Nike's Jogging Revolution
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A story about how Nike's co-founder Bill Bowerman discovered jogging in New Zealand and helped popularize it in America, leading to a business opportunity.
"In the 60s-70s, there was this New Zealand track and field coach named Arthur Leonard. He had runners like John Walker and Peter Snell who started winning Olympics in the 1500 meters, 5K, and 10K. Everyone asked what he was doing with his runners, and he said 'We run like 120 miles a week, we do long distance running, we go slow and we do just a shitload of it.'
Bill Bowerman, the track and field coach at Oregon University, got really interested. He went to New Zealand in the 1970s to learn from Arthur Leonard. When he came back, two things happened: University of Oregon gets really good at track and field, and he starts making shoes for his runners so they can run faster - he calls that company Nike, starting it with Phil Knight.
He starts talking about it to all his friends, even writes a book about it called 'The Joy of Jogging.' The idea of jogging wasn't even a thing in the seventies. People would say 'What do you mean you're just gonna run? Are the police gonna go after you?' Prior to 1970s, people didn't go out and run - that just wasn't a thing. Then there was this jogging craze of the seventies, and Bowerman created Nike to capitalize on it."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.