I’d like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so that some young man or woman, somewhere, going through the same trials and ordeals, might be inspired or comforted. Or warned. Some young entrepreneur maybe, some athlete or painter or novelist, might press on. It’s all the same drive. The same dream. It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I’d tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling.
Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.
Nike DBreak-Type
I read Phil Knight’s memoir two years ago and thought of it when I bought a new pair of Nikes over the weekend, the DBreak-Type, a reinterpretation of early Bowerman prototypes (Bowerman, an Olympic running coach, was one of Nike’s cofounders and created many of the designs for the original Nike models).
Knight came up with the “Crazy Idea” of importing and selling shoes during business school and decided to take the leap of faith while on a run through green Oregon forest during a moment of enlightenment.
Looking back through my notes, it is striking to re-live Bowerman’s journey as an entrepreneur. Having served in the army on active duty for a year and later graduating from one of the country’s top business schools, he recalls still feeling like a kid at age 24 and yearning for life experience. During the aforementioned run he realized how finite life is, and later thought about how we wanted to spend his time on earth. Sure, he didn’t mind striving for the usual trappings of success- money, a home, a family- but he realized he wanted something more. Play. He wanted a job that he enjoyed so much it didn’t feel like work.
He went on a trip to Japan to find a shoe supplier but decided to travel the world along the way, making pit stops in Hawaii, the Philippines, India, Cairo and fatefully Greece, where he found himself in awe of The Parthenon and discovered the Goddess of Victory, Nike, who would later become his company’s namesake.
This trip was oddly reminiscent of The Alchemist, in which a shepherd boy leaves his home in search of the Pyramids, which he saw in a dream. He didn’t know quite why he set off on the trip, he just knew he needed to, for the sake of the journey, in search of his Personal Treasure. This was very much the case with Phil Knight.
Ever the pragmatist, Phil did secure a day job working as an accountant, but dedicated his time outside of normal work hours towards building his business, his Crazy Idea.
He found like-minded folks who he brought on as partners along the way. All smart people who wanted…more. In a scene in which they’re preparing for their first initial public offering, he describes the motley crew he put together that was helping make his dream a reality:
Each of us has been misunderstood, misjudged, dismissed. Shunned by bosses, spurned by luck, rejected by society, short-changed by fate when looks and other natural graces were handed out. We’d each been forged by early failure. We’d each given ourselves to some quest, some attempt at validation or meaning, and fallen short.
In essence, he partnered with people who had similar entrepreneurial aspirations, who had faced some sort of previous adversity and had something to prove. It is an underdog story, of sorts. Or rather, a Shoe Dog story.
Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you.
Not only does the book describe the journey of someone who took risks and put everything they had into their business, it also tells of different managerial styles, and ways to overcome challenges that very much fall under the category of stoicism. “The obstacle is the way.”
And maybe it would cure my burnout. Maybe the cure for any burnout, I thought, is to just work harder.
The cowards never started and the weak died along the way.
If you have not read this book, I highly recommend if you’re interested in start-up stories and “how people made it.” There’s no secret sauce. The more of these types of books I read, the more it becomes clear that successful people work hard, leverage what they’re good at, and create teams of people that fill in the areas in which they’re weak. Elon Musk can’t build a rocket by himself. But he surrounds himself with disparate people that, when working together as a team, can.