April 11, 2023 • 41 mins
Convicted of murder at age 16, Nike executive Larry Miller kept his crime and incarceration a secret for over 40 years. But after building the Jordan brand at Nike into a billion dollar business, Larry has chosen to open up about his story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. It was a senseless act on my part. It
definitely made no sense, and it was something that if
I could go back and undo it, I absolutely would.
Every day I think about and hope that I could
and wish that I could go back and undo that. Hey,
(00:36):
everyone I started recording started from the bottom to find
and document unconventional success stories and to have them be
told firsthand. But I didn't expect to ever speak with
anyone like Larry Miller. In some ways, Larry's career is
super conventional. A bachelor's an accounting, an NBA, working his
(00:58):
way up at an iconic American brand like Campbell's Soup.
Then there's his time helping to build Jordan brand with
Michael Jordan himself. But what underlies his tire story the
degrees his early career, His work with MJ is an
extraordinary story of redemption and second chances. Miller was born
(01:20):
in Philadelphia, PA. Westphilly, you know, made famous by The
Fresh Prince. That show may have been a comedy, but Westphilly,
like other hoods, is deadly serious. Miller himself had an attentive,
loving family, but that didn't make growing up at his
neighborhood any easier, and ultimately he wound up succumbing to
(01:41):
the pressure of the streets in heartbreaking fashion. In this
episode of Started from the Bottom, I talked to Miller
about his career, how he navigated moving up the ladder
at Campbell's Soup, his switched to sports apparel, moving from
being an accountant to a businessman to building a brand
out of one of the most famous faces and names
in the entire world. But no matter how impressed will
(02:04):
be by his career moves, when Miller tells me about
his secret who's harboring for all his career, You'll be
all the more astonished. This is started from the bottom,
hard earned success stories from people like us. To start
a conversation, Larry tells me about a formative moment in
(02:24):
his life when he was trying to find his first
job out of college. The way it was set up
back then is there was what was called the Big
eight accounting firms, right and everybody with an accounting degree,
your goal was to get hired by one of the
Big eight. And I felt the same way. And the
one that I was really interested in was Arthur Anderson.
(02:45):
At the time, they were one of the Big Eight.
I went to the office and spent the whole day.
They're interviewing with a bunch of different people, and all
day I'm thinking in the back of my mind, should
I share my story with these folks? Should I say something?
And I kept, you know, kind of thinking, and finally
I get to the last person at the end of
the day was a hiring manager. So I decided, you
(03:06):
know what, I'm going to share my story with this guy.
So I sit down with him and I said, hey,
you know, there's something I want to talk to you
about that didn't come through and the other interviews that
didn't come through on the application. And then I went
in and started to tell him about my past, that
I had started my education while I was incarcerated, blah
blah blah. And I could see as I'm talking to him,
(03:28):
I could see his face changing. And finally, when I
got done, he said, wow, that's an amazing story. And
he reached in his pocket and he pulled out an
envelope and he said, uh. He said, I have an
offer letter here that I was all ready to give you,
but I can't give it to you now. He said,
I can't take the chance on hiring you and something
(03:48):
happened down the line, So I wish you the best,
but I can't hire you. And at that point I
decided I wasn't going to share my background anymore. If
it came up, I wasn't going to deny it, or
if somebody asked directly, I wasn't gonna be dishonest, but
I wasn't going to volunteer the information, and I never
did it to that point. Was that a pretty immediate
instinct after that or was it did that come out
(04:10):
of maybe even just a period of after that feeling
like well, I think it was pretty immediate, because as
I'm he's telling me this, I was like, man, I
should have never said anything. But the reality is I'm
glad I did because I think in an environment like that,
with public accounting and all the regulations and all, something
would have probably come up at some point. And once
(04:30):
the Campbell's opportunity came up, I figured it was probably
better not to go public accounting. The chances of my
background getting exposed or coming up in public accounting were
a lot greater than if I was working for a
company like Campbell. So I decided to take the job
at Campbell. Super when you got there and your degrees
(04:50):
in accounting, what did you learn even some of the
soft skills, maybe even beyond just accounting, Like, what did
you learn with that being your first you know? One
of the things that I realized early on was that
I was going to have to take some control of
my career. And so I remember one point, this guy
who's started in the training program with me. He had
(05:12):
gone to work for a company called Missus Paul's. They
were a division of Campbell's Soup at the time. They
make fish sticks, fish products. But he had gone to
work for Missus Paul's and he and I were pretty close,
and so he called me up one day. He said, man,
I was surprised that you weren't interested in the job
we had for you over here. I said, what are
you talking about? He said, well, we you know, we
(05:33):
reached out about a job for you over here and
we were told that you weren't interested. I was like,
no one said anything to me about that, So that
kind of got my you know, got my standard up
a little bit, and I was like, you know, this
is not right. At least someone should have said something
to me and given me the opportunity to say yes.
Or no. So I actually set up a meeting with
(05:55):
the guys who ran the department, and I stepped to
him about it. I was like, listen, you know, I
understand that Missus Paul's reached out about a job that
they were interested in me for and they were told
that I wasn't interested without me even knowing about it.
And we're like, well, we thought this was what's best
for your career. I said, you know what, I appreciate that,
but I think I should be involved in deciding what's
(06:15):
best for my career. And okay. So I ended up
going over and interviewing for that job at Missus Pauls
and moving over and taking that job at Missus Paul's.
But if my friend hadn't called me and told me
about it, I would have never known. I would have
never gotten to at least give it a shot to
see if it was something I wanted to do. So
my last role at Campbell's was actually working in the
(06:38):
soup plant, which was an amazing experience for me. One
of the differences in a situation like that is that
every day you have a new goal, and you know
whether you hit your goal or not. Every day. It's
like Hey, we need to produce X number of Kansas
tomato soup. Did we hit that number? If we did? Cool,
then if we did it, then we got to talk
about what went wrong, why we didn't hit it, and
(07:01):
what we're going to do to make it up. Every day,
the plant manager would, you know, every morning, all the
managers would get together and talk about what had happened
the day before. And one of the things that I
learned from these guys is that they would go at
each other. I mean like going at each other hard
because hey, you messed up. I'm gonna let you know
you messed up. They'd argue and curse, and then at
(07:21):
the end of the meeting like, yo, man, let's go
get a couple of coffee. Yeah, you're coming over this weekend. Yeah.
It was like nobody took it personal. It's like, I'm
gonna tell you that you screwed up, and you know,
I'm gonna call you out and tell you exactly what
was wrong. But it's not personal. I'm not you know,
we're still good whatever. But I and that was that
was something that I learned in that experience. It's like,
(07:42):
try not to take it personal when somebody's giving you
feedback on something that you you know you should have
done a better job at you know what I mean.
And that's something that's not always easy to do because
it's easier to take it personal when somebody's telling you
that you screwed up. And these guys taught me that
you got to figure out how to take that feedback.
(08:03):
Take it in, but then you gotta let it go. No,
you can't take it personal, right, Take it in, make
the tweak, ye, and then let it. But by the
time you leave Campbells, you were there five years, five years,
five years. You got a little late start for college,
so you're thirty five. Somewhere in that about thirty five.
Where are you at in terms of thinking about your career.
(08:24):
Are you thinking I'm okay to stay here as long
as I can keep moving up, or you realizing maybe
this isn't the exact right fit, or well, you know, Um,
It's funny because I never thought about like, Okay, I'm
gonna do this and then this is the next job.
My focus was always if I always felt like, if
I kill this job that I'm in, what's next will
(08:46):
materialize for me. I'll be able to you know, because
one of the things I realized is that if you
have a good reputation in terms of your work ethic
and doing things that the way you're supposed to, people
want you on their team. Yeah, you know what I mean.
And so I never was like focused on, well, I'm
gonna do this, and then the next move is this
(09:06):
one and next. I was always focused on I'm gonna
I'm gonna do my very best at the job that
I'm in, and then we'll see what materialized. And unfortunately
for me, you know, things kind of worked out with
that process, But but that that was the way I
always approached it. This like I'm gonna kill the job
I'm in and focus on that, and then what's next
to materialized for me? And I think we'll see as
(09:28):
we kind of progressed through here, is that that tactically
worked for you? It did, The thing seemed to just
follow in your lap at that point. It did. But
I think I know, beyond shadow of doubt that I'm blessed,
way beyond my wildest streams. But I think it was
also putting in the work and being willing to step
up and speak up when I felt like the need
(09:50):
was there for me to protect my own career, right right, So,
just moving ahead a little bit, you eventually make your
way to a company called Jansen, which is a company
I guess what would you call it an apparel sports company? Swimwear. Yeah,
(10:11):
so Jansen basically start out as a swimwear company, making,
you know, swimwear, cruise ships, beach in swimwear, and then
branched out into other sportswear categories, but mainly is known
for a swimwear But moving over from more the food
industry to apparel, did that feel like a challenge to
(10:33):
you or did it for like a whole new sort
of world to learn or did it feel I think
the fundamentals of business you can apply regardless of what
the industry is. I think when you change industries, you
still are going to apply your same leadership style, your
same basic business principles. It's just then learning the new industry.
(10:55):
Then people were willing to teach me the industry to
share with me. I remember in swimwear they have what
they call market weeks, and as the finance guy there
was that's not something that I would typically have been
involved in, but I requested to go to those market
meetings and sitting on the meetings when the sales guys
(11:16):
are pitching the customers, sitting on the meetings where there
were discussions between sales and customers and feedback on product.
Because I wanted to learn as much as I possibly
could about not just the finance part of the business,
but the rest of the business as well. You were
asking to do that as a controller. Yeah, wow, Yeah.
And then eventually the guy who was running the women's
(11:38):
swimwear division, he approached me one day and he's like, man,
you should come and work with me, you and I
together kind of running the swimwear it. He had more
of the creative side of like what the products should
look like. He was more focused on, you know, this
is the product we should have, this is where we
should sell it. And when we tied the conversation about it,
(11:59):
he said, you know, man, you know I want you
to come over and help me out with all the
numbers and the business stuff. And I said, fine, I'm
willing to do that as long as you teach me
the other side of the business that you're good at.
And so we had a great working relationship and we
had the business on fire. This really starts a new
chapter in your career, right, because it kind of moved
(12:20):
me out of finance. That was the first time I
actually moved out of the finance department and my job there.
My title there was director of business Development for the
swimwear division, and that, like I said, was the first
like outside of actually finance. At this point, you're out
(12:40):
of finance, You're running your first company. Were you Were
you terrified? No? Actually, the thing that I was most
concerned about throughout all of this was my story coming out,
like somebody finding out about my past, and that coming
(13:01):
out and that hindering what I was trying to do
and hindering the progress that I had been making. That
was the thing that worried me the most. Im everything
else just felt kind of easy, maybe not necessarily easy,
but I looked at it like, hey, if somebody else
can do it, then I could probably do it. Now
that I can't do brain surgery right just because somebody
(13:21):
else could do it. But in the business world, in
the corporate world, the way I looked at it's like, Okay,
you know, I'm gonna figure out. I'm gonna figure this out.
After the break, Larry gets a little more revealing about
what he really went through to get to the top.
(13:45):
We're back with my conversation with Larry Miller. We're about
to get into his upbringing in West Philly, a neighborhood
that shaped him, but not before it broke him. Maybe
you want to talk a little bit about the neighborhood. So,
you know, growing up, I had a strong family. You know,
there were eight kids in the family, my mom and dad.
My dad worked every day in the factory and made
(14:07):
sure that we, you know, had what we needed. My
mom took care and raised eight kids. So you know,
I had a good childhood. It's not like I can't
blame anybody else for what I did. These were choices
that I made, and I think at a certain age,
just the allure of the street really started to pull me,
and I started to want to be one of the
(14:29):
cool guys in the street because you know, to me,
you were seeing it exactly. That's how you get noticed,
that's how you you know, build, that's how you be
to your point be seen. And so I first time
I was ever arrested, I was twelve years old. Friend
of mine and I stole a bike and we got caught.
I ended up with probation and then a little bit
(14:53):
around the time I decided to join the gang, joined
the gang. And you know, I'm the kind of person.
Once I kind of decided to do something, then I'm
all in. And when I joined the gang, I was.
I was all in. And what what game I was from?
My gang was called the Cedar in the game fifty
six and Seedar Avenue. And when I was sixteen years old,
(15:13):
I uh, I shot another kid and killed him. And
he wasn't someone that was in a gang. He just
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it was a senseless act on my part. It
definitely made no sense and it was something that if
I could go back and undo it, I absolutely would.
Every day I think about uh and hope that I
(15:35):
could and wish that I could go back and undo that,
but but I can't. And you know, fortunately for me,
I've been able to connect with his family and they
they have forgiven me. It was it was amazing. We
met my daughter and I met with them, and um,
they you know, expressed their feelings and you know the
(15:57):
pain that this had caused them. But at the end
they all said, hey, but but but we forgive you.
And so that that's been If nothing else comes out
of this whole process, the fact that of having that
forgiveness from them has been has been amazing for me.
But I was sent and says I was sixteen. I
was charged as an adult. I pleaded guilty to second
(16:20):
degree murder and was sentenced to four and a half
to twenty years. Did the four and a half, got out,
knocked around in and out of jail doing crazy stuff again,
ended up going back to jail for a number of
armed robberies, and this time I ended up with a
sentence of four to ten and I had to do
nine months of the backtime, so I ended up with
(16:41):
four years and nine months. And this time when I
was incarcerated, they had a program where you could take
college classes inside the jail, and there were a number
of colleges that were offering classes. Temple University, Cheney State, Villanova,
Montgomery County Community College, Philadelphia Community all were offering classes
(17:01):
inside the jail. And there was a program where you
could qualify to move into these trailers that were outside
side of the wall, so that the jail had a
jail wall and the trailers were on the other side
of the wall, and in this program, you could live
in those trailers and then leave every day and go
(17:21):
to school and just had to be back by eight
o'clock in the evening. When I heard about that program,
I was like, man, that's how I want to do
my time. If if I gotta be here, I want
to do it like that. So I started doing what
I needed to do to qualify for that program, which
was take classes inside, not getting into any trouble. You
had to have half of your minimum sentences. So got
(17:42):
to that point, I moved out to those trailers and
started at Montgomery County Community College, got my associate's degree
while I was in that program, transferred down to a
halfway house in North Philly, started going to Temple. Yeah,
you transferred over into Temple right transferred and I was
able to transfer all of my credits. So I started
that Temple as a junior. So I with my associalist
(18:04):
degree and finished my bastelors in two years and started
at Campbell suit But when I was graduating from from
Temple and companies would come on campus, like I said,
to interview. One of the things I did early on,
I took interviews with companies that I knew I didn't
want to work for for whatever reason, but I didn't
know anything about interviewing and all that because I'm coming
(18:27):
from the street. So I was like, you know what,
I need some practice at this. So I took interviews
with companies I knew I didn't want to work for
to get the practice, so that by the time the
companies came that I wasn't trusted in, I was killing
it because I had figured out the right questions to
ask the answers to that they wanted to hear. I
mean I because I had taken all these interviews and
(18:49):
gotten the feedback on it. By the time the companies
came on campus that I wanted, I was interested and
I was killing them. Wow. Like one of the questions,
you know, it was always like her, so, so where
do you see yourself in five years? Right? And I
thought a lot about that question, you know, as a
controller or CFO whatever, And I thought about it and
(19:10):
I was like, it's a little bit deeper than that,
I think to me, And the way I would answer
that question is I would always tell them, you know,
my goal is I want to be a decision maker.
I want to be in a position where I'm helping,
helping to make decisions that determine the direction of company
is going to go in, and I'm willing to take
the responsibility for those decisions. Like, if they work out,
(19:33):
then great, If they don't, I'll take the responsibility. But
my goal is I want to be a decision maker.
Oh that's a very good answer. But but but but
that was the reality for me, and I think that's
the way I always looked at it. I didn't I
didn't box myself into I want to be in finance.
I want to be a controller. I want to be
It was like, I want to be sitting at the
(19:53):
table helping to make decisions. We really took that questions
that face value. You really looked inside yourself and thought, well,
what is it that I really want my career exactly?
I want to be a decision I want to be
somebody that's that's college shots right, right. We got to
take a quick break, but when we come back, Larry
Miller makes his mark at Nike. In January of twenty
(20:25):
twenty two, Larry came out with his secret. The story
of his murder conviction was in his book Jump, My Secret,
Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom, which he co
wrote with his daughter. But for four decades after getting
out of prison, Larry kept his past his secret, fearful
it would jeopardize his career. He told no one, even
as he made impressive moves from prison to Campbell's to
(20:49):
Jansen to Nike, where he was finally out of the
finance game and ready to start building a legendary brand.
Our first job at Nike was the head of apparel
in the US, which was about a billion dollar business
at the time. So jes see US apparel at that point.
(21:10):
And what I didn't know when I started at Niki
until after I got here. But at the time I
was hired at Nike, I was the first black vice
president in the history of the company. I did not
know that until I got here. But that put a
little bit. I added pressure on the fact that, you
know what, I got to make sure that I did.
I deliver on this. It must have put pressure both
ways in terms of the feeling of like being one
(21:33):
of one here at Nike, the pressure to deliver. But
I'm also wondering if if you felt pressure as as
a black man who's an executive at Nike, that sort
of built off of the greatness of black athletes? Did
that feel Could that have felt fun? That's why I
was I think that's why I was a little surprised
(21:54):
or a lot surprised when I found out that I
was the first, because you assume based on you know,
Nike's involvement with the athletes and that that the company
a certain way. But but you know, fortunately now that
number has has gone way up. I think we've got
forty to fifty black vice presidents here now. So were you?
(22:14):
I mean, you're coming from West Philadelphia, born and raced race,
had born a race, shout out the fresh Prince, and
you're moving up through the corporate ranks, not a lot
of black faces, not just a Nike yeah, anywhere you go. Right,
(22:38):
How did you put that feeling of discomfort that might
cause to the side or didn't or did not feel
that with you? No? It did, and I never put
it to the side. I just kind of dealt with
it and kind of figured out the best way that
I was going to deal with it to still keep
moving forward and accomplish what I was trying to accomplish.
But I never forgot about it because it's so obvious.
(23:02):
I mean, you know, you go into a room and
you know, you look around and it's just you sitting there,
you know what I mean, And so you can't not
you know, you can't forget it because it's in your
face all the time. But I think what you have
to do is make sure that you represent yourself in
the way that you should represent yourself as a person
(23:26):
of color, as a black person in that room. You
speak up on the things that you need to speak
up on, but do it in a way that is
non threatening to folks, but making your point, you know
what I mean, making your point and making sure that
people understand that if something's not right, it ain't right,
and you need to make sure that you voiced that.
(23:47):
And in a way that goes back to that first
example of that. You know, when you're at Campbell super Nape.
They didn't even tell you about that job opportunity and
you went in and you dressed it. It's like, on
one hand, if if you make yourself above approach, if
you do your job well and you show up and
are professional, then you can demand certain things. You know,
the reason I went back went to school and got
(24:08):
my NBA wasn't because I like school or just wanted
to go to school. I figured at some point I
was gonna get to a situation where I'm in the
runnings for a job or a position and somebody else's
as well, and they have an NBA and I don't.
Then that's to me, that's the roadblock that that would
(24:33):
be put up in front of me to keep me
from from getting to where I think I should be.
So I'm going to remove that as a barrier exactly.
So you know, you got to tell me something else
as to why you didn't give me the job. I
knew that that was a roadblock that I had to
move out of the way. Yeah. Can you tell the
story of the Jordan brand launch in ninety nine. So
(24:56):
at the time, actually Nike decided that there were three
businesses that they were going to put dedicated teams on
with the president and a team of people that were
solely focused on that business. And it was golf, Nike Golf,
which was had a different distribution and was kind of
different than the rest of the Nike business, ACG which
is the outdoor business, and then Jordan. Those were the
(25:19):
three and so so I was asked to put a
team together and strategies on how we were gonna take
that logo and evolve it into a brand. And the
first launch that we had was the Air Jordan fifteen.
And this was the first shoe that Michael wasn't going
to be playing in and wearing, right because he retired.
At that point, he was retired. And the formula had
(25:40):
been that we tinker designs a really cool shoe and
we do some marketing with Spike Lee or Bugs Bunny
or somebody, and then Michael wears the shoe eighty two
games and into the playoffs. That was the formula of
how we were gonna have what was driving this business,
and now you're taking him playing out, so a big
piece of the formula is not there anymore. And there
(26:02):
were a lot of people, both internal and external, who
thought that it would never work, that that's the formula,
formulas done. It was a nice run, but it's over
at this point. There were a lot of people who
felt that way, and you know, fortunately there were folks
internally who thought differently, as guy named Howard White, who
(26:23):
was basically the one who suggested and recommended me to
run the Jordan business. And Howard was always a proponent
of the fact that he believed the brand could be bigger,
that we could really evolve that into a brand, even
what the shoes the air Jordan's shoes had banned while
he was playing. Absolutely, And I mean, you know, if
you look at the business back then when he retired,
(26:47):
the business was around one hundred and forty one hundred
and fifty million dollars. In this year, it's over five
billion dollars. So so we would been able to not
only sustain it after he retired, but to continue to
grow it, kind of grow it exponentially. Yeah, running a
company's one thing, but running a company that's really built
(27:08):
a round a Living Legends brand, did you having to
work alongside Was that a different kind of pressure or?
I mean, I think the biggest pressure was, you know,
making sure that we represented mj the way he wanted
to be represented and the way he felt that we
should be representing him and that the brand should be
(27:29):
representing him. That was that was the biggest challenge, Just
making sure that everything we did aligned with who he
was and what he was about and what he brought
to not just on the court, but off the court
as well. Just making sure that we stayed aligned with
with who MJ is. We were blessed to have a
living legend that we could actually you know, talk to
(27:52):
and make sure that we're doing things the way he
wanted them done, and that we're doing things and representing
him the way he wanted to be represented. I think
we were add an advantage to me. He was kind
of like our secret sauce. Being able to go and
talk to MJ and run things by him and make
sure that he was on board with the things we
wanted to do. That kept us aligned with who he is,
(28:17):
and I think that's what made us be able to
you know, represent him in a way that resonates with consumers.
It's probably what makes the brand feel authentic. Authentic. Yeah, yeah,
just curious. How's the relationship with Phil Knight, who's another
very larger than life character here at Nike. Phil phil
(28:37):
Knight is someone that I have the utmost respect for.
Not only do I consider Phil a colleague and something
that I work with, but I consider him a friend.
And over the years we've developed a friendship relationship and
I always felt like Phil had my back. So if
I needed to push something through or something wasn't going
(28:57):
I felt like I could go to Phil explain it
to him, and he would help me figure out how
to get past it. So he's an incredible individual, and
like I said, I feel fortunate to consider him a friend.
When I decided that I think I'm going to move
forward with doing this book, right, So the two people
there were no. I had a list of people that
I wanted to have an opportunity to talk to before
(29:21):
they heard about it somewhere else, you know what I mean.
I didn't want to like read about the fact that
you know, I have all this history and not have
And so at the top of the list where Michael
Jordan and Phil Night they were you knew before this
book comes out and it's written, but you know, before
this comes out. I got to go to Phil them
where a bunch of other folks were on the list,
but they were to two at the top. So my
(29:44):
desire was to sit down in person and have the conversation,
but it was during the pandemic, so I had to
do it digitally. So I reached out to both of
them and basically said, hey, something personal I like to
talk with you about whenever you get an opportunity. So
Phil hits me right back I have a video conference
(30:04):
with him. So I share that with Phil and he said,
you know, when when I got the message that, uh,
that you wanted to talk about something personal, he said,
I didn't know what to expect, but it absolutely wasn't
this so so but he but then he said, look,
you know, he said, I think you have to tell
(30:25):
this story. He said, uh, it's it's inspirational. It's aspirational.
I think it will motivate some people, and I'll support you.
However I can, well, what did you tell Phil? Basically that, uh,
you know, my daughter had convinced me to tell my
story and that the part that people don't know about
(30:45):
is that from you know, the age of twelve, thirteen
to thirty, I was in and out of jail. I
was convicted of murder. I mean said, I laid the
whole whole deal out for him and and like I said,
he was like, you know, you have to tell the story.
And then it was the same with them Jack. We
finally ended up. It took a little bit longer to
connect with him, but when we did connect, same thing
(31:06):
I kind of went through, like, hey, my daughter convinced
me that I need to tell this story. Kind of
shared it with him, and his first comment was, I
agree with your daughter. You need to tell this story.
People need to know the things you've been through. And
he said, this can be a motivational story. So so
both of them, I think if either one of them
had been well, maybe you shouldn't do this, but I
(31:28):
might have been much more reluctant. But they were both
not only supportive but encouraging, like, you know, you need
you need to tell this story. The fact that you
came from where you came from, doing what you did,
and found it in yourself to forgive yourself, found it
in yourself to let yourself be better, be different. It's
(31:51):
not something a lot of people offer themselves, you know,
and it's really important that you did that. I think, well,
you know, it's like I said it was. It was.
It was challenging. I mean for years I was so
afraid that this would come out. I mean I had
nightmares on a regular basis. I had recurring nightmares of
like getting locked up again and going back to jail
(32:13):
and I'm trying to get back to my life and
trying to figure out what's going on. And this was
something that happened like at least once or twice a month,
I would have, you know, these nightmares, migraines. I actually
had to end up going to the er a couple
of times because I had these migraines so bad. And
I know it was all because I was of the
stress and anxiety I was feeling, because I was holding
(32:36):
all of this in and afraid that at some point
it was going to come out. You know. The other
the other positive thing about this to me is that
it allowed me to tell the story of my own terms,
and I think that has been a real benefit for
me just and you know, once I started talking to
(32:56):
my daughter and kind of getting some of this stuff
out to her, the nightmares stopped, the migraines stopped. And
I think it's all because I've let go of all
this pressure and tension and anxiety that I was holding
in because I was afraid that this story might come out. Wow.
You know, I'm I'm just um humbled and and you know,
(33:24):
grace grateful that I've been able to get through the
things that I've been able to get through, and um,
you know, you have a story that could maybe inspire
some some other other people. You know, I was thinking
about you know, so, so reality is, you know, I
didn't have to do this, right, I could have, Like
(33:44):
a friend of mine said, man, you were planning to
take this story to the grave, which I was like, yeah,
you're right about that. But you know, I know it
was the right thing to do. I already know it
has helped some people, It's inspired some people. And I
feel like I've been so blessed in my life with
the things that I've been able to have access to
(34:05):
and be exposed to, that if I didn't share this
story that I wouldn't be showing my gratitude for how
how blessed I've been. And it's allowing me to give
something back. It's allowing me to give something back that
can maybe help some other people. Absolutely. I mean it's
like again, people talk about the cycle, the cycle of
(34:26):
violence and that occurs in the street, and it really
is that. And some of that is down to you
feeling worthless because you did something where you feel, well,
now I have no worth you know. Um, the whole
recidivism cycle, it's I mean, you get in trouble for something,
(34:46):
you go to jail, you don't learn anything or acquirity
knowledge or training or anything. That's going to allow you
to change your life. You go back out, you did
the same thing, and you end up right back in,
and then it's it's it's a it's a vicious cycle,
you know. I am so One of the things I'm
really happy and proud about coming out of this book
(35:08):
is that Harvard Business School has decided that they're gonna
make a case study for their NBA program their first
year NBA students out of this book. It's going to
be a part of the curriculum for NBA students. I'm
excited about that because to me, these are like entrepreneurs
and CEOs of the future, and for them to have
(35:28):
a different perspective on giving people another chance and on
redemption and you know, all those things, I think is great.
So I'm really excited about the fact that they're doing that.
But one of the statistics that I saw in the
case that they did it said that, so the resident
of the rate is like seventy six seventy seven percent somewhere,
(35:50):
and that's on the people who end up going back.
If someone learns a skill or a trade while they're incarcerated,
that seventy seven percent number goes to thirty percent. If
they get a bachelor's degree, that seventy seven percent go
to six percent, and a master's degree is at zero.
(36:13):
So to me, that just really confirms the fact that education,
learning and skill learning things that are going to allow
you to have a positive impact when you get out.
That's what really makes a difference, and that's those opportunities
and things that allow you to feel pride in yourself too,
exactly feel good about yourself, like I look what I did,
(36:36):
and look what I can do. And when you learn
all these things, you know, you start reading, you're like,
it's the whole world. So something like I think the
number I saw it was like ninety two percent of
people who are incarcerated are eventually going to get out.
The goals should be they come out better people than
they were when they went in. And that's only going
(36:58):
to happen if we're doing things while people are incarcerated
to help them become better people. And the program that
like you had when you were in jail, that it
is gone. The program that I was in then it
doesn't exist anymore. So if I was there today, I
couldn't come out and do what I've been able to
do because the program that I was able to take
advantage of to change my life doesn't exist anymore, and
(37:20):
to me, that's part of the problem. That's part of
the issue. We need to figure out, you know, how
we can start to give people that opportunity to feel
good about themselves that you were talking about and believe
that they can. At the end of the day, it
starts with somebody believing that they can change their life.
That's where it starts. And I think once someone has
(37:43):
that desire and that belief that they can change their life,
then it's like, Okay, here are the steps that you
need to take to do that. Here are the things
that but it's hard to find that now. I think
to going back to your point about Harvard now including
your book Jump as required reading for first year NBA students.
Not only will hopefully these kids see that you should
(38:05):
get people second chances. We all need second, third, or
four and sometimes in life for various things. But even
if you just look at from a pure business perspective,
what someone who's been through the things that you've been
through can bring to the table, you're really up against
a rock and a hard place that you're going to
fight for success for yourself success for company. If you
(38:29):
look at an archetype of a person you kind of
want to fill a role, it might be this person
who's had to fight tooth and nail to just get
an eighth of what these you know, other applicants. Some
of the most intelligent, creative people I've ever met are
people that I've met when I was incarcerated. There's a
whole workforce there that we're not tapping into because we
(38:55):
need to develop those folks. And hey, when you're when
you're in jail, you got time, you know what I mean,
You got time on your hand. So why not give
people a positive way to utilize that time by training
them and give them them education or teaching them to
You know, a friend of mine when when I was
when I was sixteen and incarcerated, a friend of mine
(39:17):
that was there was learning how to cut hair. I
was one of the first people. I was like, yo,
don't mess me up. I was one of the first
people that he cut. He got out and opened up
a barbershop, has employed people. I mean, so, you know,
it doesn't have to necessarily be a college degree. It
just has to be some skill set that you can
(39:38):
then utilize to kind of build your life with. And
you know, for me it was college. For him it
was Barbara. You know what I mean, absolutely absolutely, Larry Miller,
real honor and real pleasure to sit here and in
your office, in your life story. So thank you so much, pleasure,
pleasure to share, you know, some of these thoughts and insights.
(39:59):
And maybe there's a sixteen year old Larry Miller out
there somewhere about to do something stupid, and maybe the
story can make them think twice and make it a
little easier on themselves, exactly. And then you know, hopefully
there are people that have never had any kind of
contact with the criminal justice system, but they're in positions
(40:20):
where they can hire people or provide opportunities for people,
and maybe this story would inspire them to give somebody
a chance, or to help somebody to get a skill
set or an education that can help them to improve
their life. Thanks so much to Larry Miller for opening
up about his journey from Westville to the executive ranks
(40:43):
of Nike and Jordan Brand. His achievements are absolutely unthinkable.
It's almost a fairy tale, but in reality, it's the
kind of achievement that we need to view as and
make repeatable Larry Miller's proof that when someone really decides
to make a change to their circumstances, that change can
be lasting, at least when provided the same opportunities as
(41:05):
everyone else. Larry, finally opening up all these years later,
hopefully brings us a little bit closer to that place.
Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited
by Keishaw Williams, Engineered by Ben Holliday, Booked by Laura
Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show's executive
(41:26):
produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the
videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Ben Holliday
and David Jaw featuring Anthony Aggas and Vannah Joe Lack.
Listen to Start Up from the Bottom wherever you get
your podcasts and if you want add three episodes available
one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out
(41:47):
Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page for more information.
If you like your show, please remember to share, rate,
and review us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond
Pushkin. It was a senseless act on my part. It
definitely made no sense, and it was something that if
I could go back and undo it, I absolutely would.
Every day I think about and hope that I could
and wish that I could go back and undo that. Hey,
(00:36):
everyone I started recording started from the bottom to find
and document unconventional success stories and to have them be
told firsthand. But I didn't expect to ever speak with
anyone like Larry Miller. In some ways, Larry's career is
super conventional. A bachelor's an accounting, an NBA, working his
(00:58):
way up at an iconic American brand like Campbell's Soup.
Then there's his time helping to build Jordan brand with
Michael Jordan himself. But what underlies his tire story the
degrees his early career, His work with MJ is an
extraordinary story of redemption and second chances. Miller was born
(01:20):
in Philadelphia, PA. Westphilly, you know, made famous by The
Fresh Prince. That show may have been a comedy, but Westphilly,
like other hoods, is deadly serious. Miller himself had an attentive,
loving family, but that didn't make growing up at his
neighborhood any easier, and ultimately he wound up succumbing to
(01:41):
the pressure of the streets in heartbreaking fashion. In this
episode of Started from the Bottom, I talked to Miller
about his career, how he navigated moving up the ladder
at Campbell's Soup, his switched to sports apparel, moving from
being an accountant to a businessman to building a brand
out of one of the most famous faces and names
in the entire world. But no matter how impressed will
(02:04):
be by his career moves, when Miller tells me about
his secret who's harboring for all his career, You'll be
all the more astonished. This is started from the bottom,
hard earned success stories from people like us. To start
a conversation, Larry tells me about a formative moment in
(02:24):
his life when he was trying to find his first
job out of college. The way it was set up
back then is there was what was called the Big
eight accounting firms, right and everybody with an accounting degree,
your goal was to get hired by one of the
Big eight. And I felt the same way. And the
one that I was really interested in was Arthur Anderson.
(02:45):
At the time, they were one of the Big Eight.
I went to the office and spent the whole day.
They're interviewing with a bunch of different people, and all
day I'm thinking in the back of my mind, should
I share my story with these folks? Should I say something?
And I kept, you know, kind of thinking, and finally
I get to the last person at the end of
the day was a hiring manager. So I decided, you
(03:06):
know what, I'm going to share my story with this guy.
So I sit down with him and I said, hey,
you know, there's something I want to talk to you
about that didn't come through and the other interviews that
didn't come through on the application. And then I went
in and started to tell him about my past, that
I had started my education while I was incarcerated, blah
blah blah. And I could see as I'm talking to him,
(03:28):
I could see his face changing. And finally, when I
got done, he said, wow, that's an amazing story. And
he reached in his pocket and he pulled out an
envelope and he said, uh. He said, I have an
offer letter here that I was all ready to give you,
but I can't give it to you now. He said,
I can't take the chance on hiring you and something
(03:48):
happened down the line, So I wish you the best,
but I can't hire you. And at that point I
decided I wasn't going to share my background anymore. If
it came up, I wasn't going to deny it, or
if somebody asked directly, I wasn't gonna be dishonest, but
I wasn't going to volunteer the information, and I never
did it to that point. Was that a pretty immediate
instinct after that or was it did that come out
(04:10):
of maybe even just a period of after that feeling
like well, I think it was pretty immediate, because as
I'm he's telling me this, I was like, man, I
should have never said anything. But the reality is I'm
glad I did because I think in an environment like that,
with public accounting and all the regulations and all, something
would have probably come up at some point. And once
(04:30):
the Campbell's opportunity came up, I figured it was probably
better not to go public accounting. The chances of my
background getting exposed or coming up in public accounting were
a lot greater than if I was working for a
company like Campbell. So I decided to take the job
at Campbell. Super when you got there and your degrees
(04:50):
in accounting, what did you learn even some of the
soft skills, maybe even beyond just accounting, Like, what did
you learn with that being your first you know? One
of the things that I realized early on was that
I was going to have to take some control of
my career. And so I remember one point, this guy
who's started in the training program with me. He had
(05:12):
gone to work for a company called Missus Paul's. They
were a division of Campbell's Soup at the time. They
make fish sticks, fish products. But he had gone to
work for Missus Paul's and he and I were pretty close,
and so he called me up one day. He said, man,
I was surprised that you weren't interested in the job
we had for you over here. I said, what are
you talking about? He said, well, we you know, we
(05:33):
reached out about a job for you over here and
we were told that you weren't interested. I was like,
no one said anything to me about that, So that
kind of got my you know, got my standard up
a little bit, and I was like, you know, this
is not right. At least someone should have said something
to me and given me the opportunity to say yes.
Or no. So I actually set up a meeting with
(05:55):
the guys who ran the department, and I stepped to
him about it. I was like, listen, you know, I
understand that Missus Paul's reached out about a job that
they were interested in me for and they were told
that I wasn't interested without me even knowing about it.
And we're like, well, we thought this was what's best
for your career. I said, you know what, I appreciate that,
but I think I should be involved in deciding what's
(06:15):
best for my career. And okay. So I ended up
going over and interviewing for that job at Missus Pauls
and moving over and taking that job at Missus Paul's.
But if my friend hadn't called me and told me
about it, I would have never known. I would have
never gotten to at least give it a shot to
see if it was something I wanted to do. So
my last role at Campbell's was actually working in the
(06:38):
soup plant, which was an amazing experience for me. One
of the differences in a situation like that is that
every day you have a new goal, and you know
whether you hit your goal or not. Every day. It's
like Hey, we need to produce X number of Kansas
tomato soup. Did we hit that number? If we did? Cool,
then if we did it, then we got to talk
about what went wrong, why we didn't hit it, and
(07:01):
what we're going to do to make it up. Every day,
the plant manager would, you know, every morning, all the
managers would get together and talk about what had happened
the day before. And one of the things that I
learned from these guys is that they would go at
each other. I mean like going at each other hard
because hey, you messed up. I'm gonna let you know
you messed up. They'd argue and curse, and then at
(07:21):
the end of the meeting like, yo, man, let's go
get a couple of coffee. Yeah, you're coming over this weekend. Yeah.
It was like nobody took it personal. It's like, I'm
gonna tell you that you screwed up, and you know,
I'm gonna call you out and tell you exactly what
was wrong. But it's not personal. I'm not you know,
we're still good whatever. But I and that was that
was something that I learned in that experience. It's like,
(07:42):
try not to take it personal when somebody's giving you
feedback on something that you you know you should have
done a better job at you know what I mean.
And that's something that's not always easy to do because
it's easier to take it personal when somebody's telling you
that you screwed up. And these guys taught me that
you got to figure out how to take that feedback.
(08:03):
Take it in, but then you gotta let it go. No,
you can't take it personal, right, Take it in, make
the tweak, ye, and then let it. But by the
time you leave Campbells, you were there five years, five years,
five years. You got a little late start for college,
so you're thirty five. Somewhere in that about thirty five.
Where are you at in terms of thinking about your career.
(08:24):
Are you thinking I'm okay to stay here as long
as I can keep moving up, or you realizing maybe
this isn't the exact right fit, or well, you know, Um,
It's funny because I never thought about like, Okay, I'm
gonna do this and then this is the next job.
My focus was always if I always felt like, if
I kill this job that I'm in, what's next will
(08:46):
materialize for me. I'll be able to you know, because
one of the things I realized is that if you
have a good reputation in terms of your work ethic
and doing things that the way you're supposed to, people
want you on their team. Yeah, you know what I mean.
And so I never was like focused on, well, I'm
gonna do this, and then the next move is this
(09:06):
one and next. I was always focused on I'm gonna
I'm gonna do my very best at the job that
I'm in, and then we'll see what materialized. And unfortunately
for me, you know, things kind of worked out with
that process, But but that that was the way I
always approached it. This like I'm gonna kill the job
I'm in and focus on that, and then what's next
to materialized for me? And I think we'll see as
(09:28):
we kind of progressed through here, is that that tactically
worked for you? It did, The thing seemed to just
follow in your lap at that point. It did. But
I think I know, beyond shadow of doubt that I'm blessed,
way beyond my wildest streams. But I think it was
also putting in the work and being willing to step
up and speak up when I felt like the need
(09:50):
was there for me to protect my own career, right right, So,
just moving ahead a little bit, you eventually make your
way to a company called Jansen, which is a company
I guess what would you call it an apparel sports company? Swimwear. Yeah,
(10:11):
so Jansen basically start out as a swimwear company, making,
you know, swimwear, cruise ships, beach in swimwear, and then
branched out into other sportswear categories, but mainly is known
for a swimwear But moving over from more the food
industry to apparel, did that feel like a challenge to
(10:33):
you or did it for like a whole new sort
of world to learn or did it feel I think
the fundamentals of business you can apply regardless of what
the industry is. I think when you change industries, you
still are going to apply your same leadership style, your
same basic business principles. It's just then learning the new industry.
(10:55):
Then people were willing to teach me the industry to
share with me. I remember in swimwear they have what
they call market weeks, and as the finance guy there
was that's not something that I would typically have been
involved in, but I requested to go to those market
meetings and sitting on the meetings when the sales guys
(11:16):
are pitching the customers, sitting on the meetings where there
were discussions between sales and customers and feedback on product.
Because I wanted to learn as much as I possibly
could about not just the finance part of the business,
but the rest of the business as well. You were
asking to do that as a controller. Yeah, wow, Yeah.
And then eventually the guy who was running the women's
(11:38):
swimwear division, he approached me one day and he's like, man,
you should come and work with me, you and I
together kind of running the swimwear it. He had more
of the creative side of like what the products should
look like. He was more focused on, you know, this
is the product we should have, this is where we
should sell it. And when we tied the conversation about it,
(11:59):
he said, you know, man, you know I want you
to come over and help me out with all the
numbers and the business stuff. And I said, fine, I'm
willing to do that as long as you teach me
the other side of the business that you're good at.
And so we had a great working relationship and we
had the business on fire. This really starts a new
chapter in your career, right, because it kind of moved
(12:20):
me out of finance. That was the first time I
actually moved out of the finance department and my job there.
My title there was director of business Development for the
swimwear division, and that, like I said, was the first
like outside of actually finance. At this point, you're out
(12:40):
of finance, You're running your first company. Were you Were
you terrified? No? Actually, the thing that I was most
concerned about throughout all of this was my story coming out,
like somebody finding out about my past, and that coming
(13:01):
out and that hindering what I was trying to do
and hindering the progress that I had been making. That
was the thing that worried me the most. Im everything
else just felt kind of easy, maybe not necessarily easy,
but I looked at it like, hey, if somebody else
can do it, then I could probably do it. Now
that I can't do brain surgery right just because somebody
(13:21):
else could do it. But in the business world, in
the corporate world, the way I looked at it's like, Okay,
you know, I'm gonna figure out. I'm gonna figure this out.
After the break, Larry gets a little more revealing about
what he really went through to get to the top.
(13:45):
We're back with my conversation with Larry Miller. We're about
to get into his upbringing in West Philly, a neighborhood
that shaped him, but not before it broke him. Maybe
you want to talk a little bit about the neighborhood. So,
you know, growing up, I had a strong family. You know,
there were eight kids in the family, my mom and dad.
My dad worked every day in the factory and made
(14:07):
sure that we, you know, had what we needed. My
mom took care and raised eight kids. So you know,
I had a good childhood. It's not like I can't
blame anybody else for what I did. These were choices
that I made, and I think at a certain age,
just the allure of the street really started to pull me,
and I started to want to be one of the
(14:29):
cool guys in the street because you know, to me,
you were seeing it exactly. That's how you get noticed,
that's how you you know, build, that's how you be
to your point be seen. And so I first time
I was ever arrested, I was twelve years old. Friend
of mine and I stole a bike and we got caught.
I ended up with probation and then a little bit
(14:53):
around the time I decided to join the gang, joined
the gang. And you know, I'm the kind of person.
Once I kind of decided to do something, then I'm
all in. And when I joined the gang, I was.
I was all in. And what what game I was from?
My gang was called the Cedar in the game fifty
six and Seedar Avenue. And when I was sixteen years old,
(15:13):
I uh, I shot another kid and killed him. And
he wasn't someone that was in a gang. He just
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it was a senseless act on my part. It
definitely made no sense and it was something that if
I could go back and undo it, I absolutely would.
Every day I think about uh and hope that I
(15:35):
could and wish that I could go back and undo that,
but but I can't. And you know, fortunately for me,
I've been able to connect with his family and they
they have forgiven me. It was it was amazing. We
met my daughter and I met with them, and um,
they you know, expressed their feelings and you know the
(15:57):
pain that this had caused them. But at the end
they all said, hey, but but but we forgive you.
And so that that's been If nothing else comes out
of this whole process, the fact that of having that
forgiveness from them has been has been amazing for me.
But I was sent and says I was sixteen. I
was charged as an adult. I pleaded guilty to second
(16:20):
degree murder and was sentenced to four and a half
to twenty years. Did the four and a half, got out,
knocked around in and out of jail doing crazy stuff again,
ended up going back to jail for a number of
armed robberies, and this time I ended up with a
sentence of four to ten and I had to do
nine months of the backtime, so I ended up with
(16:41):
four years and nine months. And this time when I
was incarcerated, they had a program where you could take
college classes inside the jail, and there were a number
of colleges that were offering classes. Temple University, Cheney State, Villanova,
Montgomery County Community College, Philadelphia Community all were offering classes
(17:01):
inside the jail. And there was a program where you
could qualify to move into these trailers that were outside
side of the wall, so that the jail had a
jail wall and the trailers were on the other side
of the wall, and in this program, you could live
in those trailers and then leave every day and go
(17:21):
to school and just had to be back by eight
o'clock in the evening. When I heard about that program,
I was like, man, that's how I want to do
my time. If if I gotta be here, I want
to do it like that. So I started doing what
I needed to do to qualify for that program, which
was take classes inside, not getting into any trouble. You
had to have half of your minimum sentences. So got
(17:42):
to that point, I moved out to those trailers and
started at Montgomery County Community College, got my associate's degree
while I was in that program, transferred down to a
halfway house in North Philly, started going to Temple. Yeah,
you transferred over into Temple right transferred and I was
able to transfer all of my credits. So I started
that Temple as a junior. So I with my associalist
(18:04):
degree and finished my bastelors in two years and started
at Campbell suit But when I was graduating from from
Temple and companies would come on campus, like I said,
to interview. One of the things I did early on,
I took interviews with companies that I knew I didn't
want to work for for whatever reason, but I didn't
know anything about interviewing and all that because I'm coming
(18:27):
from the street. So I was like, you know what,
I need some practice at this. So I took interviews
with companies I knew I didn't want to work for
to get the practice, so that by the time the
companies came that I wasn't trusted in, I was killing
it because I had figured out the right questions to
ask the answers to that they wanted to hear. I
mean I because I had taken all these interviews and
(18:49):
gotten the feedback on it. By the time the companies
came on campus that I wanted, I was interested and
I was killing them. Wow. Like one of the questions,
you know, it was always like her, so, so where
do you see yourself in five years? Right? And I
thought a lot about that question, you know, as a
controller or CFO whatever, And I thought about it and
(19:10):
I was like, it's a little bit deeper than that,
I think to me, And the way I would answer
that question is I would always tell them, you know,
my goal is I want to be a decision maker.
I want to be in a position where I'm helping,
helping to make decisions that determine the direction of company
is going to go in, and I'm willing to take
the responsibility for those decisions. Like, if they work out,
(19:33):
then great, If they don't, I'll take the responsibility. But
my goal is I want to be a decision maker.
Oh that's a very good answer. But but but but
that was the reality for me, and I think that's
the way I always looked at it. I didn't I
didn't box myself into I want to be in finance.
I want to be a controller. I want to be
It was like, I want to be sitting at the
(19:53):
table helping to make decisions. We really took that questions
that face value. You really looked inside yourself and thought, well,
what is it that I really want my career exactly?
I want to be a decision I want to be
somebody that's that's college shots right, right. We got to
take a quick break, but when we come back, Larry
Miller makes his mark at Nike. In January of twenty
(20:25):
twenty two, Larry came out with his secret. The story
of his murder conviction was in his book Jump, My Secret,
Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom, which he co
wrote with his daughter. But for four decades after getting
out of prison, Larry kept his past his secret, fearful
it would jeopardize his career. He told no one, even
as he made impressive moves from prison to Campbell's to
(20:49):
Jansen to Nike, where he was finally out of the
finance game and ready to start building a legendary brand.
Our first job at Nike was the head of apparel
in the US, which was about a billion dollar business
at the time. So jes see US apparel at that point.
(21:10):
And what I didn't know when I started at Niki
until after I got here. But at the time I
was hired at Nike, I was the first black vice
president in the history of the company. I did not
know that until I got here. But that put a
little bit. I added pressure on the fact that, you
know what, I got to make sure that I did.
I deliver on this. It must have put pressure both
ways in terms of the feeling of like being one
(21:33):
of one here at Nike, the pressure to deliver. But
I'm also wondering if if you felt pressure as as
a black man who's an executive at Nike, that sort
of built off of the greatness of black athletes? Did
that feel Could that have felt fun? That's why I
was I think that's why I was a little surprised
(21:54):
or a lot surprised when I found out that I
was the first, because you assume based on you know,
Nike's involvement with the athletes and that that the company
a certain way. But but you know, fortunately now that
number has has gone way up. I think we've got
forty to fifty black vice presidents here now. So were you?
(22:14):
I mean, you're coming from West Philadelphia, born and raced race,
had born a race, shout out the fresh Prince, and
you're moving up through the corporate ranks, not a lot
of black faces, not just a Nike yeah, anywhere you go. Right,
(22:38):
How did you put that feeling of discomfort that might
cause to the side or didn't or did not feel
that with you? No? It did, and I never put
it to the side. I just kind of dealt with
it and kind of figured out the best way that
I was going to deal with it to still keep
moving forward and accomplish what I was trying to accomplish.
But I never forgot about it because it's so obvious.
(23:02):
I mean, you know, you go into a room and
you know, you look around and it's just you sitting there,
you know what I mean, And so you can't not
you know, you can't forget it because it's in your
face all the time. But I think what you have
to do is make sure that you represent yourself in
the way that you should represent yourself as a person
(23:26):
of color, as a black person in that room. You
speak up on the things that you need to speak
up on, but do it in a way that is
non threatening to folks, but making your point, you know
what I mean, making your point and making sure that
people understand that if something's not right, it ain't right,
and you need to make sure that you voiced that.
(23:47):
And in a way that goes back to that first
example of that. You know, when you're at Campbell super Nape.
They didn't even tell you about that job opportunity and
you went in and you dressed it. It's like, on
one hand, if if you make yourself above approach, if
you do your job well and you show up and
are professional, then you can demand certain things. You know,
the reason I went back went to school and got
(24:08):
my NBA wasn't because I like school or just wanted
to go to school. I figured at some point I
was gonna get to a situation where I'm in the
runnings for a job or a position and somebody else's
as well, and they have an NBA and I don't.
Then that's to me, that's the roadblock that that would
(24:33):
be put up in front of me to keep me
from from getting to where I think I should be.
So I'm going to remove that as a barrier exactly.
So you know, you got to tell me something else
as to why you didn't give me the job. I
knew that that was a roadblock that I had to
move out of the way. Yeah. Can you tell the
story of the Jordan brand launch in ninety nine. So
(24:56):
at the time, actually Nike decided that there were three
businesses that they were going to put dedicated teams on
with the president and a team of people that were
solely focused on that business. And it was golf, Nike Golf,
which was had a different distribution and was kind of
different than the rest of the Nike business, ACG which
is the outdoor business, and then Jordan. Those were the
(25:19):
three and so so I was asked to put a
team together and strategies on how we were gonna take
that logo and evolve it into a brand. And the
first launch that we had was the Air Jordan fifteen.
And this was the first shoe that Michael wasn't going
to be playing in and wearing, right because he retired.
At that point, he was retired. And the formula had
(25:40):
been that we tinker designs a really cool shoe and
we do some marketing with Spike Lee or Bugs Bunny
or somebody, and then Michael wears the shoe eighty two
games and into the playoffs. That was the formula of
how we were gonna have what was driving this business,
and now you're taking him playing out, so a big
piece of the formula is not there anymore. And there
(26:02):
were a lot of people, both internal and external, who
thought that it would never work, that that's the formula,
formulas done. It was a nice run, but it's over
at this point. There were a lot of people who
felt that way, and you know, fortunately there were folks
internally who thought differently, as guy named Howard White, who
(26:23):
was basically the one who suggested and recommended me to
run the Jordan business. And Howard was always a proponent
of the fact that he believed the brand could be bigger,
that we could really evolve that into a brand, even
what the shoes the air Jordan's shoes had banned while
he was playing. Absolutely, And I mean, you know, if
you look at the business back then when he retired,
(26:47):
the business was around one hundred and forty one hundred
and fifty million dollars. In this year, it's over five
billion dollars. So so we would been able to not
only sustain it after he retired, but to continue to
grow it, kind of grow it exponentially. Yeah, running a
company's one thing, but running a company that's really built
(27:08):
a round a Living Legends brand, did you having to
work alongside Was that a different kind of pressure or?
I mean, I think the biggest pressure was, you know,
making sure that we represented mj the way he wanted
to be represented and the way he felt that we
should be representing him and that the brand should be
(27:29):
representing him. That was that was the biggest challenge, Just
making sure that everything we did aligned with who he
was and what he was about and what he brought
to not just on the court, but off the court
as well. Just making sure that we stayed aligned with
with who MJ is. We were blessed to have a
living legend that we could actually you know, talk to
(27:52):
and make sure that we're doing things the way he
wanted them done, and that we're doing things and representing
him the way he wanted to be represented. I think
we were add an advantage to me. He was kind
of like our secret sauce. Being able to go and
talk to MJ and run things by him and make
sure that he was on board with the things we
wanted to do. That kept us aligned with who he is,
(28:17):
and I think that's what made us be able to
you know, represent him in a way that resonates with consumers.
It's probably what makes the brand feel authentic. Authentic. Yeah, yeah,
just curious. How's the relationship with Phil Knight, who's another
very larger than life character here at Nike. Phil phil
(28:37):
Knight is someone that I have the utmost respect for.
Not only do I consider Phil a colleague and something
that I work with, but I consider him a friend.
And over the years we've developed a friendship relationship and
I always felt like Phil had my back. So if
I needed to push something through or something wasn't going
(28:57):
I felt like I could go to Phil explain it
to him, and he would help me figure out how
to get past it. So he's an incredible individual, and
like I said, I feel fortunate to consider him a friend.
When I decided that I think I'm going to move
forward with doing this book, right, So the two people
there were no. I had a list of people that
I wanted to have an opportunity to talk to before
(29:21):
they heard about it somewhere else, you know what I mean.
I didn't want to like read about the fact that
you know, I have all this history and not have
And so at the top of the list where Michael
Jordan and Phil Night they were you knew before this
book comes out and it's written, but you know, before
this comes out. I got to go to Phil them
where a bunch of other folks were on the list,
but they were to two at the top. So my
(29:44):
desire was to sit down in person and have the conversation,
but it was during the pandemic, so I had to
do it digitally. So I reached out to both of
them and basically said, hey, something personal I like to
talk with you about whenever you get an opportunity. So
Phil hits me right back I have a video conference
(30:04):
with him. So I share that with Phil and he said,
you know, when when I got the message that, uh,
that you wanted to talk about something personal, he said,
I didn't know what to expect, but it absolutely wasn't
this so so but he but then he said, look,
you know, he said, I think you have to tell
(30:25):
this story. He said, uh, it's it's inspirational. It's aspirational.
I think it will motivate some people, and I'll support you.
However I can, well, what did you tell Phil? Basically that, uh,
you know, my daughter had convinced me to tell my
story and that the part that people don't know about
(30:45):
is that from you know, the age of twelve, thirteen
to thirty, I was in and out of jail. I
was convicted of murder. I mean said, I laid the
whole whole deal out for him and and like I said,
he was like, you know, you have to tell the story.
And then it was the same with them Jack. We
finally ended up. It took a little bit longer to
connect with him, but when we did connect, same thing
(31:06):
I kind of went through, like, hey, my daughter convinced
me that I need to tell this story. Kind of
shared it with him, and his first comment was, I
agree with your daughter. You need to tell this story.
People need to know the things you've been through. And
he said, this can be a motivational story. So so
both of them, I think if either one of them
had been well, maybe you shouldn't do this, but I
(31:28):
might have been much more reluctant. But they were both
not only supportive but encouraging, like, you know, you need
you need to tell this story. The fact that you
came from where you came from, doing what you did,
and found it in yourself to forgive yourself, found it
in yourself to let yourself be better, be different. It's
(31:51):
not something a lot of people offer themselves, you know,
and it's really important that you did that. I think, well,
you know, it's like I said it was. It was.
It was challenging. I mean for years I was so
afraid that this would come out. I mean I had
nightmares on a regular basis. I had recurring nightmares of
like getting locked up again and going back to jail
(32:13):
and I'm trying to get back to my life and
trying to figure out what's going on. And this was
something that happened like at least once or twice a month,
I would have, you know, these nightmares, migraines. I actually
had to end up going to the er a couple
of times because I had these migraines so bad. And
I know it was all because I was of the
stress and anxiety I was feeling, because I was holding
(32:36):
all of this in and afraid that at some point
it was going to come out. You know. The other
the other positive thing about this to me is that
it allowed me to tell the story of my own terms,
and I think that has been a real benefit for
me just and you know, once I started talking to
(32:56):
my daughter and kind of getting some of this stuff
out to her, the nightmares stopped, the migraines stopped. And
I think it's all because I've let go of all
this pressure and tension and anxiety that I was holding
in because I was afraid that this story might come out. Wow.
You know, I'm I'm just um humbled and and you know,
(33:24):
grace grateful that I've been able to get through the
things that I've been able to get through, and um,
you know, you have a story that could maybe inspire
some some other other people. You know, I was thinking
about you know, so, so reality is, you know, I
didn't have to do this, right, I could have, Like
(33:44):
a friend of mine said, man, you were planning to
take this story to the grave, which I was like, yeah,
you're right about that. But you know, I know it
was the right thing to do. I already know it
has helped some people, It's inspired some people. And I
feel like I've been so blessed in my life with
the things that I've been able to have access to
(34:05):
and be exposed to, that if I didn't share this
story that I wouldn't be showing my gratitude for how
how blessed I've been. And it's allowing me to give
something back. It's allowing me to give something back that
can maybe help some other people. Absolutely. I mean it's
like again, people talk about the cycle, the cycle of
(34:26):
violence and that occurs in the street, and it really
is that. And some of that is down to you
feeling worthless because you did something where you feel, well,
now I have no worth you know. Um, the whole
recidivism cycle, it's I mean, you get in trouble for something,
(34:46):
you go to jail, you don't learn anything or acquirity
knowledge or training or anything. That's going to allow you
to change your life. You go back out, you did
the same thing, and you end up right back in,
and then it's it's it's a it's a vicious cycle,
you know. I am so One of the things I'm
really happy and proud about coming out of this book
(35:08):
is that Harvard Business School has decided that they're gonna
make a case study for their NBA program their first
year NBA students out of this book. It's going to
be a part of the curriculum for NBA students. I'm
excited about that because to me, these are like entrepreneurs
and CEOs of the future, and for them to have
(35:28):
a different perspective on giving people another chance and on
redemption and you know, all those things, I think is great.
So I'm really excited about the fact that they're doing that.
But one of the statistics that I saw in the
case that they did it said that, so the resident
of the rate is like seventy six seventy seven percent somewhere,
(35:50):
and that's on the people who end up going back.
If someone learns a skill or a trade while they're incarcerated,
that seventy seven percent number goes to thirty percent. If
they get a bachelor's degree, that seventy seven percent go
to six percent, and a master's degree is at zero.
(36:13):
So to me, that just really confirms the fact that education,
learning and skill learning things that are going to allow
you to have a positive impact when you get out.
That's what really makes a difference, and that's those opportunities
and things that allow you to feel pride in yourself too,
exactly feel good about yourself, like I look what I did,
(36:36):
and look what I can do. And when you learn
all these things, you know, you start reading, you're like,
it's the whole world. So something like I think the
number I saw it was like ninety two percent of
people who are incarcerated are eventually going to get out.
The goals should be they come out better people than
they were when they went in. And that's only going
(36:58):
to happen if we're doing things while people are incarcerated
to help them become better people. And the program that
like you had when you were in jail, that it
is gone. The program that I was in then it
doesn't exist anymore. So if I was there today, I
couldn't come out and do what I've been able to
do because the program that I was able to take
advantage of to change my life doesn't exist anymore, and
(37:20):
to me, that's part of the problem. That's part of
the issue. We need to figure out, you know, how
we can start to give people that opportunity to feel
good about themselves that you were talking about and believe
that they can. At the end of the day, it
starts with somebody believing that they can change their life.
That's where it starts. And I think once someone has
(37:43):
that desire and that belief that they can change their life,
then it's like, Okay, here are the steps that you
need to take to do that. Here are the things
that but it's hard to find that now. I think
to going back to your point about Harvard now including
your book Jump as required reading for first year NBA students.
Not only will hopefully these kids see that you should
(38:05):
get people second chances. We all need second, third, or
four and sometimes in life for various things. But even
if you just look at from a pure business perspective,
what someone who's been through the things that you've been
through can bring to the table, you're really up against
a rock and a hard place that you're going to
fight for success for yourself success for company. If you
(38:29):
look at an archetype of a person you kind of
want to fill a role, it might be this person
who's had to fight tooth and nail to just get
an eighth of what these you know, other applicants. Some
of the most intelligent, creative people I've ever met are
people that I've met when I was incarcerated. There's a
whole workforce there that we're not tapping into because we
(38:55):
need to develop those folks. And hey, when you're when
you're in jail, you got time, you know what I mean,
You got time on your hand. So why not give
people a positive way to utilize that time by training
them and give them them education or teaching them to
You know, a friend of mine when when I was
when I was sixteen and incarcerated, a friend of mine
(39:17):
that was there was learning how to cut hair. I
was one of the first people. I was like, yo,
don't mess me up. I was one of the first
people that he cut. He got out and opened up
a barbershop, has employed people. I mean, so, you know,
it doesn't have to necessarily be a college degree. It
just has to be some skill set that you can
(39:38):
then utilize to kind of build your life with. And
you know, for me it was college. For him it
was Barbara. You know what I mean, absolutely absolutely, Larry Miller,
real honor and real pleasure to sit here and in
your office, in your life story. So thank you so much, pleasure,
pleasure to share, you know, some of these thoughts and insights.
(39:59):
And maybe there's a sixteen year old Larry Miller out
there somewhere about to do something stupid, and maybe the
story can make them think twice and make it a
little easier on themselves, exactly. And then you know, hopefully
there are people that have never had any kind of
contact with the criminal justice system, but they're in positions
(40:20):
where they can hire people or provide opportunities for people,
and maybe this story would inspire them to give somebody
a chance, or to help somebody to get a skill
set or an education that can help them to improve
their life. Thanks so much to Larry Miller for opening
up about his journey from Westville to the executive ranks
(40:43):
of Nike and Jordan Brand. His achievements are absolutely unthinkable.
It's almost a fairy tale, but in reality, it's the
kind of achievement that we need to view as and
make repeatable Larry Miller's proof that when someone really decides
to make a change to their circumstances, that change can
be lasting, at least when provided the same opportunities as
(41:05):
everyone else. Larry, finally opening up all these years later,
hopefully brings us a little bit closer to that place.
Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited
by Keishaw Williams, Engineered by Ben Holliday, Booked by Laura
Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show's executive
(41:26):
produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the
videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Ben Holliday
and David Jaw featuring Anthony Aggas and Vannah Joe Lack.
Listen to Start Up from the Bottom wherever you get
your podcasts and if you want add three episodes available
one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out
(41:47):
Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page for more information.
If you like your show, please remember to share, rate,
and review us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond
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