Shoe Dog — Book Review
Readability 5/5
Content 3/5
Shoe Dog follows the hustling beginnings of Nike’s founder, Phil Knight and his attempt to become a distributor for a Japanese shoe company. At the end of WWII, Japan charged out of their situation with a hustling attitude to restore their productivity and put their militaristic ways behind them. Given this, Phil Knight and few American business entrepreneurs found opportunity to take their business abroad and brought their hardworking factory generated shoes to America to sell for less than rivals Puma, Adidas. With this near-death financial success, he was thrust forward by both continuing to deal with crap, stretched thin high risk finances and loans, some slyness with negotiation and building relationships with unlikely fellows that all had a passion as a shoe dog. This allowed him to leverage banks and even borrowers in the age when angel investing was not existent and everyone was fiscally conservative — especially banks (that were not yet a giant corporation). Able to do this, he had to fight other shoe companies and opportunists, steer the Vietnam war days of America, and finally see his partner stab him in the back (later known as Asics).
After their falling out, sales was always the thing that kept them alive. They had no equity, no cashflow, no money left in the bank ever when doing business. Pushing hard at all running events, getting endorsements from athletes, and eventually in state to national events and eventually internationl events (Olympics). On this stage, Blue Ribbon became Nike and then the sales were impossible to ignore. Everyone loved the feel of the shoe and people were angry when the shoes were not being made fast enough.
That dream carried them forward into the 70s and eventually Nike went public and all stabilized. Phil Knight’s cofounders and earliest employees remained loyal, as did their first athlete endorsement Pre. They would soon lose Pre to a tragedy, but kept going. And eventually Nike became a global brand. Nike moved their factory operations out of Japan to Taiwan and eventually to China, always trying to improve the way of life of their employees — even those abroad in Asia that were poverty-stricken.
Factories popped up in Mexico (a factory named Canada in Mexico that made shoes but failed to work in the cold — lol). At the height of the falling out with (eventually Asics) company and their main CEO (who backstabbed him), they had a lawsuit in Japan and Nike counter sued in America, eventually with some bad characters and indecency, Asics could not win the suit and sought settlement. Phil kept holding off the settlement, determined to pay zero, eventually reduced it from tens of millions to just 6 million settlement. Money and inflation grew drastically from 50s to 70s and a million dollars then was like a billion dollars today.
Phil’s family life was mostly sacrificed from the moment his kids were born, he had no time for them and regrets it. Losing one of his sons to a drowning accident , the one that he had trouble communicating with.
Phil is an introvert. And has trouble opening up in public, and also trouble speaking up. But forced into these situations by his burning passion to sell shoes, eventually even his dad had to admit he was doing a noble job. His mother was one of his first family-friends investors.
Overall, what I drew from this story is that being hustler is important. Sales is everything. Relationships and having good partners and good employees, good partners, is critical. You gotta have a legal fight before you can emerge victorious in a bloody ocean of a market. And your family life will be sacrificed for this. And overall, you cannot really do it for money. Even if end result your net worth is in the tens of millions, you never did it for money really. You just wanted to live this life again and build this impactful business all over again. The number of people you touch, the mosaic you carve that is human race is beautiful, and all Phil wants to do is just to do it all over again.
For me, I think I cannot do what he did. I simply wouldn’t want that life for myself. Even if I am not worth billions, not famous, not the CEO or largest stakeholder in the end (Phil holds largest stake to keep the company’s top spot and to stabilize operations under one vision, all his cofounders and earliest employees agree this is for the best to keep the operation from having any power struggle or shifting unnecessarily).
I think what I want ultimately is to do something like this, but without sacrificing my personal life… I don’t really know what that would entail. But it is not like he did either. Just find what your passion is and go with it…
But sales must drive it forward, or you will definitely fail. Phil tried to fail and fail early and did and just kept going until it worked.
The number of times he changed banks, had to work bankers into loaning him money is incredible.
His colleagues are cool too. One guy never stops begging for attention by letters and mail, but is always ignored. Somehow that’s exactly what this employee wanted — that autonomy.
Another colleague is an elite athlete that got into an accident and was wheelchaired for life, and somehow sold shoes until he got an operations (desk job) job.
Their love for Pre unites them all.
Bowerman, Phil’s cofounder, is odd, yet cool, his coach that never stops experimenting on athlete’s feet. Wants to invent things like plastics, gatorade, eventually these things are created and Nike uses them.
Nike means Victory. A name that Phil never liked until the name found them. He wanted some stupid name that no one liked.
Enjoy this one if you love reading hustlers succeed.
