SLO LIFE Magazine Dec/Jan 20/21

| PUBLISHER’S MESSAGE
My mom always said to me, “Tommy, a good book can change your life.”
Last night, I finished one that surprised me, “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight. He’s the guy who founded Nike.
His memoir was exceptionally well-written, considering it was authored by a former captain of industry.
In his Acknowledgments, he thanked among others, his fellow students at the writing classes he had taken
over the years he was penning his manuscript. Although the book was fascinating, I was most intrigued by
that revelation.
As an eighty-two-year-old multibillionaire, Knight could have simply hired a ghost writer or just sat on a
beach somewhere and sipped a Mai Tai (his favorite drink). Instead, he told his story. And he did it using his
own words.
After publishing SLO LIFE Magazine for a decade now, that’s the thing I love most: Listening to people tell
their story in their own words. It’s how they tell it that I’m interested in most. And it never gets old.
When I sit down to an interview, I always start with some variation of the same question: “Tell me, where are you from?” A few minutes in, the voice
recorder sitting on the table between us seems to melt away and I am drawn into the story as if I’m a kid back in the Tulare County Library reading
about astronauts and quarterbacks.
But while I was turning the pages of “Shoe Dog,” my mind was not in Beaverton, Oregon, where Nike is headquartered, but right here in San Luis
Obispo. Knight unfurled a white-knuckled tale familiar to all entrepreneurs, one filled with unending leaps of faith into the darkness of uncertainty. He
ended his memoir by heaping praise on the one thing he identified as the most important component of his outsized success: Luck.
Again, I was taken aback by his refreshingly honest appraisal. And while he certainly did everything possible to bend the odds into his favor, there were
many times early on where Nike could have very easily gone belly-up. Except the ball took a good bounce.
This has been a year made up almost entirely of bad hops and unlucky breaks. Many of us are hobbling to the finish line on the way toward completing a
race we’d like to forget.
But don’t do that—don’t forget.
Although we have not been dealt a hand stacked with the best cards, we are still holding cards. Which means we’re still in the game. Our stories
continue to unfold.
And I know this to be true because in the thousands of interviews I have conducted throughout my career, no one ever talks about their successes except
as a “The End.” The stories we tell one another and ourselves—our stories—are the amalgamation of adversity and setbacks and bad breaks. Smooth
sailing does not make for very interesting reading. I’m willing to bet that when we look back someday, we will all surely have a lengthy chapter in our
memoirs devoted to this most peculiar/frustrating/maddening/terrifying [insert your own adjective here] year.
As he reflects back on his life, closing in on “The End,” Phil Knight confirms this observation when he reveals his one, final wish. It’s not to buy another
building or a yacht, but to go back and do it all again—the heartbreak, the stress, the uncertainty. No money and deeply in debt, not knowing whether
his fledgling shoe company would make it to end of the month—that’s when he was happiest.
Interesting.
Mom was right about books.
I wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season, and a prosperous New Year. Thank you to everyone who had a hand in producing this issue of
SLO LIFE Magazine. And, most of all, thank you to our advertisers and subscribers—we couldn’t do it without you.
Live the SLO Life!
Bad Hop
Tom Franciskovich
tom@slolifemagazine.com
p.s. If you’d like to read more visit me at tomfranciskovich.com
12 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | DEC/JAN 2021