$90 Million vs. $3 Billion: How ONE Decision Created the Air Jordan Empire

One decision Michael Jordan's mom made at the start of his career earned him 30 to 40 times the amount that he made playing basketball combined. One decision. And think about that for a second. Jordan made about $90 million from his NBA career like actual money paid from salary from being an athlete. Last year alone, he earned $300 million and almost all of it was from Nike because of one negotiation that his mom pushed for before he ever played a pro basketball game.

And this is where this hit me. I was I was bowling with my kids on on vacation a couple weeks ago and I look over my kids are in Jordan gear. Uh next to us there's a family and their kids in Jordan gear. A couple lanes over I look over the dad is in Jordan gear. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, the size of this empire.

And by the way, I grew up die-hard Jordan fan. I mean, my like I was a Chicago Bulls fanatic. Every coat that I owned, every like my wallpaper was Chicago Bulls. Everything. You name it. It was it was it was obsessive in many ways. Some ways still is that's why my kids are wearing Michael Jordan gear.

But I'm still thinking dude, the size of that empire, which has paid him 3 to 4 billion dollars over the course of of his entire career and I I believe that he's the the highest earner of any professional athlete of all time. And how much of that came down to one decision.

And if you've ever seen the movie Air or or you've read Shoe Dog then you know the story here. But Nike offered Jordan 2 and a half million dollars over the course of five years, which was double what Adidas had offered and Adidas was actually where Jordan wanted to go.

They're doing this deal. They they offer him 2 and a half million over five years, which was a stretch for for Nike at the time. And his mom says I want a royalty. Like I want a percentage of sales. I want revenue share. And she fought for it.

And she got him a 25 percent royalty on any shoe that was sold with his likeness. And and that eventually evolved into into different revenue share structures and they they spun out his own brand. But that one ask at the negotiating table is arguably the most financial impactful decision that anyone has ever made because again $90 million from basketball over his entire career, 300 million last year alone.

So when you add this up, that decision earned him 30 to 40 times his entire basketball career. And and without it, Jordan's still the GOAT clearly, no argument here. Like he's a retired player living very comfortably, very wealthyly, but he's he's not pulling 300 million a year from Nike almost 30 years after that he played after he played basketball.

And it's not really a one-off. Like I actually went looking for this. Like are there other similar types of decisions? And and there are actually. There's a there's a pattern. Two examples real quick.

One was Bill Gates. When so when IBM was looking for an operating system, Gates went out and he bought QDOS, this operating system. He and he cleaned it up and then, you know, he licensed it to IBM.

But he insisted on there had to be a non-inclusive thread to his to the contract. Like basically a carve-out that said, you know, I can sell this to other people. And and he and he got it.

So when Compaq came to market and these other computer makers came to market and they're looking for operating systems, they basically had access to the same operating system that IBM did. And he sold it to them. And they all licensed Microsoft. And without that one clause, Microsoft isn't Microsoft.

Another one was uh was George Lucas. And I didn't know this. Uh same thing, late 70s sci-fi at the time was was declining at the box office. So Lucas offered I think to Fox, I think it was Fox, uh to cut his directing fee. So he took like half a million bucks less in exchange for sequel rights and merchandising rights.

And the studio said sure, fine. Like we you know, we keep half a million bucks. I think what we're giving you is probably pretty much worthless. He made that trade, you know, 500 grand for what became a multi-billion dollar franchise. And and Lucas actually sold Lucasfilm to to Disney for 4 billion dollars.

One decision can outsize and dwarf like every other decision that you make in your career. Just one. And the problem is most of us stay so busy. We stay so buried in our businesses. Like our hands are in our in everything, you know, all day long. Like how's this memo, how's that logo, how's this thing, how's that detail.

And by the way, by the time one of these decisions comes around, we we don't even recognize it. You know, and then when we do recognize it and we think okay this is a this is a big decision, because we've been, you know, fatigued by every other decision that we've made throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, year, we don't give it the energy, we don't give it the focus, we don't give it the weight that it actually deserves.

And so here's the challenge that I'm giving myself and then I'm giving to you too, would be like how do I stop suffering from decision fatigue on all the small stuff so that I can free up the head space that I need to identify those high-leverage decisions when they show up.

Like so when they present themselves be able to identify them first and then approach each one of those with the the focus and the respect that they actually deserve. Like so we can actually capitalize on those decisions because like they don't announce themselves.

You know, like hey this is the big one. This is going to be a a huge deal. You've got to spot them. And it could be something, you know, a pricing change, could be a business model tweak, could be uh one key hire, like a one carve-out in a contract.

Like that's several of these when you look at them. It's one detail in a in a deal and if you you make that call right it changes the entire trajectory of your business, maybe your life.

And obviously you don't know the future, you know, Jordan's mom didn't know like Air Jordan would become Air Jordan. Lucas didn't know Star Wars was going to become Star Wars. Gates didn't know like Compaq was coming down the road.

But they were present enough. They had enough head space and and they believed in themselves enough, but they they had the space that was necessary to recognize that decision when it was in front of them and then push for the right terms.

Maybe the decision you and I make isn't a, you know, 3-to-4-billion-dollar decision like Jordan or Lucas or Gates. But that decision may net you a cool seven figures and it's like that's a reality.

Those are the decisions that we have that come up periodically as business owners and we stay too busy to identify them, too exhausted to leverage them, and the challenge is make enough space to make sure you don't miss it. So, something to think about. Hope it lands. Adios.