Review Of Phil Knight's Memoir 'Shoe Dog'

In Phil Knight’s memoir, Shoe Dog, Knight recounted his arduous journey in creating the notorious brand, Nike. He expressed the many hardships and accomplishments that he and his team went through to become a successful household name. Through his point of view, readers are able to see that adversity is necessary in order to triumph, and initiative is required to succeed.
The chapters of this book are refreshingly categorized by years. Knight begins the memoir as a 24-year-old in 1962, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon and Stanford, and a drive to make an impact on the world. As a former college track athlete, Knight loved to run and continued to run in his neighborhood even after graduating from college. In fact, while still at Stanford, Knight took a seminar on entrepreneurship for which he wrote a research paper about creating running shoes. Upon graduation, Knight felt he could make his idea come to life. He thought

that since the Japanese were able to dominate the camera market over the Germans, the Japanese could do the same with running shoes. Knight sold his car and asked his dad for $1,000 to travel to Japan and pitch his idea. He made it there, learned how to conduct business with the Japanese, and met with executives of a shoe manufacturer, Onitsuka. This was the first example of the initiative theme in this memoir, and was very significant to me.
Knight promptly showed readers that it takes self-sufficiency to prosper in his career field of being an entrepreneur and marketer. He motivated himself by stating that if he did not take a chance on his own, he would be stuck in a career that he did not care for. “If I didn’t, if I muffed this, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my days selling encyclopedias, or mutual funds, or some other junk I didn’t really care about” (p.33). From constantly writing letters to Onitsuka to reaching out to his former track coach, Bill Bowerman, to share his idea, Knight did not wait to receive help, he went for it. This teaches me that I should not wait around for life to happen to me, but rather, put in work for myself and not get discouraged.
Knight titled his shoe company Blue Ribbon on a whim when asked by the Onitsuka executives. He became a distributor for their “Tiger” shoes, and he, along with Mr. Bowerman, ordered shoes and marketed them to runners. Knight eventually hired his first salesman, Jeff Johnson, who was a former runner. Johnson was extremely eager to sell shoes for Knight. “[Johnson] wrote to tell me how many Tigers he’d sold that week. He wrote to tell me how many Tigers he’d sold that day. He wrote to tell me who’d worn Tigers at which high school meet and in what place they’d finished” (p. 93). Ultimately, Johnson quit his full-time job and moved across the country to open Blue Ribbon’s first East Coast office. Knight also met Penelope “Penny” Parks at Portland State University where he taught Accounting 101 in 1968 to make money to pay bills. Soon after meeting, Knight hired Penny as Blue Ribbon’s bookkeeper, and proceeds to marry her. He employed a few more throughout his early stages, and overall Knight’s careful choosing of his employees showed that it takes time and care to build a successful team around you in his career field. This taught me a major lesson to be careful who I surround myself with because people can make or break your entire career.
Since the beginning of Knight’s journey in creating the shoe brand that became Nike, he experienced hardships and challenges in his career field. The bank that he was receiving aid from made it increasingly difficult to get loans, and Onisutka exacerbated this issue by not sending shoes in time for Knight to make his payments. Knight even ends up feeling betrayed when he steals a folder from Kitami, an executive from Onitsuka. He finds out that Kitami had plans to visit with 18 other athletic shoe distributors in the US. Since Knight already had plans to leave Onitsuka anyway and broke their contract, he and Blue Ribbon were sued. Even though he won the case, it was a hassle and a financial burden going through court. Furthermore, after finally gaining the name, Nike, from Johnson and finding a new distributor, Nike went into debt in 1975 after a late payment to the Bank of California. This turned out to be a discrepancy, but it was still extremely stressful to go through nonetheless. It is difficult to say that I would handle the challenges that Knight went through any differently than he did. If anything, I would do the same thing because it got Nike to where it is today.
Despite all of the trials and tribulations that Knight and his company went through, however, he always persevered and never lost his passion for Nike. Knight’s perseverance is a major lesson that I learned. Seemingly everything that could have gone wrong throughout Knight’s journey, did go wrong. However, he did not quit and refuse to go back. Instead, he believed “where there is no struggle there can be no art” (p. 269). This was a major takeaway for me because without persistence, Nike would not exist today. Even when they were dealing with competition and money issues, Knight and his team found a way to get through it. It takes a passionate and diligent person to get through all that he did. He was not always entirely confident that everything would work out, but we could see how he got increasingly strong and bold as he experienced complications. Therefore, I consider this passion and diligence to be a positive aspect of this career.
An additional positive aspect of marketing and entrepreneurship that I learned about from Phil Knight’s story is getting to choose who you want to work with and for you.

This is meaningful because the people who were around him ended up making vital impacts on Nike. Knight was a strong believer in teamwork and even stated, “Two people of good talent working together will always beat two people of good talent who are not working together” (p.269). For instance, if it weren’t for Johnson, Nike never would have gotten its name. “Johnson had pointed out that seemingly all iconic brands...have short names. Two syllables or less. And they always have a strong sound in the name, a letter like “K” or “X,” that sticks in the mind. That all made sense. And that all described Nike” (p.230). Knight’s team was honest with him, and shared his passion with either shoes, running, or just business, which was very significant to me. This meant that if Knight were to lose his company, they would have something to lose as well, which make them work

harder.
I also learned that in order to be successful in the entrepreneurship and marketing career field, it is critical to find a need for your market and target that need. In addition to that, uniqueness is key in this career field. Despite many different types of shoes on the market, Knight stood out because his were crafted differently. This taught me that when marketing, you have to make people think that your product is what they need over anything else that may be trying to garner their attention. This was shown repeatedly throughout Knight’s story, but the story that was the most significant example of this was when Bowerman came up with the “Waffle Sole” for Nike. Because of its rarity, they flew off the shelves, “leading to an increase in annual sales from $4.8 million to 8.4 million and our first year of real profitability with Nike” (p.239).
Knight’s examples of independence and self-determination were my main takeaways from Knight’s story. In the career field of marketing and, most importantly entrepreneurship, it is imperative to get things done on your own without being asked or needing anyone else. Based off of Knight’s story, this is crucial to do if you want to accomplish your dreams. Especially in the sport industry, I learned that I need to go out and make connections on my own, similar to what Knight did when he traveled to Japan. He did not even know anyone in Japan, but he took the initiative and reached out to Onitsuka on his own. He also did not let fear get in the way of what he wanted to accomplish. He could have been scared to travel to Japan or even afraid to ask his parents for money to help him get there and fund his first shoes, but he decided to go for it. I am both inspired and challenged to do the same.
I think it is vital, as I am going throughout school, to continue to read about others’ experiences in different sport career fields. I can learn a lot from different experiences that people have gone through. I will even learn how to handle some situations from reading about how they did. I now have a different outlook on reading books that do not seem to benefit me on the surface. After reading this story, I will instead look for ways that I can learn from everything that I am assigned, as well as every situation that I go through. This is especially imperative for me to do since I am a new interest in the sport career field, and do not know much about it just yet. After this assignment, I am motivated to not only read more books, but research different career fields in sport.
As an aspiring event planner, I did not see the value in reading this story at first, because I felt I could not relate. However, Knight’s attributes and experiences impacted me and have inspired me to follow in his footsteps of being persistent. He worked very hard and pushed himself to make his brand the best, and that is a lesson that I think everyone can apply to their career and dreams.