Phil Knight has written a great book and seems to be truthful & honest about stuff. He hasn’t tried to sugarcoat his experiences. Some of his lines are pure gold! Like -
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.
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The above line is so simple & important thing to consider for your life, especially the part about being “purposeful” & “time is short”
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Need to focus on stuff & pursue it with a single-minded dedication. Has always worked for me as well whenever I want to learn something new & when a bug occurs that I don’t quite understand but I don’t quit until I have an answer because that propels my learning further. (doing this way better recently, than before)
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It’s the journey which has all the goodies/challenges on the way because once you reach the destination it’s always the journey that you remember. The destination attainment just lasts for a short duration, because the mind wants to be on a journey.
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I have always believed that going with the flow is better than thinking too much about big goals and stuff that comes up along the way. Luckily, that’s how it has happened for me, be it in my career or learning anything. It’s always been my curiosity to learn/explore stuff, and everything else has been auto-pilot!
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Selling encyclopedias door to door. Not glamorous, to be sure, but heck.I just love how easily he says that, we should respect any & every kind of job. -
Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.again emphasizes being with the flow. -
You need to quit the place if you feel that it isn’t you even when you don’t quite hate it.
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The thing about saying that “I made it!” is what I want to say & love to say even now for any small things or projects that I build, hence maybe I enjoy learning & building even more!
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The feeling when you make it, is pure euphoria!
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How telling the truth always, helped Blue ribbon even when they launched Nike just shows how cool that can be, even when it’s the difficult thing to do, it helps in the future, if not now!
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Pre was most famous for saying,
Somebody may beat me—but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.He was the first athlete Phil signed for Nike and was really close to him. Sad he died so early, had so much potential. -
There was none of that smartest-guy-in-the-room foolishness. Hayes, Strasser, Woodell, Johnson, each would have been the smartest guy in any room, but none believed it of himself, or the next guy. Our meetings were defined by contempt, disdain, and heaps of abuse.I can’t really do justice to these lines in my own words!In the midst of those intense discussions, in the middle of one of the most trying years in the company’s history, those Buttface meetings were nothing but a joy. Of all those hours spent at Sunriver, not one minute felt like work. It was us against the world, and we felt damned sorry for the world. That is, when we weren’t righteously pissed off at it. Each of us had been misunderstood, misjudged, dismissed. Shunned by bosses, spurned by luck, rejected by society, shortchanged by fate when looks and other natural graces were handed out
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He had doubts about himself in a management role, was he the right person for buttfaces.
Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. -
Clearly the Buttfaces liked the culture I’d created. I trusted them, wholly, and didn’t look over their shoulders, and that bred a powerful two-way loyalty.
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The point around them trying out new stuff for shoes, they thought that it would receive backlash when there would be issues, rather people had only gratitude for them, it makes me wonder that innovation even in its early stages is appreciated for the efforts if not the results.
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I love the way they did discussions around, if something is working or not with just the info they personally gathered, because they couldn’t do market research & focus groups because of lack of money, but still they found ways to think deeply about such stuff.
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People loved their story, Oregon firm run by geeks. “We were more than a brand, we were a statement” - it’s not the arrogance talking rather it is actually true.
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It’s amazing how important the product & everything else was for the buttfaces, they never had money in mind, so they were actually sad about going public.
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I love this line -
Everything is about change. It's just a matter of time. -
The day that his father feels proud of him, says so much about us humans, love is so important in life.
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1977 (Olympics) - $70 million in sales!!
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There is honor in saying “back to the drawing board”, this just shows how ready the team was for accepting any kind of feedback.
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The team was amazing and they all agreed, 46% needed to be Phil’s, just the pure hunger for contributing, growth etc. but not influenced by money is something which is so cool.
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This line I don’t think can be said any better, I’m sure it’s his team was also on the same wavelength -
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I asked myself: What are you feeling? It wasn’t joy. It wasn’t relief. If I felt anything, it was … regret? Good God, I thought. Yes. Regret. Because I honestly wished I could do it all over again.
- It just says the main thing it’s always about the “journey” 💯
I think of the countless Nike offices around the world. At each one, no matter the country, the phone number ends in 6453, which spells out Nike on the keypad. But, by pure chance, from right to left it also spells out Pre’s best time in the mile, to the tenth of a second: 3:54.6.
I ALWAYS FEEL a thrill, a shot of adrenaline, when I drive through the intersection of the campus’s two main streets, each named after a Nike Founding Father. All day, every day, the security guard at the front gate gives visitors the same directions. What you wanna do is take Bowerman Drive all the way up to Del Hayes Way … I also take great pleasure in strolling past the oasis at the center of campus, the Nissho Iwai Japanese Gardens. In one sense our campus is a topographical map of Nike’s history and growth; in another it’s a diorama of my life. In yet another sense it’s a living, breathing expression of that vital human emotion, maybe the most vital of all, after love. Gratitude.
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LeBron James gesture says it all, taking a chance on people is such a great thing to do
“Right. So I went to my jeweler and had them find a Rolex watch from 1972.” He hands me the watch. It’s engraved: With thanks for taking a chance on me. As usual, I say nothing. I don’t know what to say. It wasn’t much of a chance. He was pretty close to a sure thing. But taking a chance on people—he’s right. You could argue that’s what it’s all been about.
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Strasser started the Jordan thing -
It might have been okay if he’d just quit. But he went to work for Adidas. An intolerable betrayal. I never forgave him. (Though I did recently—happily, proudly—hire his daughter, Avery. Twenty-two years old, she works in Special Events, and she’s said to be thriving. It’s a blessing and a joy to see her name in the company directory.)
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Woodell amazingly flies his own private airplane -
He’s one of the best storytellers in the history of Nike. My favorite, naturally, is the one about the day we went public. He sat his parents down and told them the news. “What does that mean?” they whispered. “It means your original eight-thousand-dollar loan to Phil is worth $1.6 million.” They looked at each other, looked at Woodell. “I don’t understand,” his mother said. If you can’t trust the company your son works for, who can you trust?
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Money effect -
WHEN IT CAME rolling in, the money affected us all. Not much, and not for long, because none of us was ever driven by money. But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.
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Some great lines about entrepreneurship
It’s all the same drive. The same dream. It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I’d tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.
And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop.
Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck.They might call it Tao. Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your Tao. And since no one has ever adequately defined Tao, I now try to go regularly to mass. I would tell them: Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.