[Outliers] Phil Knight: The Obsession That Built Nike

this. Y and run, mile after mile, and you never quite know why.
hat you ning towards some goal, chasing some rush,
because ternative, stopping, scares you to death.
1962, I yself, let everyone else call your idea crazy.
n’t sto
out sto ntil you get there, and don’t give much thought to where there is.
t don’t
, presc rgent advice I managed to give myself out of the blue
to tak a century later.
best a and maybe the only advice any of us should ever give.
from t I’m going to talk to you about today, which is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.
nevitab for nearly two decades, this company almost died daily.

m.
ried to e him.
nvestig
him wit toms bill larger than their revenue.

gue dur se years is extraordinary.
xtremes ng himself up in one moment,
ffirmat things he doesn’t quite believe to keep him going.
t.
the bes ossible.
ho bomb elling encyclopedias.
lf with ls, a guy in a wheelchair, an obsessive letter writer,
would h on.
em and gnored them, but he trusted them completely,
hat tru iving everything they had.
the bes ess books ever written because it tells the truth about what
actuall like.
me of t ons.
is irre e.
errible an.
ias doo or and hated every moment.
.
ds next hile he was slightly better, it was a job.
sellin ese running shoes out of the trunk of his car.
ge happ
lling t
ined it
shoes s rent?
it wasn ing.
ng.
people and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place.
shoes ter to run in.
elief w ome of that belief for themselves.
a line turning over for the rest of the book.

ble.
he sale iques in the world.
asion.
negotia ok.
cast.
nuinely e in what you’re building, people will sense it instantly.
true.
is cont
and st racting.
with Ja ar, he put it this way.
n, then dangerous.
ete wit
having
lf for
the mo


to how sed his memoir.
iness.

ome jus ess, that will mean that business is very bad.

t like t to.
ight’s l mantra.

ice fro ne who never actually fails.
ugh.
say he n the edge for over a decade.
ast rea n?

ing fai
not wa ail.
y page memoir.
the bo s holding himself together with positive affirmations he doesn’t fully believe, coaching himself through one crisis to the next.
ng the would recognize.
worst
his isn t pessimism.
your r ship with fear.
es this
st outc inks about it, and says he’d be okay.
emy.
hat sto from getting where you want to go.
ment at act moment you need clarity most.
ater in ok when he says,
roblems e not seeing clearly.
rst cas rio up front, he took away its power.
ng him, g him see what was in front of him instead of what his anxiety invented.
he powe ke big swings and go for it.
eople s you.
people rthodox.
have c t outright neglect.

on, his real salesman.
sionate s from the road.
ng, the daily, and they were filled with random missives.
cknowle even responded to these.
down to stare at the page, realize he didn’t even know where to start because he was so behind, and get up.
, there be a new letter anyway.
g a pri he’d absorbed from studying military leaders, especially General Patton.
ow to d s, tell them what to do, and let them surprise you with the results.
s own w
rom all eschooling about the heroes was that they didn’t say much.
outh.

Johnson didn’t pester him.
t to do ed that he would surprise me.
line fo ond.
t to do ed that he would surprise me.
nce bet naging and leaving.
how to ething, you cap the upside at your own imagination.
m what nd you leave them alone, there’s room for their imagination.
you.
that t th devotion.
ves But , a name from their brutally honest retreats where no idea was sacred and everyone was fair game.
misfit ad walked through the fire for the company.
id them
.
sed the antly.

he saw ing in each of them that the world had missed.
nobody ould.
wo comp orldviews around trust.
hat you t and some people think that you give it.
hil gav nerously with real responsibility and real autonomy.
untains ve him right.
t just r Nike.

ork pla
t work- lance, but Knight wanted the opposite.
rites h
x days at Pricewaterhouse, spending early mornings and late nights, and all weekends and vacations at Blue Ribbon.
cise, n l life.

balance but I didn’t care.
ven mor ance.
of imb
e every of every day to Blue Ribbon.
ltitask I didn’t see any reason to start now.
ent alw
onstant he one task that really mattered.
e all w no play, I wanted work to be play.
deserve nd listen.
n more ce.

ulture
found ife’s work.
ife is
ife was all work and no play, I wanted work to be play.
tly bac lief.
eply in ou’re building, the boundary between work and play dissolves.
discipl
you fo
odbye t
the mos ly powerful lines in the book about the woman he’s dating,
nny.

way to t how you feel about someone is to say goodbye.
ove, bu rinciple applies everywhere.
ramewor valuating your team.

ls you leaving, you feel relief.
s the s ng, you think we’ll miss them, but we’ll manage.
r walks our office and says they’re done, you feel a pit in your stomach.
ing to em.
ells yo ruth about how you feel.
ow what e means to you while they’re there.
hey’re when you imagine them gone.
everyo co-founders to employees and friends.
who re tters to you, run them through the goodbye test.
ng.
rwhelme
crises ittle cash, and not enough hours in the day.
line th ied him through all of it.

onstant he one task that really mattered.
e same le.
easure r possible in focusing on one small task.
said, c he mind.
to just every problem at the same time.
ost imp ones and ignored everything else.
er deta stood out about his focus.
ughest, iberately directed his attention to what was working and not what was broken.
o focus good.
tup.
zy idea usand borrowed dollars, and the kind of obsession that makes balance irrelevant.
what h .

d, sitt his father’s TV room in Portland, waiting for a commercial break during wagon train.
he wan ay for weeks, but he’s nervous because what he’s about to propose sounds insane.
er that idea I had at Stanford?
from a ch paper.
good en compete at the University of Oregon under a legendary coach named Bill Bowerman.
shoes, was also a business student, and he’d noticed something.
d recen wn apart the German-dominated camera market.
per and s good, if not better.
a simp tion.
ing sho he same thing to German running shoes?
and Pu d that world completely.
ympics, track and field athletes wore Adidas.
us runn he 60s, that’s what you wore.
his ide s classmates with passion and intensity,
with wh alled labored sighs and vacant stares.
him an nobody else cared.
stop t about it.
hit, h it on thick.
ked, da
to see rld?





f stopp in Japan, dad.
dea?
oes?
ad.

shipped tability.
ou get you buy a house, and you live a normal life.
propos the opposite.
ound th to chase an idea about importing shoes.
unexpec pens.
ight of levision, his father walks forward in his recliner and
gretted aveling more when he was young.
t be th hing touch to his son’s education.
ays, ok k, okay.
and fl ore the old man can change his mind.
in Nov f 1962.
l rebui rom the war.
ur trai from Tokyo to Kobe, packed against strangers.
executi a company called Onitsuka, which makes athletic shoes under the

s comin
ver eve of him.
re, he’ ted into this conference room with four executives seated

e bows, eryone sits.
m asks, ompany do you represent?

ompany.
to his ood, to the blue ribbons he’d worn at track meets.
I repr lue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon.
bon Spo sn’t exist, but it will if they give him a chance.
as goin imself right now is an unwavering belief in what he’s

orce th create Nike.
his co n, and it’s contagious.
s pitch
Stanfor all over again, delivered with all the passion of a man who
.
capture erican market.
e.

e right butor.
merican s.
nner.
here’s silence.
er in r panese talking over each other, and then they stand up and

re.
lown it
ater, t e back carrying shoe samples.
deal.
les of shipped to his father’s house in Oregon.

.

p aroun orld.
s in At e stops in front of the temple of Athena Nike.
oddess ory.
cable c on to the place.
owing i
will b he most famous brand in sports.
regon i and waits.

ive for .
e gets s an accountant.
orld, h y idea looks like it’s gone nowhere.
s paren l.
nally a he does something clever.
to Bill an, his old track coach at Oregon.
ndersta Bowerman was at the time.
running
ost res coaches in the country.

athlete
ifferen n obsession.
nkering hoes.
, shave ight, add foam.
e his r an edge.
f fish
h kanga ther.
ly a ma tist who happened to coach track.
tigers g that Bowerman might like them and maybe recommend them to a few athletes.
like t

at the litan Hotel in Portland, Bowerman makes him an offer.
.
t that econd.
h no tr ord, no money, no infrastructure, selling shoes out of the trunk of his Plymouth.
ted tra h in America is sitting across the table offering to go house.
man did w him at all.
m.
eap.
s at th hose approval he crept even more than his father’s and said yes.

he fel he was daring to negotiate with God.
ng char
this a young man that others had missed.
ness se ugh to bet real money on it.
Blue R ports is officially born.
n $500.
d be wo lions.
l years t lives a double life.
ectable tant.
kends, shoe peddler.
Plymou nd the Pacific Northwest, pops open the trunk, lays out the tires, and waits for runners to wander over.
out pro and cushioning and weight.
compla out existing shoes and makes notes about everything that’s wrong.


e Ribbo es $8,000.
gross 16,000.

ber dou
trovert
f is ir ble.
ing and ieves in these shoes.
l his c on and it’s contagious.
es in s g so totally, we respond to it.

ething ems obvious but wasn’t common at the time.
about t uct.
law, he it.
ter for ain foot type, he says so.
lling a r shoe.
and he t exaggerate.
runners seeking him out.
ends.
lue Rib
s a rep .
t they’ ing about.
.
s, Knig ts hiring.
ires ar hat you’d expect.
oyee is ohnson, a runner and former competitor.
e.
ng, ram etters about everything from shoe design to the meaning of life.
ever wr ck.
ng anyw
s that s his approval and Knight never gives it to him.
odle, a who became paralyzed from the waist down after a freak accident.
without tion.
t to be the most resourceful people in the company.
yes and er, one by one the oddballs and misfits,
t anywh e.
they f
emarkab t this.
manage h.
nal sen
ement s sed entirely on trust.
robably t neglect.
e East tells him to open a store, then a factory.
ufactur erience.
harge o tions.
ience.
out of .
licitly
s adher the wisdom of General Patton.
ow to d s.
o.
se you e results.
ted the autonomy, they rewarded him with devotion.
misfit ad walked through fire for each other and for the company.
paid th , because he didn’t, at least not for years.
ething of them that the world had missed.
rest of careers proving him right.
s off b his team, Bowerman was doing
s did.

ing in e’s having breakfast with his wife.
taring waffle iron.

ubber i
e waffl es became treads on a shoe sole?
fle iro s it into his workshop, and starts experimenting.
uins th e iron.
ot happ comes out of that experiment totally changes the company.
ps the better than anything on the market.
on trac avement, all without adding weight.
ea that obvious after someone else does it, but nobody had done it.
ooked a ife’s kitchen appliance and thought, running shoes.
s the f on for the waffle trainer, which helps fuel the running boom of the 1970s.
oduct t ‘t borrowed from somebody else’s factory.
at dest affle iron is recovered from a garbage pit.
on a di ase at Nike headquarters, proof that innovation doesn’t require an expensive lab or a big budget.
he stor dark.
60s an 70s, Blue Ribbon grew fast.
year.
with de
sophy i is growth, you grow or you die.
ng them
is brut
or shoe Japan months before he can sell them in America.
borrowi cing orders he can barely afford, and then scrambling to sell enough to pay back the loans before the next shipment arrives.
d it’s g up.
lier tu tile.
ell he’ and starts asking the obvious question, why do we need a middleman?
for way t Blue Ribbon out entirely.
one.
n kicke f multiple banks for being too leveraged.
ch them
y is le nsolvent.
and th are getting hostile.
is sit the docks and it needs to be paid for.
sense, e finished.
l rolls night’s office.
the wh r who runs operations, tells Knight that his parents want to lend the company their life savings.
rest.

odall h d sits with Bob’s parents.
king at odest home, that these people are not rich.
their s
g this s reckless.
s, he w e destroyed the retirement of the parents of one of his most loyal employees.
take th ey, but he has no choice.
f he ne e.
3,000.
avings , but they’ll do it.
.

door, n hand, he asks Miss Woodall why she’s doing this.
d says, can’t trust the company your son is working for, then who can you trust?
happeni .
sheet t tified this investment.
hat wou h Blue Ribbon.
watched give her paralyzed son a chance when no one else would.
at Bob spect, with real responsibility, and with trust.
t a man uld do that was worth betting everything on.
ught ti it didn’t fix the real problem.
hat One as actively shopping for other American distributors.
ve him rt was now trying to cut him out.
t built ibbon was dying.
ce.
nship t already dead or bet everything on making his own shoe.
a Japan ding company called Nishu, he found new manufacturers.
signing own products.
ted the ike after it came to him in a dream.
udent n rolyn Davidson created this swoosh logo that is so popular today for $35.
hen he was, I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.
its deb he National Sporting Goods Association show in Chicago.
ed.
s were , but buyers trusted Blue Ribbon enough to give them a shot.
he shoe se they were perfect.
cause t ieved in the people behind them.
ut the risis was still coming.
ncing w rican banks wouldn’t, buying shoes from the factories up front so Nike could use his cash to actually run the business.
re perf ligned.
Nike s e more Nishu earned.
ership.
f Calif ulled the plug.
f his a ve borrowing.
a clien then they did something worse.
ccount FBI because they suspected fraud.
ing, th ny would collapse within weeks, and now Nike might face criminal charges on top of it.
Nishu.
blem.
ishu’s o secretly fund a factory in New Hampshire.
ce his nce on Japanese manufacturers, and it was a smart long-term move, but it was also a clear violation of his agreement with Nishu.
get aw it, and now he’d have to get caught.
nto Nis fices and sat across from a terrifyingly stoic executive that he privately called the Iceman.
erythin
them, t might investigating, and oh, by the way, he’d been secretly diverting their money into an unauthorized factory.
partne now he was at their mercy.
all in, en he looked at Knight, and he said, there are worse things than ambition.
is extr ry.
ust for ight.
Bank of rnia, paid off Nike’s entire debt on the spot, and then told the bank that Nishu would be terminating its own relationship with them.
r a sec
any jus d a bridge with a major American bank to defend a tiny shoe operation based out of Oregon.
he debt ceman said two words, such stupidity.
he was about him, but he was talking about the bank.
tinued, ot like stupidity.
attent the numbers.
the pat at runs through the entire Nike story.
hed the operate.
treated , how they ran toward problems, how they cared about the product.
terribl
and not lance sheet.
Nike h ters today named after Nishu, a small tribute to a debt that can never be fully repaid.
g and t crisis behind them, Nike entered its golden age.
anythin planned.
rted ru
cated A named Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in Munich.
ve.
watched ean, determined man cross the finish line and something shifted.
d up.
suburb walks.
ew York on had 127 finishers.
ecade, tens of thousands.
he runn m, but they were the only company ready for it.

caught cause it’s better traction, better cushioning, and a better price.
everyon uding Phil, was what happened next.
ng them
l wrote book.

volve i from popular accessory to cultural artifact, I had a thought.
wearing hing to class, and the office, and the grocery store, and throughout their everyday lives.
athleti were for athletics.
n, then anged.
runnin to the grocery store was radical.
ll deci at turned out to be enormous.
le trai blue, to go with jeans.
ough.
reps w their knees, pleading for all the waffle trainers we could ship.
jeans.
ike sto ing a running company and started becoming a lifestyle brand.
elling ance anymore.
dentity
the pow thlete endorsements.
, they ter the best.
refonta
d every an record from 2,000 to 10,000 meters.
lious, erly devoted to the sport.
Nike.

alled h soul of Nike.
n a car nt in 1975, at just 24, the company was devastated.
me part ir DNA.
at thei s today named after him and even a statue.
he 1970 sales hit $270 million.
f of th can athletic shoe market.
s in th d States.
000 had into the biggest name in American sports.
its own ms.
, the m h they consumed.
hey con the more vulnerable it became to forces beyond its control.
d its f its competitors found a weapon.
rican s panies had watched this upstart from Oregon eat their market share for a decade.
Nike on t, and they couldn’t beat them on price.
hington
ure cus le that let the government recalculate import duties,
ike act aid for shoes overseas,
Americ shoes sold for domestically.
enormou they got it applied retroactively.
s $25 m
ue at t was $24 million.
demandi than the company earned in a year.

any law
rted le
rrectly time.
ive rul e,
titors ldn’t win in the market.
n in a racy.
he wen ical.


‘t abou cting American jobs.
ting Am companies from competition.
on for and Phil Knight described it as one of the most stressful
, which everything else he’d survived, tells you something.
he beli ey would lose, that this arbitrary bureaucratic weapon would
ks, sup and the FBI had all failed to do.
tled fo llion, still a staggering sum at the time.
ght Phi t something every successful founder eventually learns.
mies.
t beat the market will try to beat you in court, in the press,
ernment
the fi
a.
rced a n on the butt faces, one that they had resisted for years.
hest.
to sur atever came next.
d been n a handshake and loyalty was about to go public.
80, Nik public at $22 a share.
irst da ading, the company is valued at hundreds of millions of

d who b $1,000 from his father to chase a crazy idea halfway around
about llion on paper.
ribe th as a triumph.
a kind h.
based c he built was now a public corporation.
d answe alysts.
ginal t e misfits who’d built this thing with him, and they sat
.

.
nding,
I want uild something that would last, but I also wanted to build
d stay nough to feel like family.
.
f at th of every company that succeeds.
and pre he culture, or you can grow and change the world.
d to do
se grow
st of h er mourning what it cost.
r the C War, the labor controversies, and the endless expansion
f sport story circles back to where it all started.
es aske private word with Phil Knight.
ron as ger before he had played a single professional game.
on an n kid from Akron, Ohio.
hil Kni ift.
1972, r Nike was founded.
back, , with thanks for taking a chance on me.
here ho hat watch, and the whole journey collapsed into a single frame.
hance o hen the crazy idea made no sense.
nce ove rgers at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.
ts hand their entire life savings with no interest.
debts w FBI was circling, and now LeBron was thanking Phil Knight for
g all t le had done for him.
worked e people trusted the man crazy enough to pursue it.
nt his career trying to be worthy of that trust.
y, not gracefully, but relentlessly.
f Phil
f Nike.
ning an ing with me.
eek.