#186 Phil Knight (Nike)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show. So we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. I was up before the others, before the birds, before the sun. I drank a cup of coffee, wolfed down a piece of toast, put on my shorts and sweatshirt, and laced up my running shoes. Then I slipped quietly out the back door.
I stretched my legs, my hamstrings, my lower back, and groaned as I took the first few steps down the cool road into the fog.
Why is it always so hard to get started?
There were no cars, no people, no signs of life. I was all alone, the world to myself.
That foggy morning, that momentous morning in 1962, I had recently blazed my own trail, back home after seven long years away.
It was strange being home again, strange being lashed again by the daily rains. Stranger still was living again with my parents and twin sisters, sleeping in my childhood bed.
Late at night, I'd lie on my back, staring at my college textbooks, my high school trophies, and blue ribbons, thinking, this is me? Still, on paper, I thought, I'm an adult. I graduated from a good college, University of Oregon, earned a master's from a top business school, Stanford, survived a year-long hitch in the US. Army. My resume said I was a learned, accomplished soldier, a 24-year-old man in full. So why, I wondered, why do I still feel like a kid?
I would have found it difficult to say what or who exactly I was or I might become. Like all of 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.
I wanted to leave a mark on the world. I wanted to win. No, no, that's not right. I simply didn't want to lose.
And then it happened. As my heart began to thump, as my lungs expanded like the wings of a bird, as the trees turned to greenish blurs, I saw it all before me, exactly what I wanted my life to be, play.
Yes, I thought, that's it. That's the word. The secret of happiness, I'd always suspected, the essence of beauty or truth or all that we ever need to know of either, lays somewhere in that moment when the ball is in midair, when both boxers sense the approach of the bell, when the runner's near the finish line and the crowd rises as one. There's a kind of exuberant clarity in that pulsing half second before winning and losing are decided. I wanted that, whatever that was, to be my life, my daily life.
At different times I'd fantasized about becoming a great novelist, a great journalist, a great statesman. But the ultimate dream was always to be a great athlete.
Sadly, fated made me good, not great. I'd run a track at Oregon and I'd distinguish myself. But that was that, the end.
Now, as I began to clip off one brisk, six mile after another, I asked myself, what if there was a way without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing?