flâneur

Founders: #186 Phil Knight (Nike)

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What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- [2:02] 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. [6:18] So that morning in 1962 I told myself: 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. That's the precocious, prescient, urgent advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it's the best advice-maybe the only advice-any of us should ever give. [10:32] They greeted my passion and intensity with labored sighs and vacant stares. [16:48] Carter never did mess around. See an open shot, take it. I told myself there was much to learn from a guy like th

[00:00:00] 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…

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