Shoe Dog - Phil Knight [Phil Knight]  ## Metadata - Author: **Phil Knight [Phil Knight]** - Full Title: Shoe Dog - Category: #books ## Highlights -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtsg8zv341s885e4nc9m6ykh)) - Like all my friends I wanted to be successful. Unlike my friends I didn’t know what that meant. 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtdwr1dqrr6bksr1gxx842m0)) - Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtdwwmvtcd5ww6ha3wcgfsjt)) - History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most—books, sports, democracy, free enterprise—started as crazy ideas. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtdx5rvbqceadm2sgz7vvsgz)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtdxafgv6d05pycqkz8vbzed)) - Now, *here* , you see, it takes all the running *you* can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that. > —Lewis Carroll, *Through the Looking-Glass* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtdxbg4kds30rrqg74ta1q2a)) - Of course I wanted to taste other foods, hear other languages, dive into other cultures, but what I really craved was connection with a capital C. I wanted to experience what the Chinese call Tao, the Greeks call Logos, the Hindus call Jñāna, the Buddhists call Dharma. What the Christians call Spirit. Before setting out on my own personal life voyage, I thought, let me first understand the greater voyage of humankind. Let me explore the grandest temples and churches and shrines, the holiest rivers and mountaintops. Let me feel the presence of . . . God? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtdxm3he3f68hnwxb4vkm9db)) - I appreciated money as much as the next guy. But I wanted my life to be about so much more ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwbnr5g3etwp3gyp49cd8gs)) - You cannot travel the path until you have become the path yourself ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwbv4bw16jt5b3hcjn68aes)) - The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwdkd84h4n89y3egmceqq5h)) - I 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? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwdsp2awtz7h20d6gxh3t16)) - an enormous six-hundred-year-old Buddha carved from a single hunk of jade. Standing before its placid face I asked, *Why am I here? What is my purpose?* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwf1hvgqy6n4x9xfbetfpf6)) - All are proud of their craft. God speaks of his work; how much more should man. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwh6pnjgh6z3tb25r69n6hd)) - *Don’t go to sleep one night* , wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. *What you most want will come to you then.* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwhaa7dmyy6d66x1vz4ggsb)) - Twenty-five centuries ago, per my guidebook, it had housed a beautiful frieze of the goddess Athena, thought to be the bringer of “nike,” or victory. It was one of many blessings Athena bestowed. She also rewarded the dealmakers. In the *Oresteia* she says: “I admire . . . the eyes of persuasion.” She was, in a sense, the patron saint of negotiators. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdwj8w89x34wqnxx7a2m1s1g)) - There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdy1gt1kdtyycvtgwkfgf58h)) - Boredom scares me ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdy1repfvgvanqp82rg8srzb)) - A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs it twice ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdy1swqrdkz55ensmzxyreg9)) - happiness is a *how* , not a *what* . ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdy23y4zewrkg3m9bzjf01kj)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdy3h40199tx9tcygnhbvp3z)) - I had grown to hate that war. Not simply because I felt it was wrong. I also felt it was stupid, wasteful. I hated stupidity. I hated waste. Above all, *that* war, more than other wars, seemed to be run along the same principles as my bank. Fight not to win, but to avoid losing. A surefire losing strategy ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdy4kqv0smjmtmtfy6qt425k)) - Mr. Onitsuka told Bowerman about founding his shoe company in the ruins of Japan, when all the big cities were still smoldering from American bombs. He’d built his first lasts, for a line of basketball shoes, by pouring hot wax from Buddhist candles over his own feet. Though the basketball shoes didn’t sell, Mr. Onitsuka didn’t give up. He simply switched to running shoes, and the rest was shoe history. Every Japanese runner in the 1964 Games, Bowerman told me, was wearing Tigers. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdyv9ntms2b2svn38tc21xca)) - 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. 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdz46xr9hd1fe5cyzynez8xc)) - Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdz4aw68e9ryhzt501k4dyks)) - Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdz5b93y001zwc07b42dgmj4)) - 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.* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hdz5czk2chrsa9kcn6w86khf)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he1yj0q9q7hhpsw4gmkpmrr2)) - 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 compromise, find a different day job, one that would pay my bills but require fewer hours, leaving me more time for my passion. The only job I could think of that fit this criterion was teaching. I applied to Portland State University, and got a job as an assistant professor, at seven hundred dollars a month. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he1ynmf0w1bafsnbpd87zds9)) - 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he209gss1sbz2j7xv68xkdne)) - Yes, I thought. Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he6t5ftv3g3g6ay9ac2n0pan)) - 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 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he6t673y46sb1tf1da0xwn8m)) - The company, my company, born from nothing, and now finishing 1971 with sales of $1.3 million, was on life support ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he7ht26rvmapf703sh5j0ega)) - She’d often ask what we were going to do if it all went south. I’d say, “I can always fall back on accounting.” I did not sound sincere, because I wasn’t. I was not delighted to be caught up in these adventures. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he7j6gv910v1wf6nve7mm7qg)) - You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he8y1sdd74w4tgy5ezzfczx7)) - **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 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he8y4pqe4qfh5ryspxkb1fpy)) - Shoe dogs were people who devoted themselves wholly to the making, selling, buying, or designing of shoes ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he9xwkpbd89bhcty80xjk9tk)) - Supply and demand is *always* the root problem in business. It’s been true since Phoenician traders raced to bring Rome the coveted purple dye that colored the clothing of royals and rich people; there was never enough purple to go around ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hee5h5f61ggqp7ch7venpvd6)) - No brilliant idea was ever born in a conference room,” he assured the Dane. “But a lot of silly ideas have died there,” said Stahr. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heh9m6j48mf6619s76p9hr1x)) - In the end, however, I decided, *we* decided, going public wasn’t right. It’s just not for us, I said, and we said. No way. Never. Meeting adjourned. So we set about casting for other ways to raise money. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hehw3a1c6hw0fynzyvss4tmh)) - 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. We’d each been forged by early failure. We’d each given ourselves to some quest, some attempt at validation or meaning, and fallen short. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hen764bky5x15zpjy9vvrw8x)) - My window looked onto a beautiful stand of pines, and I definitely couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I didn’t understand what was happening, in the moment, but now I do. The years of stress were taking their toll. When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly. At just the moment I needed to be my sharpest, I was approaching burnout. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01herbqy6hf7dmwpzct78apqac)) - For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hew1fcc4vepenja2g1n7j12b)) - When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hew1eps5gsn90nk36yphk52b)) - A company called Apple was also going public that same week, and selling for twenty-two dollars a share, and we were worth as much as them, I said to Hayes ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hewvt73mwx9db0z74d2kwprx)) - I fell asleep for a few hours. When I woke it was cold and rainy. I went to the window. The trees were dripping water. Everything was mist and fog. The world was the same as it had been the day before, as it had always been. Nothing had changed, least of all me. And yet I was worth $178 million ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hexfgpjc1kt9gd1gjk912n7p)) - It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyhbv3ecv3jc0z1w1ptbgq8)) - You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyhcfmy50dk6jqq0pwdn354)) - Oneness—in some way, shape, or form, it’s what every person I’ve ever met has been seeking. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyhfvk5vmgh40fzae852dxf)) - I felt that same sense of betrayal when Nike came under attack for conditions in our overseas factories—the so-called sweatshop controversy. Whenever reporters said a factory was unsatisfactory, they never said how much better it was than the day we first went in. They never said how hard we’d worked with our factory partners to upgrade conditions, to make them safer and cleaner. They never said these factories weren’t ours, that we were renters, one among many tenants. They simply searched until they found a worker with complaints about conditions, and they used that worker to vilify us, and only us, knowing our name would generate maximum publicity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyhv8wa8139pnf28qe0enwc)) - Another thing I often heard from those same professors was the old maxim: “When goods don’t pass international borders, soldiers will.” Though I’ve been known to call business war without bullets, it’s actually a wonderful bulwark against war. Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity. That’s why, haunted as I was by the Vietnam War, I always vowed that someday Nike would have a factory in or near Saigon. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyj4ejws8gbddd09fcw8cpr)) - It’s always a happy occasion to be walking a campus, but also bracing, because while I find students today much smarter and more competent than in my time, I also find them far more pessimistic. Occasionally they ask in dismay: “Where is the U.S. going? Where is the world going?” Or: “Where are the new entrepreneurs?” Or: “Are we doomed as a society to a worse future for our children?” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyjryz1f2eenpyt72yy5d5q)) - We must all be professors of the jungle. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyjszh8k019zxz3at2d215g)) - **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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heyk2r2z354m08hd7qm54zca)) - The harder you work, the better your Tao. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heykav9f84cpn338g9ty1krw)) - I squint at the moon shining outside my window. The same moon that inspired the ancient Zen masters to worry about nothing. In the timeless, clarifying light of that moon, I begin to make a list. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01heykd4c1zmmdsrt5w52ncebw))