Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or

One lesson I took from all my home-schooling about heroes was that they didn’t say much. None was a blabbermouth. None micromanaged. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. So I didn’t answer Johnson, and I didn’t pester him. Having told him what to do, I hoped that he would surprise

Pre was most famous for saying, “Somebody may beat me—but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.” Watching him run that final weekend of May 1975, I’d never felt more admiration for him, or identified with him more closely. Somebody may beat me, I told myself, some banker or creditor or competitor may stop me, but by God they’re going to have to

In the ten years since the bad headlines and lurid exposés, we’ve used the crisis to reinvent the entire company.

Don’t go to sleep one night. What you most want will come to you then.

And like so many teens, he started every sentence with “I.” I think this. I think that. I, I, I.

I tried often to copy Woodell’s Zen monk demeanor. Most days, however, it was beyond me. I boiled with frustration, knowing that our pair count could have been so much higher if not for our constant problems with supply. People were crying out for our shoes, but we just couldn’t get them out on time. We’d traded Onitsuka’s capricious delays for a

You are remembered for the rules you break.

Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity.