Dear daughters.
I just love stories of rolling sleeves and getting to work creating things that didn’t exist before.
Call it entrepreneurship. Call it resourcefulness. Call it self-made success.
Whatever you call it — I like it.
So when I heard of the story of Bill Bowerman, a resourceful self-made entrepreneur and the co-founder of Nike, I was inspired to write a ballad about it. Just some highlights from his life, in rhymes.
Hope you like it.
Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman
An athlete with mad skillz,
A war hero with courage and zeal,
A community leader who made jogging a big deal,
An accomplished and revered coach
whose runners’ shoes
Didn’t feel quite right
So together with his partner Phil Knight
Decided to give German manufacturers a good fight
He rolled up his sleeves and began tinkering
To make shoes even better for running.
He took shoes apart
Every change that he got
To figure out what designs to keep and what not.
His creations were a hit.
A success for all feet.
But he continued to challenge conventions
With his shoe inventions
Even during breakfast
When eating waffles and lost in contemplations
About the waffle’s depressions.
He famously ruined his wife’s waffle maker
By pouring melted urethane on it
Thereby recreating the famous
Feet on the moon imprint.
Bill Bowerman.
This is the story
It was he,
Who co-founded Nike.
Some of his quotes (the only thing I like better than a good quote is several):
“I don’t think there is any question, certainly in my own mind there is not, that I now have the best shoe in the world — if I could just find some good American shoemaker to make it.”
“If you have a body, you are an athlete!”
“Victory is in having done your best. If you’ve done your best, you’ve won.”
“The real purpose of running isn’t to win a race, it’s to test the limits of the human heart.”
“A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils.”
“It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
“The idea that the harder you work, the better you’re going to be is just garbage. The greatest improvement is made by the man or woman who works most intelligently.”
Here’s the last quote, and a cool clip about how running used to be for weirdos:
“Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: life.”
