Book Review: Shoe Dog by Phil Knights

I read “Shoe Dog”, a memoir written by Phil Knight, the creator of Nike. It was amazing book. He describes about his journey with Nike from the very beginning to public offering. I was almost crying after I read entire book. Not only his story was touching but his writing style also was expressive.

I learned a lot about what it is like to be an entrepreneur. Phil Knight started his company with his crazy idea from college. He had a lot of obstacles, conflicts, struggles, and setbacks. He ran his business on float barely breathing on the surface. Business encountered a lot of obstacles: cash flows, license issues, employee issues, and quality issues. He also met a lot of people and visited a lot of countries. It was so amazing.

I want to take some notes of quotes from the book below so that I can keep remembering his spirit and adventure.

Quotes

• Our character, our fate - our DNA. “The cowards never started, and the weak dies along the way - that leaves us.”

• If Blue Ribbon went bust, I’d have no money, and I’d be crushed. But I’d also have some valuable wisdom, which I could apply to the next business. Wisdom seemed an intangible asset, but an asset all the same, one that justified the risk. Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks - marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling - seem like sure things. But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. “Fail fast”.

• I confessed that Blue Ribbon was tenuous. The whole thing might go bust any day, but I still couldn’t see myself doing anything else. My little shoe company was a living, breathing thing, I said, which I’d created from nothing. I’d breathed it into life, nurtured it through illness, brought it back several times from the dead, and now I wanted, needed, to see it stand on its own feet and go out into the world.

• “Why you do such a thing?” Ito demanded. “Becuase I think Blue Ribbon could be great success,” Sumeragi said, “maybe $20 million account. I shake hands many times with Mr. Steve Prefontaine. I shake hands with Mr. Bill Bowerman. I go many times to Trail Blazer game with Mr. Phil Knight. I even pack orders at warehouse. Nike is my business child. Always it is nice to see one’s business child grow.” “So then,” Ito said, “you hide invoices because … you … like these men?” Deeply ashamed, Sumeragi bowed his head. “Hai,” he said. “Hai.”

• “The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentleman. Us.”

• “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”

• “Life is growth. You grow or you die.”

• “So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy … just keep going. Don’t stopo. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”

• It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I’d tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whome they want to spend it for the next forty years. I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt. I’d like to warn the best of them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bull’s-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bull’s-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion; it’s a law of nature.

• And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop.

• Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jnana, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.

• Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your Tao. And since no one has ever adequately defined Tao, I now try to go regularly to mass. I would tell them: Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.

• Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

• The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.

• I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, that’s what I believed, no matter the situation.

• When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is - you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.

• It seems wrong to call it “business”. It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher - and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money”. For some, I realize, business is all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day to day of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living - and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great business do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the life of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is - you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping other to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.