Top highlights from Shoe Dog
The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.
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The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.
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Dont tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
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Id 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 dont know what that means, seek it. If youre following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing youve ever felt.
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Life is growth. You grow or you die.
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When you see only problems, youre not seeing clearly.
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So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy... just keep going. Dont stop. Dont even think about stopping until you get there, and dont give much thought to where there is. Whatever comes, just dont stop.
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You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break. I
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Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other peoples victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete.
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Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart. In
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How can I leave my mark on the world, I thought, unless I get out there first and see it?
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I thought back on my running career at Oregon. Id competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet Id trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but thats only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, Id learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You
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And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesnt mean stopping. Dont ever stop. Luck plays a big role. Yes, Id like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God. Put
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Like it or not, life is a game.
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I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.
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Its never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.
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Starting my own business was the only thing that made lifes other risksmarriage, Vegas, alligator wrestlingseem like sure things. But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, Id fail quickly, so Id have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasnt much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.
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Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.
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In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts mind there are few. Shunryu
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But thats the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.
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I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.
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The art of competing, Id learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.
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Driving back to Portland Id puzzle over my sudden success at selling. Id been unable to sell encyclopedias, and Id despised it to boot. Id been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but Id felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasnt selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Sometimes
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He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to-equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.
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Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome.
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There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. Signs
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History is one long processional of crazy ideas.
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If youre following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing youve ever felt. Id
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I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, thats what I believed, no matter the situation.
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When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom isyoure participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, youre helping others to live more fully, and if thats business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me. THERE
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Dont go to sleep one night, wrote Rm, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then.
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People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but thats only true of people who can forget the competition.
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the best way to reinforce your knowledge of a subject is to share it,
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You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. I
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I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time.
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Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets gets left on the sidelines, and I didn't want that.
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He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk toequally important qualities in a friend.
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What if there were 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.
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No matter the sport-no matter the human endeavor, really-total effort will win people's hearts
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God, how I wish I could relive the whole thing. Short of that, I'd like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so 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. I'd like to warn the best of them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bull's-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bull's-eye. It's not one man's opinion; it's a law of nature.
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All is vanity, says the Bible. All is now, says Zen, All is dust, says the desert.
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Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.
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When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom isyoure participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, youre helping others to live more fully, and if thats business, all right, call me a businessman.
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I thought of that phrase, Its just business. Its never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.
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So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy... just keep going. Dont stop. Dont even think about stopping until you get there, and dont give much thought to where there is. Whatever comes, just dont stop. Thats
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No brilliant idea was ever born in a conference room, he assured the Dane. But a lot of silly ideas have died there, said Stahr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon
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I told her that I flat-out didnt want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.
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But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I'd fail quickly, so I'd have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn't much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.
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We must all be professors of the jungle.
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It seems wrong to call it "business". It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higherand none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes" didn't mean "money". For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for use business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It's a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of livingand at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great business do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the life of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom isyou're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping other to live more fully, and if that's business, all right, call me a businessman.
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Whatever comes, just dont stop. Thats
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confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.
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One ounce sliced off a pair of shoes, he said, is equivalent to 55 pounds over one mile. He wasnt kidding. His math was solid. You take the average mans stride of six feet, spread it out over a mile (5,280 feet), you get 880 steps. Remove one ounce from each stepthats 55 pounds on the button. Lightness, Bowerman believed, directly translated to less burden, which meant more energy, which meant more speed. And speed equaled winning. Bowerman didnt like to lose. (I got it from him.) Thus lightness was his constant goal. Goal
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Though Ive been known to call business war without bullets, its actually a wonderful bulwark against war. Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity.
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If my life was to be all work no play, I wanted my work to be play.
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When it came rolling in, the money affected us all. Not much, and not for long, because none of us was ever driven by money. But that's the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.
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For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. Its hard. Its painful. Its risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. Its not just that theres no finish line; its that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. Its all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself. Every
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Theres 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
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Fight not to win, but to avoid losing. A surefire losing strategy.
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