Ep 37: Nike's Story-Part 1: Phil Knight’s Incredible Journey Before Nike Existed

How does one of the world's most iconic brands begin?

Not with millions of dollars.

Not with investors.

Not with a perfect business plan.

It started with a young man who borrowed money from his father, got rejected by banks, struggled with self-doubt, and became obsessed with a simple question:

Could Japanese running shoes compete with industry giants like Adidas and Puma?

In this special episode of the Swedish Wealth Institute Podcast, Daniel Wood begins a new storytelling series by unpacking the remarkable early life of Nike founder Phil Knight and the events that set the stage for one of the most successful companies in business history.

From Phil Knight's childhood in Oregon to his years as a runner under legendary coach Bill Bowerman, his time at Stanford, military service, and world travels, this episode reveals the hidden moments that shaped the future founder of Nike.

You'll hear how a rejected business school paper became the foundation of a global brand, why Phil Knight constantly felt the need to prove himself, and how one trip to Japan changed everything.

This is Part 1 of the Nike story.

And the company hasn't even started yet.

If you enjoy entrepreneurship, business history, leadership, resilience, innovation, and the stories behind world-changing companies, this episode is for you.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

• The childhood experiences that shaped Phil Knight's mindset

• How Phil Knight's relationship with his parents influenced his drive to succeed

• Why getting cut from a baseball team became a turning point

• The role legendary coach Bill Bowerman played in Nike's future

• How Bowerman's obsession with shoe innovation inspired Phil Knight

• What Phil Knight learned from military service

• The Stanford business assignment that sparked the Nike idea

• Why Japanese manufacturing caught Phil Knight's attention

• How Adidas and Puma dominated the athletic footwear market

• The entrepreneurial opportunity Phil Knight spotted before anyone else

• What happened during Phil Knight's travels through Hawaii and Asia

• The importance of curiosity, persistence, and calculated risk-taking

• Why many great companies begin with simple observations

• How self-doubt can become fuel for achievement

• The lessons modern entrepreneurs can learn from Nike's earliest days

Key Takeaways

•  Great companies often begin long before the company itself exists. 
•  Entrepreneurship frequently starts with curiosity rather than certainty. 
•  Personal challenges can become powerful sources of motivation. 
•  Competitive advantages often come from noticing market shifts before others do. 
•  Relationships and mentors can change the course of an entrepreneur's life. 
•  Many successful founders begin with limited resources and significant uncertainty. 

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Episode Series

Business Legends Series

This episode launches a new storytelling format on the Swedish Wealth Institute Podcast where Daniel breaks down the real stories behind some of the world's most influential companies, founders, and business empires.

Series Topic:
 The Nike Story — Part 1

Upcoming Episodes:

• Phil Knight's first deal in Japan

• The creation of Blue Ribbon Sports

• The partnership with Bill Bowerman

• Early sales and near-collapse moments

• How Nike became Nike

• The rise of one of the most powerful brands in history

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Transcript

0:00

It started with a kid borrowing money from his dad to buy a pair of shoes from a Japanese supplier and bringing them to the United States. He got thrown out of two banks, not just one, but two banks said nope, this is too high risk. This is not something we want to get involved in. We are out. He had challenges, he had setbacks, he had fears, he was definitely not a perfect leader. Maybe it should never have happened because as we'll see, they were on the verge of collapse over and over again. Welcome to the Swedish Wealth Institute podcast. I am your host, Daniel Wood, and I am very excited to invite you to today's episode because it's a little bit different. Normally, I have the pleasure of sitting down with world-class entrepreneurs, investors, authors, athletes, and get to learn from them directly. I always take that opportunity to ask them the questions that I want to know to get some free coaching. But what I realized is the type of podcast that I listen to is not actually interviews. It is the chronological story of amazing companies, amazing people, or historical empires or events. And I realized that I wanted to give you some of that as well because there are some companies that have inspired me and I've taken such lessons from them that I wanted to give them to you as well and make sure that you can take these lessons and implement into your life. So we are going to start with one of the most exciting business stories that I've ever, ever had the pleasure of studying. This is one of the most iconic companies in history. And it started from nothing. It started with a kid borrowing money from his dad to buy a pair of shoes from a Japanese supplier and bringing them to the United States. He uh during his journey, as he grew that business from nothing, he got thrown out of two banks, not just one, but two banks said, Nope, this is too high risk. This is not something we want to get involved in. We are out. Take your business somewhere else. He had challenges, he had setbacks, he had fears. He was definitely not a perfect leader in many ways. He was kind of a crappy leader. And yet, Phil Knight was able to create Nike. And what's cool is, you know, obviously their slogan, we all know, just do it. I think the cool thing with that slogan, when you really get into the history, is that's who they are. They tried things, they tested, they challenged, they took that extra step, and they never settled for less than all they could give. And so I want to share with you this story of how Nike became Nike. Even though, well, maybe it should never have happened because as we'll see, they were on the verge of collapse over and over again. So let's get straight into it. And of course, this story will begin with its founder, Phil Knight. So Phil Knight was born in 1938 in Portland, Oregon. His parents were Bill or William Knight, and his mother was Loda. So I think we can learn from every entrepreneur, it's really about their personality, right? Who they are tells us everything we need to know about how they were able to achieve what they achieved. In Phil's case, a lot of who he is came from how he grew up and his parents. So his dad was a respectable member of society. He was a Republican, a state legislator, he was a lawyer, uh, he was even the publisher of the Oregon Journal, the new local newspaper. And the thing is, he was respectable. He wasn't overly emotional, he wasn't, he didn't give Phil a lot of encouragement and attention. He wanted Phil to go the respectable route, become an accountant or a lawyer. And Phil kind of grew up constantly wanting to prove to his dad that he was good enough. And that we'll see keeps coming back, this whole idea of Phil wanting to be enough and proving to the strong men in his life that he had a great idea, that he wasn't crazy, that they should believe in him. And that craving to be believed in is one of the reasons why Nike exists today. Now, of course, as a father, I wouldn't say holding back emotional support is the way to go. Usually that doesn't work. In Phil's case, it motivated him. And a big part of why that might have worked is because of his mother, Loda, who Phil describes her as in many ways the opposite of Phil. She was a lot more encouraging, a lot more warm, but she was very quiet. Like Bill, her husband, was you know the one that you saw. She was more behind the scenes, quietly supportive, and as we'll learn in the story here, she was crazy competitive and fiercely loyal. Also, two traits that come with Phil as he grows up. So, Phil, I think, like all of us, is truly an amalgamation of his parents. As a person, he is incredibly intensive, he is a quiet leader, he's never bombastic, he is always fighting to be the best he can be, the best version of himself and achieve, both because he has that competitive spirit in him and because he wants to prove to his father and other men in his circle that he is good enough. And he's brought that with him from his parents and and from his growing up. And this will be a repeatable part of the story. So if we follow Phil kind of as a kid and how he grew up, he uh played sports as a kid, and one of the moments he talks about in his amazing book, Shoe Dog, which is one of the big inspirations to this uh to this episode. And if so, if you haven't read it, go read it. It's absolutely amazing. But one of the things that truly inspired him was being cut from the local baseball team. And when I say it inspired him, it crushed him, right? It was such a crushing moment. And uh his mother instantly challenged him. She said, You know what? It happens, you were cut. Now you have a choice, you're a good runner, either you can try out for the track team or you can get a paper route, paper route. Like you're not just gonna stay at home and whatever you did in the 1950s, 40s, right? She said, You are going to figure you're gonna either run track or you're gonna have a paper route. Well, Phil chose to run track, which I think all of us are happy about. So running track basically means he was running, uh, he wasn't a short distance runner, he wasn't running, you know, uh a hundred meters or two hundred, he was running the mile and two miles and and longer distances. He was good, he wasn't great, he was good enough to get uh get into college, but he was never the star. And this is kind of a bit of a cool part of this story because when he gets to college, he got a scholarship to train for Bill Bowerman. Now, Bill Bowerman is truly unique. He is, well, at least he was the college coach that had the most athletes that ran a four-minute mile. Now, Phil didn't run a four-minute mile. Four was a little Phil was a little bit slower. Bill Bowerman was passionate about training and not just training, but about everything pertaining to athletic success. So it was nutrition, it was uh it was hydration, it was training methods, and it was the equipment. Now, for a runner, you don't have a lot of equipment. You'll have a t-shirt, you'll have a pair of shorts, and you'll have shoes. So Bill became absolutely passionate about figuring out ways to make the shoes better. And so throughout his career, he would, you know, when he bought shoes for his team, he would take them apart, he would put them back together, he would experiment. He was truly the like mad scientist who got into this. And then what he would do is he would try changing things, he would try different materials, and he would give these to his athletes to run with. Now, Phil says this in his story is he wasn't he wasn't the best, right? He wasn't the worst, but he wasn't the best. And again, he had this craving to prove himself. And Bill Bowerman kind of saw this. So Bowerman would use Phil as his primary guinea pig. So Phil never actually got to run, essentially ever, with normal shoes. He would be running with these weird like whale skin or fishkin or a new type of leather or a thicker sole or a thinner sole or this and that and the other thing. And so he was always, you know, every time he came to his locker, there would be a new pair of weird experiment there that he would have to put on and try. And I think this relationship becomes one of the true keys to why Nike was created, because we will come back to Bowerman, I promise. So in 1959, Phil served a year in the army. He had an army like reserve commission. So he had one year active duty, and then he was in the reserves for for seven years. And I mean, he learned a lot in that time. He learned discipline, he learned about bureaucracy, and that technically he could handle it, but it definitely wasn't something that he loved. It wasn't you know, he felt stifled. So he spent a year there and then he went on to Stanford, to his father's delight, because his father, like we said, wanted him to take that proper journey, right? That that respectable route. And obviously, Phil was very intelligent. You don't get into Stanford for nothing, and uh he took business and accounting. So he uh he became an accountant, which will be important, but maybe not the most important thing that happened. The most important thing that happened when he was at Stanford was that he had a business class. In that business class, they got the job to invent a new company, not analyze a company, invent a new company. Basically, as a paper, he was supposed to create that. And so he was, he'd probably been thinking of this since working with with Bowerman and you know the obsession with shoes. But he looked around the world and back then, so this is you know early uh 1960s, Germany was famous for being the top engineering country in the world. But at this time, Japan was starting to catch up, and there was this big challenge going on in uh cameras. So, you know, there had always been Germany. That was that was you know where the best things came out of. But Japan's quality was getting better and better, and they were able to do it at much lower prices because Japan was truly rebuilding their their infrastructure and their factories and and everything to really get on they wanted to compete at a global level. And Phil asked himself, well, if this is happening in cameras, could this also happen in shoes? Could this be something that a company could import shoes from Japan and sell in the United States, thereby undercutting the giants, Adidas, which was the the biggest, but also of course Puma, which that is an interesting story in itself, which we might explore in the future, because if you don't know, Adidas was founded by Adidas, and Puma was founded by his brother, whose first name I don't remember, uh, but it was the Das brothers that basically dominated the shoe industry back then. And Phil's insight in this paper was well, instead of everyone buying these German products, maybe I could import from Japan and sell. Now, this was only a a paper on a business class. I don't think he got a great, uh, a great grade, you know, it was like a B, but he was it sparked something. It it landed in in the back of his head because there was also this issue back then that quality of shoes weren't great, and if you really wanted quality, they were ridiculously expensive. So most runners were running with really poor shoes. Again, this is why Bill Bowerman kept testing to make improvements. After Stanford, before wanting to become an accountant and and get his uh get his CPA and get his job and settle down, he wanted to explore the world. Phil is a little bit of a hippie, and uh will come up when when we start talking about how he is in the office. Or if you've seen the uh Ben Affleck Matt Damon movie, you'll you'll see him walking around barefoot in the office. He wanted to travel the world. So he and his friend Carter went uh decided to do this trip, and they would start by going to Hawaii, and then they would uh you know across the the Pacific and they would go to Japan, of course, and then they would continue to travel through Asia, through Europe, and and back to the United States. So basically a world tour. So first stop is Hawaii, and they land in Hawaii and it's paradise. It is absolutely amazing. And and Phil talks about this in Shoe Dog, about how it's you know, it's it's just the the entire energy, the ambiance, the the surfing, the the women, everything was was perfect to you two young men just exploring. So they decided to to hang out and stay here for a while. And uh so they stopped in Hawaii and uh they rented themselves a little a little place to stay, and you know, they would spend their days on the beach and and just living living life, but they realized that this was gonna eat up all their money, so they had to get jobs, and they actually get jobs going door-to-door selling encyclopedias. Now, if you can guess how Phil handled that, Phil was, as a person, a little bit awkward, again, a little silent, a little quiet, fiercely competitive, but not the type of charismatic person that is going to do well selling something he does not believe in door to door like encyclopedias. So he it's awful. He absolutely hates it. But their days were amazing, right? They go up, they get up in the morning, they surf, they go a few hours they're selling encyclopedias, and then they're back on the beach in the evening. And so they stayed there a lot longer than expected. But finally he says, All right, it's time to go, it's time to keep doing this journey. This was only step one, we're gonna keep going. But his friend Carter had met a girl. So Carter says, You know, you know what, I'm staying here. So Phil decides to go on alone. His next stop is Japan. And this is, of course, where this entire story begins. And where we're gonna wrap up this first episode with uh before he actually meets Tiger, negotiates the deal, invents on the spot his company, buys his first shoes, continues traveling the world, gets back to the United States, waits for the shoes, finally gets the shoes, starts selling the shoes, and officially has started Blue Ribbon Sports. No, Nike did not start as Nike, Nike started as Blue Ribbon Sports. We will get back to the details of this in our next episode. I so appreciate you joining us here. I hope you felt this was a fun format. If so, please comment below. Let me know if you want us to continue this story. We will, of course, continue with interviews with amazing speakers. This is something we're gonna mix in. The series will be multiple episodes about Nike. We'll probably be mixing in interviews in between. So please let us know what you think. Either if you're on YouTube, comment on the video. Or if you are listening to this on any podcast platform, feel free to email us at info at Swedishwealth Institute.com. Let us know what you felt about this shift in format. And uh, we really appreciate your feedback. In addition, as you know, I love giving gifts. So I want to give a gift before we wrap up today. That gift is two weeks access to the Swedish Wealth Institute community. Now, our community, I believe, is very special. We have entrepreneurs from all over the world, investors, people in personal development that you can connect with, find an accountability buddy, and work with. The most important part is we help you identify where are you now, where is it you are going, and what is your number one limiting factor. And based on these insights, what we'll do is we'll introduce you to what it takes to overcome that limiting factor. That might be finding an accountability buddy, or it might mean you need training. And we have courses in our course catalog from Dr. John D. Martini, Jack Camfield, and many others, everything ranging from meditations, how to calm your nervous systems, how to overcome trauma to business skills, to investing skills. If you want to become a TEDx speaker, Tara Lafunguoch has created an amazing course on how to become a successful TEDx speaker and many, many other courses and trainings. So I hope I see you there. We're gonna give you two weeks free access. You can access the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you are have done like people all over the world have done and subscribed to the Swedish Wealth Institute podcast. And again, please give us your feedback. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this new format. Thank you. I'm Danny Wood. This is the Swedish Wealth Institute Podcast. See you next week.