Shoe Dog: A Memoir By The Creator Of Nike
A review and three intangible life lessons
Sometime back, Christmastime, 2017, Phil Knight bumped into Bill Gates and Warren Buffett at a Cinema in the heart of Cathedral City. He and his lovely wife, Penny, were holiday-ing in Palm Springs and came out to see Nicholson’s and Morgan Freeman’s "Bucket List", thinking it was a comedy — it was not.
But there were the two billionaire friends, Bill and Warren, outside, chatting away. He joined them.
Standing there, three of them, someone behind whispered, “Hey, look, Buffett and Gates—who’s that other guy?”
That someone could easily have been me. I mean, I love, love a pair of Nike — who doesn’t? I have read extensively about founders of popular businesses and brands, too, but somehow I haven’t known the name nor the face behind my favourite shoe brand until two days ago when I stumbled across this memoir online, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the creator of Nike.
Wait, what? Creator of Nike? And a memoir at that? Hoo-hee!
Quick. Almost trembling with excitement, I bought it and took a minute or two to salivate, to show gratitude, much as I do when my mom, smiling lovingly and knowingly, spreads my favourite meal before me.
Necessities of life, good food and good books — nourishment for the body and the soul — and at their availability, one is thankful for blessings.
And the book was every bit as interesting as I guessed it would. And more.
The Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree — a brand as beautiful, brave, and charming as Nike must have an equally beautiful, brave, and charming story. And hearing from the Horse’s own mouth, it’s wholly, essentially complete.
Phil Knight first describes himself as shy and then hops on a plane to Japan and tells a very big shoe company that he aspires to be its distributor in the United States when he has not a single penny nor a single store to start with. Imagine such brave shyness!
A little white lie he told. A small sin of ambition. But like a Japanese banker would tell him many years later, during one of the most nervous make-or-break moments in the history of Nike — there are far worse things than ambition.
Young Knight, then only 24, travelled round the world. Searching for meaning, he says.
In Greece, at the Temple of Athena, the goddess who was thought to give, among other gifts, Nike (or victory), he found himself staring, lost, enthralled by the haunting carvings on the facade, by one in particular — in which the goddess inexplicably leans down to adjust the strap of her shoe.
The twist is, more than ten years later when they, the founding fathers, would be thinking of a name to call their first shoe, it wasn’t Phil Knight who suggested "Nike" — it was Jeff Johnson who hadn’t even been to Greece, saying it was whispered to him in a dream.
It is one hell of a story, complete with tragedy, suspense, comic relief, one that is by no shred of doubt worthy of the crowning climax of every glorious thing that is Nike today.
And sure, there are lessons, but, as with an iceberg, everything is below the surface.
Here are the few I lifted, my favourites.
Three valuable life lessons;
1. Grow or die.
Since the day Phil Knight’s very first order of shoes — Tigers, they were called — ducked on the shores of America from Japan and he started selling from out of his boy’s quarters bedroom, he doubled his sales figures every subsequent year.
Not even his father who first thought it a waste of time and no, not the bankers who constantly hammered him to slow down and build equity else they’d cut him off, nor the lack of a means of survival, nor a far richer competing distributor years later, nor when his own suppliers sued him; nothing could slow Phil down.
Like a rolling stone, he kept moving on and on and on. And it was the only reason he survived.
More than survived, he took over, blasting past Adidas and Puma, sports brands that already were behemoths when he was just taking his first uncertain steps. Like Isaac Newton said: ducks, in motion, are always in line.
2. The truth shall set you free.
It is what every good mother tells her kids. Mine told me and I'm sure yours told you, yet, somehow, the majority of us seldom opt for total honesty when it isn't convenient.
Throughout this eccentric yarn, the numerous make-or-break moments in Nike's eccentric history made rather than broke it because, besides a sheer will of steel, Phil Knight and his team chose complete honesty in those situations. Every damn time.
In 1974, at a federal court in Portland, before the honourable James Burns passed judgment when Blue Ribbon (Nike’s parent company) counter-sued its supplier, Onitsuka, a much bigger and powerful company for breach of faith, he said, “Truthfulness is ultimately all I have to go on, to gauge this case.” Blue Ribbon has been more truthful, he said, not only throughout the dispute, as evidenced by documents, but in the courtroom.
That’s how Phil Knight won his first court case. A crucial case. Given that Blue Ribbon was running on 90% debt, it’s hard to imagine that there would have been any Nike today if he’d lost.
Again and again, as he went on, Phil Knight chose complete honesty over deceit, honour over dirty business, in the direst situations, even when his entire life’s work was on the line he still wouldn’t bring himself to lie. And yes, he prospered.
3. It’s never just business.
Leonard E. Read, somewhere in the middle of his book, "Accent on the Right", states that if one's ideal is no greater than the reward, then that ideal, paradoxically, will bring no reward. And I agree.
Even the Bible says: seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added on to you.
What do you seek?
Elon Musk seeks to make humanity multi-planetary and cushion global warming by cutting carbon emissions through electric cars hence Tesla™ and Space X™.
Mark Zuckerberg sought to connect the world.
And Sergey and Larry's mission was to democratize man's access to information.
It then becomes, when you look at it, only complimentary — deserving, one would say — that these people are among the richest in the world.
For Mr Knight and his founding partner, Bowerman, the fetish was to see the athlete reach his/her full potential, that is, to aid, to support, to enrich the success of athletes all over the world.
And Coach Bowerman always tearing shoes apart, cutting, and sewing them together again, always making adjustments, innovating, they did.
From Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant to Tiger Woods to Lebron James. They did.
And what are the rewards? Money, fame, family, and fulfilment. Every other thing shall be added onto you, remember?
Phil Knight declares that if he were to go back and start Nike all over again from scratch, he'd do it. And do it again. And again. Happily.
