The Love Of Sports Made Nike Knight Come To This Day.

I have been thinking for a long time that the entrepreneurs of our generation Internet are really better than their predecessors, and we are really different from the people in the past.

Have we produced better products and created more value? In this era, we are constantly changing the world, but most of the time we just create products that have no users by mere imagination, and burn hundreds of millions of bills into ashes.

And from

Phil Knight's autobiography, Shoe Dog, is a completely different story from Phil Nate.

When I closed the book, the answer was already in my mind.

Compared to the more than 40 year old Silicon Valley's founder of biography, Mr. NAT, 78, seems to be an alien.

The low-key old man went to Stanford University to read a MBA degree at the age of 24. He never left his hometown in his life.

He was born and brought up in Portland, a seaport city in the northwestern United States. The Nike headquarters he founded was located in a small town outside his hometown of Portland.

He keeps away from the media all year long, and carries a pair of sunglasses in public places. He supports his alma mater team Oregen Duck all his life.

Few people outside the sports circle had noticed him before. In many media, he was just the greedy little old man behind the countless sweatshops in Southeast Asia.

It was not until after the publication of the memoirs that people rediscovered the founder of the sports brand that had been integrated into the American culture.

From this book, I can not see the tone of the author's showing off, like an ordinary old man, calmly recalling past events in the afternoon sunshine.

Compared to the arrogant young talents in the Internet age, there is a touch of deep and long.

In NAT's story, entrepreneurship is not a change in the world, but a thirty year race. From a young man who has nothing to lose, he bears more and more responsibilities in the race. He wanders around the edge of bankruptcy all the year round. He goes to the middle age to bring the company to the market without stopping. He runs faster and faster until he retires. He suddenly looks around and finds himself the last winner.

"Whether you like it or not, life is a game.

A coward never leaves, but the weak die on the way.

This is a sentence repeated by knight in this book, which sounds like his murmur.

Unlike other autobiographies who only like to exaggerate their merits, knight is faced with his mistakes.

He confessed in his book that he had laid off three times in ten years and made 1500 unemployed, which made him sleeps all night.

In his book, he bravely laughed at the erroneous judgments that he had made.

He once asserted that magic Johnson is a player who has no sense of position and will never be able to stay in NBA.

He regretted that he did not spend more time with his son, that his older son was abroad after his adulthood, and was eventually killed in a diving accident.

...

From this book, I find three key words, which is the main line of this book, and also summed up Knight's life.

Ardently love

Knight has never thought of changing the world. He loved sports and brought him to this day.

Nate started his business in 1964, when he was 26 years old, living with his parents and living in his childhood bedroom.

"60s is a rebellious era, but I seem to be the only one who is not rebellious.

"

But except for one thing, running is the love of Nate's life.

"Fate has turned me into a good runner, but not great."

Knight dreams of becoming a professional athlete from childhood.

Rinat was a good runner in the University, but he did not want to become a national champion to take part in the Olympic Games. After graduation, he went to business school first and then became an accountant.

But his love for running made him obsessed with the Onitsuke Tiger sneakers produced in Japan, so he sold Onitsuke Tiger in her hometown town despite his parents' objection.

It was a humble beginning to no longer humble. He opened his own small car, put dozens of pairs of sneakers in the trunk, and peddled outside the various sports venues.

No one understood why he did so, and his parents objected, because their living room and garage soon became warehouses.

Selling shoes is a boring job. The price of shoes is not high, but the volume is not small.

Every night Nate knew how much money he made today for a long time.

But people who love running are fond of tiger. They are getting more and more popular in the running circle. People often run to the door to ask for shoes.

This is probably the earliest fan economy.

His small company sales in the first year were $8000; five years later, in 1969, it rose to 300 thousand, while sales reached 8 million in 1980.

After half a century, Knight told the young people in the book.

I want to tell them to slow down, press the pause button, and seriously think about how you want to spend the next forty years.

I want to tell more than 20 year old young people not to settle down for a job or occupation.

To search for the call of the heart.

Even if you don't know what the call is, don't stop.

If you do this, you will be able to overcome fatigue day after day, ease your disappointment and reach the height you can't imagine.

east

On the title page of "shoe dog" is a passage by Japanese famous Zen Suzuki Juntaka in the Zen master's heart:

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the, but

And this book is also Jobs's favorite book when he was young.

Many great entrepreneurs in the United States have drawn strength from eastern culture, and so did Jobs.

Like Jobs, young knight was fascinated by oriental culture. He liked to study Japanese culture at Stanford University. He thought Japan had manufacturing elegance.

The ability and cheap labor, if cheap Japanese products exported to the United States would be a good business.

Soon after he started selling Japanese sports shoes, he spent all his savings on a trip to Japan.

Knight knocked on the office of Onitsuke Tiger.

He wants to become a distributor of Onitsuke Tiger in the United States, and asks him to come to the market. He did not tell the Japanese to live in their parents' home. Instead, he said, "I am CEO of Blue Ribbon Sports."

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Blue ribbon sports is the name that NAT wanted to come out temporarily. The blue ribbon is the prize that knight has won in his childhood, and is full of Knight's bedroom.

His CEO identity shocked the Japanese, so he was lucky to meet Mr. Onizuka Kiyaro, founder of Onitsuke Tiger.

Onizuka Kiyaro liked the American boy very much, and said he saw his youth from him.

Onizuka Kiyaro not only formally signed a dealer agreement with him, but also told him his mission and vision.

"Everyone in the world walks around wearing sports shoes all the time.

I know that day will come sooner or later. "

"Everyone in the world is walking around in sports shoes all the time," and now people do not understand the meaning behind this sentence.

Running on the streets in 60s is a strange thing. Passing cars will whistle and even throw bottles to those runners.

A non mainstream sports equipment will wear on everyone's feet in decades. Only the most crazy people can think of it.

But Knight believed it.

After returning to the United States, Knight immediately ran to register a company called Blue Ribbon. The address was in the garage of his parents' home.

His long distance running coach, Bill Bowerman, invested $500 to become his partner in.

Boeerman is also an excellent inventor. He once invented the running shoes of soft nylon upper instead of traditional leather.

7 years later, the company was renamed Nike -- the name of the goddess of victory in ancient Greek mythology.

Forty years later, Knight completed the ideal of Mr. Onizuka Kiyaro.

Today, Nike's market value is close to 100 billion dollars, with annual sales of 32 billion, and about 120 million pairs of shoes sold in one year. The rich men on this planet, whether they are worth tens of billions, are still children of refugee camps in a war-torn country in Africa. They wear Nike sneakers on their feet.

Liabilities

In the era of no venture capital, knight has always been a heterogeneous group.

It is no exaggeration to say that Nike's initial 20 years have been hovering on the verge of bankruptcy.

Nate, who was born in the accounting profession, did not develop the habit of calculating carefully. He put all his cash into faster development, kept looking for bank loans, and carried back the debt he weighed.

The whole book was full of Knight's anxiety for money, and NAT could hardly keep up with it many times.

In the early 70s of last century, venture capital grew up in a place called Silicon Valley in northern California. Soon, NAT, in Portland, heard of this new industry for the first time.

He soon thought that this was a good way to solve the financial difficulties. He wanted to sell 30% of the shares at $2 a share for $300 thousand.

In order to attract the interest of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, Knight also registered a new company called sports-tec.

Later, he wrote letters to investors and sent them the financing documents.

The result is that, within two months, no reply was received and no phone call was received.

Knight, who was in despair, began to borrow money from his friends, and his friends around him were not rich, so he avoided him.

When he was at a loss, his good friend and first employee, Woodell, knocked on his door. Woodell told Nate that his parents were willing to lend him $5000, and NAT, who was overjoyed, rushed to Woodell's parents to take the check. His parents did not ask him for interest or even received a receipt.

Finally, he asked, "we still have 3000 dollars left. Do you want to take it with us?" and NAT cheek to take the $8000 life savings of the couple.

Before leaving, Knight asked, "why do you do this?"

"If I don't trust my own son's company, who else can I trust?"

There was a happy ending at the end of the matter. After ten years of Nike's listing, the $8000 became a 1 million 600 thousand, 200 times return.

Nate told the news to the old lady herself. The old lady shook her head in astonishment. "I still don't understand what happened."

In the face of venture capitalists, NAT learned an important lesson from this story: your employees are always more important than your investors.

At the beginning of the book, Knight told him that he had lost any game in his childhood and would lose his crying. In the last chapter, Knight spoke of everyone in his life with a calm and grateful tone - his wife, lifelong mentor and partner, Onizuka Kiyaro, and even a good friend who betrayed himself into the Adidas camp.

Time has made him a tolerant person.

And knight's most grateful person is Steve Plifontein (Steve "Pre" Prefontaine).

As the most famous long-distance runner in the history of the United States, she has created all the seven long distance running records from 2000 meters to 10000 meters.

Friends who are interested in him can go to see a movie, Without Limits, which is one of my favorite sports movies.

This early genius is the first endorser signed by Nike.

"Pre is a rebel from the grass roots, full of pride and courage, and his spirit is the cornerstone of our company."

Knight comments on Puli Fontan.

Today, Nike's last four phone calls in each country are 6453. This is the number of four letters on the number plate of the NIKE, and these four figures are exactly the best result for Pre to finish a mile: 3 minutes 54 seconds 06.

Knight said that this is the divine providence.

Life is growth, not life is growth you grow or you die.

At the end of the book, Knight writes.