It leaves plenty of time to get to know this deep thinker who's contributed much to the distance running culture in America. If readers are interested in learning about economics, and truly understanding economics, they need only purchase and read Knights book. The freedom to do what he enjoyed. Johnson, 70, is the kind of guy who sets out on a 3,050-mile trip without making a single hotel reservation or mapping out any stopping points along the route west. When he lived in Portland, Johnson had the privilege of watching Pre compete often at Hayward Field. In ten months he'd sold 3,250 pairs of shoes, which to quote Knight was a "completely impossible" feat. And for those with underdeveloped public personas, Nike has not hesitated to fill in the blanks. He looked at every exercise like doing repeat quarters. Where Knight was once famous for governing by instinct, today Nike studies reams of statistics and convenes a focus group before designing a new shoelace. "Sports is like rock 'n' roll," he says. John Tamny is a Forbes contributor, editor of RealClearMarkets, a senior fellow in economics at Reason Foundation, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research & Trading. Nike has become a major player in promoting women's sports as well as funneling money into inner-city sports programs. Irreverence and risk-taking were prized; the athletic establishment and corporate wisdom were disdained. At recess they had 15 minutes to pummel me to death and they never caught me.". (Shortform note: Just take a minute to remember that business used to be done entirely through phone and letters, not email). $1 Million - $5 Million. Jeff Johnson is on his way to the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials, but instead of taking a first-class flight--which, as .css-1hr08dr{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.125rem;text-decoration-color:#59E7ED;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-1hr08dr:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Nike's first-ever employee 48 years ago, he most likely could afford--he prefers to drive there from his Lebanon, N.H., home. After Johnson retired from Nike, he returned to his beloved New England to live a quiet life. They aren't directly about running, but their messages apply to running. He also taught as an accounting professor at Portland State University (PSU). A healthy life savings. . "Jeff thought the same kind of rubber would be a really interesting insole. He was out there suffering and he opened a vein for you. As Knight describes the scenario wrought by floating money, now the yen-to-dollar rate was like the weather. That still leaves billions of un-Niked feet out there. Johnson seemed to have it made. [1] As of February 15, 2023, Knight was ranked by Forbes as the 17th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$41.5 billion. "Nobody liked it, but it seemed better than anything else. Figure that trade is voluntary, it occurs among consenting individuals, and as such, individuals can only import insofar as they have something to export. Phil Knight earned his net worth as the founder and largest individual shareholder of Nike Inc. Philip Hampson Knight was born in Portland, Oregon, on February 24, 1938. "He came back from California once and had this rubber teddy bear in his hand," Chadwick says. He reads broadly, covering a wide range of subjects including finance, management, health, and society. You thought, 'I can take a chance, I can dare to do something.'". It isn't tame by civilian standards, but, to a guy at the forefront of the running boom, his biweekly 40-minute slogs (broken up by walking breaks) feel like the epilogue to a grand novel. "I've had one good idea in my life and this was it," he says. But the world's largest athletic shoe and apparel company had triumphed again, creating a buzz for its masterful orchestration of Woods's coming-out party and raising hackles with its questionable use of race to promote him. "Other than that, I'm all of those things--most of those adjectives are right some of the time," he says. By 1969, he was making enough money from these sales to quit his accountant job and work for Blue Ribbon Sports full-time. Midway through 1965 Knight hired Jeff Johnson, his first full-time employee. Johnson explained the story about iconic brand names, and that the word was also for the Greek winged goddess of victory. Stanford, CA 94305-6105 In 2004, Matthew unfortunately passed away while scuba diving in El Salvador due to an undetected congenital heart defect. Here's what you'll find in our full Shoe Dog summary : Allen Cheng is the founder of Shortform. Nike aggressively signed NBA players. His channel proved to be an immediate success, earning more than 40,000 subscribers within the first six months of its existence. "The market is saturated to the point where it can be sickening. Thirty years ago, American teenagers owned either a pair of Converse All-Stars or Keds. Some say the logo is worth the net worth of the Nike brand, valuing it as a . In reality, the weight of time now makes three miles feel like a marathon. But in 1984, it was unprecedented. Really? When were shooting at one another, were not improving one another through trade. his co-worker asked. His involvement had always been focused on the startup phase, so he handed the Farm Team off to Frank Gagliano in 2001 and returned to New Hampshire. Your email address will not be published. As the perhaps overly modest Knight notes, Whenever reporters said a factory was unsatisfactory, they never said how much better it was than the day we first went in. Interesting about Nikes overseas factories is that the company always paid above the prevailing market rate; sometimes so much above it that Nike, according to Knight, was disrupting the nations entire economic ecosystem. Translated, there were times when exploited Nike factory workers were earning more than doctors in the impoverished countries that Nike entered. From there he pushes on to Bend, where he finds the town's Dairy Queen by relying on his instincts rather than his phone's GPS or the AAA map he keeps between the front seats. Maybe some of the layoff rounds wouldnt have been as substantial as they were. Jeff Johnson is on his way to the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials, but instead of taking a first-class flight--which, as Nike 's first-ever employee 48 years ago, he most likely could afford--he. Today more Nike shoes are produced in China than in any other country. Allen graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude and attended medical training at the MD/PhD program at Harvard and MIT. The following year Johnson picked up a copy of Boy's Life and read an article on Charlie Paddock, the fastest man in the world. Indeed, Knight first presented his ideas for a shoe company (jogging shoes) at Stanford Business School. Knight knows this well, and this writer would give anything to hear him lecture on currencies. Finally, school wasn't drudgery. Phil and Penny, have been long time contributors and supporters for the University of Oregon athletic fund and have been honored by many times over by the school. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Edging closer to Nike Country, it seems odd that for the man who named the company, Oregon never felt like home. Phil feels smothered and rarely replies to Jeff Johnsons letters. "He showed me several walking drills that help strengthen the smaller stabilizing muscles around your calves that I frequently do today, although I get a lot of odd looks walking pigeon-toed with my heels high off the ground," Wheating says. Implicit in antitrust is that the present foretells the future, but it doesnt. This was complicated by President Nixons protectionist 1971 decision to delink the dollar, and by extension all global currencies pegged to the dollar, from gold. He graduated from college in 1959 with a degree in journalism. "Phil is always thinking ahead," says Nelson Farris, Nike's director of corporate education and a Knight confidante for 23 years. Johnson waited until it was later on the West Coast and called Nike headquarters. Jeff Johnson has a messianic view on runningbelieving running done right is akin to enlightenmentand Phil hasnt met anyone with his passion for running. This entrepreneur is working feverishly to knock Nike off of its lofty perch much as Nike did formerly #1 Adidas. As of 2022, Jeff Johnson's net worth is $100,000 - $1M. Jeff Johnson was born on May 7, 1973 in Harrogate, England. Phil Knight is an American businessman, sports fan and philanthropist who has a net worth of $40 billion. From an economics standpoint, Knights recollection of nearly always being in debt for the first 18 years of the companys existence, of always fearing the one incorrect move that would bankrupt Nike, is instructive on its own. How does one trade and invest if the proceeds (yen, dollars, euros, Pounds, francs, etc.) When they met, Andrew Wheating told Johnson he wanted to be a top 5K runner. "The effect Pre had on us in the stands is that he made us feel better about ourselves," Johnson says. Notable here is that Nike entered China early, in 1980, when it was a horrendously poor country. The Will Vinton Studios, an animation company, had sought external investors due to rapid growth in the late 1990s. 1 walked out the door with no regrets. "But you better not spend much time doing that, because every six months is a new lifetime, and you've got to worry about what's coming up to stay ahead of the curve," he says. American businessman Phil Knight, whose net worth is billions of dollars, was born on February 24, 1938. Examples in this review will show why thats perhaps true. Unlike most people who take up running to accomplish a goal, lose weight or join a team, Johnson's initial inspiration was survival. Nike was perceived as demanding that its athletes put shoe company before country. It forgot about the women. Magic Johnson Declined Phil Knight's Nike Stock Offer In The Late 1970s. Three days later, Woods called a news conference, stepped before the TV cameras and announced that he was quitting college to join the Professional Golf Association Tour. As he further explained it, Thats why, haunted as I was by the Vietnam War, I always vowed that someday Nike would have a factory in or near Saigon. Knights story is not just one of building one of the worlds greatest brands. He recalls that banks, including First National, were very risk averse back then. By 1969, at the fortuitous dawn of the jogging boom, Knight sold a million bucks worth of Onitsuka shoes bearing his Blue Ribbon Sports label. A road trip with Jeff Johnson, Nike's original wage-earner, unveils a treasure of running history. Knight isn't wearing his ever-present Oakley sunglasses (he's rarely photographed without them), which is a bonus, as his pale blue eyes open wide and sparkle when a topic engages him. "I'm glad to not run into her again," he says shaking his head. More information on Jeff Johnson can be found here. (It was originally called Blue Ribbon Sports before being renamed Nike in 1971.) Just about every item ever produced by Knights wondrous company was manufactured somewhere not the United States, not to mention that Knights financial savior in Blue Ribbons (Knights original shoe company before Nike) less prosperous days was a Japanese trading company, Nissho. And it was in Frank Shallenberger's small-business class that Knight conceived Nike. Today, Forbes estimates his net worth at more than $25 billion, making him the 24th richest person in the United States . The elite runners loved those shoes.". This is a crucial economic point given the odd focus of economists on a Federal Reserve that projects its always overstated influence through a risk averse banking system. The school even named the library after his mother and his father's name appears on the law school, and the Matthew Knight Arena was named in honor of their late son in 2011. Knight took on a 15 percent stake in the company in 1998, and his son Travis joined the company as an animator. This readers reaction to Knights experience with floating money was what did he leave out? and once again, would he or could he ever give a course on the horrors of money without definition? In 1965, Knight hired Johnson as the first full-time employee. Theres only one person crazy and passionate enough to do this at a moments notice Jeff Johnson. Knight laughs uncomfortably and reaches for his watch as if embarrassed to have committed two personal transgressions: He reflected out loud, and he exposed a small corner of his heart. Johnson's selling strategy was similar to Knights, but he was better than him. What stories of entrepreneurs almost invariably tell us is that these outsiders were and are discriminated against, almost as a rule. FAQs. This article will clarify Jeff Johnson's Twitter, Linkedin, Obituary, Nike Net Worth, lesser-known facts, and other information. He is a genuine, authentic and passionate person.". Johnson's selling strategy was similar to Knights. Why did Knight succeed? The area serves as a launching point for hikers scrambling up the nearby snow-capped peaks or a refueling station for said victorious climbers. The next day sprint 100 meters, once. Even when Johnson stopped coaching teams, he was still offering guidance to promising up-and-coming athletes. Even when he gets in a car crash and breaks his skull, he continues to sell shoes. His voice hardens. Johnson launched the company's East Coast factory in Exeter, N.H., and developed the first line of running shoes. Jeff Johnson, Nike's first employee, recommended calling the firm "Nike," named after the Greek flying goddess of victory, and Blue Ribbon Sports has consequently renamed Nike in 1978. Currently, they are all stored in his basement. Blue Ribbon Sports cleared $3,240 in its first year, 1964. Jeff Johnson has settled on the location of their first East Coast office Wellesley, MA, a place where runners seemed to abound and the Boston Marathon runs through. He had read an in-flight magazine article about the great brand names that become household terms, such as Kleenex and Xerox. Following the end of his active duty, Knight enrolled at Standard Graduate School of Business, graduating in 1962 with a master's degree in business administration. Phil Knight earned his net worth as the founder and largest individual shareholder. You could walk in off the street and be inspired by this guy," Johnson says. Nike was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports and initially operated as a distributor for the Japanese shoemaker Onitsuka Tiger (now known as Asics). (Two rooms of his five-bedroom house, where he lives by himself, are dedicated to his library.) This is the story of Jeff Johnson and Nike, from Phil Knights book Shoe Dog. Nike NKE closed its stores across the U . The winner was Mao, but there was a tie for second between [revolutionary hero] Zhou Enlai and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Red Oxen!"). According to the police officials, he committed suicide on 8th September 2021. But Bowerman still wasn't satisfied. In just ten months, he'd sold 3,250 pairs of shoes - an achievement far exceeded any expectations. "Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions. In Knights case, Nike, one of the most important and successful brands in the world, is a creation of Knights genius. (Encounter), along with Popular Economics (Regnery Publishing, 2015). With a net worth of $5.3 billion, Knight ranks sixth on Forbes's latest list of the richest Americans. You can also click edit to tell us what the Net Worth of the Jeff Johnson is "We're not in the fashion business, as the Wall Street Journal wrote the other day," says Knight, clearly still peeved. He correctly predicted that American culture was a marketable commodity--that teenagers from Paris to Shanghai would be just as taken with Charles Barkley's ample attitude as teenagers in Trenton and San Diego. That same wrestling coach from 1964 who was supposed to stick to wrestling shoes. "We had gangs in third grade," he remembers. Hes lived Brenners quote, and much more. But the biggest push will be overseas. Absent a globalized supply chain, Nike once again isnt Nike. To the idea of Nike and its well-healed employees, the truly small and bereft of knowledge will respond that this global behemoth has overseen sweatshops around the world that exploited poorly paid employees. The marketing budget grew, and so did the emphasis on design, Nike's euphemism for fashion. "We've decided to call it Nike," his co-worker told Johnson over the phone. The message is clear: introspection over. "We didn't invent it," Knight acknowledges in an interview, "but we ratcheted it up several notches.". (Chicago's store is one of the city's top tourist attractions.) "I thought that was ridiculous . Stanford, California 94305. On Tuesday night, May 3, 2004, "The Sopranos" had just ended when Johnson, then 62, felt like he'd been hit by lightning. The truly dynamic finance that powers the worlds most dynamic economy isnt of the bank variety. In June 2015, Knight announced he was stepping down as Nike's chairman, and he officially retired from the company's board at the end of June 2016. But the world may never know which adjective suits him best. Regarding taxes and spending, Knight addressed both; albeit in oblique fashion. "If you want to spend time saying this is cool, you're going to get your ass kicked.". Sports isn't about truth and accuracy. He was a middle-distance runner for the University of Oregon track team, which at the time had one of the best programs in the country. It was pure Philip Hampson Knight: innovative, controversial and very, very successful. Knight has been portrayed as mysterious, inscrutable, eccentric, unpredictable, enigmatic, idiosyncratic, shy, aloof, reclusive, competitive and a genius. He evolved into a distance runner, the kind described as having a lot of "heart. Knight subscribes to the correct, Fredric Bastiat view of war. As 20-year-old Stanford golfer Tiger Woods fought his way to an unprecedented third U.S. Nike engineered shoes for the top echelon of athletes to compete and train in. Nike courts controversy. It's time once again to just do it. Knight knows intuitively what Adam Smith properly observed in the 18th century, that the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods. Money facilitates the trade that always benefits both sides. The following morning Johnson had to undergo an MRI. . That's as far as he'll go. Without the full-length cushioned mid-sole, which Johnson invented from shower thongs, many of us would be on crutches today. In a barrage of new TV spots and full-page newspaper ads, Nike unveiled its latest pitchman: pro golfer Tiger Woods. Nike's seductive marketing focuses squarely on a charismatic athlete or image, rarely even mentioning or showing the shoes. Its a fixer-upper, with tissue thin walls and broken windows. Then Jeff Johnson, '63, a fellow running geek, proposed a name that came to him in a dream: Nike, for the Greek winged goddess of victory. The company paid $35 to commission a new logo--a fat checkmark dubbed a "swoosh"--and the new shoe debuted at the 1972 Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore. Nike sold $3.2 million worth of shoes in 1972, and its profits doubled each of the next 10 years. ", Some consider Nike--with its swoosh popping up on uniforms, on the lapels of college basketball coaches, even as bus-size renderings on walls of stadiums--responsible for the over-commercialization of sports. "We're in the sports business, and there's a big difference.". His once-bouncy gait has returned to earth after grinding out an estimated 60,000 lifetime miles. Then there are the three library-style drawers where Johnson keeps thousands of note cards scribbled with quotes he's come across over the years. He straightens out of a slouch, steadies his gaze and, like a shortstop, waits to field the next question. Johnson is in the process of digitizing them. "That went on for a year and a half. But when Nike was dislodged from the top, he realized that his fly-by-Knight approach would no longer work. Year-old messages later retrieved on it confirm that to be true. "Where should I sit?" These towering shrines look about as much like a typical shoe store as Dennis Rodman looks like a typical human. From studying war heroes and generals, he holds a virtue: Dont tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.. He then continued his education at the University of Oregon, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, worked as a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald, and was a middle-distance runner. [2] [3] He is also the owner of the stop motion film production company Laika. "Hello, World.". But other experts say logos have very little worth on their own. I nervously appraise my black leather, conservative flats and kick myself for making such a boring choice for a meeting with the man who made footwear an art form. He understands this is what happens to an aging body--muscles tighten like rubber bands, ligaments start to snap and pull, and good runs occur about once every two weeks--and he's been trying to accept it for the past 25 years. It wasn't the first time Johnson and Lananna collaborated. Employees reported to work in sneakers and shorts, partied hard and made decisions on the run. "He built up a sense of loyalty, which he does everywhere he goes. An indifferent student, Knight graduated from Oregon with a degree in journalism in 1959. Instead, he opts for core exercises in his hotel room. Silly stuff. "Until the third or fourth week, the possibility that I would never get out of a wheelchair was real. His customers love him, depending on Johnson to solve their problems in both running and life. Despite the arguments of Johnsons father, Phil holds steady he would give Johnson a $50 raise, and that was it. Knight's overriding goal is to ensure Nike's legacy. "She'll smoke me.". "In about a second they came to their senses and grabbed me, but in that one second I found that I could balance," Johnson says. Like this article? Government is an expensive lunch paid for by you, the worker. And for those not familiar with Bastiat, Knight subscribes to the Joseph Kennedy view that war is bad for business. Yes it is. "Nike is at times feisty, or counterestablishment, deliberately," says Spence, the business school dean. Not that Reebok endorser Sean Kemp or Converse man Larry Johnson (both guilty of taunting lesser opponents while representing the United States in the 1994 World Games) are paragons of virtue, but Nike pioneered the trend of signing athletes who project attitude as well as excellence. Matt McCue is a frequent contributor to Running Times and the author of An Honorable Run. And. The above is what protectionists often miss about free trade. Submit a correction suggestion and help us fix it! somebody asked. As Knight recalls about the employees of a much younger Nike, Each of us had been misunderstood, misjudged, dismissed. "Mike Pallet had like 50 kids in his and then there was me. Their short time together--one season of track--was enough for Johnson to reach out to Vin Lananna, the former University of Oregon coach, and tell him about Wheating's potential. The first place a runner usually visits in Eugene is the looping wood-chip trail system named after Steve Prefontaine. After he eventually received the Tiger running shoes, he sent samples to Bill Bowerman, his old track coach at the University of Oregon. "I hope we sign him," Knight said at the time. It's unusual that someone can be so open-minded, yet stay singularly focused on a project. The longtime friends go all the way back to when Lananna lived in Hanover, N.H., and coached at Dartmouth. Traveling north over the dry flatlands of western Idaho and into Oregon, Johnson decides to pack it in for the night in Ontario, a speck-of-dust town right off the interstate. When the Olympic trials conclude, he packs up his gray Subaru and drives back home to add these memories and photos to those captured over the past 50 years. My kingdom for liquidity. What this writer would give to have every politician read Knights story, and for Knight to come to Washington in his retirement to tell his story. Even if Johnson "only" got $10,000 in Nike stock, those shares would now be worth nearly $1 billion. . He found a way to harness society's worship of heroes, obsession with status symbols and predilection for singular, often rebellious figures. Like many of the 2,700 employees on the campus, Knight instinctively glances down at his visitor's shoes before taking a seat at the far end of the conference table, his back to the picture window that offers a view of the campus and the 10-acre lake anchoring it. Notable here is that Knights early days as a shoe dog were spent in Japan, the manufacturing locale for his shoes. No company has put as much creative energy and resources into marketing celebrities as Nike. Before Shortform, he co-founded PrepScholar, an online education company. Though he was tapped out at the time, Johnson fondly reflects on his 18-year career at Nike. According to Johnson's self-set fitness schedule, in which he works out six days per week, he is supposed to swim this afternoon, but he doesn't because the hotel pool is too crowded. But did you know she He has handed over the daily running of the company to Thomas Clarke, who was appointed president in 1994. One of Johnsons customers says that he can start getting Tiger running shoes from another seller a wrestling coach somewhere in the East Coast. Amateur title last summer, Nike founder Phil Knight shadowed him from hole to hole, appraising the young phenom's every smile the way a golf coach would his swing. Phil even issues him a challenge sell 3,250 pairs of shoes in a few months, and Johnson could open his retail space in LA. With his trim beard, collar-length, wavy red-blond hair shrouding most of the gray, he suggests a record executive who looks and sounds remarkably like actor Donald Sutherland. Coaches Tips for Tackling the Boston Marathon, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Lights reflect off the lake and illuminate the four miles of running trails that crisscross and surround the campus. Add a paid profile Advisors do not pay a fee for placement on Forbes Top Advisor. 2023 Celebrity Net Worth / All Rights Reserved. Neither Phil nor Bowerman, the only owners of Blue Ribbon, want to give up their equity. "First, Shallenberger defined the type of person who was an entrepreneur--and I realized he was talking to me. Woods may be the company's current star, but its controversial CEO and founder is the real story. Stanford changed Knight's life. November 23, 2021. It's pronounced "ny'-kee." The name is Nike and their rival was Adidas. It's the central, unifying culture of the United States and the stuff of romance and dreams. According to our Database, He has no children. Knights story is unputdownable as both autobiography and business book, and then as an economics book, it is endlessly great. War is about wealth destruction, its about the extermination of human capital that is the driver of all wealth creation. Award-winning journalist and communications specialist known best for his social and political commentary on BET, MSNBC, and syndicated radio. Johnson's stay in Boulder proved to be short-lived. Jeff Johnson - the first employee In 1965 they hired Jeff Johnson - the perfect employee one could hope for. After returning from Japan in 1964, the 26-year-old Knight began peddling Onitsuka running shoes from the back of his green Plymouth Valiant at track meets across the Pacific Northwest.