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| We all know Nike—it's one of the biggest brands in the
world. But did you know the founder of Nike was NOT some
billionaire investor, but just a kid who loved running? A kid
with ZERO business experience named Phil Knight.
When Phil started, he was selling shoes from the back of his
car! But today, sports icons like Michael Jordon and Tiger
Woods proudly wear Nike shoes. And so do hundreds of
millions of other customers. In fact, you probably have a pair
of Nikes in your closet right now!
Phil wrote Shoe Dog to share with us how he built Nike. Hets
to inspire other young people to chase their own ‘crazy ideas’
too, just like he did.
Right here, I've summarized some of the key lessons from
the book. Whether you dream of being an entrepreneur,
athlete or artist, | think these lessons can guide you in the
right direction. So let’s begin!
About Phil Knight
Phil Knight (wiki) was the co-founder and CEO Nike for 40
years, from 1964 to 2004. According to Forbes, in 2020 his
net worth was over $50 billion, making him the 24th richest
person in the world.
1. Start Before You're Ready: The founder of Nike ‘faked it
until he made it’+ Nike, the most valuable sportswear brand in the world,
started as a school project. That’s right. Phil was
finishing university and needed to do a project for his
entrepreneurship class. And he had a simple idea, which
he called his ‘Crazy Idea’:
+ Phil believed that Japanese shoes could become more
popular than European shoes in America, just as
Japanese cameras had overtaken German ones recently.
+ This idea turned into an obsession. Phil spent weeks in
the library, learning everything about importing and
trade laws. He really began to believe his idea could
change the sports world forever. Finally, he presented
the project to his classmates, filled with passion and
enthusiasm. But they only reacted with yawns and
bored looks.
Did that discourage him? No way!
After graduating in 1962, Phil wanted to travel the world. And
he planned to stop by Japan so he could try to make his
crazy idea into a reality.
+ Fora few months, he surfed Hawaiian beaches, admired
classic European cities, experienced Asian cultures...
+ And even stopped by Greece to admire the Temple of
Athena Nike, the goddess of victory.
+ Then in Japan, Phil set up a business meeting with ashoe company named Onitsuka because they made
shoes he liked under the brand Tiger.
So he goes into the meeting with Onitsuka and sits down
with several Japanese people in business suits. Phil is not
sure what's going to happen, but he begins talking. He
repeats the same things he said during his school
presentation. Since he has all the facts and lines memorized,
it sounds like he knows what he’s talking about and they look
impressed. But he's really just faking it!
(Isn't that insane?! Phil is just a kid fresh out of school, and
he traveled to a foreign country to persuade serious
businesspeople to sign a contract with him!)
When they ask Phil what company he represents, he realizes
that he doesn’t have a name! In the moment, he blurts out
“Blue Ribbon” because he remembered the blue ribbons
hanging in his room back home from his old races.
Surprisingly, Onitsuka said YES to the idea! They asked Phil's
company to be their distributor in the US because they also
believed there was a big opportunity for their shoes in
America.
2. Sell Enthusiasm: It’s easy to sell something you believe in
+ In 1963, Phil waited months and months for the first
sample shoes to arrive from Japan. Onitsuka simply
told it would take ‘a little more time.’ (His father actually
believed it was some kind of scam and the shoes were
never coming!) In the meantime, Phil got a job as an
accountant, but he really didn't like it.Suddenly, at the beginning of 1964, twelve sample pairs of
shoes finally arrived! Phil was overjoyed!
+ Phil immediately sent two pairs to his old university
running coach Bill Bowerman (Nike.com). Bowerman
was highly respected in the world of running and he had
always been obsessed with improving his athlete's
shoes. Surprisingly, Bowerman liked the sample shoes
so much that he offered to be Phil’s business
partner! Phil and Bowerman agreed to be co-founders of
the new company Blue Ribbon Sports.
+ In April, they received the first real shipment of 300
Tiger shoes from Onitsuka. The local sports stores
didn’t take Phil seriously, so he drove around to track
meets selling the shoes from the trunk of his car. Within
3 months, all the shoes had been sold, and Phil ordered
900 more from Japan.
+ In my opinion, this part of the story is really fantastic.
You can feel Phil's excitement popping out of every
word in the book. His Crazy Idea that started as a
dream... may be actually coming true! | have some
experience with much smaller online business, but | feel
a similar excitement when one of my new projects
begins taking off.
+ Inthe past Phil Knight had failed miserably in sales,
particularly when he'd been hired to sell encyclopediasdoor-to-door. Yet he found it strangely easy to sell
shoes. He thinks the difference was that he sincerely
believed the shoes would make people's lives better. He
wrote, “People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that
belief for themselves.”
3. Resist Conformity: Parents and society push us towards
security
Guess what Phil’s dad thought of this new shoe business?
He didn’t like it at all!
+ You see, his dad was the publisher of a local newspaper
and respectable member of the community. More than
anything, he wanted his children to be respectable too.
That meant a stable career, nice house and family. He
didn’t want to see his son drifting around and selling
shoes out of a car!
* Only decades later would his father seem really proud of
what Phil had done. Especially after he’d seen people all
over the world wearing his son’s shoes. (But to be fair,
Phil's dad did lend money for the first couple shipments
of shoes, on top of paying for all Phil’s schooling.)
+ |can really connect to this part of Phil's story. At 18
years old, | was at university studying courses that |
found painfully boring. | had already created a small
online business that was generating profit. So | told my
parents that | was thinking of quitting school. Theyargued with me for weeks. They wanted me to take the
more secure path and finish the degree. Yet | quit
anyway, for better or worse.
+ Later, when | told my parents that | would try being a
‘digital nomad’ (Investopedia.com) which meant
traveling for 6 months, | heard yelling again. They
seemed to believe I’d be kidnapped and held for
ransom. Again, | travelled anyway and it was one of the
best times of my life.
Now | think this is a normal reaction—parents want their kids
to avoid risks, even if that also means avoiding the adventure
that makes life interesting.
4. Seek a Calling, Not a Career: The key to remaining
motivated despite setbacks
Phil’s passion was running and sports, and he believed Blue
Ribbon could help him spread that passion to more people.
That's a big reason why he remained motivated for years
despite countless stressful problems. He wrote:
I'd tell men and women in their mid-twenties 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.In fact, for the first 5 years of Blue Ribbon, Phil continued to
work full-time as an accountant! He sold shoes in the
evenings and on weekends. And he reinvested all their early
profits back into ordering more shoes.
In 1964, Phil began hiring people. Many of his early
employees felt similar passion and his salespeople were all
ex-runners. Two employees frequently mentioned in the book
are:
+ Jeff Johnson, the first sales employee, was a fellow
runner that Phil had seen at track meets many times. He
became ultra-devoted, creating an extensive database
of his shoe customers, designing his own advertising
for Tiger shoes, and even opening their first retail store
in Santa Monica in 1966.
+ Bob Woodell, a runner whose legs were paralyzed in an
accident. He was hired for sales, but quickly rose to the
important position of Operations Manager, organizing
many parts of the business.
5. Grow or Die: Get comfortable with life's constant change
For the first 20 years, Phil was growing Blue Ribbon (later
Nike) as fast as possible. It was accelerating like a rocket
and almost out of control. Almost every year, their sales
doubled:
+ In 1967 sales were $84,000.+ In 1968 sales had almost doubled to $150,000.
+ In 1969 sales doubled again to $300,000!
+ ...and the growth continued...
+ In 1971 sales were $1.3 million.
+ In 1973 sales were $4.8 million.
+ In 1976 sales were $14 million.
During these years, Phil overcame countless complex
challenges to keep his company alive:
* Getting kicked out of one bank, and then another
(bankers didn't like Phil's obsession towards growth,
seeing it as too risky),
+ Fighting legal battles that stretched on for months, first
against Onitsuka and then the US government,
* Opening stores all over the US and building new
relationships with foreign companies, which required
understanding complex international business laws,
+ And getting home late every night just in time to read a
bedtime story to his two young sons. Vowing to spend
more time with them, but often feeling that he wasn't
around enough.Phil believed growing as fast as he could was the right thing
to do. In his mind, life is all about growth. You're either
growing or you're dying.
(As someone who is building a business called ‘Growth.me’, |
can definitely connect with that!)
And despite all the added stress, Phil says those years
were ‘nothing but a joy’. His life was completely
consumed with building his crazy idea, he had no real
work-life balance, yet he says that he was ‘wholly
content.’
| think it’s like watching a great movie. Movies are only
interesting when there is some difficulty, conflict, or
danger. Have you ever noticed that? In a movie, we get
bored unless something goes wrong, or there is a ‘bad
guy’ to struggle against. Yet in real life many of us avoid
challenges and discomfort, and then we wonder why we
full unfulfilled!
6. Fail Fast: We gain valuable wisdom even when we fail
Many of us feel paralyzed by fear of failure. Phil Knight
was also scared of his dream collapsing, but he pushed
back the fear by encouraging himself to “Fail fast.”
He believed that if you're going to fail, then you'd better
fail as fast as you can. That way, you'll have enoughtime to apply any wisdom that you've gained towards
your next crazy idea.
7. Build a Brand: Gaining control by making his own Nike
shoes
+ After several years, Blue Ribbon had made the Japanese
Tiger shoes a lot more popular in America and they had
made Onitsuka a lot of money.
+ However, tensions were beginning to grow between Blue
Ribbon and Onitsuka. Phil suspected that Onitsuka was
looking to sign a contract with a larger distribution
company. That would put Blue Ribbon out of business
because they would have no products to sell!
+ And so in 1969 Phil was feeling very insecure about the
future of his business, even though sales were rising
fast and they were moving into larger offices. But Phil
would often tell his wife Penny that if it all failed
tomorrow, then he could always go back to accounting.
By 1971, Phil knew what they needed to do: Create their own
brand of shoes! This would finally give Blue Ribbon control
over their own product and destiny, rather than being at the
mercy of Onitsuka’s decisions.
They had a lot of trouble deciding on a name for their new
brand. They discussed different names endlessly and some
top candidates included “Falcon” and “Dimension Six.”(Dimension Six was Phil's favourite but his employees hated
it!) One day, an employee named Johnson had a dream
where he saw the word “Nike,” which was about the Greek
goddess of victory. Phil and his team were not very
enthusiastic about this name either. But Phil chose Nike
because they were out of time and he said, “maybe it'll grow
on us.”
| think there's a business lesson here: While it's very valuable
to have a brand, maybe the name itself doesn't matter as
much as we think. As Shakespeare wrote, “A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet.” In the same way, Nike by
any other name would be a very similar company. Nike didn’t
become successful because of a perfect name, but all the
other parts of their business like athlete endorsements, great
shoe designs and quality, etc.
(Just don’t name your business “Dimension Six”!)
8. Experiment Constantly: Always be testing new product
ideas
In 1972, Nike shoes were introduced to the world for the first
time at a big sports show in Chicago. They were a huge hit
with the salespeople there. However, Phil was disappointed
in the quality of those first shoes, he even said “this is the
worst the shoes will ever be” and he vowed to improve the
quality standards fast.
In the same way, Nike encouraged their employees to take
risks:+ Bill Bowerman, the other cofounder, was eating
breakfast one day. Looking at the waffle iron in his
kitchen, he suddenly wondered if shoes with a waffle
pattern at the bottom could provide a better
grip. Bowerman broke a couple of waffle makers to
create the first prototype, but eventually his ‘waffle
trainer’ became one of Blue Ribbon’s best sellers.
+ M. Frank Rudy, a former aerospace engineer, had
invented special pressurized air bags to put inside
shoes. Adidas rejected his idea, but Nike took a shot
with it. The first time they included the air bags ina
shoe was a disaster. The shoes had too many defects
and needed to be recalled. But the idea was eventually
successful in Air Max, a line of Nike shoes that was truly
unique.
9. Don’t Micromanage: Tell people what to do, let them figure
out how
Phil believed that ‘business is war without bullets’ and he
often studied great war leaders like Sir Winston Churchill to
learn about leadership. And he often paraphrased a quote
from the famous US General George S. Patton who said:
“Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and
let them surprise you with the results.”
From 1977 to 1979, Nike sales grew from $70 million to $140
million, and they had to move twice to larger headquartersoffices. Throughout Nike's explosive growth, Phil was
generally a hands-off leader and he believes this unleashed
his employee's creativity.
For example:
+ If they needed to open a new store, then Phil would
assign the responsibility to an employee without giving
them too many limits or directions.
+ Orif they needed to find a good factory in a foreign
country, Phil would find a great local expert, then allow
them to make most of the decisions. (They relied on
separate experts in Japan, then Taiwan and China.)
10. Go Public: Seeking greater connection is what life is
about
+ For many years, Phil was hesitant about ‘going public’
with Nike because that could mean losing control over
his business. (Going public means allowing anyone to
buy Nike stock and own a piece of the company.)
+ He finally decided to do it because Phil realized his
whole life had been about ‘going public’ and becoming
more connected with others... whether that was through
running in sports, growing a business, or building a
family.
+ What we're all really seeking is oneness, according toPhil. This is why people are so excited by sports. Sports
allow us to feel one in spirit with the athletes and other
fans.
So on December 2nd 1980, Nike went public. Phil says it
felt surreal knowing that he was suddenly worth $178
million. His early employees were each worth over $6
million, too. Yet the next morning, Phil still woke up early
and arrived at his office, as usual.
In the end, Phil's biggest wish is to live it all over again.
To younger people, he advises us to ‘Have faith in
yourself, but also have faith in faith, | got the message
that faith, however our hearts choose to define it, is
absolutely essential if we're aiming to be bold and
adventurous