#13: NIKE's Phil Knight on running, business, and life
The NIKE founder credits running with teaching him about selling, competing, and persisting when things got hard
“People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.”
-Phil Knight-
You can’t understand Phil Knight—his disposition, his philosophy of life or business-—without knowing this fact: Knight was, is, and always will be a runner.
Years before Phil Knight left his accounting career to start a shoe company, he ran track at the University of Oregon. A middle distance runner, Knight specialized in the one mile run.1
His running coach at Oregon was Bill Bowerman. A coach that took the Ducks to four national titles in a decade.
And he had a profound impact on Knight.
Bowerman’s strategy for running the mile was simple. Set a fast pace for the first two laps, run the third as hard as you can, then triple your speed on the fourth. There was a Zen-like quality to this strategy, because it was impossible. And yet it worked.
Most coaching relationships fade away after college, but not so with Bowerman.
Four years after graduation, Knight sent Bowerman a Japanese shoe called the Tiger which he had secured the rights to distribute in the US. Bowerman, stunned, offered to partner with Knight on the spot. Knight agreed.
A few weeks later, Blue Ribbon Sports (later NIKE) was born.
Knight reflected.
“If there was no Bill Bowerman, there would have been no me. He had about as much of an impact on my life as any one person could have.”
NIKE got it’s start, it’s growth, and it’s global fame as a runner’s company.
Not just because it was a running shoe, and runners its only promoters it for the first decade plus, but because it was made by runners, for runners.
Knight wrote about other running lessons applied to life in his memoir, Shoe Dog, and that’s the subject of today’s 1GT.
Let’s get it.
Knight’s Running lessons
(1) Reframing pain
One thing that was clear from reading about Knight’s early days of NIKE— it was stressful and tiring.
To get through it, Knight depended on his evening run.
I was deeply tired when I returned home each night. But I’d always get a second wind after my six-mile run, followed by a hot shower and a quick dinner.
When things got really difficult, and Knight felt uncertain, he would switch his frame of mind. A trick he learned running.
Few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least not one that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find from within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.
(2) Selling is believing
Knight, recall, was an accountant for seven years.
‘Middle-distance runner turned accountant’ isn’t exactly the pedigree you’d look for in a star salesperson.
That’s why, at first, Knight was confused at his success.
Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different?
Then it dawned on Knight. It wasn’t about skillset, but belief system.
Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in.
And when someone is selling something that they believe in its infectious.
People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.
(3) The art of forgetting
Knight started importing shoes as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964.
In that first year, they sold $8,000 worth of shoes. In 1965, their revenue (not profit) was up to $20,000. Four years later, in 1969, they were doing better, but not running away with it (pun, your welcome)— they were up to $300,000.
The point is— this company took a decade to really get off the blocks. And to persist through that, you need a strong desire, and, according to Knight, a short memory.
I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I’d competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I’d trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting.
Forgetting came in handy not only in competition, but perhaps more so in perseverance.
You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice, screaming and begging, “not one more step!” And when it’s not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it... I’d had to tell my body, “ yes, you raise some excellent points, but let’s keep going anyway...”
The 1GT
This isn’t really about running to me.
It’s about taking the lessons you learn from a physical pursuit—or any challenging, long-term project you persisted through—and applying those lessons to other areas of your life. Running might lend itself well to this, as well as many other sports, but so do other activities.
Schwarzenegger learned business lessons from bodybuilding. Kevin Hart learned about comedy from selling, and about business from standup. And don’t forget what Steve Martin learned about life from a decade performing: “Perseverance is a great substitute for talent.”
For me early on, it was sports. I learned a lot about myself from lacrosse, football, and basketball. I even took some lessons from my brother about golf that actually translated to life (that Zen bastard).
What lessons did you take from your pursuits?
Think about it.
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His best time was four minutes, thirteen seconds, which today would be OK, but in the early 1960s was a competitive time.Elite level right now seems to be around four flat, with the record around 3:50.
Let's see your report about how Phil Knight has exploited poor people in 52 countries to make himself a mega-billionaire. Let's see your review of the documentary about how he staged a hostile takeover of an animator's business for Knights son.