It didnât matter. Just before getting on the plane home we signed deals with two Chinese factories, and officially became the first American shoemaker in twenty-five years to be allowed to do business in China.
It seems wrong to call it âbusiness.â It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more.
Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higherâand none of us wavered in the belief that âstakesâ didnât mean âmoney.â
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 isnât our mission as human beings. Itâs a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of livingâand at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive.
That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud.
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 isâyouâre participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, youâre helping others to live more fully, and if thatâs business, all right, call me a businessman.
Maybe it will grow on me.
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WE CHOSE A date for the offering. December 2, 1980. The last remaining hurdle was settling on a price.â
The whole process was crazy-making, because it was imprecise. There was no right number. It was all a matter of opinion, feeling, selling. Sellingâthatâs what Iâd been doing for much of these last eighteen years, and I was tired of it. I didnât want to sell anymore. Our stock was worth twenty-two dollars a share. That was the number. Weâd earned that number.
We deserved to be on the high end of the price range. 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. If a bunch of Wall Street guys didnât see it that way, I was ready to walk away from the deal.
âGentlemen,â the loud voice said. âWe have a deal. Weâll send it out to market this Friday.â
I drove home. I remember the boys were outside playing. Penny was standing in the kitchen. âHow was your day?â she said.
âHm. Okay.â
âGood.â
âWe got our price.â
She smiled. âOf course you did.â
I went for a long run.
Then I took a hot, hot shower.
Then I had a quick dinner.
Then I tucked in the boys and gave them a story.
The year was 1773. Privates Matt and Travis were fighting under the command of General Washington. Cold, tired, hungry, their uniforms in tatters, they camped for the winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
They slept in log huts, wedged between two mountains: Mount Joy and Mount Misery. Morning till night, bitter cold winds sliced through the mountains and barreled through the chinks in the huts. Food was scarce; only a third of the men had shoes.
Whenever they walked outside, they left bloody footprints in the snow. Thousands died. But Matt and Travis held on. Finally, spring came. The troops got word that the British had retreated, and the French were coming to the aid of the colonists. Privates Matt and Travis knew from then on that they could live through anything. Mount Joy, Mount Misery.
The End.
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By this time next week Bowerman would be worth $9 million.
Caleâ$6.6 million.
Woodell, Johnson, Hayes, Strasserâeach about $6 million.
Fantasy numbers. Numbers that meant nothing. I never knew that numbers could mean so much, and so little, at the same time.
I asked myself: What are you feeling?
It wasnât joy. It wasnât 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.â
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.
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CRISIS
Of course my handling of the crisis only made it worse. Angry, hurt, I often reacted with self-righteousness, petulance, anger. On some level I knew my reaction was toxic, counterproductive, but I couldnât stop myself. Itâs just not easy to remain even-keeled when you wake up one day, thinking youâre creating jobs and helping poor countries modernize and enabling athletes to achieve greatness, only to find yourself being burned in effigy outside the flagship retail store in your own hometown.
The company reacted as I did. Emotionally. Everyone was reeling. Many late nights in Beaverton, youâd find all the lights on, and soul-searching conversations taking place in various conference rooms and offices.
Though we knew that much of the criticism was unjust, that Nike was a symbol, a scapegoat, more than the true culprit, all of that was beside the point.
We had to admit: We could do better.
We told ourselves: We must do better.
Then we told the world: Just watch. Weâll make our factories shining examples.
And we did. In the ten years since the bad headlines and lurid exposĂŠs, weâve used the crisis to reinvent the entire company.
For instance. One of the worst things about a shoe factory used to be the rubber room, where uppers and soles are bonded. The fumes are choking, toxic, cancer-causing. So we invented a water-based bonding agent that gives off no fumes, thereby eliminating 97 percent of the carcinogens in the air. Then we gave this invention to our competitors, handed it over to anyone who wanted it.
They all did. Nearly all of them now use it.
One of many, many examples.
Weâve gone from a target of reformers to a dominant player in the factory reform movement. Today the factories that make our products are among the best in the world. An official at the United Nations recently said so: Nike is the gold standard by which we measure all apparel factories.
âWHEN 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 thatâs 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.â
NEVER GIVE UP
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 doesnât mean stopping. Donât ever stop.
Luck plays a big role. Yes, Iâd 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, or Logos, or JĂąÄna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.
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.â
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To study the self is to forget the self. Mi casa, su casa.
âYou measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.â - The Bucket List
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Excerpt From: Phil Knight. âShoe Dog.â
