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[MUSIC] [APPLAUSE] >> Phil? >> Pretty good. >> Welcome home.
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>> It's great to be home.
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But I couldn't help but be really pleased to see the dean wearing a business suit and Nike shoes showing.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But I think we can all be, and we can all be glad that basically I was not the founder of Jockey underwear.
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>> [LAUGH] >> We'll try and make that a permanent change in Dean Levin's wardrobe.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Now Phil, we know you don't do too many public speaking events.
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And a question a lot of people have asked is what does it take to get Phil Knight up on stage?
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So I thought maybe we should share the story of what got you here today.
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Now, you probably remember that we first crossed paths a couple of months ago just over there at McDonald Hall.
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You were entering the building when I very politely interrupted you, introduced myself.
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We exchanged a couple of pleasantries, and then you went on inside about your day.
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Now what you're probably less aware of, Phil, is that I decide to camp outside McDonald Hall for the next 40 minutes.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Watching every possible human exit to the building so that I could find you, and casually bump into you a second time, to pitch you this interview.
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>> [LAUGH] >> It's creepy, I know.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, but that's how it happened.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I'll be honest, I was pretty nervous when you did come out out that second time.
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It was fight or flight, I very nearly walked the other way.
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But there was this voice in my head.
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It just kept saying, Will, just do it.
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>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> But really, Phil, we are so thrilled and excited to have you back on campus.
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And I think I speak for every student here when I say how grateful we are for this incredible business school.
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>> Well, thank you, but having stalked me for at least 40 minutes.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I feel that there should be some payback. >> Don't do it.
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>> And I know that most of you know that Will's mother, Mags, has come all the way from Ireland to be here today.
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>> [APPLAUSE] >> And having come such a long way, I think you should reveal something about yourself that she doesn't know.
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>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> Phil, I don't know what you're trying to suggest. I was a perfect child.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Well, did you make your bed this morning?
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>> I didn't even sleep in my own bed this morning- >> Well- >> because I gave it to my mom!
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>> [APPLAUSE] >> I gave it to my mom.
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>> [LAUGH] >> That wasn't what it sounded like.
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>> [LAUGH] >> All right, now Phil.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Phil, we don't want to make you feel old, this is payback by the way.
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>> Yeah, this could go back and forth a long time, that's right.
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>> But it's been almost 60 years- >> Yep.
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>> Since you were here in our shoes, an incoming MBA, class of 1962.
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What kind of person was Phil Knight back at the GSB?
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How would you have described yourself? >> Yeah, I will.
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But I want to tell you first about coming back to campus, after being gone for a while.
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That you go out 20 years or so, and you haven't been back for a while, and you come back, and it's more about just sharing a moment with family and friends.
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It's for a moment, you step back in history and remember when you had all the world laying out before you.
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And you decided the things you were going to find important, and it was really the start of you becoming what you ultimately became.
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When I come back, for just a moment, I always hear the voice of Frank Shallenberger, Bob Davis, Jim Porterfield.
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And I know that sounds sort of corny to an educated group.
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But I promise you that over half the people in this room, when they come back here 20 years from now, will have those same feelings.
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For me it was, well, yeah, that I was the guy that thought an extrovert was the person that stared at other people's shoes.
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That it was a time for me to kind of grow and chase what I was really going to become.
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And so it's really a big, transitional period for me in my life.
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And as I say to this day, when I come back, I still get inspired and lifted up.
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>> Do have any favorite memories from your days back at Stanford?
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>> That it was just a turning point in general for me, that if I was honest, I'd say that my undergraduate career was really focused on track.
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And it got to be, when I got to be a graduate student, that I was really focused on what it was I wanted to be.
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And this was just the right school at the right time, with the right inspirational professors, and it really doesn't get any better than that.
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>> So you do graduate the GSB in 1962. >> Yep.
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>> This is a time when Silicon Valley isn't even a phrase yet. >> Right.
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>> And you had what you call this crazy idea.
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What was the crazy idea and where did it come about?
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>> Well, I took the entrepreneurship class from Frank Shallenberger.
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And basically the project, he had a term project where you basically either attach yourself to a company in the area, or for the purpose of the paper, made up a company and how it would succeed.
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And even in those days, a lot of my classmates were writing about electronics.
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Which was certainly beyond me, since when I turn on an electric switch, the light bulb comes on, it's magic for me.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But my old track coach was always working with shoes, and felt that a light weight in shoes was something that was neglected by the major manufacturers, Adidas and Puma.
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And indeed, my senior year, Otis Davis won the Pacific Coast Conference championship in a pair of homemade Bowerman shoes, which were an ounce lighter than the other shoes.
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So I kind of put those things together, and said if you were starting a shoe factory, would you start it in Germany?
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And I said it's such a labor intensive business, it makes more sense to start it in Japan.
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Japan being a country that took German cameras, and dominated the camera markets, I said, could they do the same thing in sport shoes?
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And that was really the thesis of the paper which ultimately I got caught up in, and here we are.
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>> Now, you got an A on that paper, right? >> I did.
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>> [LAUGH] >> That mattered.
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If he had ridiculed the paper, I don't know where we'd be today.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But Phil, this was a time when entrepreneurship post-GSB was not just a less traveled path, it was probably a less celebrated path.
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What gave you the confidence to push ahead?
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>> Well, if I didn't, I was going to have to be an accountant.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, I know that's a scary thought.
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>> No, it was- >> [LAUGH] >> No, but it was when I wrote the paper, it just stayed in my head.
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And at the time, I think the ratio was that 26 out of 27 new companies failed.
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So I knew the odds weren't high.
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But I really began to feel if I could do this, that it would really be meaningful to me, and something that I would really have a lot of passion for and about.
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And so that's where it started and the way it will end.
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>> Now, two years in Many of your classmates have gone down more traditional career paths.
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You're back in Oregon, you're living in your old room in the family house, and you're selling shoes out of the trunk of your car.
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Did you ever have doubts in those moments, and what was it that kept you going?
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>> [LAUGH] Well obviously, there were a lot of doubts, but I enjoyed what I was doing, and I really thought that I was bringing a product to the world that was better than the other product and so I believed.
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And if you read the book, it wasn't too long before I had a bunch of other people that believed as well.
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And we just through all the ups and downs and there were plenty of downs that we never stopped believing.
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And a lot of people say, why did you stay with it?
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There were a lot of negative moments and a lot of downturns.
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And I look back on those days the most fun I ever had in business.
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Every Monday you went to work and you knew it mattered what you did, including whether you're going to meet payroll on Friday.
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But it was an exciting time that Frank Shellenberger had done a wonderful job of preparing us for being an entrepreneur.
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Bob Davis, a marketing professor said, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, he said, everyday's a crisis and every Friday is a Jesus crisis.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And that was kind of the way it was.
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[LAUGH] >> Now you also talk in your book, Shoe Dog, about those early trips to Asia. >> Mm-hm.
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>> So you're 24 years old, traveling alone to Japan, it's a culture you don't know, a language you don't speak, to try and broker that first shoe import deal.
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So this was a time before Stanford's global study trips or GMIXs.
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Where did that ability to embrace hustle and uncertainty come from in you?
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>> Well, by the time I got there I believed, and so I believed that that was a good idea, I believed that if we could get a cooperative Japanese factory, that we could make the idea work, and so I overcame, I'm an introvert.
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Well, you're basically you have to believe, you have to overcome the shyness to take certain chances and I was willing to do that, and there were a lot of ups and downs, but ultimately it worked.
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And I think at the end of the day you gotta believe.
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And that's what I did have maybe above everything else.
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>> Now as you said, the team grew and you weren't alone in this endeavor.
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And I think there's no story of Nike without, of course, mentioning Bill Bowerman, your former track coach at Oregon, later US Olympic's track coach.
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And of course, your co-founder of what became Nike.
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You've described yourself as a person whose always needed heroes. >> Mm-hm.
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>> Why was Bill a hero to you and what is it you learned from him?
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>> Well he was a very unique person that he was probably the best track and field coach in the world, for one thing.
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But he also had a certain command presence and a certain belief and certain leadership things that leaders did.
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He said, I'm not a track coach, he says, I'm a professor of competitive response.
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And he had a way of having sayings that got your attention and really focused you on attitude.
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The strategy for running the mile was start out and run the first two laps at a very fast pace.
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Run the third lap as fast as you can, run the fourth lap, triple your speed.
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And he said, the Oregon Trail, he says, the cowards never started and the weak died along the way, that leaves you and me.
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And that's once again, him getting in kind of your attitude and his best one for me was always, do right and fear no man.
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And so he had a big influence on my life, certainly the biggest influence other than my parents.
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And if you go back through the sayings and who he was, he was always working on attitude.
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This is a man that had seen combat in World War II, fired a gun and been fired at, and he had seen competition at its most extreme level.
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And he thought his job as a professor of competitive response was to get kids ready, young men and young women, ultimately to be ready for the toughest competition they can face.
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So he brought, to me, a certain attitude, which you can be an introvert and have attitude, so that was sort of me.
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And he had a huge influence on that, and he was a hero of mine, in those days, and unto this day.
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>> When you first met him, you described it as love and fear at first sight.
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>> Right, and then there's little hate that came after that.
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>> [LAUGH] >> He really kind of believed in hazing, that you had to prove that you wanted to be there.
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And so he would make you go through hoops, which I did, somewhat reluctantly.
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>> Now beyond Bill of course, you talk with a lot of affection about that core early Nike team.
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And I think you had a name for each other, right? >> Well yeah, we did.
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>> I see you're playing that game.
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>> [LAUGH] Now, the first four or five people of the company, we wound up calling each other butt faces which, we don't do that anymore.
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We're >> [LAUGH] >> More professional group now.
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>> [LAUGH] You know from the top team, reached a similar name for each other actually.
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>> It's good, that's healthy.
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>> But what was it about that early team and that culture that made it so successful?
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>> Well I think first of all, they were a bizarre group to say the least.
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Each of them, in his own way, but they were, and I hope this showed in the book, that they were able, very able people that really kind of didn't get along with society in general.
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So it was kind of a perfect fit.
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And they complimented each other in terms of their abilities.
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And then lastly, all of them believed.
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When we would hit a downturn, nobody thought, this is the end, versus, say, okay, we've got to get together and find our way out of this one.
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And so it was fun being in a foxhole with those guys.
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And basically, it's corny, but we loved each other, and we were going to go through this come hell or high water.
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And It was a very exciting intense time and it, it's actually, I love those times.
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>> You fought a lot of crisis together. >> Yeah, for sure.
14:59
>> In recent years Phil, we've seen many high profile disruptive companies being pressured to rein in.
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What we're seeing is aggressive, macho, win at all costs cultures, cultures that have brought these companies so much early success in their life.
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Just last year, Nike faced some similar accusations and the management team made some pretty decisive changes.
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When you grow from a start up to a 74,000 person team, how do you preserve the best of that winning culture in a more complex, diverse, global workforce?
15:35
>> Yeah, well you touched on a lot of things there, I do think that Nike's culture is a big part of its reason for success.
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And the culture really was formed in the early days by the four people, plus me, and it still exists to this day.
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A lot of people say, well, Phil had a dominant influence on that, and he didn't.
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I've often said many times, Nike is young and irreverent, and I'm neither.
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But it did, to use Burman's word, it came with a certain attitude. And it was sort of us. It's who we were.
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And the culture has been modified some, which is a good thing.
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But it's still, kind of, basically there, and I thinks its a big part of it's strength.
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Yeah, so I hope that that culture is basically in place 20 years from now.
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And it's one thing it fits with sort of our view then and now about what a brand is.
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It doesn't matter how many people hate your brand, as long as enough people love it.
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And as long as you have that out, you can't be afraid of offending people.
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You can't try and go down the middle of the road.
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You have to take a stand on something, which is ultimately, I think why the Kaepernick ad worked.
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>> Well let's jump into those athletes.
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So, I want to take you back to 1978, Phil.
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You stumble across a shy, timid, retiring Stanford tennis player by the name of John McEnroe.
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>> Timid, I wouldn't say.
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[LAUGH] >> Well, we got to see a little bit of John in that video.
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But for anyone who doesn't know tennis John is a young, fantastic tennis player who's as well known for breaking rackets as he is breaking serve.
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He is everything that the tennis establishment at the time, the major majority of the market, was not.
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So what made him the right ambassador for Nike?
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>> Well the story, basically, we had an agreement with Jimmy Connors' agent for him to wear Nike shoes.
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And he did, he wore them at Wimbledon.
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And the agent said, as soon as he gets back from Wimbledon, we'll get it signed. Well, he won Wimbledon.
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And as soon as he got back from Europe for he had summer matches and then came the US Open.
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He says, as we get done with the US Open, we'll get this contract signed.
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Well, he won the US Open, and then, we got down to sign the contract.
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And he says, I don't remember it this way.
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That was Jimmy Connors' agent, not Jimmy Connors, himself.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But that was the end of our endorsement with Jimmy Connors.
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[LAUGH] And so, the next year, I think it was, that I went to Wimbledon looking for the next great hope.
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And there were a bunch of really good American, young Americans 18 and under.
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I was looking at the 18 and unders.
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And they had Brian Godfrey who was a great player and Eliot Teltscher is a great player and the head of USA tennis was saying that those are really great endorsements.
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Stay away from that kid McEnroe he's too much of a hot head.
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He's playing over on court 14 and I went right for court 14.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And basically that week he was playing the number 16 player in the world, Phil Dent, and he's 18 years old and hits his first serve in and the chalk flies up and the line judge goes out.
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McEnroe jumps over the net, puts his nose this far from the official and says are you sure of that call?
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Are you very sure of that call?
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And I turned to the guy I was with and said this kid's not afraid.
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And I kind of became a fan of his intensity and his competitiveness and his attitude.
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He did lose control sometimes.
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But- >> [LAUGH] >> Well, I always remember Frank DeForge's write-up of him in Sports Illustrated, when he said of the big picture of Mac, and it says, why isn't this man smiling?
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Said, Beethoven didn't smile much, either.
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>> [LAUGH] >> That's fair.
19:38
A few years later, actually, several years later, you decided to name the executive building at your headquarters in Oregon after John McEnroe.
19:45
What is it you were trying to say to the team at Nike in doing that?
19:50
>> Well we named all the buildings after our heroes at the time, and he was one of them, and that just that was where my office was. >> Fair enough.
20:01
You're glad to see him back, playing well?
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>> And that makes me feel even better.
20:04
>> Now, let's fast forward to 1984.
20:06
You come across another decent basketball player whose name is Michael Jordan?
20:11
Michael Jordan, that's it.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Now, Nike were actually criticized at the time for overpaying for Jordan's signature. >> Mm-hm.
20:19
>> But of course, with hindsight, he became more than an athlete, he became a $2.
20:23
5 billion revenue brand for Nike.
20:28
Beyond MJ's greatness, what was it that made that brand so successful, and so dominant?
20:34
>> Yeah, it isn't something you can bottle.
20:38
It's been truly one of the unique experiences really, in all of marketing, that obviously he had it all.
20:47
And we pretty much knew that coming in.
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I mean, he was player of the year, he was handsome, he could jump, and that he won the national championship with the winning shot.
20:56
He had all of it, and when we signed him, we signed him for more than any rookie had been paid before.
21:04
We signed him for $250,000 a year, and Fortune magazine ran a little insert in another article.
21:11
It says there's no greater indication that Nike has lost its way than the fact that they paid Michael Jordan $250,000.
21:18
But we combined it with what we thought was a really good shoe, a really distinctive shoe.
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It was red and black it wasn't just white or black.
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And of course he wore it in great performances.
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And then we had the added benefit of David Stern banned it in the NBA.
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So we immediately combined what became a good ad, said, banned in the NBA, and every kid in the world wanted that.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And it hasn't been straight uphill.
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We had a one year where our sales actually went down.
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But overall, we got together with really good advertising, which reflected his personality, which was strong.
22:00
And it's been an unbelievable success that when he quit playing, sales of Jordan brand product were $750 million.
22:11
And this last fiscal year, they topped $3 billion long after he quit playing.
22:16
So I said to many people imagine how much we would sell if he never played [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> We can only dream.
22:24
>> Phil, it's Nike's 55th anniversary next week, I believe. >> Yeah.
22:29
>> The company's at record revenue levels, and just last year Nike was voted alongside Apple as the favorite brand of millenials.
22:38
And I think there's a few of us in here who might attest to that.
22:41
How does a brand stay so relevant to so many people for so long?
22:48
>> Well, it's hard work, but you have to work at it all the time.
22:53
But I think our thing obviously it starts with the product, the product is by far our most important marketing tool.
23:01
And so we're constantly working to improve product.
23:04
And so the kind of the recent up turn is because we've had a really good product pipeline.
23:10
Probably, the React running shoe is the number one on the list, but there have been a lot of others and so that's been really important.
23:19
And then good advertising is critical to it.
23:25
The Wieden+Kennedy experience has been, is in many ways as dramatic as Nike's, and it's really been kind of along side each other.
23:34
When I first met Dan Wieden, I walked into the door of his quote office.
23:38
He had three people besides himself sitting around the card table.
23:42
And he said welcome to Wieden+Kennedy and I said, Dan, just I want you to know just one thing, I hate advertising.
23:47
And he looked at me and said, well this will be interesting. And it has been.
23:51
But it is interesting that obviously if I had said that to Procter & Gamble, they'd take your $25 advertising budget and go on out the door But they were a small advertising firm, and he grew to understand that what I didn't mean was that I hated advertising, what I meant was that I hate traditional advertising and he found ways to find out who Nike is, or who Michael Jordan was and project that to the consumer.
24:22
And not only did Nike succeed, Kennedy now has offices all over the world, over 1,000 employees.
24:30
It has Coca Cola as a client, it has Honda as a client, it has a lot of the world's most famous brands as clients.
24:36
They've been an enormous success, and to this day they work really hard at trying to find out who it is and who the athlete is and how to how to project them.
24:48
I know we had Boris Becker, the great tennis players, and we're trying to get him as an endorsement.
24:54
And Dan Widen, was making the pitch and he says, we will find out who you are and project that to the world.
24:59
And Boris says, how in the world can you know who I am, when I don't know who I am?
25:05
[LAUGH] And just says, well, we'll find out.
25:08
Well, we didn't make the sale, we didn't sell them, but that is one of the things I've done.
25:14
So the advertising and the product are two of the really important things, and then keeping the product fresh and keeping advertising fresh.
25:22
And it's an ongoing challenge and we don't always hit it.
25:25
A couple years ago we took a little dip and it's a very, very competitive business and every six months there's kind of a new life and everybody has to be aware of that.
25:36
>> Phil this is a school and a speaker series dedicated to leadership.
25:40
So we want to make sure we touch on that topic.
25:43
Something the MBA I class is challenged with each year is why would someone follow you?
25:49
I think, there can be a stereotype of what a CEO should be.
25:52
Sometimes, we think of them as a natural extrovert around the valley, sometimes they can be hero-like characters.
25:58
You described yourself as shy, introverted, someone who identifies with the born loser.
26:06
>> [LAUGH] >> That's why [CROSSTALK] >> [LAUGH] >> But how have those traits helped you as you built Nike?
26:14
>> Well, I think, I mean obviously introverted people have tendency to listen which I think good leaders do.
26:21
But when I was in school that, they talked about two different types of leadership.
26:27
They talked about autocratic leadership and democratic leadership.
26:31
And it was only 15 years after World War II and they had two of the great autocratic leaders ever, Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.
26:41
And they at the time were looked on as being very successful.
26:45
That then you have a democratic style leadership which is, the other thing is getting people involved and talking to people.
26:56
So I think it's probably almost impossible for an introvert to be an autocratic leader.
27:03
But an introvert can be a democratic leader and as the idea of democratic leadership progressed, they started to use the term collaborative leadership, which is really, in my view, the ultimate only kind of leadership to this day.
27:17
That in this day and age, the autocratic leader doesn't work.
27:20
It can work for temporarily but it won't work long run.
27:24
And I hope that the people in this auditorium today don't get the idea that hero leadership means being autocratic.
27:34
I mean, obviously, I think Steve Jobs is looked at as really kind of in this area, the whole world really as being one of the great leaders, which I believe he was.
27:44
But I do believe at the end of his career, he was beginning to modify his natural autocratic style which if you will, got him fired as first tour around Apple and as he got it to go through Apple a second time, there was a change in Steve Jobs.
27:59
And you notice that from the commencement speech he gave to Stanford University and he hired Tim Cook and he had a lot of give and take with Tim Cook.
28:08
And Tim Cook who I know quite well is a very much collaborative leader, and I believe a great collaborative leader.
28:14
So I think that it's just don't equate hero leadership with autocratic leadership.
28:21
The only task style of leadership that will work in this day and age is collaborative leadership.
28:28
>> Okay, Phil, another thing they know about this group is that we're a pretty touchy-feely bunch these days.
28:34
Of course, in your book you describe business as war without bullets. >> Yeah.
28:39
>> So, as you look back on those early days in Nike dealing with those crises, were soft skills tools an entrepreneur like you could really afford back then?.
28:49
>> What type of skills are you talking about?
28:52
>> The softer skills, the touchy-feely skills.
28:54
>> I think yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that.
29:02
If you read the book Shoe Dog, obviously, I don't come across as a touchy-feely type, and neither were any of those top five.
29:11
But there's lots of different ways of communicating.
29:14
And one of the things I don't like about the politically correct movement is that to me, politically correct has been founded by people that couldn't communicate, and they don't want you to communicate very well either.
29:27
Because communication is really, is a kind of an individual thing.
29:31
Everybody's a little bit different.
29:32
It's like people have different fingerprints, they have different personalities, they have different emotions.
29:38
And I think the leader's job is to know who his team is and there is different ways to communicate with that team.
29:44
We weren't touchy-feely in the sense that we are always patting each other back and say how we feel.
29:48
But you could say, how are you doing today, you son of a bitch and mean the same thing.
29:52
>> [LAUGH] >> And so there's just different ways to do that.
30:00
>> I think we need to bring that into the chatter on campus these days.
30:04
>> [LAUGH] >> Now, Phil, we also study a lot here, how leaders act in times of crisis, and Nike and yourself have dealt with several.
30:15
Today the Nike brand is stronger than ever but of course in the late 90s, Nike did for some time become synonymous with sweat shops, and slave wages.
30:26
As you look back how do you feel you handled that crisis, what would you do differently, and what are you most proud of?
30:32
>> Well, one of the things that we didn't talk about in business school when I was here was the media.
30:45
And so I think probably this group Is probably much more aware of the media.
30:50
But it's always there, it's more prevalent than it's ever been and they're not always consumed by facts.
30:58
That and so when the first charges came that Nike runs sweatshops that it's really a seductive argument to say, this person only makes $4 a day, and Michael Jordan makes $30 million a year, and Phil Knight's worth $2 million dollars, and isn't this awful.
31:26
But our initial reaction was that we don't run sweatshops. And that you're wrong.
31:35
And I was the CEO at the time, and that was my strategy, and it was awful. It didn't work.
31:42
And so we kind of after about a year of that it became clear.
31:48
And so we took another tack which says yeah you can criticize who you want but this is what we're going to be and this is how were going to be a better company over the next 10 years and we're going to take these steps each year and you come look at any of our factories anywhere in the world that you want.
32:03
And we've kind of been on that path ever since and that's basically working.
32:07
And I do think that we have had lots of good comments that don't get much publicity from the media.
32:14
And one of the good ones was a member of the United Nations says Nike's the gold standard for all apparel companies in how they run their factories.
32:23
And it's a constant battle though, because we're always kind of looking for new factories or changing factories.
32:29
And most of our shoe factories and our good apparel factories have been with us for 20 or 25 years, but economics change at different times so you do change some of them on the periphery.
32:40
So it's a constant battle to live up to the standards we have.
32:43
But we have a whole team at Nike that does that all the time and basically is talking to people on the production line all the time.
32:51
And, I do think that our factories are the best in the world right now for conditions and it's a basic truth that great shoes are made by great factories.
33:01
You don't want a bad factory making the best shoes in the world.
33:07
>> Now Phil, something else we hear a lot from the media but also occasionally at Stanford is to find and follow your passion and you are perhaps the example of someone who built a business dedicated to something they love, which is sports and athletes.
33:23
There's many of us in the room today who I feel they are struggling to maybe tie our true passions to a viable business or career.
33:33
What would you say to people like us?
33:35
>> Well, I think, you know, that one thing that is left out is that you've got to have a niche, you've got to have a reason to succeed.
33:42
My reason that was that, you know, Japan could make shoes economically, and but then the rest of it fit right in home base for me.
33:54
So and I do think if you're going to be an entrepreneur it has to be something that you really love because there will be a lot of dark days.
34:02
And as I say we never hesitated in those dark days so I was fortunate enough to find what I thought was a niche to go with my passion, and that's what you need to bring those two things together.
34:14
But when you do, you're very, very fortunate and take advantage of it.
34:18
>> All right, well, look, Phil, this has been brilliant thus far.
34:20
I know Nike say there is no finish line.
34:23
We do need to finish in about 15 minutes.
34:24
Phil, this has been brilliant.
34:27
We're almost going to let you go, not quite yet.
34:29
There's a little tradition we like to do up here, on stage, we call the lightning round.
34:33
So the idea is, I'm going to ask you a set of either-or questions.
34:37
We want you to answer the one answer that comes first in your mind, okay?
34:41
>> [LAUGH] >> You didn't warn me about this.
34:45
>> [LAUGH] >> You didn't tell me you were going to mention me mom.
34:47
>> I might get back to her.
34:48
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> All right, look.
34:51
Because it's a new thing we're going to start easy and then we'll get harder, okay? So Jordan or LeBron? >> No.
34:58
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> It's like asking which of your kids do you like better.
35:07
>> [LAUGH] >> You can tell me backstage it's fine.
35:10
>> [LAUGH] >> Rose Bowl or Super Bowl? >> Rose Bowl.
35:14
>> 3:40 mile or two-hour marathon? >> Two hour marathon.
35:22
>> Nice, suit or track suit? >> Man, track suit.
35:26
>> [LAUGH] >> Just do it, or dream crazy? >> Just do it.
35:32
>> Hawaii or Palm Springs? >> Hawaii.
35:36
>> Beatles or Rolling Stones? >> Beatles.
35:38
>> [LAUGH] >> That was easy.
35:40
>> [LAUGH] >> Breaking Bad or The Sopranos? >> Ooh.
35:45
>> [LAUGH] >> Probably Sopranos but that's tough.
35:48
[LAUGH] >> We were told it was tough for you.
35:50
>> [LAUGH] >> Adidas or barefoot? >> [LAUGH] >> Barefoot.
35:54
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Ladies and gentlemen, Phil Knight.
36:00
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Thanks, it was fun. [MUSIC]