Hard, brown, ancient, he possessed a prehistoric strain of maleness, a blend of grit and integrity and calcified stubbornness that was rare in Lyndon Johnson’s America. Today it’s all but extinct.
It’s hard enough to invent and manufacture and market a product, but then the logistics, the mechanics, the hydraulics of getting it to the people who want it, when they want it – this is how companies die, how ulcers are born.
In the timeless, clarifying light of that moon, I begin to make a list.
I think of the countless Nike offices around the world. At each one, no matter the country, the phone number ends in 6453, which spells out Nike on the keypad. But, by pure chance, from right to left it also spells out Pre’s best time in the mile, to the tenth of a second: 3:54.6.
As ever, the accountant in me saw the risk, the entrepreneur saw the possibility. So I split the difference and kept moving forward.
I’d always suspected, the essence of beauty or truth, or all we ever need to know of either, lay somewhere in that moment when the ball is in midair, when both boxers sense the approach of the bell, when the runners 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.
This database enabled Johnson to keep in touch with all his customers, at all times, and to keep them all feeling special. He sent them Christmas cards. He sent them birthday cards. He sent them notes of congratulation after they completed a big race or marathon.
It was my first real awareness that not everyone in this world will like us, or accept us, that we’re often cast aside at the very moment we most need to be included.
Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation.
He was waiting for me to bend, to up my offer, but for once in my life I had leverage, because I had nothing left to give. “Take it or leave it” is like four of a kind. Hard to beat.
I felt that same sense of betrayal when Nike came under attack for conditions in our overseas factories – the so-called sweatshop controversy. Whenever reporters said a factory was unsatisfactory, they never said how much better it was than the day we first went in.
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 green running shoes. Then slipped quietly out the back door. I stretched my legs, my hamstrings, my lower back, and groaned as I took the.
When you hired an accountant, you knew he or she could count. When you hired a lawyer, you knew he or she could talk. When you hired a marketing expert, or product developer, what did you know? Nothing. You couldn’t predict what he or she could do, or if he or she could do anything.
He’s one of the best storytellers in the history of Nike. My favorite, naturally, is the one about the day we went public. He sat his parents down and told them the news. “What does that mean?” they whispered. “It means your original eight-thousand-dollar loan to Phil is worth $1.6 million.” They looked at each other, looked at Woodell. “I don’t understand,” his mother said. If you can’t trust the company your son works for, who can you trust?
But I was wrong. His parents had a little bit more, and they asked if I needed that, too. And I said yes. And they gave me their last three thousand dollars, draining their savings down to zero. How I wished I could put that check in my desk drawer and not cash it. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. On my way out the door I stopped. I asked them: “Why are you doing this?” “Because,” Woodell’s mother said, “if you can’t trust the company your son is working for, then who can you trust?
Johnson phoned first thing this morning,” he said. “Apparently a new name came to him in a dream last night.” I rolled my eyes. “A dream?” “He’s serious,” Woodell said. “He’s always serious.” “He says he sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and saw the name before him,” Woodell said. “What is it?” I asked, bracing myself. “Nike.” “Huh?” “Nike.” “Spell it.” “N-I-K-E,” Woodell said. I wrote it on a yellow legal pad. The Greek goddess of victory. The Acropolis.
Because mothers are our first coaches.
I didn’t consider myself an optimist by nature. Not that I was a pessimist. I generally tried to hover between the two, committing to neither.
By then Prefontaine was universally known as Pre, and he was far more than a phenom; he was an outright superstar. He was the biggest thing to hit the world of American track and field since Jesse Owens. Sportswriters frequently compared him to James Dean, and Mick Jagger, and Runner’s World said the most apt comparison might be Muhammad Ali. He was that kind of swaggery, transformative figure.
I was following a path that felt like my path, and though I wasn’t sure where it would lead, I was ready to find out.