3 Lessons From The Founder Of Nike

QUOTE OF THE DAY

SHOE DOG

357 Words | 1 Min 18 Sec Read

Shoe Dog is the autobiography of Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, who at last decided to share the story of how he founded one of the most iconic, profitable, and world-changing brands.

It is rare for someone with the stature of Phil Knight to allude to the public spotlight.

He’s not like your Jeff Besos or your Elon Musk (although his bank balance wasn’t too different). He kept under the radar, built one of the biggest brands in the world, and then, well, retired. Just like that.

There are three main takeaways from his autobiography, ‘Shoe Dog', that we thought were well worth sharing.

Lesson #1: You only get a few chances to start something crazy, so go for broke when you’re young.

Phil's story is pretty movie-like. He went to Stanford Business School, had a passion for sports and shoes, went travelling to Japan on his gap year, cold-called one of the biggest shoe brands CEOs (at the time), and somehow landed the distribution rights for the western US to sell their shoes—that is, in a nutshell.

Don’t get it wrong; it doesn’t usually happen like that, but what Phil re-instated was that when you’re young and you have nothing better to do, you may as well put your craziest ideas forward and see what comes out of them.

Lesson #2: Get someone who can be your mentor and partner and will believe in you and bring valuable skills.

Phil wouldn’t have taken Nike off the ground on his own; to his luck, his running coach filled in the gaps that Phil couldn’t.

He provided the intense attention to detail and design skills that made Nike into the brand it is today.

Lesson #3: Just tell people what to do and let them figure out the how. Encourage everyone to be themselves.

When working with people, Phil ran with the idea of not telling people how to do things but telling them what to do and letting them surprise him with their results.

Some would see this as inefficient, but Phil found that allowing people to do what they did best enabled the brand to scale frictionlessly.

ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS:

So what can you take from Phil Knight's story that you can implement into your own life?

Well, firstly, read the book yourself; the knowledge within it is timeless, and he conveys a lot of core entrepreneurial skills that become fluff in the modern day.

Secondly, ask yourself if you have any ideas that you’re not capitalising on.

Do you have an itch that you want to scratch? If so, no one else is going to scratch it for you; you have to chase it. As Phil said, go for broke when you’re young.

If you’re worried about taking the first step, ask The Kaizen down below for some advice or some insight. It may just change your life!

TAKEAWAYS:

There's a lot to be learned from Phil Knight's autobiography. In fact, there are hundreds of lessons, but the few that stood out to us were the following:

Lesson #1: You only get a few chances to start something crazy, so go for broke when you’re young.

Lesson #2: Get someone who can be your mentor and partner and will believe in you and bring valuable skills.

Lesson #3: Just tell people what to do and let them figure out the how. Encourage everyone to be themselves.

LESSON OF THE DAY ⤵️

Treat your brain like a muscle; just like at the gym, you would progressively overload on weight, you need to progressively overload on focus.

Start small in 10- to 15-minute intervals with small breaks in between, and gradually increase those intervals to the point where you are achieving deep focus for an hour at a time.

Focus is something you train and improve on, not something that you naturally have an acute awareness of; treat it as such.

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