Shoe Dog — Takeaways

‘Shoe Dog’ by ‘Phil Knight’ is an awe-inspiring story from the creator of ‘Nike Inc’. It invites you into the life of Phil Knight, a passionate runner from Oregon, from his early years at Blue Ribbon to Nike going public.

Here are my take-aways from this memoir 👇

1) Phil fulfilled his desire of going around the world before starting out with his crazy idea. Thus once he started out, he wasn’t dual minded about it and invested all of him into it.

2) The mysticism involving Phil’s vision of ‘Temple of Athena Nike’, Johnson’s dream of the name ‘Nike’ and Phil being born in Oregon where the oldest shoe tracing over 9000y ago was discovered. This gave me a notion that somehow Phil was meant to do this. This was his calling.

3) Even though Phil had a business which was growing year on year, he was having hard time staying afloat. He took up jobs to make ends meet, ensuring that the growth of his business didn’t stop.

4) Phil, like all of us had his own tough times. Even when company was growing 100% y-o-y, he had tough time attributing time to his family. Even amidst this he ensured that he always was there to tell his children their bed-time stories.

5) No matter how good the company was doing, hard-pressing problems never stopped. The company was always on the brink of extinction, indicating no matter how much you’ve put yourself into creating something, it was always a moment away of going into drain. Even this is temporary

6) Phil never stopped and got back even stronger from each challenge. His attitude of grow or die amidst excruciating challenges is inspiring.

7) The culture Phil created, the camaraderie he established shows that Nike was more than just a business to him. In a way it was him.