October 7, 1996
Editor's Notebook
What does Phil Knight know about losing?
Steven D. Jones
n this job I hear dozens of interesting things each day and only a few of them fit into news stories. I'll hear something at a meeting or presentation, get a phone call or receive a piece of mail that will contain an eye-opening comment but not much more. The recent Oregon Enterprise Forum Entrepreneurship Awards provided a whole evening of such moments, such as the admission by Coffee People co-founder Jim Roberts that his slogan, "good coffee, no back talk," was pure whimsy.
"To tell you the truth, I was a poetry major at the University of Oregon, and I just liked the rhythm of it," Roberts said.
William Sherertz, who is a native of Bandon and president of Barrett Business Services Inc., said, "Oregon can be very proud of itself and its culture. It's not always believed across this country that you can do the right thing. But that's what I believe. Sometimes it costs you money, but doing the right thing has come back to me more than once." Sherertz was named the Service Entrepreneur of the Year.
Tom Holce, president of BLT Technologies Inc. of Vancouver, defines luck as "opportunity meeting preparation." He has built and sold four companies, and from that simple formula you can understand how he makes it seem so easy.
Most revealing were Phil Knight's comments about himself and his view of the sports-marketing juggernaut that he has made of Nike.
"The thing that drives me, and probably anyone in my position, is to build a good company," Knight said. "Nike has been a successful company over its first 24 years, but there is still a lot it can do. So I look on it as more than just a financial instrument, although I suppose it is more than adequate there, but it's almost more of an artistic viewpoint I have now. It's sort of my novel or my painting. And I would like it to be as good as it can be.
"The only time you cannot fail is the last time you try. I know that the young people who come in today and talk to me about what they want to do are more afraid of failure than the group of 20 years ago. They come in with good grades and great opportunities for great careers and they are very timid about going out on their own. If I would have any advice for them, it's `Go try it.'"
After receiving the Oregon Entrepreneur Award, Knight was even more forthcoming, and even political.
"It's obvious the Portland School Board didn't have a vote" on the entrepreneur award, he said in reference to the board's consternation over accepting a $500,000 donation from Knight because of the controversy surrounding labor conditions at Nike's contract manufacturing plants overseas. There was polite laughter.
Knight went on to tell an interesting story about himself, entrepreneurship and risk-taking that gives a hint why this man has built one of the most powerful brands in business and accumulated a $5.3 billion fortune.
"I was in New York last week . . . and in the course of that week I was in the office of Fortune editor John Huey and in the course of the conversation he said he was going to change format in the next month and they were going to have a column submitted by a business executive and would I submit a 750-word essay to that column.
"Well, I was enormously flattered and I said that would be great, and I was off thinking of what aspect of my world view they would be interested in. And I said you'd have to narrow this down a bit. And he said `We'd like a column from you on losing.'
"Well, I'll have to tell you that pissed me off. I mean how could they associate me with that, right?
"So I was flying back to Oregon and thought about it a little more and came to realize he was absolutely right. I have lost a bit.
"Reflecting back 34 years on Frank Schellenberger's course on entrepreneurship at Stanford University, it was a class that was long on inspiration. Part of that inspiration was he would have entrepreneurs from the Palo Alto area come to the class. Probably 75 percent of those inspirational talks were about failing to get bank loans, or failing to get money from venture capitalists or being thrown out of banks, or bank overdrafts, or in some cases having their houses repossessed and losing their businesses. But all through that, those entrepreneurs never really thought that they could lose.
"Look around you in this room and every day at the entrepreneurs you see in this great state and you see it over and over again.
"I'm reminded of the first time I ever walked into Dan Wieden's office; he had four employees counting himself, two of them current on the payroll and one of them was him. Basically, he had been in the business 20 years and he had lost so much that it was his middle name. But he didn't succeed because of his love of winning. He succeeded because of his love of writing. And today he has 350 employees with offices in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Portland, Ore.
"I think it's another example of the atmosphere that this state and its attitude brings. And I really think that all entrepreneurs lose a lot. It's the response to that losing that really makes them stand out."
© 1996, The Business Journal
