From Nike CEO to Starting Over at 65: John Donahoe’s Reinvention

I think one of the hardest lessons I learned was how much adversity is a fact of life, both personal and professional adversity. And adversity is what gives our lives purpose and meaning. I was afraid of adversity. I hated when things weren't going well. I wanted everything to go well. I want everyone to feel good. And yet, so when adversity was there, my reaction was so like almost panic and negative, and I can't wait to get out of this pain or this suffering or this whatever.

Thank you, Chip. And you know that feeling is mutual.

You know, Chip, it had been such an intense period. My time at eBay, it felt like almost...

eBay, PayPal. It was both. Yeah.

eBay owned PayPal, but the company name was eBay at the time.

And it felt like there almost had been one crisis after another. And while we became better maybe with each one, it was taking more and more out of me. And so as it got toward the end, there's some inner part of me that knew I needed a break. And I had given advice to so many people over the years: 'Oh, you should take a lot of time in between your different phases.' Well, I took a whole three weeks between Bain and eBay. And so I thought it was time I would practice what I preached and said I wanted to take a full year off. And someone had advised me saying, you know, define that upfront, say it's going to be a full year because that will help your ego when people say, 'What are you going to do next? What are you going to do next?' To be able to say, 'I'm going to take a full year.' And I had no idea at the time how prescient and valuable that advice was. And so I did. I took, starting in, I guess it would have been September of 2015. The first, I had no idea in hindsight how burned out I was. The first three months were just recuperation. You know, it takes time for that inner clock to quiet down and calm down. I remember that first month being twitchy. I'd get up twitchy like, oh, there's no email or there's no this or no that. And just slowly what would happen over time is my inner clock would begin to quiet down a little bit. And you notice a little bit, oh my goodness, that tree that I've looked at every day for the last 10 years looks a little more green and a little more vivid. And then I did a 10-day silent Buddhist retreat up with Jack Kornfield up at Spirit Rock.

And that was like a transformational experience because that was sort of like, I don't know, an inner explosion of processing what I had been through a little bit and opening my heart and my soul to be more available and present for the uncertain journey ahead. And so that first three months was a really important transition point.

You know, some, another YPO colleague of ours, Kent Siri, had, you know, one of my true heroes and a mentor, had said to me 15 years earlier, he had been going through some tough times and he said he'd been having some almost inner panic attacks. And he said to me, you know, 'I've been doing some Buddhist reading.' And I said, 'Well, who? I've never done that.' And Jack Kornfield and Pema Chödrön were the two. And so I had been, you know, I had been reading those and touching those. And then I got to know Jack, perversely, when I was at eBay because Bill Ford of Ford Motor Company was on my board and Jack had, he was one of Jack's mentees. He introduced me to Jack. And so Jack had become a bit of a mentor or a spiritual adviser and he said, 'Come do this retreat.' I'm like, 'Jack, I've never meditated seriously.' And he said, 'Don't worry. Don't worry. We have you.' It was a deeply, I would say it's one of the most, one of the most important 10 days of my life in terms of certainly of my inner life, of sort of some of the experiences and insights, and you know, insights make it sound like I would say just the experiences that I had there.

Well, you know, Chip, it's just coming to me. And one of, just an experience I had at that retreat that was so transformational. There was a beautiful Buddhist painting on the wall behind where I would sit. You know, you sit in the same place for the 10 days to meditate. And it had a beautiful, one of the female icons in Buddhism around some beautiful green hills and there were streams. And I was in one of the meditations. I had this image that I was in a coliseum like in the old, and I was in the ring and it was like a gladiator. I was having to fight others until one of the two of you died, right? It was a fight to death. And there was a full stadium, a full coliseum of people yelling and screaming. And I remember the fight to death and winning and then realizing all that meant is I had to do it again to the next person. And so being stuck in this gladiator coliseum with everyone sort of hoping that either you're going to die or the person you're competing with is going to die, and eventually you're going to die, right? You're not going to win them all. And then at one point I turn and I see a doorway or a tunnel way where I can leave the ring. I can leave the ring. And so I walk out of the ring and outside, literally right outside the coliseum, was the painting, all these beautiful green hills and streams and it was calm. And it was like, 'Oh my god, I have been living my life in the gladiator ring where my experience was people were hoping I was going to die, and yet only a hundred yards out was this beautiful world that had green hills and streams and birds and trees.' And that captured a little bit what my inner experience had been and the recognition that it wasn't, I didn't need to go two years into the deep forests of Thailand like Jack did back in his day. But a different world was right there next to me. And a world where that was peaceful and I could open and let my guard down and open my heart or soul and maybe trust in whatever, mother nature, God, universal love. And so that was a key transition point. And that then led to the, well, what would give me joy? And I love Van Morrison's music. And that then led to me, I looked up right after that retreat where Van was playing. He was playing all through Spain and through Europe. So I told my wife, I'm going over to follow Van, and followed him on the road. And it was a little bit of a journey of joy, which was a radical concept for me because I kind of grew up Catholic. You know, you don't embrace that. And I did. And so that then led into a period of, all right, now what do I want out of the next stage of my life? And I kind of got to this sense of, all right, what, and every time I thought practically about it, it was depressing and caused me anxiety.

And so I had a conversation with a good friend, Bob Swan, who you may have, and he's like, 'Well, if you were 10 years from now looking back, what would you care about?' And I started thinking about, well, I was 55 at the time. I said, 'When I'm 65, what am I going to care about?' And I started recognizing or thinking about that there are certain people that I knew that were 65 and older that had vitality. They were young at heart. They were happy. And I just know, like Buddhist science teaches you, our brain becomes more negative over time. Meditation and mindfulness can counteract it. But our brain becomes more negative over time because we remember our negative experiences and our positive experiences can bounce off. And I said, 'Well, that's what I want. I want to have vitality when I'm 65. I want to be young at heart. That's more important than what I do or where I do it or how.' So I started on this listening journey of going to people I knew that were 65 and older and saying, 'Can I come buy you a cup of coffee and can I ask you two questions? How do you understand your life at this stage of your life? And how have you handled transition since you're 50?'

And Chip, it was remarkable because one conversation leads to another. Before I know it, I've had 50 conversations. I end up calling it the wisdom journey after the fact. Of course, life is so easy after the fact, but during it, everyone's story was different, but there was such consistency of perspective from it. It really gave me some guiding principles which helped me really embrace the next six to eight months and really in many ways have guided me ever since.

Well, I'm going to try to touch on maybe a couple of what I heard. I heard four or five things. The first I heard was our bodies give us all sorts of signals that we're getting older. Our hair turns gray, our hair falls out, you know, our knees ache a little, our back aches a little, maybe occasionally we have trouble remembering a name. You know, it's like all these, and yet our minds aren't getting older. Our minds are getting wiser. And Jim Collins said to me, he said, 'John, your 50s, your 60s, and God willing, your 70s should be the most productive and creative years of your life because you have the wisdom of your experience and you have the freedom to apply that wisdom where you want to and you can do it out of service and not out of ego. So don't call it the back nine, the second half, the final chapter. You're actually entering the prime period of your life.' And you know, Chip, when I heard your phrase 'wise elder', you know, 10, 15 years later, that captured that sense of you're entering that, oh my god, I'm entering my wise elder era. And that's a birth more than a death. So that was one. A second, and I'll just highlight two or three because they're the ones that stood out the most. I had two or three different people say to me, you know, John, one said, 'You want to know I have vitality? I'll tell you I have vitality. I hang around people that have vitality.' He said, 'Every time I hang out at the golf club with men of my own age, all we do is talk about how bad our golf swings are and brag about what kind of red wine we drank the night before. That makes me old.' Almost every one of these people found ways to be around young people and teaching, coaching, mentoring, often in informal ways. That was the second. A third, and this one maybe had the biggest impact on me. Two or three different people said, 'I want you to go see a guy. His name was Bill. He lived in Atlanta. He was 69 years old. He had had a big impact on them.' So I wrote to him and I said, 'Can I come buy you a cup of coffee? I'm going to be on the East Coast.' He said, 'No, but if you come to Atlanta, I'll buy you lunch.' So I did. I went and saw him and he listened to me talking about change and the next stage of life and I'm 55, and he listens, and then at some point he says, 'John, this personal renewal thing you're talking about, what did you call it? A repotting? I think it's just great. But if you want my advice about how you can have vitality when you're my age, my advice is this: Do not lose sight of your gifts.' Now, young man, when I was your age, I never would have used the word gifts because I'd assumed it would have been egotistical. God gave us all certain gifts. And our job's been to figure out which of those gifts, when we utilize them and utilize them in service to others, animates us inside and makes me happy. And John, I have learned that all the success and wealth and fame, and I have had all three, cannot make me happy. Happiness cannot come from the outside. It can only come from the inside. And at this stage of life, at 69 years of age, I have determined the best thing I can do for the people in my life and on this earth is to be happy. So young man, do not let anyone else tell you what your gifts are. You are the only one that can go inside of yourself and figure out what are the things for you that animate you inside, makes you happy. And John, you can apply those gifts in new areas, in new ways. I'd encourage you to do it out of service and not out of ego, a common thread. But young man, you need to do some thinking about what your gifts are.' I'm like, holy, like, can't you just tell me?

And Chip, the people that had been through some of this journey, they had a sense that they were doing thy will, not my will. They were doing what sort of God intended them to be doing. And they had a certain liberation. It wasn't about what other people thought anymore. It wasn't about whatever. It was they had a sense of almost following, you know, channeling, 'make me a channel of your peace,' and that was powerful. And then I'll tell one last one. I'm sorry I'm going on, but you brought me back to this era. The last one was a role of serendipity, and I'll use the story with Clay Christensen on this. Clay had gotten to know, he'd done some retreats for us at eBay, board retreats, and he was a very famous professor for disruptive innovation at Harvard Business School. And he said to me, he said, 'John, you know, I am very conscious about who I am as a man, as a spouse, as a father, as a Christian, as an educator.' He was in the Mormon church. He had, I think, eight kids. And he said, 'I have spent the last 20 years of my life having two separate but parallel parts of my life as a bishop in the Mormon church in Boston and as an HBS professor.' He said, 'Then I turned 60 and I had a stroke and I lost my ability to speak.' He said, 'Serendipity is not always positive, but life happens this way.' He said, 'So I didn't know what I was going to do. I lost my ability to speak. Ended up writing what was his latest book, it was the second to latest book in his life, which was How Will You Measure Your Life?'

Yes. He said, 'Now that I've re-taught myself how to speak, 90% of my speaking requests are not about what I was famous for, but they're about this book. And it's the most integrative stage of my life.' And by the way, Clay spoke with a strong stutter right till the end. But he said it was the most rich and fulfilling stage of my life. He said, 'So serendipity is not always good, but one thing led to another and it's led to the most rewarding stage of my life.' And what I loved about it, Chip, is I'm never going to just say, screw it, I'm going to overthink it, try to overplan it. And it allowed me to say, I'm going to be conscious about who I am, like Clay said, what I stand for, what I believe in, but be open to the serendipity of life as it unfolds in front of me. And almost every person that I talked to had a story that said, 'I never would have guessed I'd have been here 10 years ago.' But this happened and then that happened and then that opened that door and then this event. And by the way, usually there was a crisis in there. Almost inevitably there was a crisis at some point. But it allowed me to open up and just be, all right, I have to kind of listen to discover thy will, not my will, instead of trying to figure it out.

I mean, you were a very important, wise elder counselor, one of the most important in my life, Chip. And that was very much true in that period. And let me, so to your point, you know, serendipity. I was on the board. I was quite happy at ServiceNow. Phil reached out and said, would you come play the CEO role for a period of time? Initially I said, you're crazy. I've never designed a shoe. I've never even been in a product company that makes a physical product. And he said, we need, we have to deal with technology, management, development, and a few things. So it felt like, okay, maybe this is a calling. I was 60 years old. He said, do it for five years. And so I did it and I actually did move up there. I moved up there because I had to live in Oregon. And we thought, Eileen and I thought we were going to both move up there. Well, what happened is less than 30 days, or about 30 days after I started, because I started mid-January 2020, COVID hit.

And so all of a sudden, the whole world got tossed upside down. I ended up staying up there because I had to be in a bubble. Eileen, my wife, had to be in either my bubble or a grandkid bubble. So she stayed to be in the grandkid bubble as my kids and grandkids were dealing with life down here. And so it was, you know, for the first couple years I felt like, oh my goodness, this was a calling. I was naturally a good fit for what was needed. There was a lot of decision-making needed. It was a little bit of a crisis leading through COVID. We were having very positive results in the market. And so it felt like, okay, I, you know, this was a calling. This was, you know, doing thy will, not my will. And sort of a couple, two and a half, three years in, when people started coming back to the office, I began to realize, well, wait a minute, we weren't as well positioned as I thought and the culture was feeling frustrated. And that started a couple-year period where I sort of did everything I tried in my three as an Enneagram to make change and position us, but what happened over time is it just created a bit of alienation between me and the culture and ultimately me and investors. And so, and it was, I think, and I was increasingly miserable because by that time Eileen was in D.C. I was up there alone. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm so unhappy and I'm not being successful. I talked to the board. We just said, I think the right thing is for me to transition. And you go through the usual thing. Oh, no, no. But eventually we do it. And then when we announced it, there was an explosion of media that was quite bruising and negative. And I remember being out a week later. I went away with my youngest son for a week. And I remember saying to him, Kevin, in a reflective moment, I said, 'God, my soul just feels bruised. My soul feels bruised with this. It's not just my ego or my body or my...' And he's like, 'Dad, souls can't get bruised. Souls are souls. Your body's bruised. Your ego's bruised. Your mind may be bruised. Yeah, that's, you got to let those heal. But your soul is your...

Yeah, because it was, and you played a hugely important role during this period, but it was a period where I thought, oh my goodness, I should be... I was 65. I should be coming into the wisest period of my life. I should be coming into what was the culminating phase of my life, and I just gotten my butt kicked really visibly, publicly, in a way that kind of surprised me, the veracity of it. And I now can say it was serendipity and one of the greatest gifts: the gift of crisis, the gift of failure. But during that time, in that dark night, and you and I... you remember, I remember coming down to spend the weekend with you in LA.

You know, I think it took me 11 seconds before I started crying.

You know, the first of 12 times in that 24-hour period when we took those long walks, and you were just there, and that was just a... I mean, I feel the emotion coming back right now. That was just a processing of... it wasn't just the short-term experience. It was a processing in the broader context of life and my life and identity, and reconnecting to a sense of, is there hope? Can I trust the universe? Because I was so surprised by what happened. And the concept of wise elder, and this notion that you were so helpful with, saying, oh, this is... you gave me the book Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. And the more I read, the more I read about, oh my god, crisis. I realize now, I didn't know that, but so many other wise elders have written about the role of crisis at some point in our life allows us to move to that next stage of life, the stage of perhaps true certitude, and the stage of being open to discovering the wisdom as it unfolds. Not calling on our own wisdom, but being open to embracing the wisdom of others to maybe lead a life of integrity and purpose. So it was a very... that year-long period was very... it was hard, but it was so... I don't know, meaningful, certainly in hindsight. Just in that moment, it just felt hard.

Yeah, you know, this sounds perverse maybe in some ways. I feel like I did some of my best work there. I don't know, as a leader, it wasn't easy, and part of what I've learned from it is it doesn't always work out.

Like I had had a... and I realized how much... and by the way, I did make some strategic decisions, other decisions that may or may not have been right. Certainly the perspective now is they were not right. But it was not feeding me over some period of time. There wasn't that mutuality. And you realize that life's not always fair. And I've actually come to understand it's always not about me. One of the lessons is it wasn't about me. John Gardner had this saying that, you know, he used to worry so much about what other people thought about him, and then he realized that actually most people were thinking about themselves, not him.