I'm not a Nike fan. After all, its boss doesn't give many discounts to alumni, but the name Shoe Dog attracts me. A dog is chasing its prey. What is a shoe dog?
Phil knight, the founder of Nike, decided to write such an autobiography while thinking about his The Bucket List. Shoes and Dogs describes the development process of the company from the founding of Nike to 1980 IPO. Different from the boasting of general business biographies, Knight described more the difficulties and setbacks experienced in the development of the company and the process that Nike saved the day again and again. This book reads like a novel. Knight's writing style is excellent and he has a good grasp of narrative rhythm. He is like a TV screenwriter, knowing that after one climax, there will be another climax at a proper interval, which makes people fondle it. The important thing is that this book is by no means chicken soup.
Knight emphasized this state of being always on the road. When he was young, he was also confused. He wants to travel around the world to find a career he loves all his life and a valuable and interesting dream. So he started as a shoe agent of Japanese Oni Tsuka Company, became a shoe dog, and successfully found a group of like-minded people to make shoes go further and further.
Memoirs are written with love and dreams as the first belief and are full of chicken soup. Knight's writing is so cunning that it is easy for readers to have an illusion that the difficulties he faces are indeed huge, but it seems that they are not so difficult to reverse.
After all, you have a dream. You are not afraid of anything, are you?
If you do Nate's bowl of chicken soup, you really don't understand his cleverness: Nate is brave, stays behind and knows people well.
Knight's method of managing the company is a radical who pursues development. It has been mentioned many times in the book that the annual sales are increasing substantially, but the company's net assets and cash flow are poor. Conservative banks are often reluctant to lend money to small businesses like him and ask him to slow down the scale growth. Knight originally sold Japanese shoes on a commission basis, and basically had no fixed assets, but only some stocks. High debt and low cash mean high accounts receivable and high accounts payable, and the life of the company depends on the normal supply chain. Knight chose radical expansion, which is related to his character as an athlete: this is a life-and-death contest with his opponent, and there is no room for any delay. In that era when there were few venture capitalists, Knight chose a very difficult road.
Some things will turn into jokes after success, such as lying about a nonexistent company in the first meeting with Oni Tsuka company; Give Oni Tsuka employees money to buy bicycles, and also write the training of "spies" into the memorandum; Stealing files from the other supervisor's briefcase; Concealing funds from the first creditor, Iwai Nippon, and secretly building a factory ... These bold or stressful reactions just prove Knight's courage and determination. There may be beautification in the memoirs, and maybe he was really anxious at that time, but judging from the numerous decisions made in the past decades, Knight is definitely not a reckless person.
On the contrary, knights are used to having a subsequent hand. Knight pursues his dream, but he is very rational, which is reflected in his participation in accounting courses and qualification for meetings. After listening to the experience of his predecessors, Knight knew the twists and turns on the road to chasing dreams and needed the means to survive, so he became an accountant working in PricewaterhouseCoopers, and later taught at the university and took care of the company during his break. At the same time, his No.1 full-time employee, Johnson, is all busy with his own career, which is really incredible: the boss of a startup company works for others most of the time, and his own career is only done in his spare time!
It is also because of his success that knights dare to eat crabs. The change of Nike foundry is a typical case of globalization in the second half of the 20th century. From Japan to Taiwan Province Province, and then to Chinese mainland, of course, there are cost considerations, more for a more suitable and stable supply chain, in order not to be controlled by individual manufacturers. So in the early days of reform and opening up, Nike came to China and was the first American shoe factory to set up a factory in Chinese mainland, which brought great returns to Nike.
In the process of expanding territory step by step, the knight can't do without his shoes and dogs. These people are the kind of people that any team wants to have: co-founder Ballman is a track and field coach and a research madman, who has made great contributions to the technical development of Nike shoes; No.1 employee Johnson, doing sustainable marketing and daily management; Despite Woodall's physical inconvenience, his heart has been pursuing the perfect shoes ... This team is the key to Nike's success, but Knight found them, pinched them together and never stopped moving forward together on the road of shoes and dogs.
Where can I find such a boss?
Knight's characteristics and wisdom come from the tempering of athletes' career, trial and error in the process of starting a business, and observation and learning in interpersonal communication. He really grew up with Nike. This step by step has overcome countless difficulties: the dispute over agency rights, hostile takeover of the original factory, legal proceedings, unstable supply chain, failure of new product development, framed by competitors, and difficulties made by the US government ... In the process of reading Shoes and Dogs, although the ending is clear, every time I see the knight in trouble, I can't help but sweat for him. The tone of the knight has a faint taste and the effort behind it, which only makes me admire.
If you don't accumulate steps, you will be thousands of miles away; If you don't accumulate small streams, you won't be a river.
The road is under your feet. These are shoes and dogs.