- Even today as big as Nike is
with over 60,000 employees,
the key thing is people.
I think in many ways
the success that Nike has today
really came out of the soul searching
that was done in the mid 1980s
when Reebok went past us.
I know they asked me
on one of the rare TV interviews
from 25 years ago
if I wanted to meet the president of Reebok
and I said no.
I says I don't know him,
I don't like him,
and I don't want to like him.
It's more than just a business.
It's more than just sports.
It is a mission.
- He's an American business magnet and philanthropist.
He's the Co-Founder
and Chairman Emeritus of Nike.
He has an estimated net worth of 25.5 billion dollars.
He's Phil Knight and here's my take
on his top 10 rules for success.
Rule number eight is my personal favorite
and make sure to stick around all the way to the end
for some special bonus clips.
Also, as Phil is talking,
if he says something that is meaningful to you
that you want to remember,
make sure to write it down in the comments below
and put quotes around it
so other people can be inspired as well.
- You're a runner
with a track coach that you're very fond of,
an accountant,
and a Stanford Business School grad.
- All those things.
- And all of that produced a crazy idea.
How did it come to you?
- Well it was a combination of two things.
It came off the running track at Oregon
and out of the classroom
at Stanford Business School.
And that Bowerman was always tinkering with shoes,
and he began to have some of his good runners,
not just his hacks like me,
wear the shoes.
And they were wearing them quite successfully,
and he was very sincere in believing
the weight of the shoe was
very important to a runner.
And so that registered.
All the best shoes were being made in Germany.
It made no sense that you would make shoes,
Adidas and Puma,
make no sense that they'd be made in Germany.
So I wrote the paper about
they should make them in Japan
and the idea built and built and built,
and it became a crazy idea to everybody
but me and my college professor,
and then my old track coach.
- If you were talking to a young entrepreneur today,
what would you say about
how a great team gets put together?
About the role of a CEO
in supporting, shaping,
interacting with that team?
- Yeah, it's life and death.
I think even today
as big as Nike is with over 60,000 employees,
the key thing is people.
So when you're starting out
obviously getting the right people,
that's life and death.
And then not only the right people
but getting them to work together
and work for a common purpose.
I've always said,
two nines working together
will beat two tens working apart any day.
- And how do you do that?
- Well, get the right people is number one,
and then giving them the environment
and maybe a little bit of leadership
that allows them to keep doing that.
- And the environment for good,
for the ability to get
different people to work together.
I'm looking for how you would articulate,
what is that thing you put in the environment?
- Well, now you're getting into management,
and there's all kinds of
different management styles.
And you have to kind of recognize
that each person is an individual.
But I always liked Sparky Anderson,
the manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
He says, do you treat all players the same?
Hell no, he says.
If Johnny Bench wants a day off,
he gets it off.
If a rookie wants a day off,
I said, get your ass out on the field.
And I think that's a good management principle by itself.
The key thing for us was the product.
And our whole focus
for the first 10 years of the company
was building a better mousetrap,
having a better running shoe,
having a better basketball shoe,
having more cushioning in different shoes.
And innovating every six months
and spending a lot of money on research and development.
Spending a lot of money on a lab.
And the product process
really was developed far in advance
of anything else that we did.
The most important thing is you have to...
there's two sides.
There's really sort of the intellectual
or mental side.
You have to pick a business that has a niche.
You have to have a reason to succeed.
You have to be something like we were doing
and say Japan can beat Germany
in the manufacturing of this type of a product.
That was the niche really.
And then on that,
you just have to have
a total and complete passion,
because there's going to be so many dark moments.
I think the dark moments are true
for any entrepreneur
or any startup company.
I'm sure that you talk to Steve Jobs in Apple,
you'd see many, many dark, dark moments.
Ours happened to last a little longer than most of 'em,
but you really emotionally have to be prepared
for those dark moments.
- I think every entrepreneur I've ever spoken to
would echo that.
That there are dark moments
when everything's on the line.
- That's the life of an entrepreneur.
And so you're going to be into it,
you better be prepared for that.
Before there was success,
there was defeat.
We were kicked out of two banks.
We borrowed money once from a shoebox manufacturer
to meet the payroll.
On another time,
we had to sell $2500 at a National PE Convention
in Seattle, Washington, on a Friday
so we could meet payroll on Monday.
In all those cases,
the lessons from the fields and the courts,
the lessons of competitive response
were the most valuable of all.
I think in many ways,
the success that Nike has today
really came out of the soul searching
that was done in the mid 1980s
when Reebok went past us,
that essentially we had to decide
who we were and what we were
and try and build off of that
and really defend those values
that really determined,
that dictated what our persona was as a company.
- [Narrator] Knight refocused the brand on pure sport
and reorganized the company.
Ten Commandments emerged.
Break the rules, fight the law.
This is as much about battle as out business.
It won't be pretty.
And lastly, if we do the right things,
we'll make money damn near automatic.
- I have in my travels
occasionally met promising young people
who insist they are not
going to ask for help along the way.
They want to figure it out themselves.
Mine was the opposite approach.
It is hard enough out there.
Get all the help you can.
Getting help really is just a part
of a lifelong search for wisdom.
Brands are one of the most interesting parts of business.
But I mean basically,
a brand stands for something.
It creates an emotion in a person's mind
to either positive or negative,
that brings out all kinds of reactions
to that brand.
And when we got to start our own brand
and have our own name,
we were very ambitious in some of the things
that we wanted it to stand for.
But as you stop and think about
brands around the world,
from Sony and Coca Cola and Rolls Royce.
Where they all stand for very different things,
but they all create an emotional response
and something that's really strong and powerful.
- I was developing
an unhealthy contempt for Adidas, you say,
or maybe it was healthy.
I despised them.
- Yeah.
- I'm curious what you make of the competition right now?
Adidas is coming back from a soft patch.
And there are upstarts like Under Armour
that are making headway
on athletes and on sales.
- Well I think, I'm sort of a worrier by nature
and so everybody is concerned.
But I'm still the same as I was before.
I know they asked me
on one of the rare TV interviews from 25 years ago
if I wanted to meet the president of Reebok,
and I said no.
I says I don't know him,
I don't like him
and I don't want to like him.
And I still feel that way about the competition.
- What about Under Armour in the U.S. market?
- They're one of 'em. - Is there room for three?
- They're one of 'em.
There are lots of them that we compete with.
But believe me, we will compete.
- [Narrator] Phil Knight built Nike's corporate headquarters
in Portland, Oregon,
as a shrine to sporting excellence.
It's part cathedral,
part university campus.
Each building has its own patron saint.
Icons adorn every wall.
As they walk down the cloisters,
disciples are encouraged to contemplate
the deeds of Nike heroes
past and present.
- Heritage is the glue that holds
great companies together.
Because you have to love what you're doing.
Because this is the way people have chosen
to work in the world.
And if you're going to work for a company,
you might as well love what you do.
And for us,
it's understanding the roots that gives people
the energy and the fire
and the appreciation for competition in sport.
And that passion,
you can only get it if
you're hooked into why you exist.
Our employees understand,
what are we doing here?
Why do we exist?
And if they understand that, everybody excels.
- [Narrator] To approach the main door,
workers walk along the Rocky Road,
which symbolizes man's journey from an uncertain past
to a more promising Nike future.
- It's more than just a business.
It's more than just sports.
It is a mission.
This is what we've committed our lives to doing,
so let's make it something worthwhile.
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because
MrOldFashionedlover asked me to.
So if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it down in the comments below,
and I'll see what I could do.
I'd just love to know
which of Phil's top 10 rules
had the biggest impact on you and why?
What change you're going to make in your life or business
as a result of watching this video?
Leave in the comments,
I will join in the discussion.
Finally, I want to take a quick shout out
to Orquidea Gutierez.
I hope I pronounced that okay.
Thank you so much for buying my book.
It really means a lot to me.
For those of you watching,
you want a chance at a shout out in a future video,
make sure to pick up a copy of the book
and email in your receipt
so we can keep track.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
Continue to believe
or whatever your one word is,
and I'll see you soon.
- The swoosh, the very famous Nike swoosh.
How much you pay for that design?
- There was a graphic art student at Portland State
that had done some work for us,
and she charged $2 an hour.
And we said, how about coming up with a
logo for the shoe?
And she spent 17 1/2 hours on it,
so it cost us $35.
And as I said,
it's easily worth it.
It turned out to be fairly iconic.
But when we went public in 1980,
we gave her 500 shares of stock,
which she still owns.
She's never sold a share
and that's worth a million dollars now too.
- So good for her.
- So story had a happy ending.