So they send out a representative to talk and they, and that representative expresses his disappointment. He says, look,  and that representative expresses his disappointment. He says, you should be doing better. And Phil Knight says, look, we've been doubling your sales in the U S every year.

And this guy says, that's not good enough. We expect more. Some say that you should be tripling it or more. So it's a civil, but tense negotiation. And then. Disrepresentative from Onitsuka excuses himself to go to the restroom. And when he does, Phil Knight starts rifling through his briefcase and steals  the papers that he had in there.

The ones that seem relevant.  He copies the papers. And the next day he uses some cloak and dagger, you know, spy stuff to slide the papers back into the guy's briefcase.  This is great stuff. You know, Phil Knight is willing to do. Whatever it takes to survive and to win, including stealing documents. So, uh, when he and other executives analyze the contents of these documents, they find a list of 18 potential distributors and a schedule of appointments with half of them.

So, okay. This was not just like a misunderstanding. Onitsuka is actively looking for replacement distributors in the U S.  Eventually Onitsuka reveals their true intentions when they offer to buy Blue Ribbon. So, I mean, just imagine this situation. Your whole company is that you are a distributor for this Japanese shoe company, and that company has just revealed their intention to cut you out.

Now, these are the moments where legends are made because the average person. It's just despair. Like, that's it. Onitsuka can buy us for pennies on the dollar because our company is worthless without them. We have no product. And to be fair, Phil Knight also has many moments of despair.

But he doesn't stay there. He doesn't stay in depression. He doesn't stay inactive. He says, look, if they're going to try and replace us, we need to try and replace them. And so he goes out looking and eventually finds a new manufacturer in Mexico to produce  their own shoes. You know, rather than this pre existing brand of Tiger shoes,  they can have their own.

Now, technically, this is not a violation of their contract, because he's going to be manufacturing football shoes at first. And the contract only said that Blue Ribbon couldn't import other track and field shoes. It was, of course, a violation of the spirit of the deal, but as far as Phil Knight was concerned, Onitsuka had already broken the spirit of the deal by trying to find new distributors.

He was just returning the favor.  But now that they're manufacturing their own line of shoes,  they need a name and a logo to go with this line for the logo. He goes with a young artist he had met at Portland state named Carolyn Davidson. She had done some brochures for them and he says to her, Hey, we need a new logo.

And she says, what kind? And he says, I don't know, something maybe that evokes a sense of motion.  And so she comes back with some initial designs, you know, some lightning bolts, some wind.

And they give her some feedback and, uh, you know, they go through, uh, and you know, they go through a few rounds of revisions where Phil tells her to make it sleeker, make it simpler. And then there's no aha moment. Like they look at one design and, uh, he and Jeff Johnson and a couple other executives say, yeah, I mean, I think we like this one a little better than the others reading now from the book quote, it looks like a wing.

One of us said, it looks like a whoosh of air. Another said, it looks like something, a runner might leave in his or her wake. We all agreed it looked new, fresh, and yet somehow ancient, timeless. For her many hours of work, we gave Carolyn our deepest thanks and a check for 35, then sent her on her way.

After she left, we continued to sit and stare at this one logo, which we'd sort of selected and sort of settled on by default. Something eye catching about it, Johnson said. Woodle agreed. I frowned, scratched my cheek. You guys like it more than I do, I said, but we're out of time. It'll have to do. You don't like it, Woodle said.

I sighed, I don't love it. Maybe it will grow on me.  I just love that. I love how honest Phil Knight is about the messiness. That was the origin of Nike. That was his initial reaction to the swoosh. One of the most famous logos of all time. I don't love it. Maybe it will grow on me.

They also need a name, and the leading contenders are Falcon and Phil's personal favorite, Dimension 6. But they can't really decide, and finally the factory in Mexico needs an answer. They need to put something on the shoe. And Phil is still agonizing at the last minute. He doesn't love any of the options.

And here's what happens. Reading once again from Shoe Dog. There is one more suggestion, Woodle said. From who? Johnson phoned first thing this morning, he said. Apparently a new name came to him in a dream last night. I rolled my eyes. A dream? He's serious, Woodle said. He's always serious. He says he sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and saw the name before him, Woodle said.

What is it, I asked, bracing myself. Nike. Huh? Nike. Spell it. N I K E, Woodle said. I wrote it on a yellow legal pad. The Greek goddess of victory. The Acropolis. The Parthenon. The Temple. I thought back. Briefly. Fleetingly. We're out of time. I said, Nike Falcon or dimension six. Everyone hates dimension six.

Everyone but me. He frowned. It's your call. He left me. I made doodles on my pad. I made lists, cross them out. Tick tock, tick tock. I needed to tell effects the factory. Now I hated making decisions in a hurry. And that's all I seem to do those days. I looked to the ceiling. I gave myself two more minutes to mull over the different options.

Then walk down the hall to the Telex machine. I sat before it, gave myself three more minutes. Reluctantly, I punched out the message. Name of new brand is  A lot of things went  Man,  clogged up now. A lot of things were rolling around in my head. Consciously, unconsciously. First Johnson had pointed out that seemingly all iconic brands Clorox, Kleenex, Xerox have short names.

Two syllables or less. And they always have a strong sound in the name. A letter like K or X that sticks in the mind. That all made sense. Also, I liked that Nike was the goddess of victory. What's more important, I thought, than victory? I might have heard, in the far recesses of my mind, Churchill's voice.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. I might have recalled the victory medal awarded to all the veterans of World War II. A bronze medallion with Athena and Nike on the front, breaking a sword in two. I might have. Sometimes I believe that I did. But in the end, I don't really know what led to my decision.

Luck? Instinct? Some inner spirit? Yes. What did you decide? Whittle asked me at the end of the day, Nike. I mumbled, Hmm. He said, yeah, I know. I said, maybe it'll grow on us. He said, maybe.

So both the logo and the name of one of the world's greatest brands is born with the deepest reluctance.  Again, you don't have to have it all figured out right away. I think, um, I think the full picture emerges as time goes on, kind of grows organically as it did with Nike. Now the quality of the Mexican factory is a disappointment, and so they decide to go back to Japan, not with Onitsuka, of course, who they are drifting away from,

but with a large holding company, but with a large holding company called Nisho Corporation. Nisho agrees to a simple deal,

Nisho agrees to a simple deal where they get no equity in blue ribbon Nike, but they will get 4 percent off the top as a markup on the product and market interest rates on top of that. And so in a few short months, the future of Nike was born. They eventually changed the corporate name from Blue Ribbon to Nike, and this completely changed the makeup of the company.

Previously, Onitsuka was the maker of the shoe. Blue Ribbon had input, they offered designs, but they didn't really own their own designs. Now, they were making their own shoes, and this change unleashes their creativity. Bowerman immediately starts experimenting. He uses a waffle iron and fills it with polyurethane to try to make a waffle iron design for a shoe sole.

The polyurethane actually seals the waffle iron shut, doesn't work, but after some experimentation, they do produce a waffle iron outsole, and that is one of the first major innovations of Nike shoes. Phil Knight writes in Shoe Dog, I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs.

Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Edison in Menlo Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wa

Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired. I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, That he was the Daedalus of sneakers.    I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneakers. That he was making history, remaking an industry, transforming the way athletes would run and stop and jump for generations.

I wonder if he could conceive in that moment all that he'd done, all that would follow. I know I couldn't.

So 1973 is the year where all this happens. It's very awkward for a while, they still have to fulfill their obligations to Onitsuka, and they need to, you know, they desperately need that revenue, even as they are basically cheating on them with Nisho Corp and the new Nike line. Of course, once the Nike comes out, Onitsuka ends the relationship almost immediately.

Now, even though the first Nike had sold well, this is devastating. Nike was just starting, they had this whole million dollar business selling Onitsuka shoes. Phil Knight calls an all hands meeting and tells everyone the situation. When he reveals that Onitsuka is cutting them off, everyone becomes despondent.

Their initial reaction is, you know, like, so, okay, this is it then. And we had a good run, we have no shoes to sell, you know, Nike's just fledgling. But then Phil goes on, reading again from Shoe Dog, he says, I cleared my throat. So in other words, I said, I cleared my throat again, pushed aside my yellow legal pad.

What I'm trying to say is, we've got them right where we want them.  Johnson lifted his eyes. Everyone around the table lifted their eyes. They sat up straighter. This is the moment, I said. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. Our moment. No more selling someone else's brand. No more working for someone else.

Onitsuka has been holding us down for years. Their late deliveries, their mixed up orders, their refusal to hear and implement our design ideas. Who among us isn't sick of dealing with all that? It's time we face the facts. If we're going to succeed or fail, we should do so on our own terms with our own ideas.

Our own brand. We posted two million in sales last year, none of which had anything to do with Onitsuka. That number was a testament to our ingenuity and our hard work. Let's not look at this as a crisis. Let's look at this as our liberation. Our independence day. Yes. It's going to be rough. I won't lie to you.

We're definitely going to war people, but we know the terrain. We know our way around Japan now. And that's one reason I feel in my heart, this is a war we can win. And if we win it, when we win it, I see great things for us on the other side of victory. We are still alive. People, we are still alive.

Okay. So again, that's some great rah rah stuff.  Onitsuka of course, sues them for everything they're worth. Nike counter sues. It's a long and dramatic lawsuit. But in the end. Nike wins and stays alive and even get some damages awarded to them from Onitsuka.  They signed their first athletes in the coming months, notably Steve Prefontaine, who comes to work for Nike in 1973.

Pre, as he was known, was a running phenomenon, a legend, and he becomes an important evangelist for Nike. If you want to know more about that story, you can go listen. That's just two episodes ago.  So things are looking up, but it is the first year that they actually lose money. And of course they do, you know, you can't go from a full fledged operation selling one brand for eight years and And then just shut down that business and expect to not feel the repercussions.

But essentially after one down year, things immediately start bouncing back and bounce back in a very dramatic way. By 1977, their sales increased to 70 million.

And still, even at these things, And still, even at these levels, things are basically doubling every year. So by 1979, they are on track for 140 million of revenue.

That is the year they introduced apparel for the first time. The thought was that some athletes were choosing Adidas over Nike because they could offer athletes more. An entire look, tracksuits, shoes, shirt, shorts, everything. And so Nike felt they needed to compete. And this is of course, increases revenue even further, just more revenue streams. 📍     One quick break to tell you that this episode is brought to you by all the hacks, all the hacks is a great podcast. It's all about upgrading your life, money, and travel. It's hosted by my friend, Chris Hutchinson, and he is incredible.  So if you want to learn about optimizing your credit card points. He's got an episode on that.

If you want to learn about optimizing your sleep and the best products and the best way to do that, he's got an episode on that. Um, all the hacks is incredible for optimizing your finances, your health, and your life. So I love it. Go give it a listen.

You won't regret it. That is all the hacks and you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. 📍  

So things are looking up. Things are still growing, still growing very fast.  However, in that year,  Phil Knight receives a simple letter in the mail from the U S federal government. He opens it up and can't believe what he sees. It's a bill for 25 million.  Now Nike was already broke. They were growing so fast. They were operating at the red line. They had no free cash, 25 million would sink them.

And it turns out that this was a dirty trick by their competitors. Basically, there was a law that you had to pay certain import duties based not on the price of your shoe, but on the price. Of an equivalent shoe manufactured in America.  Well, a competitor had manufactured a shoe in the U S and marketed it for 250 or something crazy.

Shoes are basically selling for maybe 20 at the time. So the competitors do this just to benchmark and say, look,  uh, here's a competitive shoe for 250. So you have to put import duties on these shoes that are selling for 20  as if they're 250 shoes.  So it racks up this huge tax bill, just totally illegitimate.

It's a dirty trick working with the federal government,

but it works. And so the government's telling them you owe us 25 million.

And so eventually it has to become Phil Knight's top priority. This is existential. He goes out to Washington, DC and does much of the lobbying himself. It's just amazing how for the first two and a half decades of this, It's just amazing how for the first two decades of its existence, Nike's experiencing basically one extended near death experience.

I think,

you know, you'd expect something as successful as Nike,  at least what it is now, you'd expect it to be stable earlier. But no, it is banking issues nearly putting them out of business, and then their supplier nearly putting them out of business, and then the federal government nearly putting them out of business.

In the end, Phil Knight's personal involvement and his lobbying pays off. He really, really wanted to win fully and completely and pay nothing. He thought that was right and just. But in the end, his lawyers and his team convince him that that's not possible. And they end up paying a settlement of eight million dollars to the federal government.

, so one more crisis averted. However, that isn't the last near death experience.

So basically,  money was always tight at Nike.

So basically money was always tight at Nike. Um, that was because, so basically money was always tight at Nike. They had pretty thin operating margins and they were growing so fast that they just, you know, it was money was tough to,  and they were growing so fast that cash was just always hard to come by.

Any money that they made, you just went into largest,  any money that they made basically always just went into larger purchase orders.

And so they often had to get creative. And so they often had to get creative, uh, with their payments. Right. But Phil always had a rule and that was always pay Nisho first. Okay. So Nisho is this company in Japan that was manufacturing for them. Yes. But was also a financial partner essentially was making them loans to keep them financially afloat.

And, uh, the bank that they were with  only was willing to take them on because they had this relationship with Nisho. And so he said, look.  We pay Nisho first, everything else comes out of that. If we ever don't pay Nisho,  we're going to have problems, right? So we got to keep them happy.  One month, however, they owe Nisho a million dollars,  the first ever million dollar payment, and they did not have a million dollars lying around.

They were 75, 000 short. And so he's, you know, Phil Knight is talking with his team and he says, well, you know, I got this rule. We always pay Nisho first.  They say, yeah, but, I mean,  if we're gonna pay Nisho  a million dollars, we're gonna have to drain a million dollars. All of our other bank accounts, all dry, like zero money.

Now they had made big payments to Nisha before, not this big, but big payments. And always they had had enough balance in a day or two, like things had refreshed. Uh, they're looking at it and it doesn't seem that much worse. It might take three or four days instead. And so Phil decides that it's worth the risk.

And so he pays Nisha. Pays a million dollars, drains all the bank accounts to zero, all over the company.

So how does something like this, how did they get in a situation like this? Here's how Phil describes it. Quote, I was also partly to blame, of course. I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, that's what I believe, no matter the situation. Why cut your order from three million down to two million if you believed in your bones that the demand was out there for five million?

So I was forever pushing my conservative bankers to the brink, forcing them into a game of chicken. I'd order a number of shoes that seemed to them absurd. A number we'd need to stretch to pay for. And I'd always just barely pay for them in the nick of time. And then just barely pay our other monthly bills at the last minute, always doing just enough and no more to prevent the bankers from booting us.

And then at the end of the month, I'd empty our accounts to pay me show and start from zero again.  Okay. So that's what he's doing here. He's playing this game of chicken, always just barely covering everything. So they do this to make the million dollar payment. Then the CFO calls him.

It's all hitting the fan. She said the checks, all the checks are bouncing all over the company.

That means suppliers aren't being paid. That means distributors aren't being paid. That means employees aren't being paid. All of these people are trying to cash checks. And all of them are bouncing, which looks horrible. There's a near mutiny at a small factory in New England where they were doing some manufacturing.

And, um, so his man on the ground there is calling Phil Knight to say like, Hey, what's happening? You know, our guys aren't getting paid. Their, their checks are bouncing  And these guys are threatening to quit and go home. And so he actually can't wait to hear back from Phil. And so he goes to one of their suppliers, the guy who was supplying them with the cardboard boxes, right?

For the shoes, uh, those famous orange Nike cardboard boxes. And, uh, he says, look, you guys, if you want to stay in business, a huge part of your business is giving us cardboard boxes. If you want to stay in business, you need us to stay in business. I need you to help pay my factory workers. It's just hopefully a short term loan, but can you do something for us?

And so he leaves with a stack of a hundred dollar bills to pay their factory workers, and that's how he keeps it open, but it gets worse than that. Way worse,

but it gets worse than that. Way worse. So, first of all, like I said, they've got distributors, you know, sporting goods stores all over the country that are having their checks bounce. And, uh, and so they're mad. Uh, they've got other,  They've got other suppliers, uh, like  they have checks bouncing all over the country, left and right, and their bank can't believe this.

Uh, so they, you know, this bank didn't really want them from the start and then word gets to them and they ask for a meeting and coldly tell them, gentlemen, You are no longer welcome to bank with us. They throw them out worse. They call the next day and tell them that they are  worse. They call them the next day and tell them that they are relaying information to the FBI as a major fraud case.

So as Phil goes home from this meeting with their bank, he is considering the very real possibility that he might spend time in prison. Okay. So that really puts things in perspective of how bad this financial situation.  Okay. In the meantime, they have half a dozen creditors who are all flying uninvited to Portland to go to Nike headquarters to see what the heck is going on and why their checks are bouncing.

These are suppliers and distributors, people they need to continue operating.   What unravels next. He's a farce worthy of Broadway, worthy of Hollywood. The great fear is that all these creditors who are flying at the same time, we'll see each other and realize the extent of this crisis. What they want to do is convince all these creditors that this is a minor hook.

What they want to do is convince all these creditors that this is a minor hiccup in book.

What they want to do is convince all these creditors that this is a minor hiccup in bookkeeping that will quickly be resolved. And so they set up a plan to keep all these various creditors quarantined In separate parts of the building, they set up an air traffic control, someone who tracks the movements of all these people to make sure they don't bump into each other.

So if,  so they've got someone assigned to each creditor and they take them to rooms in, in different corners of the building. And so let's say that one of these people says, Hey, I need to use the restroom. Then they call it into air traffic control. And so if another creditor in another part of the building says, I need to use the bathroom, they have to stall for a few minutes to make sure these people don't meet in the hall or in the bathroom, don't run into each other.

And miraculously, this ploy works and all the creditors go home, believing that Nike can sort this out. So now they actually have to,  so now they actually do have to sort it out. The best solution,  the best solution they decide was to go to Nisho. The plan is to ask for both an extension on their next payment and some additional funding alone.

Nisho says, look,  you guys are growing. We like you, but this is highly irregular. If we're going to do this, if we're going to make you a loan, we're going to need someone to come out and comb through all of your books.

Okay. Well, good. It sounds like the contours of a deal. There's just one minor problem.   Nisho was two things to Nike, a financier and a manufacturer.  Well, conditions had changed in Japan and Phil Knight was highly skeptical that they could continue to do all their manufacturing in Japan for forever. And so he had bought and fixed up a factory in new England, the one with the aforementioned problem, paying their workers.

And they had, of course, kept this secret from Nisho that they were using Nisho's funding to build a factory to replace them as their manufacturer. Okay, so you get that? So Nisho is their manufacturer and their financier,  and so  they had used some of the money from Nisho to replace them as a manufacturer.

And so, if Nisho, and so, if someone from Nisho comes out and opens the books, they would of course see all of the money that they had spent.  So if someone from Nisho came out and opened the books, they would of course see all this money that got spent on a factory. To replace them. Oof, not good.  Well, at this point,  Phil Knight is saying, all right, well, what other choice do we have?

And so they say, all right, send someone out.  And so,  and so Nisho sends out an executive named Ito.  And so, uh, Nisho sends out a high ranking executive named Ito. He arrives in Portland and, uh, comes to their offices and they give him everything. They give him all the books, no use trying to hide it. It was a glaring gap in the accounting  and Ito was going to find out about the factory sooner or later. So they just hand over the books to Ito and let him look through them. As he's looking over these books, Phil comes back in. As he's looking over these books, Phil comes back and checks on him every 15 minutes or so. And finally, he pops his head in one time, and he can see it in Ito's eyes, that he has seen the factory.

Reading now, quote, I could smell it in the air. We'd reached that fateful moment. Leaning over the books, Ito realized what he was looking at, and did a slow double take. Exeter, secret factory. Then I saw the realization dawn, that he was the sucker who'd paid for it. He looked up at me and pushed his head forward on his neck, as if to say, Really?

I nodded,  and then he smiled.  It was only a half smile, but it meant everything.

Okay, so this Ito guy, you know, he's able to kind of see the forest through the trees. And, uh, he realizes, look,  you know, maybe it wasn't plausible that we would stay your manufacturer for forever anyway. And, um, this is what you guys had to do. And so before he leaves, he lets Phil know that they still have a deal.

And says, quote, There are worse things than ambition.

Not only does Nisho agree to the deal, but Ito comes to a meeting with Nike's bank, the Bank of California. And first of all, they pay off all of Nike's outstanding debts. And then Ito tells the bank, quote, there's one more thing. He said, I believe your bank has been negotiating in San Francisco to become one of Nisho's banks.

That's right.  That's right. The banker responded. Ah, I must tell you that it will be a waste of your time to pursue those negotiations any further. Are you sure he asked? I am quite sure.

So basically he's using Nisho's muscle. To tell the bank, Hey, back off. If you want to work with us anymore. And the bank of California got the message. The FBI investigation was over from that moment forward.

All right. Well, that was really the last near death experience of Nike's young life. The book ends with Nike going public. Phil  had resisted going public for a long time because he was afraid that he would lose control and Nike would lose its soul.

But they're able to pull together a deal where Phil Knight maintains 46 percent of the company, Bill Bowerman had already sold back most of his ownership, and the stock bought through the public offering would be Class B stock, which would give them fewer voting rights, meaning Phil still had effective control of Nike.

Of course, Nike would still have many ups and downs. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, the sweatshop controversies in China, you know,

the sweatshop controversies in China, stuff we're all familiar with. But the future of Nike was secure. With the public offering, they raised enough capital that there would be no more near death experiences.  At the end, Phil expresses his regrets. The biggest of his regrets is his relationship with his two sons.

I think Phil was a pretty good father, but he just wasn't present enough to develop as strong of a relationship as he would have liked, and probably as would have been healthy. And so that's a big regret of his. He wished he had been able to spend more time with his boys. But,  he's honest that this is tempered by his acknowledgement of his other one great regret.

He says, quote, And yet I know that this regret clashes with my other secret regret, that I can't do it all over again. God, how I wish I could relive the whole thing.

So should Phil Knight have done what he did? Or should he have been more con  So should Phil Knight have done what he did? Or should he have been content to be an accountant and spend more time with his kids?  I don't think it's a question with a general answer that works for everyone. You have to decide if it's worth it for you.

But I will say this. If you are going to make those sacrifices, make sure that it is in pursuit Of something worthwhile. I hear of other people who regret,  I hear of other people whose regret is more unadulterated, right? It's not tortured. They just wish that they had spent more time with their family.

And to be honest, it's usually because they were building,  you know, car dealerships or something like that, you know, uh, businesses that are frankly not very meaningful to them. It's just a way to make money, but Nike meant something. It stood for something. It represented the pursuit of excellence of distinction.

It represented exactly what that word Nike means victory.

So if you are going to make great sacrifices, and I think that's a path that I wish more people would take, don't make them in the name of money only make those sacrifices in the pursuit. Of something worthwhile of some higher purpose.  Okay. If you are a free listener that does it for this episode. If you are a paid subscriber, stick around because we will be going through my full list of takeaways, including how Phil Knight built such an outstanding team of executives, how he hired, how cult building played an instrumental role in Nike success and more.

But for those of you tuning out now, until next time, thank you for listening to How to Take Over the World.   📍   By the way, Phil Knight is one of the most well read founders I've ever read about. Shoe Dog is just littered with references to the great generals of the past, as well as to great literature and authors, inventors.

I think it's a big part of his success. This is someone who didn't just know sports. He also knew about the wider world and it paid off in a million little ways. If you want to be a great leader like Phil Knight and still make the time to read so that you have the competitive advantage that he did, then you need speechify speechify  turns anything you want to read into a podcast.

That means Kindle books, articles, PDFs of textbooks. You name it. I use speechify all the time to get through all the reading that I wanted to do for the podcast. And also the other stuff that I just want to read and know about.

So go to speechify. com slash Ben to get 15 percent off. So go to speechify. com slash Ben to get 15 percent off speechify premium. Check them out. You'll love them

‍