Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

Dawn

college—University of Oregon. Earned a master’s from a top business school—Stanford. Survived a yearlong hitch in the U.S. Army—Fort Lewis and Fort Eustis. My résumé said I was a learned, accomplished soldier, a twenty-four-year-old man in full . . . So why, I wondered, why do I still feel like a kid? Worse, like the same shy, pale, rail-thin kid I’d always been. 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 under way, 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’d never even been with a girl. If I tended to dwell on all the things I wasn’t, the reason was simple. Money? Maybe. Wife? Kids? House? Sure, if I was lucky. These were the goals I was taught to aspire to, and part of me did aspire to them, instinctively. But deep down 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. I wanted to leave a mark on the world. I wanted to win. No, that’s not right. I simply didn’t want to lose.

| Location: 9 | Date: December 7, 2016 |

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

| Location: 10 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

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.

| Location: 10 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

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

| Location: 11 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself. Every runner knows this. You run and run, mile after mile, and you never quite know why. You tell yourself that you’re running toward some goal, chasing some rush, but really you run because the alternative, stopping, scares you to death.

| Location: 12 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop. That’s the precocious, prescient, urgent advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it’s the best advice—maybe the only advice—any of us should ever give.

| Location: 12 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

Part One

But he also worshipped another secret deity—respectability. Colonial house, beautiful wife, obedient kids, my father enjoyed having these things, but what he really cherished was his friends and neighbors knowing he had them. He liked being admired. He liked doing a vigorous backstroke each day in the mainstream. Going around the world on a lark, therefore, would simply make no sense to him. It wasn’t done. Certainly not by the respectable sons of respectable men. It was something other people’s kids did. Something beatniks and hipsters did.

Notes:The "log kya kahenge" mindset in 60s America

| Location: 17 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

I thanked my father and fled the nook before he had a chance to change his mind. Only later did I realize with a spasm of guilt that my father’s lack of travel was an ulterior reason, perhaps the main reason, that I wanted to go. This trip, this Crazy Idea, would be one sure way of becoming someone other than him. Someone less respectable. Or maybe not less respectable. Maybe just less obsessed with respectability. The rest of the family wasn’t quite so supportive

| Location: 18 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

I SPENT WEEKS reading, planning, preparing for my trip. I went for long runs, musing on every detail while racing the wild geese as they flew overhead. Their tight V formations—I’d read somewhere that the geese in the rear of the formation, cruising in the backdraft, only have to work 80 percent as hard as the leaders. Every runner understands this. Front runners always work the hardest, and risk the most

| Location: 19 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

. We liked to sit with our fellow beachniks and surf bums, seekers and vagabonds, feeling smug about the one thing we had in our favor. Geography. Those poor suckers back home, we’d say. Those poor saps sleepwalking through their humdrum lives, bundled against the cold and rain. Why can’t they be more like us? Why can’t they seize the day? Our sense of carpe diem was heightened by the fact that the world was coming to an end. A nuclear standoff with the Soviets had been building for weeks

| Location: 24 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

And then, surprise, the world was spared. The crisis passed. The sky seemed to sigh with relief as the air turned suddenly crisper, calmer. A perfect Hawaiian autumn followed. Days of contentment and something close to bliss. Followed by a sharp restlessness. One night I set my beer on the bar and turned to Carter. “I think maybe the time has come to leave Shangri-La,” I said.

| Location: 24 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

The last thing I wanted was to pack up and return to Oregon. But I couldn’t see traveling around the world alone, either. Go home, a faint inner voice told me. Get a normal job. Be a normal person. Then I heard another faint voice, equally emphatic. No, don’t go home. Keep going. Don’t stop. The next day I gave my two weeks’ notice at the boiler room. “Too bad, Buck,” one of the bosses said, “you had a real future as a salesman.” “God forbid,” I muttered. That afternoon, at a travel agency down the block, I purchased an open plane ticket, good for one year on any airline going anywhere.

| Location: 25 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product.

| Location: 26 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

But first I’d need to change my whole approach. I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now

| Location: 27 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

Perfection in the art of swordsmanship is reached . . . when the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one’s own sword and how to wield it. . . . All is emptiness: your own self, the flashing sword, and the arms that wield it. Even the thought of emptiness is no longer there.

| Location: 28 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

I couldn’t look away. I watched and watched, asking myself, Is this what it’s all about? Really? I appreciated money as much as the next guy. But I wanted my life to be about so much more.

| Location: 28 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

In that case, the ex-GIs said, you’d better learn a few things about doing business with the Japanese. “The key,” they said, “is don’t be pushy. Don’t come on like the typical asshole American, the typical gaijin—rude, loud, aggressive, not taking no for an answer. The Japanese do not react well to the hard sell. Negotiations here tend to be soft, sinewy. Look how long it took the Americans and Russians to coax Hirohito into surrendering. And even when he did surrender, when his country was reduced to a heap of ashes, what did he tell his people? ‘The war situation hasn’t developed to Japan’s advantage.’ It’s a culture of indirection. No one ever turns you down flat. No one ever says, straight out, no. But they don’t say yes, either. They speak in circles, sentences with no clear subject or object. Don’t be discouraged, but don’t be cocky. You might leave a man’s office thinking you’ve blown it, when in fact he’s ready to do a deal. You might leave think ing you’ve closed a deal, when in fact you’ve just been rejected. You never know.”

Notes:Dealing with the Japanese 🏯

| Location: 30 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

“Mr. Knight—what company are you with?” he asked. “Ah, yes, good question.” Adrenaline surging through my blood, I felt the flight response, the longing to run and hide, which made me think of the safest place in the world. My parents’ house. The house had been built decades before, by people of means, people with much more money than my parents, and thus the architect had included servants’ quarters at the back of the house, and these quarters were my bedroom, which I’d filled with baseball cards, record albums, posters, books—all things holy. I’d also covered one wall with my blue ribbons from track, the one thing in my life of which I was unabashedly proud. And so? “Blue Ribbon,” I blurted. “Gentlemen, I represent Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon.” Mr. Miyazaki smiled. The other executives smiled. A murmur went around the table. Blueribbon, blueribbon, blueribbon. The executives folded their hands and fell silent again and resumed staring at me. “Well,” I began again, “gentlemen, the American shoe market is enormous. And largely untapped. If Onitsuka can penetrate that market, if Onitsuka can get its Tigers into American stores, and price them to undercut Adidas, which most American athletes now wear, it could be a hugely profitable venture.”

| Location: 33 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

They barraged me with questions about the United States, about American culture and consumer trends, about different kinds of athletic shoes available in American sporting goods stores. They asked me how big I thought the American shoe market was, how big it could be, and I told them that ultimately it could be $1 billion. To this day I’m not sure where that number came from

| Location: 34 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

They leaned back, gazed at each other, astonished. Now, to my astonishment, they began pitching me. “Would Blue Ribbon . . . be interested . . . in representing Tiger shoes? In the United States?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it would.” I held forth the Limber Up. “This is a good shoe,” I said. “This shoe—I can sell this shoe.” I asked them to ship me samples right away. I gave them my address and promised to send them a money order for fifty dollars.

| Location: 34 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

was fascinated by all the great generals, from Alexander the Great to George Patton. I hated war, but I loved the warrior spirit. I hated the sword, but loved the samurai. And of all the great fighting men in history I found MacArthur the most compelling. Those Ray-Bans, that corncob pipe—the man didn’t lack for confidence. Brilliant tactician, master motivator, he also went on to head the U.S. Olympic Committee. How could I not love him?

| Location: 36 | Date: December 27, 2016 |

Of course, he was deeply flawed. But he knew that. You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break.

| Location: 36 | Date: December 12, 2016 |

I wanted to book a night in his former suite. But I couldn’t afford it. One day, I vowed. One day I shall return

| Location: 36 | Date: December 27, 2016 |

Don’t go to sleep one night, wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then. Warmed by a sun inside you’ll see wonders

| Location: 38 | Date: December 26, 2016 |

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

| Location: 40 | Date: December 13, 2016 |

This is how I spent 1963. Quizzing pigeons. Polishing my Valiant. Writing letters.

| Location: 47 | Date: December 13, 2016 |

It’s possible that everything I did in those days was motivated by some deep yearning to impress, to please, Bowerman. Besides my father there was no man whose approval I craved more, and besides my father there was no man who gave it less often. Frugality carried over to every part of the coach’s makeup. He weighed and hoarded words of praise, like uncut diamonds.

| Location: 50 | Date: December 14, 2016 |

. One story, told to me by a teammate, brought this fact pointedly home. Apparently there was a truck driver who often dared to disturb the peace on Bowerman Mountain. He took turns too fast, and frequently knocked over Bowerman’s mailbox. Bowerman scolded the trucker, threatened to punch him in the nose, and so forth, but the trucker paid no heed. He drove as he pleased, day after day. So Bowerman rigged the mailbox with explosives. Next time the trucker knocked it over—boom. When the smoke cleared, the trucker found his truck in pieces, its tires reduced to ribbons. He never again touched Bowerman’s mailbox

Notes:Bowermans mailbox

| Location: 52 | Date: December 30, 2016 |

When their diametrically opposed personalities caused problems, my parents would fall back on the thing they had most deeply in common, their belief that family comes first

| Location: 57 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

there was the time my father refused to cut back on his salt, despite a doctor’s warnings that his blood pressure was up. My mother simply filled all the saltshakers in the house with powdered milk. And there was the day my sisters and I were bickering and clamoring for lunch, despite her pleas for quiet. My mother suddenly let out a savage scream and hurled an egg salad sandwich against the wall. She then walked out of the house, across the lawn, and disappeared. I’ll never forget the sight of that egg salad slowly dripping down the wall while my mother’s sundress dissolved in the distant trees

| Location: 58 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

So I shouldn’t have been too surprised by my mother’s next move when my father accused me of jackassing around. Casually she opened her purse and took out seven dollars. “I’d like to purchase one pair of Limber Ups, please,” she said, loud enough for him to hear. Was it my mother’s way of digging at my father? A show of loyalty to her only son? An affirmation of her love of track? I don’t know. But no matter. It never failed to move me, the sight of her standing at the stove or the kitchen sink, cooking dinner or washing dishes in a pair of Japanese running shoes, size 6.

| Location: 59 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

PROBABLY BECAUSE HE didn’t want any trouble with my mother, my father loaned me the thousand bucks.

| Location: 59 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

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? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

| Location: 60 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

My “business” was two months old and I was embroiled in a legal battle? Served me right for daring to call myself happy. Next I sat down and dashed off a frantic letter to Onitsuka. Dear Sirs, I was very distressed to receive a letter this morning from a man in Manhasset, New York, who claims . . . ? I waited for a response. And waited. I wrote again. Nani mo. Nothing.

| Location: 63 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

I went into a deep funk. I became such a grouch, such poor company, the girlfriend fell away. Each night I’d sit with my family at dinner, moving my mother’s pot roast and vegetables around my plate. Then I’d sit with my father in the nook, staring glumly at the TV. “Buck,” my father said, “you look like someone hit you in the back of the head with a two-by-four. Snap out of it.” But I couldn’t. I kept going over my meeting at Onitsuka. The executives had shown me such kei. They’d bowed to me, and vice versa. I’d been straightforward with them, honest—for the most part. Sure, I hadn’t “technically” owned a “business” called “Blue Ribbon.” But that was splitting hairs. I owned one now, and it had single-handedly brought Tigers to the West Coast, and it could sell Tigers ten times faster if Onitsuka gave me half a chance. Instead the company was going to cut me out? Throw me over for the fricking Marlboro Man? Come to where the flavor is.

| Location: 63 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

TOWARD SUMMER’S END I still hadn’t heard from Onitsuka, and I’d all but given up on the idea of selling shoes. Labor Day, however, I had a change of heart. I couldn’t give up. Not yet. And not giving up meant flying back to Japan. I needed to force a showdown with Onitsuka.

| Location: 64 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

I told myself that I needed to put aside hurt feelings, put aside all thoughts of injustice, which would only make me emotional and keep me from thinking clearly. Emotion would be fatal. I needed to remain cool. 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, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, “Not one more step!” And when it’s not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it. I thought over all the races in which my mind wanted one thing, and my body wanted another, those laps in which I’d had to tell my body, “Yes, you raise some excellent points, but let’s keep going anyway . . .” Despite all my negotiations with that voice, the skill had never come naturally, and now I feared that I was out of practice. As the plane swooped down toward Haneda Airport I told myself that I’d need to summon the old skill quickly, or lose. I could not bear the thought of losing.

| Location: 65 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guide book, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought

| Location: 70 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

While eating my dinner I fell to talking with another couple

Notes:Beginning of Phil and Sarah's story

| Location: 70 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

“All the boys back home are going to business school,” she said, “and then they all plan to become bankers.” She rolled her eyes, adding: “Everyone does the same thing—so boring.” “Boredom scares me,” I said. “Ah. That’s because you’re a rebel.” I stopped climbing, stabbed my walking stick into the ground. Me—a rebel? My face grew warm.

| Location: 71 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

She wrote back right away. No sale.

Notes:End of Phil and Sarah...

| Location: 74 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

I’d always considered myself a conscientious correspondent. (I’d sent countless letters and postcards home during my trip around the world. I’d written faithfully to Sarah.) And I always meant to answer Johnson’s letters. But before I got around to it there was always another one, waiting. Something about the sheer volume of his correspondence stopped me. Something about his neediness made me not want to encourage him. Many nights I’d sit down at the black Royal typewriter in my basement workshop, curl a piece of paper into the roller, and type, “Dear Jeff.” Then I’d draw a blank. I wouldn’t know where to begin, which of his fifty questions to start with, so I’d get up, attend to other things, and the next day there’d be yet another letter from Johnson. Or two. Soon I’d be three letters behind, suffering from crippling writer’s block. I asked Jeanne to deal with the Johnson File. Fine, she said. Within a month she thrust the file at me, exasperated. “You’re not paying me enough,” she said.

| Location: 77 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

I did everything I could to discourage Johnson from thinking like this. At every turn I tried to dampen his enthusiasm for me and my company. Besides not writing back, I never phoned, never visited, never invited him to Oregon. I also never missed an opportunity to tell him the unvarnished truth. In one of my rare replies to his letters I put it flatly: “Though our growth has been good, I owe First National Bank of Oregon $11,000. . . . Cash flow is negative.” He wrote back immediately, asking if he could work for me full-time. “I want to be able to make it on Tiger, and the opportunity would exist for me to do other things as well—running, school, not to mention being my own boss.”

| Location: 79 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

I tell the man Blue Ribbon is sinking like the Titanic , and he responds by begging for a berth in first class.

| Location: 79 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

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

| Location: 79 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

My banker was upset with me. After posting eight thousand dollars in sales in my first year, I was projecting sixteen thousand dollars in my second year, and according to my banker this was a very troubling trend. “A one hundred percent increase in sales is troubling ?” I asked. “Your rate of growth is too fast for your equity,” he said. “How can such a small company grow too fast? If a small company grows fast, it builds up its equity.” “It’s all the same principle, regardless of size,” he said. “Growth off your balance sheet is dangerous.” “Life is growth,” I said. “Business is growth. You grow or you die.” “That’s not how we see it.” “You might as well tell a runner in a race that he’s running too fast.” “Apples and oranges.” Your head is full of apples and oranges, I wanted to say.

| Location: 79 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

It was textbook to me. Growing sales, plus profitability, plus unlimited upside, equals quality company. In those days, however, commercial banks were different from investment banks. Their myopic focus was cash balances. They wanted you to never, ever outgrow your cash balance.

| Location: 80 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

“Mr. Knight,” he’d say, again and again, “you need to slow down. You don’t have enough equity for this kind of growth.” Equity. How I was beginning to loathe this word. My banker used it over and over, until it became a tune I couldn’t get out of my head.

| Location: 80 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

To have cash balances sitting around doing nothing made no sense to me. Sure, it would have been the cautious, conservative, prudent thing. But the roadside was littered with cautious, conservative, prudent entrepreneurs. I wanted to keep my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal. Somehow, in meeting after meeting, I held my tongue. Everything my banker said, I ultimately accepted. Then I’d do exactly as I pleased. I’d place another order with Onitsuka, double the size of the previous order, and show up at the bank all wide-eyed innocence, asking for a letter of credit to cover it. My banker would always be shocked. You want HOW much? And I’d always pretend to be shocked that he was shocked. I thought you’d see the wisdom . . . I’d wheedle, grovel, negotiate, and eventually he’d approve my loan. After I’d sold out the shoes, and repaid the borrowing in full, I’d do it all over again. Place a mega order with Onitsuka, double the size of the previous order, then go to the bank in my best suit, an angelic look on my face.

Notes:How Phil dealed with his Bankers and how he grew his business monetarily

| Location: 81 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

He didn’t like giving credit to anyone, for anything, but with my balance hovering always around zero, he saw me as a disaster waiting to happen. One slow season, one downturn in sales, I’d be out of business, the lobby of Wallace’s bank would be filled with my unsold shoes, and the holy grail of bank president would slip from his grasp.

| Location: 82 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

Like Sarah atop Mount Fuji, Wallace saw me as a rebel, but he didn’t think of this as a compliment. Nor, in the end, come to think of it, had she.

| Location: 82 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

What sweet satisfaction it would have been to tell Wallace where he could shove his equity, then storm out and take my business elsewhere.

| Location: 82 | Date: December 15, 2016 |

But in 1965 there was no elsewhere. First National Bank was the only game in town and Wallace knew it. Oregon was smaller back then, and it had just two banks, First National and U.S. Bank. The latter had already turned me down. If I got thrown out of the former, I’d be done. (Today you can live in one state and bank in another, no problem, but banking regulations were much tighter in those days.)

| Location: 82 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Also, there was no such thing as venture capital. An aspiring young entrepreneur had very few places to turn, and those places were all guarded by risk-averse gatekeepers with zero imagination. In other words, bankers. Wallace was the rule, not the exception.

| Location: 83 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

To make everything more difficult, Onitsuka was always late shipping my shoes, which meant less time to sell, which meant less time to make enough money to cover my loan. When I complained, Onitsuka didn’t answer. When they did answer, they failed to appreciate my quandary.

| Location: 83 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

I’d typically get a telex that was maddeningly obtuse. Little more days. It was like dialing 911 and hearing someone on the other end yawn.

| Location: 83 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Given all these problems, given Blue Ribbon’s cloudy future, I decided that I’d better get a real job, something safe to fall back on when everything went bust. At the same moment Johnson devoted himself exclusively to Blue Ribbon, I decided to branch out.

| Location: 83 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

MOST DAYS I didn’t mind. For starters, I invested a healthy portion of my paycheck into Blue Ribbon’s account at the bank, padding my precious equity, boosting the company’s cash balance.

| Location: 83 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

The work suited me better, too. Price Waterhouse boasted a great variety of clients, a mix of interesting start-ups and established companies, all selling everything imaginable—lumber, water, power, food. While auditing these companies, digging into their guts, taking them apart and putting them back together, I was also learning how they survived, or didn’t. How they sold things, or didn’t. How they got into trouble, how they got out. I took careful notes about what made companies tick, what made them fail. Again and again I learned that lack of equity was a leading cause of failure.

| Location: 84 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

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

| Location: 85 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Sadly, he was discovering, as I had, that no matter how well you got along in person with the team at Onitsuka, things were different once you were back on your side of the Pacific. Most of Bowerman’s letters went unanswered. When there was an answer, it was cryptic, or curtly dismissive. It pained me at times to think the Japanese were treating Bowerman the way I was treating Johnson

| Location: 89 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

1966

Notes:A lot of this chapter contains info about Johnson, his dedication to work and how he played a very important role for Phil. Johnson was introduced a few chapters back.

| Location: 92 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Then one last plea for encouraging words, which I never sent. I didn’t have time for encouraging words. Besides, it wasn’t my style. I look back now and wonder if I was truly being myself, or if I was emulating Bowerman, or my father, or both. Was I adopting their man-of-few-words demeanor? Was I maybe modeling all the men I admired? At the time I was reading everything I could get my hands on about generals, samurai, shoguns, along with biographies of my three main heroes—Churchill, Kennedy, and Tolstoy. I had no love of violence, but I was fascinated by leadership, or lack thereof, under extreme conditions.

| Location: 93 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

War is the most extreme of conditions. But business has its warlike parallels. Someone somewhere once said that business is war without bullets, and I tended to agree.

| Location: 93 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

One lesson I took from all my home-schooling about heroes was that they didn’t say much. None was a blabbermouth. None micromanaged.

| Location: 93 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. So I didn’t answer Johnson, and I didn’t pester him. Having told him what to do, I hoped that he would surprise me. Maybe with silence.

| Location: 93 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

To Johnson’s credit, though he craved more communication, he never let the lack of it discourage him. On the contrary, it motivated him. He was anal, he recognized that I was not, and though he enjoyed complaining (to boundless creativity and energy. He worked seven days a week, selling and promoting Blue Ribbon, and when he wasn’t selling, he was beaverishly building up his customer data files.

Notes:Ignoring J luckily worked for Phil here, because Johnson was OK with it. But most people doing what J did do it for approval/validation, J didn't seek any of it. If you ignore employees who do what J did for validation and you ignore them, they would get pissed and probably quit (is that a good thing??)

| Location: 93 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Each new customer got his or her own index card, and each index card contained that customer’s personal information, shoe size, and shoe preferences. This database enabled Johnson to keep in touch with all his customers, at all times, and to keep them all feeling special. He sent them Christmas cards. He sent them birthday cards. He sent them notes of congratulation after they completed a big race or marathon.

| Location: 94 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Whenever I got a letter from Johnson I knew it was one of dozens he’d carried down to the mailbox that day. He had hundreds and hundreds of customer-correspondents, all along the spectrum of humanity, from high school track stars to octogenarian weekend joggers. Many, upon pulling yet another Johnson letter from their mailboxes, must have thought the same thing I did: “Where does this guy find the time?”

| Location: 94 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Unlike me, however, most customers came to depend on Johnson’s letters. Most wrote him back. They’d tell him about their lives, their troubles, their injuries, and Johnson would lavishly console, sympathize, and advise. Especially about injuries.

| Location: 94 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

One man, for instance, complained that Tiger flats didn’t have enough cushion. He wanted to run the Boston Marathon but didn’t think Tigers would last the twenty-six miles. So Johnson hired a local cobbler to graft rubber soles from a pair of shower shoes into a pair of Tiger flats. Voilà. Johnson’s Frankenstein flat had space-age, full-length, midsole cushioning. (Today it’s standard in all training shoes for runners.) The jerry-rigged Johnson sole was so dynamic, so soft, so new, Johnson’s customer posted a personal best in Boston. Johnson forwarded me the results and urged me to pass them along to Tiger. Bowerman had just asked me to do the same with his batch of notes a few weeks earlier.

| Location: 94 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Good grief, I thought, one mad genius at a time.

| Location: 95 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

bills, he needed to inquire about the long-term prospects of Blue Ribbon. How did image of Johnson, single, lonely, his body wrapped in plaster of Paris, 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. “Farfetched,” I wrote. “But it seems worth shooting for.”

| Location: 96 | Date: March 8, 2017 |

This last line was wholly truthful. It was worth shooting for. If Blue Ribbon went bust, I’d have no money, and I’d be crushed. But I’d also have some valuable wisdom, which I could apply to the next business.

| Location: 97 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

Wisdom seemed an intangible asset, but an asset all the same, one that justified the risk. Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things. But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.

Notes:EACH AND EVERY LINE OF THIS PARAGRAPH... Spot on 🎯. BEST PARAGRAPH OF THE BOOK SO Far. Best line from it... "Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things"

| Location: 97 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

He fired back a sarcastic thanks for the tax advice. He wouldn’t be filing taxes, he said, “because gross income was $1,209 while expenses total $1,245.” His leg broken, his heart broken, he told me that he was also flat broke. He signed off: “Please send encouraging words.” I didn’t.

Notes:Poor little Johnson, pity him sometimes

| Location: 97 | Date: December 16, 2016 |

It was a morbid puppet show, a dark kabuki play, starring a wit less victim and a micro-kraken—was it a sign, a metaphor for our dilemma? One living thing being eaten by another? This was nature, wet in tooth and claw, and I couldn’t help wondering if it was also to be the story of Blue Ribbon and the Marlboro Man.

| Location: 100 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

He said in a few terse words that this would not be possible. Onitsuka wanted for its U.S. distributor someone bigger, more established, a firm that could handle the workload. A firm with offices on the East Coast. “But, but,” I spluttered, “Blue Ribbon does have offices on the East Coast.” Kitami rocked back in his chair. “Oh?” “Yes,” I said, “we’re on the East Coast, the West Coast, and soon we may be in the Midwest. We can handle national distribution, no question.” I looked around the table. The grim faces were becoming less grim. “Well,” Kitami said, “this change things.” He assured me that they would give my proposal careful consideration. So. Hai. Meeting adjourned. I walked back to my hotel and spent a second night pacing. First thing the next morning I received a call summoning me back to Onitsuka, where Kitami awarded me exclusive distribution rights for the United States. He gave me a three-year contract. I tried to be nonchalant as I signed the papers and placed an order for five thousand more shoes, which would cost twenty thousand dollars I didn’t have. Kitami said he’d ship them to my East Coast office, which I also didn’t have. I promised to wire him the exact address.

Notes:It's ok to say a white lie, if you can make it true. So it isn't a lie anymore. Phil didn't have an east coast office but he still told them that he did, and it was enough to tip the decision in his favour. Unintuitive but true.

| Location: 103 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

But somewhere over the Pacific the full weight of my “victory” came over me. I imagined the look on Wallace’s face when I asked him to cover this gigantic new order. If he said no, when he said no, what then? On the other hand, if he said yes, how was I going to open an office on the East Coast? And how was I going to do it before those shoes arrived? And who was I going to get to run it? I stared at the curved, glowing horizon. There was only one person on the planet rootless enough, energetic enough, gung-ho enough, crazy enough, to pick up and move to the East Coast, on a moment’s notice, and get there before the shoes did. I wondered how Stretch was going to like the Atlantic Ocean.

| Location: 104 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

I explained that I’d been forced to lie to Onitsuka and claim we already had an office on the East Coast. Thus, we were in one heck of a jam. The shoes would soon be on the water, an enormous shipment steaming for New York, and no one but Johnson could handle the task of claiming those shoes and setting up an office. The fate of Blue Ribbon rested on his shoulders. Johnson was flabbergasted. Then furious. Then freaked. All in the space of one minute. So I got on a plane and flew down to visit him at his store.

| Location: 105 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

“Ah. Yes. Well. Anywhere on the East Coast with a port. Just don’t go to Portland, Maine.” “Why?” “A company based in two different Portlands? That’ll confuse the heck out of the Japanese.”

| Location: 106 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

The forgiveness Johnson showed me, the overall good nature he demonstrated, filled me with gratitude, and a new fondness for the man. And perhaps a deeper loyalty. I regretted my treatment of him. All those unanswered letters. There are team players, I thought, and then there are team players, and then there’s Johnson. AND THEN HE threatened to quit.

| Location: 107 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

I phoned Bowerman and told him that Full-time Employee Number One was staging a mutiny. Bowerman listened quietly, considered all the angles, weighed the pros and cons, then rendered his verdict. “Fuck him.” I said I wasn’t sure “fucking him” was the best strategy. Maybe there was some middle way of mollifying Johnson, of giving him a stake in the company. But as we talked about it in greater detail, the math just didn’t pencil out. Neither Bowerman nor I wanted to surrender any portion of our stake, so Johnson’s ultimatum, even if I’d wanted to accept it, was a nonstarter.

Notes:Johnson's mutiny

| Location: 107 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

He was waiting for me to bend, to up my offer, but for once in my life I had leverage, because I had nothing left to give. “Take it or leave it” is like four of a kind. Hard to beat.

| Location: 109 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

Before long I felt that I’d have given Woodell a job even if he’d been a stranger. Gladly. He was my kind of people. I wasn’t certain what Blue Ribbon was, or if it would ever become a thing at all, but whatever it was or might become, I hoped it would have something of this man’s spirit.

| Location: 111 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

I WAS DEVELOPING an unhealthy contempt for Adidas. Or maybe it was healthy. That one German company had dominated the shoe market for a couple of decades, and they possessed all the arrogance of unchallenged dominance. Of course it’s possible that they weren’t arrogant at all, that to motivate myself I needed to see them as a monster. In any event, I despised them. I was tired of looking up every day and seeing them far, far ahead. I couldn’t bear the thought that it was my fate to do so forever.

Notes:Competion as fuel/motivation

| Location: 112 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

The situation put me in mind of Jim Grelle. In high school, Grelle—pronounced Grella, or sometimes Gorilla—had been the fastest runner in Oregon, and I had been the second-fastest, which meant four years of staring at Grelle’s back. Then Grelle and I both went to the University of Oregon, where his tyranny over me continued. By the time I graduated I hoped never again to see Grelle’s back. Years later, when Grelle won the 1,500 in Moscow’s Lenin Stadium, I was wearing an army uniform, sitting on a couch in the day room at Fort Lewis. I pumped my fist at the screen, proud of my fellow Oregonian, but I also died a little at the memory of the many times he’d bested me. Now I began to see Adidas as a second Grelle. Chasing them, being legally checked by them, irritated me to no end. It also drove me. Hard

| Location: 113 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

. I would replay Bowerman’s epic speeches, hear him telling us that Oregon State wasn’t just any opponent. Beating USC and Cal was important, he said, but beating Oregon State was (pause) different. Nearly sixty years later it gives me chills to recall his words, his tone. No one could get your blood going like Bowerman, though he never raised his voice. He knew how to speak in subliminal italics, to slyly insert exclamation marks, like hot keys against the flesh

| Location: 113 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

he said the right shoes were important, but almost any shoes would work. “Probably the shoes you wear for gardening, or working around the house, will do just fine.” What? As for workout clothes, Bowerman told readers that proper clothing “may help the spirit,” but added that people shouldn’t get hung up on brands. Maybe he thought this was true for the casual jogger, as opposed to the trained athlete, but by God did he need to say so in print? When we were fighting to establish a brand? More to the point, what did this mean about his true opinion of Blue Ribbon—and me? Any shoe would do? If that were true, why in the world were we bothering to sell Tigers? Why were we jackassing around?

| Location: 114 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

the thought crossed my mind that it might make more sense to give up the apartment altogether, just move into the office, since I’d Waterhouse, making the rent, I’d be at Blue Ribbon, and vice versa. I could shower at the gym. But I told myself that living in your office is the act of a crazy person. And then I got a letter from Johnson saying he was living in his new office.

| Location: 116 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

I was putting in six days a week at Price Waterhouse, spending early mornings and late nights and all weekends and vacations at Blue Ribbon. No friends, no exercise, no social life—and wholly content. My life was out of balance, sure, but I didn’t care. In fact, I wanted even more imbalance. Or a different kind of imbalance. I wanted to dedicate every minute of every day to Blue Ribbon. I’d never been a multitasker, and I didn’t see any reason to start now. I wanted to be present, always. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered. If my life was to be all work and no play, I wanted my work to be play. I wanted to quit Price Waterhouse. Not that I hated it; it just wasn’t me. I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time. But it wasn’t possible. Blue Ribbon simply couldn’t support me. Though the company was on track to double sales for a fifth straight year, it still couldn’t justify a salary for its cofounder. So I decided to I applied to Portland State University, and got a job as an assistant professor, at seven hundred dollars a month.

| Location: 118 | Date: December 17, 2016 |

Miss Parks saw my bewitchment, I think. There were several long looks between us, several meaningfully awkward pauses. I recall one burst of particularly nervous laughter, one portentous silence. I remember one long moment of eye contact that kept me awake that night. Then it happened. On a cold afternoon in late November, when Miss Parks wasn’t in the office, I was walking toward the back of the office and noticed her desk drawer open. I stopped to close it and inside I saw . . . a stack of checks? All her paychecks—uncashed. This wasn’t a job to her. This was something else. And so perhaps . . . was I? Maybe? Maybe.

| Location: 123 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

One day, after Woodell had gone home, neither Miss Parks nor I said much. At quitting time I walked her out to the elevator. I pressed the down button. We both smiled tensely. I pressed down again. We both stared at the light above the elevator doors. I cleared my throat. “Miss Parks,” I said. “Would you like to, uhh . . . maybe go out on Friday night?” Those Cleopatra eyes. They doubled in size. “Me?” “I don’t see anyone else here,” I said. Ping. The elevator doors slid open. “Oh,” she said, looking down at her feet. “Well. Okay. Okay.” She hurried onto the elevator, and as the doors closed she never lifted her gaze from her shoes.

| Location: 124 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I confessed that Blue Ribbon was tenuous. The whole thing might go bust any day, but I still couldn’t see myself doing anything else. My little shoe company was a living, breathing thing, I said, which I’d created from nothing. I’d breathed it into life, nurtured it through illness, brought it back several times from the dead, and now I wanted, needed, to see it stand on its own feet and go out into the world. “Does that make sense?” I said. Mm-hm, she said.

| Location: 124 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I told her that I flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.

| Location: 124 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

she didn’t know that the basic rule of negotiation is to know what you want, what you need to walk away with in order to be whole

| Location: 129 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I was picking up the language, slowly. I knew the Japanese word for shoe: gutzu. I knew the Japanese word for revenue: shunyu. I knew how to ask the time, and directions, and I learned a phrase I used often: Watakushi domo no kaisha ni tsuite no joh hou des. Here is some information about my company.

| Location: 132 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

Most were ex-runners, and eccentrics, as only ex-runners can be. But when it came to selling they were all business. Because they were inspired by what we were trying to do, and because they worked solely on commission (two dollars a pair), they were burning up the roads, hitting every high school and college track meet within a thousand-mile radius, and their extraordinary efforts were boosting our numbers even more

| Location: 136 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I decided that Blue Ribbon was doing well enough to justify a salary for its founder. Right before my thirty-first birthday I made the bold move. I quit Portland State and went full-time at my company, paying myself a fairly generous eighteen thousand dollars a year

| Location: 136 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

Above all, I told myself, the best reason for leaving Portland State was that I’d already gotten more out of the school—Penny—than I’d ever hoped. I got something else, too; I just didn’t know it at the time. Nor did I dream how valuable it would prove to be.

| Location: 136 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

The ad featured a photo of Bowerman and me . . . staring at a shoe. Not as if we were shoe innovators; more as if we’d never seen a shoe before. We looked like morons. It was embarrassing

| Location: 137 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

HIRING SALES REPS and graphic artists showed great optimism, and I didn’t consider myself an optimist by nature. Not that I was a pessimist. I generally tried to hover between the two, committing to neither. But as 1969 approached, I found myself staring into space and thinking the future might be bright. After a good night’s sleep, after a hearty breakfast, I could see plenty of reason for hope.

| Location: 137 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

He told me about the scandalous behavior of Puma and Adidas throughout the Games. The world’s two biggest athletic shoe companies—run by two German brothers who despised each other—had chased each other like Keystone Kops around the Olympic Village, jockeying for all the athletes. Huge sums of cash, often stuffed in running shoes or manila envelopes, were passed around. One of Puma’s sales reps even got thrown in jail. (There were rumors that Adidas had framed him.) He was married to a female sprinter, and Bowerman joked that he’d only married her to secure her endorsement. Worse, it didn’t stop at mere payouts. Puma had smuggled truckloads of shoes into Mexico City, while Adidas cleverly managed to evade Mexico’s stiff import tariffs. I heard through the grapevine they did it by making a nominal number of shoes at a factory in Guadalajara. Bowerman and I didn’t feel morally offended; we felt left out. Blue Ribbon had no money for payouts, and therefore no presence at the Games.

| Location: 138 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

Plenty of athletes were training in Tigers, Bowerman reported. We just didn’t have anybody actually competing in them. Part of the reason was quality; Tigers just weren’t good enough yet. The main reason, however, was money. We had not a penny for endorsement deals.

| Location: 139 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

Maybe he was getting ready to jack up our prices. I mentioned this to Bowerman, and told him I was taking measures to protect us. Before hanging up I boasted that, though I didn’t have enough cash or cachet to pay athletes, I did have enough to buy someone at Onitsuka. I had a man on the inside, I said, a man acting as my eyes and ears and keeping tabs on Kitami.

| Location: 139 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

“I’ve taken what I think is a big step to keep us informed. I’ve hired a spy. He works full-time in the Onitsuka Export Department. Without going into a lengthy discussion of why I will just tell you that I feel he is trustworthy. “This spy may seem somewhat unethical to you, but the spy system is ingrained and completely accepted in Japanese business circles. They actually have schools for industrial spies, much as we have schools for typists and stenographers.” I can’t imagine what made me use the word “spy” so wantonly, so boldly, other than the fact that James Bond was all the rage just then. Nor can I understand why, when I was revealing so much, I didn’t reveal the spy’s name. It was Fujimoto, whose bicycle I’d replaced. I think I must have known, on some level, that the memo was a mistake, a terribly stupid thing to do. And that I would live to regret it. I think I knew. But I often found myself as perplexing as Japanese business practices.

| Location: 140 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I was trying to build a company and a marriage. Penny and I were learning to live together, learning to meld our personalities and idiosyncrasies, though we agreed that she was the one with all the personality and I was the idiosyncratic one. Therefore it was she who had more to learn.

| Location: 141 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

For instance, she was learning that I spent a fair portion of each day lost in my own thoughts, tumbling down mental wormholes, trying to solve some problem or construct some plan. I often didn’t hear what she said, and if I did hear I didn’t remember it minutes later.

| Location: 141 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

She was learning that I was absentminded, that I would drive to the grocery store and come home empty-handed, without the one item she’d asked me to buy, because all the way there and all the way back I’d been puzzling over the latest bank crisis, or the most recent Onitsuka shipping delay.

| Location: 141 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

She was learning that I misplaced everything, especially the important things, like wallets and keys. Bad enough that I couldn’t multitask, but I insisted on trying. I’d often scan the financial pages while eating lunch—and driving. My new black Cougar didn’t remain new for long. As the Mr. Magoo of Oregon, I was forever bumping into trees and poles and other people’s fenders.

| Location: 142 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

She was learning that I wasn’t housebroken. I left the toilet seat up, left my clothes where they fell, left food on the counter. I was effectively helpless. I couldn’t cook, or clean, or do even the simplest things for myself, because I’d been spoiled rotten by my mother and sisters. All those years in the servants’ quarters, I’d essentially had servants

| Location: 142 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

She was learning that I didn’t like to lose, at anything, that losing for me was a special form of agony. I often flippantly blamed Bowerman, but it went way back

| Location: 142 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

Above all, she was learning that marrying a man with a start-up shoe company meant living on a shoestring budget. And yet she thrived. I could give her only twenty-five dollars a week for groceries, and still she managed to whip up delicious meals. I gave her a credit card with a two-thousand-dollar limit to furnish our entire apartment, and she managed to buy a dinette table, two chairs, a Zenith TV, and a big couch with soft arms, perfect for napping. She also bought me a brown recliner, which she stuck in a corner of the living room. Now, each night, I could lean back at a forty-five-degree angle and spin inside my own head all I wanted. It was more comfortable, and safer, than the Cougar

| Location: 142 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I got into the habit every night of phoning my father from my recliner. He’d always be in his recliner, too, and together, recliner to recliner, we’d hash out the latest threat confronting Blue Ribbon. He no longer saw my business as a waste of my time, apparently. Though he didn’t say so explicitly, he did seem to find the problems I faced “interesting,” and “challenging,” which amounted to the same thing.

| Location: 143 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

And in which part of town should we buy? Where were the best schools? And how was I supposed to research real estate prices and schools, plus all the other things that go into buying a house, while running a start-up company? Was it even feasible to run a start-up company while starting a family? Should I go back to accounting, or teaching, or something more stable?

| Location: 143 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.

| Location: 143 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

When I was growing up my sisters asked me several times what my dream house would look like, and one day they handed me a charcoal pencil and a pad and made me draw it. After Penny and I moved in, my sisters dug out the old charcoal sketch. It was an exact picture of the Beaverton house.

| Location: 144 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

That night I told Penny that if Blue Ribbon failed we’d lose the house. She put a hand on her stomach and sat down. This was the kind of insecurity she’d always vowed to avoid. Okay, she kept saying, okaaaay.

| Location: 144 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

If I was ever tempted to take myself too se riously, Woodell’s story always reminded me that things could be worse. And the way he handled himself was a constant, bracing lesson in the virtue, and value, of good spirits.

| Location: 146 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

His injury wasn’t typical, he said. And it wasn’t total. He still had some feeling, still had hopes of marrying, having a family. He also had hopes of a cure. He was taking an experimental new drug, which had shown promise in paraplegics. Trouble was, it had a garlicky aroma. Some nights on our office-hunting expeditions Woodell would smell like an old-school pizzeria, and I’d let him hear about it

| Location: 146 | Date: December 18, 2016 |

I struggle to remember. I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. Numberless conversations, breathless laughing fits. Declarations, revelations, confidences. They’ve all fallen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always sat up half the night, cataloging the past, mapping out the future. I remember that we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be. How I wish, on just one of those nights, I’d had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal, as I did on my trip around the world. Still, at least I can always call to mind the image of Woodell, seated at the head of our dinette, carefully dressed in his blue jeans, his trademark V-neck sweater over a white T. And always, on his feet, a pair of Tigers, the rubber soles pristine.

| Location: 147 | Date: December 19, 2016 |

She handed me my son. I cradled him in my arms. He was so alive, but so delicate, so helpless. The feeling was wondrous, different from all other feelings, though familiar, too. Please don’t let me drop him

| Location: 150 | Date: December 19, 2016 |

At Blue Ribbon I spent so much time talking about quality control, about craftsmanship, about delivery—but this, I realized, this was the real thing. “We made this,” I said to Penny. We. Made. This.

| Location: 150 | Date: December 19, 2016 |

I reminded Bork that in any company there could only be one boss, and sadly for him the boss of Blue Ribbon was Buck Knight. I told him if he wasn’t happy with me or my management style, he should know that quitting and being fired were both viable options.

Notes:Phil(buck Knight) realises (in the next paragraph) that he should not have written this as Bork was a really valuable part and he couldn't afford to lose this employee. Stubbornness is required when somebody who is easily replaceable rebels. But when it is someone crucial who rebels, meeting in person and humbly resolving is the best way to fix things. If the situation still doesn't change for the good, best is to let go.

| Location: 152 | Date: December 19, 2016 |

As with my “spy memo,” I suffered instant writer’s remorse. The moment I dropped it in the mail I realized that Bork was a valuable part of the team, that I didn’t want to lose him, that I couldn’t afford to lose him. I dispatched our new operations manager, Woodell, to Los Angeles, to patch things up. Woodell took Bork to lunch and tried to explain that I wasn’t sleeping much, with a new baby and all. Also, Woodell told him, I was feeling tremendous stress after the visit from Kitami and Mr. Onitsuka. Woodell joked about my unique management style, telling Bork that everyone bitched about it, everyone pulled their hair out about my nonresponses to their memos and letters. In all Woodell spent a few days with Bork, smoothing his feathers, going over the operation. He discovered that Bork was stressed, too. Though the retail store was thriving, the back room, which had basically become our national warehouse, was in shambles. Boxes everywhere, invoices and papers stacked to the ceiling. Bork couldn’t keep pace. When Woodell returned he gave me the picture. “I think Bork’s back in the fold,” he said, “but we need to relieve him of that warehouse. We need to transfer all warehouse operations up here.” Moreover, he added, we needed to hire Woodell’s mother to run it. She’d worked for years in the warehouse at Jantzen, the legendary Oregon outfitter, so it wasn’t nepotism, he said. Ma Woodell was perfect for the job. I wasn’t sure I cared. If Woodell was good with it, I was good with it. Plus, the way I saw it: The more Woodells the better.

Notes:Putting out the fires and finding out The actual reason for t h e mutiny.

| Location: 152 | Date: December 19, 2016 |

Ultimately we withdrew the offering. It was a humiliation, and in its wake I had many heated conversations with myself. I blamed the shaky economy. I blamed Vietnam. But first and foremost I blamed myself. I’d overvalued Blue Ribbon. I’d overvalued my life’s work. More than once, over my first cup of coffee in the morning, or while trying to fall asleep at night, I’d tell myself: Maybe I’m a fool? Maybe this whole damn shoe thing is a fool’s errand? Maybe, I thought. Maybe.

| Location: 158 | Date: December 19, 2016 |

Standing before the mirror I said to my reflection: “Uh-oh.” But it was more than the Stroganoff. Somehow, I’d gotten out of the running habit. Blue Ribbon, marriage, fatherhood—there was never time. Also, I’d felt burned out. Though I’d loved running for Bowerman, I’d hated it, too. The same thing happens to all kinds of college athletes. Years of training and competing at a high level take their toll. You need a rest. But now the rest was over. I needed to get back out there. I didn’t want to be the fat, flabby, sedentary head of a running-shoe company

| Location: 160 | Date: December 20, 2016 |

I trained hard that summer. I got into the habit of running six miles every night after work. In no time I was back in shape, my weight down to 160.

| Location: 161 | Date: December 20, 2016 |

And when the day of the big race came—with Woodell on the stopwatch—I took thirty-six dollars from Grelle. (The victory was made all the sweeter the following week when Grelle jumped into an all-comers meet and ran 4:07.) As I drove home that day I felt immensely proud. Keep going, I told myself. Don’t stop

| Location: 161 | Date: December 20, 2016 |

Yes, I thought. Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs. I wished I had more. I wished I could borrow some. But confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.

| Location: 162 | Date: December 20, 2016 |

The moment he was out of sight I jumped from behind my desk. I opened his briefcase and rummaged through and took out what looked like the folder he’d been referring to. I slid it under my desk blotter, then jumped behind my desk and put my elbows on the blotter. Waiting for Kitami to return, I had the strangest thought. I recalled all the times I’d volunteered with the Boy Scouts, all the times I’d sat on Eagle Scout review boards, handing out merit badges for honor and integrity. Two or three weekends a year I’d question pink-cheeked boys about their probity, their honesty, and now I was stealing documents from another man’s briefcase? I was headed down a dark path. No telling where it might lead. Wherever, there was no getting around one immediate consequence of my actions. I’d have to recuse myself from the next review board.

| Location: 168 | Date: December 20, 2016 |

The following morning, when Kitami came to the office, Woodell and I ran a sort of shell game. While someone whisked Kitami into the coffee room, Woodell blocked the door to my office with his wheelchair and I slid the folder back into the briefcase

| Location: 170 | Date: December 20, 2016 |

The company, my company, born from nothing, and now finishing 1971 with sales of $1.3 million, was on life support. I talked with Hayes. I talked with my father. I talked with every other accountant I knew, one of whom mentioned that Bank of California had a charter allowing it to do business in three western states, including Oregon. Plus, Bank of Cal had a branch in Portland. I hurried over and, indeed, they welcomed me, gave me shelter from the storm. And a small line of credit.

| Location: 175 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

REELING FROM ALL this drama, 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, alone. (Penny and Matthew ate around four.) I’d always try to find time to tell Matthew a bedtime story, and I’d always try to find a bedtime story that would be educational

| Location: 176 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

When I got back to Oregon I invited her to the office again and told her we needed a logo. “What kind?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “That gives me a lot to go on,” she said. “Something that evokes a sense of motion,” I said. “Motion,” she said, dubious. She looked confused. Of course she did, I was babbling. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted. I wasn’t an artist. I showed her the soccer-football shoe and said, unhelpfully: This. We need something for this. She said she’d give it a try.

| Location: 178 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

Woodell and I and a few others looked them over. I remember Johnson being there, too, though why he’d come out from Wellesley, I can’t recall. Gradually we inched toward a consensus. We liked . . . this one . . . slightly more than the others. 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 thirty-five dollars, then sent her on her way.

| Location: 179 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

“Something eye-catching about it,” Johnson said. Woodell 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?” Woodell said. I sighed. “I don’t love it. Maybe it will grow on me.” We sent it to Canada. Now we just needed a name to go with this logo I didn’t love

| Location: 179 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

We took a poll of all our employees. Secretaries, accountants, sales reps, retail clerks, file clerks, warehouse workers—we demanded that each person jump in, make at least one suggestion

| Location: 180 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

Hour after hour was spent arguing and yelling, debating the virtue of this name or that. Someone liked Bork’s suggestion, Bengal. Someone else said the only possible name was Condor. I huffed and groused. “Animal names,” I said. “Animal names! We’ve considered the name of just about every animal in the forest. Must it be an animal

| Location: 180 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

Again and again I lobbied for Dimension Six. Again and again I was told by my employees that it was unspeakably bad. Someone, I forget who, summed up the situation neatly. “All these names . . . suck.” I thought it might have been Johnson, but all the documentation says he’d left and gone back to Wellesley by then.

| Location: 180 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

THE DAY OF decision arrived. Canada had already started producing the shoes, and samples were ready to go in Japan, but before anything could be shipped, we needed to choose a name. Also, we had magazine ads slated to run, to coincide with the shipments, and we needed to tell the graphic artists what name to put in the ads. Finally, we needed to file paperwork with the U.S. Patent Office.

| Location: 181 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

Woodell wheeled into my office. “Time’s up,” he said. I rubbed my eyes. “I know.” “What’s it going to be?” “I don’t know.” My head was splitting. By now the names had all run together into one mind-melting glob. Falconbengaldimensionsix. “There is . . . one more suggestion,” Woodell 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,” Woodell 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,” Woodell said. “What is it?” I asked, bracing myself. “Nike.” “Huh?” “Nike.” “Spell it.” “N-I-K-E,” Woodell 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, crossed them out. Tick, tock, tick, tock. I needed to telex the factory—now.

| Location: 181 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

I hated making decisions in a hurry, and that’s all I seemed to do in those days. I looked to the ceiling. I gave myself two more minutes to mull over the different options, then walked down the hall to the telex machine. I sat before it, gave myself three more minutes.

| Location: 181 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

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. And that all described Nike. 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 veterans of World War II, a bronze medallion with Athena 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 me to my decision. Luck? Instinct? Some inner spirit? Yes. “What’d you decide?” Woodell asked me at the end of the day. “Nike,” I mumbled. “Hm,” he said. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Maybe it’ll grow on us,” he said. Maybe.

| Location: 182 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

MY BRAND-NEW RELATIONSHIP with Nissho was promising, but it was brand new, and who would dare predict how it might evolve? I’d once felt the relationship with Onitsuka was promising, and look where that stood. Nissho was infusing me with cash, but I couldn’t let that make me complacent. I needed to develop as many sources of cash as possible. Which brought me back to the idea of a public offering

Notes:Best time to raise money is when you don't actually need it.

| Location: 182 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

Also, this time we decided not to sell stocks, but convertible debentures. If business truly is war without bullets, then debentures are war bonds. The public loans you money, and in exchange you give them quasi-stock in your . . . cause. The stock is quasi because debenture holders are strongly encouraged, and incentivized, to hold their shares for five years. After that, they can convert the shares to common stock or get their money back with interest. With our new plan, and our gung-ho salesman, we announced in June 1971 that Blue Ribbon would be offering two hundred thousand shares of debentures, at one dollar per, and this time the shares sold fast. One of the first to buy was my friend Cale, who didn’t hesitate to cut a check for ten thousand dollars, a princely sum. “Buck,” he said, “I was there at the start, I’ll be there at the bitter end.”

| Location: 182 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

the man was a genuine, head-to-toe shoe dog. I’d heard this phrase a few times. Shoe dogs were people who devoted themselves wholly to the making, selling, buying, or designing of shoes. Lifers used the phrase cheerfully to describe other lifers, men and women who had toiled so long and hard in the shoe trade, they thought and talked about nothing else. It was an all-consuming mania, a recognizable psychological disorder, to care so much about insoles and outsoles, linings and welts, rivets and vamps. But I understood. The average person takes seventy-five hundred steps a day, 274 million steps over the course of a long life, the equivalent of six times around the globe—shoe dogs, it seemed to me, simply wanted to be part of that journey. Shoes were their way of connecting with humanity. What better way of connecting, shoe dogs thought, than by refining the hinge that joins each person to the world’s surface?

| Location: 183 | Date: December 21, 2016 |

The hell’s a swoosh? The answer flew out of me: It’s the sound of someone going past you

| Location: 198 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

There were about thirty people there. I expected to be nervous. They expected me to be nervous. On any different day, under any other circumstances, I would have been. For some reason, however, I felt weirdly at peace. I laid out the situation we faced. “We’ve come, folks, to a crossroads. Yesterday, our main supplier, Onitsuka, cut us off.” I let that sink in. I watched everyone’s jaw drop. “We’ve threatened to sue them for damages,” I said, “and of course they’ve threatened to file a lawsuit of their own

| Location: 202 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

We’re not going to win a lawsuit in Japan, so we’ll have to beat them to the courthouse, get a quick verdict here, to pressure them into withdrawing. “Meanwhile, until it all sorts out, we’re completely on our own. We’re set adrift. We have this new line, Nike, which the reps in Chicago seemed to like. But, well, frankly, that’s all we’ve got. And as we know, there are big problems with the quality. It’s not what we hoped. Communications with Nippon Rubber are good, and Nissho is there at the factory at least once a week, trying to get it all fixed, but we don’t know how soon they can do it. It better be soon, though, because we have no time and suddenly no margin for error.”

| Location: 202 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

I looked down the table. Everyone was sinking, slumping forward. I looked at Johnson. He was staring at the papers before him, and there was something in his handsome face, some quality I’d never seen there before. Surrender. Like everyone else in the room, he was giving up. The nation’s economy was in the tank, a recession was under way. Gas lines, political gridlock, rising unemployment, Nixon being Nixon—Vietnam. It seemed like the end times. Everyone in the room had already been worrying about how they were going to make the rent, pay the light bill. Now this.

Notes:When this happens, it's the leader who has to take charge and boost morale

| Location: 202 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

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.”

Notes:Motivation from the ceo

| Location: 203 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

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 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 faced 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 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.” As I stopped speaking I could see a wave of relief swirl around the table like a cool breeze. Everyone felt it. It was as real as the wind that used to swirl around the office next to the Pink Bucke

| Location: 203 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

Johnson said he wanted to buy me a cup of coffee. “Your finest hour,” he said. “Ach,” I said. “Thanks.” But I reminded him: I just told the truth. As he had in Chicago. Telling the truth, I said. Who knew?

| Location: 204 | Date: December 22, 2016 |

I’d never witnessed anything quite like that race. And yet I didn’t just witness it. I took part in it. Days later I felt sore in my hams and quads. This, I decided, this is what sports are, what they can do. Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete, and in that convergence, in that transference, is the oneness that the mystics talk about.

| Location: 207 | Date: December 23, 2016 |

I knew that race was part of me, would forever be part of me, and I vowed it would also be part of Blue Ribbon. In our coming battles, with Onitsuka, with whomever, we’d be like Pre. We’d compete as if our lives depended on it. Because they did

| Location: 207 | Date: December 23, 2016 |

“Sure there will be a lot of pressure,” he told Sports Illustrated. “And a lot of us will be facing more experienced competitors, and maybe we don’t have any right to win. But all I know is if I go out and bust my gut until I black out and somebody still beats me, and if I have made that guy reach down and use everything he has and then more, why then it just proves that on that day he’s a better man than I

| Location: 208 | Date: December 23, 2016 |

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way—that leaves us

| Location: 209 | Date: December 24, 2016 |

I always called them my Ducks, but now they really were. They were in my shoes. Every step they took, every cut they made, was partly mine. It’s one thing to watch a sporting event and put yourself in the players’ shoes. Every fan does that. It’s another thing when the athletes are actually in your shoes.

| Location: 211 | Date: December 24, 2016 |

there was Bowerman. Pre and the coach were clashing constantly, two headstrong guys with different ideas about training methods and running styles. Bowerman took the long view: a distance runner peaks in his late twenties. He therefore wanted Pre to rest, preserve himself for certain select races. Save something, Bowerman kept pleading. But of course Pre refused. I’m all-out, all the time, he said. In their relationship I saw a mirror of my relationship with banks. Pre didn’t see the sense in going slow—ever. Go fast or die. I couldn’t fault him. I was on his side. Even against our coach

| Location: 214 | Date: December 24, 2016 |

A race is a work of art,” he told a reporter, “that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.

| Location: 216 | Date: December 24, 2016 |

Around the close of 1972 each man handed his house keys to the other, and now in early 1973 they switched places. Talk about team players. It was an enormous sacrifice, and I was deeply grateful. But in keeping with my personality, and Blue Ribbon tradition, I expressed no gratitude. I spoke not a word of thanks or praise

| Location: 219 | Date: December 24, 2016 |

It wasn’t a tough call. There was the trust factor, of course. Kinship, blood, so on. Also, there was the confidence factor.