Hello, and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. Today, we are talking about Steve Prefontaine, one of the all time great middle distance runners. If you haven't heard of Steve, he's famous for a few things. He was a great runner, held a number of American records, but he never actually won a gold medal at the Olympics.

So why study a runner who never ever won the gold? So why study a runner Well, one thing is the way he was able to use his abilities as a runner to build his celebrity and become famous. Despite, you know, maybe not being the best in the world,

but the biggest reason I wanted to do this episode is his mindset. This is someone who, who was not the most naturally gifted runner in the world, but achieved truly great things, regardless, through his mindset, his work ethic, his grit. And that is worth studying. I mean, if I were to study a runner and the takeaways were, you know, be born with elite lung capacity, leg strength, and cardiovascular efficiency, then there wouldn't be a lot to learn from the episode.

I actually first got interested in Pre from a quote that I read. I tried to find the providence of this quote, and I have to conclude that it's probably fake. So keep that in mind. This is not a real quote, but, uh, it's a good encapsulation of the attitude of Steve Brifontaine. . And here it is.

Here's what the quote says. It says, no matter how hard you train, somebody will train harder. No matter how hard you run, somebody will run harder. No matter how bad you want it, somebody will want it more. I am that somebody.

It's a great quote, right? I wish it was real. But regardless, it does kind of capture who he was. He's one of the most determined people I have ever read about. Everything about him was enthusiasm, passion, obsession.  He also happens to have been the first great Nike athlete. I think he was actually the first Nike sponsored athlete and had a big part in the success of Nike.

Of that now great company. It's a very inspiring story and I hope it inspires you as much as it inspired me.

My source for this episode is pre the story of America's greatest running legend, Steve Brifontaine. By Tom Jordan. So let's get into it. This is Steve Prefontaine

before we get into it. I want to quickly shout out the first ever, how to take over the world event on August 22nd through the 25th. Every great achiever has an elite group around them. And that is what I'm trying to cultivate here. A group of people who are trying to take over the world, who you can take inspiration from bounce ideas off of collaborate with

and form friendships with it's going to be awesome. We're going to be at Hacienda Zuleta, a very cool venue just outside of Quito, Ecuador. We're going to be having a good time. Donkey rides, hot air balloons, all that. So we would love to have you go learn more and apply at nowheresummit. com. Steve

Roland Prefontaine was born on January 25th, 1951, in Coos Bay, Oregon, a small town on the cold Oregon coast.  Coos Bay was a sleepy little town, and there were not a lot of ways to get ahead. As Prefontaine would later say, quote, You don't have many ways to jump in Coos Bay.

You can be an athlete. Athletes are very, very big in Coos Bay. You can study, try to be an intellectual, but there aren't very many of those. Or you can go drag the gut in your lowered Chevy with a switchblade in your pocket. I had to go look up dragging the gut, and that means that's going cruising down the main drag,  going by showing off your car.

So from a young age, Steve had this motivation to distinguish himself, to make it big. Quote, what I want is to be number one, is how Steve put it.  So as he said, athletics was one way to make it. He was naturally a pretty gifted athlete, but he was only 5'9 so he was too short to be a great basketball or football player, um, though he tried both as a boy.

So one day in middle school, he's in P. E. class, and they have a distance running unit. And in only a few weeks, he becomes one of the best distance runners in his grade. And so he thinks, okay, I found something here that I'm naturally good at, where I can excel. So he goes out for the track and field and cross country teams in high school.

His freshman and sophomore years, so that's ninth and tenth grade for you non Americans, he is good, but he's not a great runner quite yet. One of the things that actually holds him back initially is he is too intense and excitable. So there,  so there's a great quote from the book about this.

So there's a great quote in the book about this. It says,. His goals were high for the outdoor track season, but months of frustration ended in his failure to make the state meet, caused in part perhaps by his strong interest in the performance of other members of the team.

He was always running up and down shouting encouragement and advice, His coach McClure recalls, we finally had to tell him, look, we'll do the coaching. You do the running.

Okay. So he's so excitable that sometimes he'll be in the lead and he'll run back to other runners on his team and, and try and motivate them. The other way, this excitability and enthusiasm manifests itself is He is conflict. So during one race quote, when in a physical cross country race against Sheldon high school, the tough kid from Coos Bay indelicately took a swing at rival, John Anderson, the future winner of the 1973 Boston marathon.

All right. So this is someone who is so intense that sometimes he's literally throwing punches at his competitors. So once his coaches get him to stop running back and forth and trying to hype up his teammates and getting into fist fights with his competitors during competition, that's His performance improved significantly, and by his junior year, he is an extremely elite middle distance runner.

By the way, by middle distance, the shortest distance he would do was the mile. He was also very good at the two mile. His best event was the three mile, and he sometimes competed in the 10, 000 meter event, which is equivalent to about six miles.

So, as I said, he's naturally pretty gifted. Maybe not the most gifted, and certainly not the most technically gifted. Um, proficient runner, uh, the thing that really sets him apart is as the book puts it quote, his ability to accept mentally and physically the punishment of training.  Okay. It goes on pre was the hardest worker in running that I ever had by far.

McClure remembers. This is the whole thing, his intensity on his morning runs. I didn't check on him. I just said, if you want to be a good runner, you got to go out there in the mornings. He worked awful hard.

Okay. So I really liked that he worked awful hard and he had an amazing ability to accept mental and physical punishment.  Again, from a technique standpoint, uh, he's anything but elite. Here's what his coach said. His talent was not that he had great style. He didn't. It got better. I think we worked probably harder on that than we did on anything.

He'd like to slump over and we'd keep hollering. He'd like to slump over and we'd keep hollering at him. No,

he'd like to slump over and we'd keep hollering at him. No, his talent was his control of his fatigue and his pain. His threshold was different than most of us, whether it was inborn or he developed it himself.  Okay, so I think this is an amazing takeaway. I think optimization is overrated. Figure out the technique later.

My friend Sean Puri has a great line. He says, intensity is the strategy.  Technique and strategy matter. Yes, especially in the long run, but that can come later.

You know, as McClure said, it got better, I think. And that can always improve, but intensity is absolutely necessary. And that ability to accept and overcome pain is absolutely necessary. My friend, David Cenner of the founders podcast likes to share this quote that I love from Issy Sharpe, the founder of the four seasons, who says excellence is often just the capacity for taking pain, the ability to experience it, go through it and keep going. You know, I mentioned that quote from David Senra. This podcast is sponsored by founders podcast. If you love how to take over the world, if you love learning lessons from some of the greatest achievers in history, you'll love founders. It's like how to take over the world  but specifically about the stories of great founders in history, and it's for founders and what, you know, you as a founder can learn from them. So it's an incredible podcast. If you love how to take over the world, you will love founders.

Go give it a listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

 Okay. And even though that quote is from an entrepreneur, obviously, I think you see some real nice alignment there between what it takes to be a great entrepreneur and what it takes to be a great runner. That was what made Steve Prefontaine excellent.

The ability to take pain and keep going.  I think one thing that helps in this domain is to rewire your brain to see barriers as filters. So whether you're a runner or an entrepreneur or anything else, when you encounter something that deals out pain, You know, a hurdle, a roadblock, something difficult.

You should rewire your inner monologue to say, good, you know, great. I found the filter. This is the thing that weeds out the week. This is where I win because the easy stuff is the stuff that everyone is doing. You should get excited when you encounter pain, because it means you are on the cusp of breaking away from the pack because most people don't want to take that pain.  and so I think those are two of the big secrets behind Steve Brifontaine. First, his emotion, his excitability, his enthusiasm and passion. The second was his ability to take pain, which we just discussed. And then the third secret to his success is consistency. One of the things that people talk about is his habit of running at six in the morning.

And he did it every single day. Steve was an extrovert. . He was outgoing and he liked to party, but even on nights where he was out past midnight drinking beer. He would be up the next morning at 6 a. m. sharp running and going through his workout. And then he would work out later too with the team. Uh, he sometimes would work out at night.

He was such a hard worker. But no matter how much work he had done the day before, The 6 a. m. run was unmissable. So here's what the book had to say about his consistency.  And unlike those who could manage several such workouts and then break down with illness or injury, Pre had the physique and temperament to come back for more.

I guess the thing that stands out, says Oregon coach Bill Dellinger quietly when asked of Pre's greatest talent, is that he went through four years of college without ever missing a workout because of a cold or illness. Four years of never missing any meets.

. I really do think that's a strategy for succeeding at basically anything. If you can have intensity and passion, if you can have the ability to take pain and keep going, and then just unbelievable consistency, then you will succeed at almost anything.

I really do think it's that simple. So Steve is training all the time in high school. In fact, for the people of Coos Bay, it becomes something of a joke to say, there goes pre. Okay. Cause everyone saw him running around town all the time. He was always running. So they would see him go by, turn to each other, shake their head to say, there goes pre.

So his junior year, that is 11th grade is when things really come together for him as a runner for the first time. He goes undefeated in cross country and wins the state title. Everyone wants to recruit him to run at their college. But he didn't have to look far because the nation's greatest track and field program had just been built up by the legendary coach Bill Bowerman just down the road at the University of Oregon, which is in Eugene, Oregon.

It's only about two hours drive from Coos Bay.

Uh, his assistant coach, Bill Dellinger was also very involved with Pre and here's what Bill Dellinger had to say about the first time that he went to go watch him run., He said, I was standing on a hill, I had my binoculars and I was probably a good half mile or 700 yards away from the start. And I saw this guy that had the start position, but it was the look in his eyes from a half mile distance, the intensity in his face as the gun went off.

I thought, that's got to be Pree.  And by the way, that look in his eyes, that is something we talked about last episode on the Picasso episode. Everyone talked about Picasso's gaze. The way he looked at you, straight in the eyes, he held eye contact, and I compared that to Alexander Hamilton and Steve Jobs and all these incredibly charismatic people.

They have this way of drawing you in by looking you in the eyes, maintaining eye contact, and focusing on you with this gaze while they're in conversation with you.  Um, well, listen to this quote from the book about Pree.  Pree would fix you with a steady gaze and give the impression that you were the most important person in his life at that instant, and that the things he was telling you were known by few others.

He was an enormously flattering and appealing trait and contributed greatly to what came to be called his charisma.  Just crazy. As I've said, I don't really traffic in hacks or shortcuts, but this is the closest thing I have ever found, to a foolproof hack, maintain eye contact and stare a person in the eyes.

And it has a very charismatic effect. . Okay. This is something I keep seeing popping up over and over again. These very charismatic people do this one thing and it really draws people in. Everyone notes it, so it's something I've been trying and I recommend you try it as well.

Okay. So he's recruited to Oregon. Bill Bowerman writes to pre's mom saying quote, I have every confidence that if he keeps his eye on the target and his dedication with his background and with the future, he will become the greatest runner in the world. Steve later said that was all I needed to hear.

Okay. So he's, you know, I've got one of the greatest coaches in the world, Bill Bowerman telling me that I could be the greatest runner. That's what I want. Oregon's the place for me.

Speaking of his letter writing. So you just heard Bill Bowerman wrote a letter to his family. Pre was a big letter writer. He loved to send postcards whenever he went to track meets. But his handwriting was terrible. And why was it so bad? Here's what a friend said, quote, Steve spoke better than he wrote, because he was always in too much of a hurry to punctuate his sentences or read over for errors.

In fact, I'm surprised he had the patience to write at all. And that was something, that impatience, that kind of applied to everything. Here's another quote,   pre was not easygoing in any way says teammate Paul Geiss Everything had to be competitive or fast You could come in from a workout and have gotten out of your clothes and be already walking to the shower when pre came in And yet, by the time you came out of the shower, he would have gotten undressed, have already showered, dressed, and be shaking the water from his hair, anxious to get on the road.

He was just always in a rush. It was a phenomenon.

Okay, that trait of impatience is something I've called out before. Actually, it's, it's something that I really took from my first episode studying Napoleon. Great achievers have this monstrous impatience. They want to move faster and accomplish things faster.

You know, in terms of his diet, Steve Prefontaine is really interesting because on the one hand he drank quite a bit. He liked to party and he drank lots of beer. On the other hand, he was dieting all the time. And for his normal, you know, nutrition and diet, he was very careful about what he put in his body.

And of course, if you want to perform at your best, what you put into your body is crucial. That's why I'm proud to sponsor with just ingredients that only uses  the best and most natural ingredients.  My family has used their protein powder for years.

There are very few companies that I really trust to do the right thing when it comes to what they put in their products. And Just Ingredients is one of those companies.  I take their non caffeinated pre workout, and I use basically all their men's products, deodorant, aftershave, all that kind of stuff.

Genuinely, it is some of the most real, natural stuff that you can get

So go to justingredients. us and use code takeover to get 15 percent off. That's as good of a discount as you will find. Again, that is justingredients. us and use code takeover for 15 percent off, or you can follow the link in the show notes to get the discount automatically applied.

Thank you, Justingredients for sponsoring this episode.

Okay, so as a senior, He sets the U S high school record for the three mile, and then he wins the state championship in the mile and the two mile on the way to helping his team win the overall state championship. And that was a very difficult feat. Very rare for a state championship. Most people would be focused on just one event because the meat happens on one day.

So if you're going. all out running one mile, then it's gonna be really hard to have the lungs and, uh, the recovery and be ready to run the two mile in an elite fashion. Uh, but he wants to prove just how good he is. And so, um, he wins both in the same day  and more than that. You know, more than just winning and being a great runner, he becomes something of a phenomenon in Coos Bay.

People there, as I mentioned, loved basketball and football, but now they start showing up in numbers to watch Steve Prefontaine run, which is unheard of. In high school, I played basketball and did track and our basketball games usually had a lot of fans. People would show up and watch, but my track meets, the only people in the stands were parents.

Even at regional championships and things like that. Uh, I remember going to the NorCal finals for track. And that had about as many fans as a normal, regular season basketball game. Like just,  track is, is not a sport that people show up for in the US.  So the fact that crowds are filling up the bleachers at Pre's track meets is a testament to his charisma and to the cult following that he was building.

So he graduates high school and when he shows up at Oregon, They have this legendary track program, as I mentioned, built by Bill Bowerman. But even with all these great athletes that they already have, Pre has a reputation coming in. He also has a lot of self confidence, and that comes out sometimes as naivete.

So here's how Bill Dellinger puts it. He says, He was just pretty naive as a freshman. He was someone who didn't know any better, and went out and did whatever he said he was going to do. We nicknamed him the Rube.  Okay. I love that. I think it's a great mindset. I think naivete is great, especially when it comes to achieving your goals.

Okay.  I love this idea that Steve is going and doing stuff that should be impossible because he just doesn't know any better. He doesn't know it's impossible. So he tries it and he achieves it. One thing about all these great achievers is they have tremendous self confidence and the question is, of course, does that confidence precede accomplishment?

Or is it a consequence of it? Are these people successful because they are self confident or are they self confident because they are successful?  And I think there's a little bit of both. Uh, there's a positive reinforcement loop success begets confidence, which begets more success. So when people ask me whether they should be confident at the start, I think it comes back to the idea of.

Of being naive, or in other words, don't let others or your own beliefs dictate what you cannot do.  Let reality and the laws of physics dictate your limits. And they will of course, eventually,  but if you listen to other people and what they say you can't do, or you listen to your own own fears, then you're never going to push yourself enough to find those limits.

So I like to say. That attribute,  Bill Dellinger told us, he was naive, he was a rube. Be naive when it comes to your own limitations. Nothing is impossible until you have hard evidence to the contrary.

One of the other ways that his self confidence demonstrates itself is that he is constantly challenging people on the team to races. He's very competitive. Here's what the book says. It came in handy in workouts, especially where pre challenged the best runners of the school known for its distance runners.

Pat Tyson, who was to become Steve's friend and roommate, recollects the feeling of team members toward the prodigy. Some were kind of envious, you might say.  Yet at the same time, thought it was neat having him there. But that's the way it was at Oregon. You're friends, but when you're on the track, you're there to beat somebody else out.

Steve was kind of above that though, because even as a freshman,  he was at national caliber.  Pree's biggest asset on the track was his competitive personality.  Pree had to be number one in workouts.  Okay. And then here's a, another quote from another teammate, Paul Geiss. Pre had to be number one in workouts.

I remember another time when Scott might have blown by him at one.

Pre had to be number one in workouts. I remember one time when Scott might've blown by him in one part of the workout. Three days later, Pre just obliterated him and he realized what had happened. Pre had gone home and for the next 48 hours had mentally prepared his case. There were many casualties left in his wake of people trying to keep up with him.

Myself included.

Okay. And I, I think that competitiveness, that, that love of competition, of wanting to prove that he's the best of comparing himself to others is another big secret  of his success. So his freshman year, he is very good, but not the best. And he's the best on his team, but not in the nation. And then by his sophomore year, he is fully the man.

Okay. After his freshman year, he only lost two races in college, both in the mile, which was his weakest race. He was generally better at longer distances. Okay. So three years, sophomore, junior, senior year.  He only loses two races and he never loses a race, not a single race in his best events.

The way he does this is different from most runners. So there are a few different strategies you can use for distance running. And one of them, what most people do is keep up a good pace, but stay with the pack. And then if you're one of the fastest guys, then you try and out sprint everyone. In at the very end on the last lap.

And there are a lot of runners who excel that way. I think that's one of the more common strategies, but pre was not a great sprinter or a kicker as they call it. So his strategy was to go all out from the beginning in the three mile. He would run a very fast first and second mile, which people generally couldn't keep up with.

And so he didn't have to sprint at the end and crowds really responded to this. This kid is just giving it his all for three straight miles. And one consequence of this strategy is he sets a lot of records. And part of it is that he's fast. Like you have to be fast to be able to set records.  You know, there are some runners  who might go for a record, you know, once a year or something like that.

But for most of their races, they're going with this strategy of staying with the pack and then trying to out sprint everyone. And so they're just not running fast enough to set records. a record for the three mile. But that's one reason people loved watching pre run is, you know, his strategy every time was I'm running my fastest for all three miles.

And so you never know when you might see a new college or us record because he's going all out on basically every race.

So as a sophomore, once again, he is a phenomenon. He's famous this time nationally. They put them on the cover of sports illustrated, which was the big sports magazine in the U S at the time, people wore t shirts that said legend or go pre, uh, go pre as a shirt actually became so famous that some people started to wear shirts as a joke that said, stop pre,. He was also notable for taking victory laps. So he was like a natural showman. So after he had won, he would jog around the track and acknowledge the fans who were by this point cheering wildly. His teammates gave him the nickname world because he was famous worldwide.

All right, hear that Pitbull, Steve Prefontaine, the original Mr. Worldwide.  And he had this special relationship with the crowd who pre always referred to as his people. Okay. I love that,  especially Coos Bay and Eugene, Oregon. He always called those people, his people.

And he said, I want to perform well. For my people. Uh, reading now from the biography that man has something. No runner in my time had Bill Dellinger once Mused to Kenny Moore of Sports Illustrated. We used to warm up outta sight behind the stands, and we would never have considered taking a victory lap.

But pre, he's almost like a movie star in his relationship with the crowd, he thrives on it

For his people, the feeling was mystical. The last laps of his races were the most exciting moments I've ever experienced in viewing sports, is how one of Steve's fans summarized the feeling. The crowd was always on its feet. The excitement generated was riotous. The race was a victory for Pre's people as much for the runner himself.

There will never be another sound like, Go Pre! There's no way the people of Eugene will ever forget Steve.

Okay, so I just think this relationship is really special. Something I think a lot about is the idea of energy transfer.  I try to be in a spot of heightened energy, When I record these episodes, because I believe that a big part of podcasting is simple energy transfer. If my energy is high, if I'm excited, then that rubs off and the energy transfers to you, to the audience.

And it makes for a good listening experience. So I often go for a walk or do some pushups before recording, just to make sure my energy is high. And I think the inverse is true as well. You give energy off and then you get energy back from the audience. And that was true for Bri.

From the book, quote, in that race, as in many others, Prefontaine appeared to derive a direct energy from the crowds he performed before.

And so that's another takeaway for me. Make sure that you are in that heightened emotional state, that you have high energy when you're performing, because it's going to excite others, and then it kind of bounces back to you when you have heightened energy, it excites others, and then they excite you in turn.

And it's a reinforcement. Loop, uh, that, that, that,  and it's a reinforcement loop that just increases your performance.

you know, competition is one of those things that was so crucial to Steve Prefontaine. It's what fueled him is what motivated him and competition is crucial in any pursuit.

And specifically, if you're an entrepreneur and you work in e commerce e com, then particle is something you need to stay up with the competition. 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 if you're struggling to keep up with your competitors using traditional methods, you'll love Particle.

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.

So as a sophomore, he's running college track meets at Oregon. He's also preparing for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. In the lead up, he sets the American record for the 10, 000 meter. And it seems like he's well positioned to contend for the gold in Munich.  And now he was indisputably the fastest middle distance runner in the U S.

But of course the Olympics are an entirely different beast. You have the best runners from all over the world. It's just a better level of competition. And so here pre would finally have the chance to show just how good he was.  If you know anything about the Olympics of 1972,  they were kind of a fiasco.

Some Israeli athletes are kidnapped and end up dead. The disruption had a huge effect on Pri as well as his competitors.

So the race gets moved back a few days when it does finally come time to race. Pree does his usual thing of pushing the pace from the get go. And with two laps to go, he was in the lead. I'll let the book narrate what happened next. Quote, Veeran still led slightly,

does his usual thing of pushing the pace from the get go. With two laps to go, he was in the lead.  However, shortly thereafter,  Three of his main competitors catch up with him, and so it's neck and neck between the four of them. And I'll let the book narrate what happened next. Viren still led slightly, with Pri behind him, and Gamaudi off Pri's right shoulder.

At the top of the backstretch, with 300 meters left, Pri started to pull out to pass Viren, but Gamaudi, one of those cagey vets Pri was so aware of, moved instantly to cut him off before he could get past Viren. Chastened, Pri dropped behind Viren again, until the top of the last curve, when he tried to go again.

And again, Gamowdy moved at the perfect moment to cut him off.

Unable to pass, Steve finished fourth. The defeat was devastating.   Okay. So Pri was in a position where he might have been able  to win, to, to pass.  So Pri was in a position where he might have been able to make a pass and actually win, but he was cut off. By another runner and kind of boxed in, uh, by these three front runners.

And so he finishes fourth and doesn't medal. It's a, it's a very close fourth place finish.   You know, these four runners are grouped together, but they kind of, yeah, box them in, cut them out. And, and he finishes without a medal. He complained about this, said it was unfair, said it was a dirty trick. But the truth is jockeying is a part of running and Pri himself wasn't above cutting off competitors and using positioning to keep them from getting ahead of him.

Again, this finish was devastating for him. He was very competitive. He hated losing. It was one of his defining attributes. And this was losing in the biggest and most public way possible. You know, he's this big celebrity. He's a big phenomenon back in the United States. He had all these people watching the TV to see him win and he doesn't even medal.

It's obviously not exactly a humiliation,  you know, to finish a close fourth when you're still this young kid, uh, he's what, uh, 2021. Um, and you know, you got these older opponents. And they're resorting to cutting you out in order to win.  You know, that's not much consolation to Briefontaine who was devastated.

Well, he came home and resumed his college track career where, as I said, he didn't lose any more races. He won three national championships and set many more records.  After college, he took a job with Nike. At the time, in order to qualify for the Olympics, you had to remain an amateur. And that meant you could not be sponsored.

You couldn't receive any compensation. For your athletics, for your running in this case. And so pre you'd had a run in with the amateur athletic union, the AAU. They had gotten on his case and threatened to disqualify him because he had received free merchandise from Nike.  At the time, most people were engaging in what was called sham mature athletics.

Okay. Supposedly it's amateur athletics, but everyone knows it's a sham. They would take under the table payments. Everyone knew that the top athletes were being paid, but everyone had to keep up the pretense. That they weren't and pre was actually an outspoken opponent of the system, and he's one of the major voices that opposed it and led to reforms where athletes were allowed to be compensated and still compete in the Olympics,  but his job with Nike was a not very discreet way to be paid for his running the position he took was national global relations manager. But like, you know, the idea, the agreement between him and Nike was, look, you take this job, you work a couple hours and we'll pay you to wear a merchandise and keep running. Essentially they're paying him even so, you know, in typical pre fashion, even though he was really just being paid to run, he throws himself into the job and actually does good work for Nike and gets on the road and does everything he can to promote the brand.

Uh, so for example, he takes it upon himself to find the best runners and when they win stuff, he sends them Nike shoes and he, he talks with people and he really encourages other runners to try Nike and to get the shoes on the feet of the best runners so that.

They can get more publicity. So, you know, he does everything,

you know, he does everything all out. It's like Nike comes to him and says, yeah, just take this position. Really? You just have to keep running. He's like, but he can't help himself. He wants to do a good job of doing his job as well.  Pre was actually offered a chance to go legit when he was offered a hundred thousand dollars a year to renounce his amateur status and compete in the ITA.

Which was a burgeoning professional track organization and a hundred thousand dollars is good money. Now it was great money back then, especially for someone like Steve Brifontaine, who was essentially living hand to mouth. And so he really considers it, but at the end he turns it down because he still wanted a crack at the 1976 Olympics.

So he doesn't join the ITA and he maintains his amateur status. He keeps working for Nike.

So he graduates in 1974 and all through 1974, 1975. Five. Um, he's working for Nike, but he's also running in a lot of races. Uh, he's still competing. He's still maintaining his fitness. He's got his eyes on the Olympic and this time he really wants to medal. He wants his shot at,, he wants his shot at vindication.

So in 1975, as part of this run up, he helps to organize a series of meets to promote running in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. And he brings in some international runners and he himself runs the In front of a bunch of big crowds all throughout Oregon, Washington.  On May 29th, 1975, he holds a meet at his home field in Eugene, Oregon.

Steve won his race and had a wonderful day in front of his family and friends and the always adoring Eugene crowd. Afterwards, he went out with the other runners and had some drinks. And

afterwards he went out with the other runners and had some drinks and he was out drinking and partying until well after midnight, uh, he was driving home from that party. When he took a turn too wide, he flipped his car, ran into a rock wall and was pinned underneath the wreckage. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

He died officially on May 30th, 1975. He was 24 years old.

So I know that was kind of sudden, right? And  I wanted to do it that way because that is how his life was. I mean, it was this exciting buildup  and he was doing great and he had this whole future ahead of him. And then,  like that, he was dead. You know, for the people of Eugene, they couldn't believe it. They had just seen him running.

And he was at the top of his form, and then they read the next day in the newspapers, he's dead, he's gone.

And I think that is one of the reasons that he's such a legend. It's because this is someone who, you know, really never declined, never aged, like he was just great. And then he died while he was great. So what are my takeaways from the remarkable short life of Steve Prefontaine? First is that combination of for improving and succeeding at anything.

First is that combination for improving and succeeding at anything. Intensity, the ability to take pain, and consistency. You do those three things together, and that is a very powerful combination. Okay, again, intensity.  Obsession.  And then the ability to take pain and just keep going through that pain to push past it, to, to want, crave, love the pain and then consistency.

That was just, you know, every day, 6 00 AM running up partying 3 AM, three hours later, I'm up running. It doesn't matter if I'm sick. It doesn't matter if I'm not feeling the best. You know, he ran when he had injuries.  Consistency. Unbelievable consistency. Never take a day off. The second takeaway is the gaze.

Draw people in with the intensity of your gaze and focus in on others if you want to develop charisma. And then the third is to be naive when it comes to your limits. Believe in yourself instinctively. If you have limits, then let reality determine those, but don't listen to others, and certainly don't listen to your own self doubts when it comes to your limits.

The rules of nature and physics will humble you, so don't do it to yourself prematurely. I'll finish with some quotes that I think capture  the essence of Steve Prefontaine, who he was.

The first is about the idea of being artistic and creating something beautiful, no matter what you do.  Here's a quote from Steve Prefontaine himself, quote, some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, I've never seen anyone run like that before.

It's more than just a race. It's style is doing something better than anyone else.  It's being creative. I'm Steve. The second quote is about letting that extend to everything you do. Here's a quote from Don Chapman, a reporter who covered pre extensively.  If you ever saw pre run, you're lucky. The sight of him rounding that last turn and looking up at the clock will be forever frozen in my memory.

The same is true of the way he scratched my dog's ears and muttered the silly things people say to dogs.  Okay, I love that idea that somehow the same passion that was displayed when he ran was evident when he was simply scratching a dog behind the ears. Okay, everything that Steve Prefontaine did, he did all the way.

And then the last quote is once again from Steve Prefontaine himself. Whenever he did youth camps or clinics, he would always end his speeches with the same line. He would talk about how everyone has a gift, some natural abilities or talent that they can share with the world. And he would end by saying, to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.

 Okay, that's it. Until next time, thank you for listening to How to Take Over the World. 📍    One of my favorite stories about Steve Prefontaine is how he would save time. So he had this long hair that was part of his signature look. And during his twenties, his hair started to fall out. And he heard that massaging your scalp would increase blood flow to your scalp, which would stop your hair from falling out.

So he would massage his scalp with his hands while he did sit ups to try and pack as much productivity in as possible. One of those things I do to be more productive is use Speechify. It turns anything into a podcast, articles, emails, books, even tweets. So anything I want to read that I don't have time for. I throw it into speechify and listen while I'm driving or doing dishes or working out. They have some of the best AI voices on the planet, and you can even select my voice as an option.

If you're a real sicko for listening to me, so make the most of your time. Go to speechify. com slash Ben and how to take over the world. Fans can get 15 percent off speechify premium. Do me a favor. Check them out. You won't regret it Once again, that is speechify. com slash Ben.

‍