2 Best Lessons From Shoe Dog: The Founder of Nike’s Story

Out of all the literature genres I enjoy the one I find the easiest to digest and hardest hitting is biography. After a couple of years of my current strength and conditioning coach recommending Shoe Dog, the founder of Nike, Phil Knight’s autobiography to me, I finally got around to it in 2024. It was the best book I read that year and a story containing so many elements that still keep returning to my mind.

I’d like to share the two biggest lessons I took away from the book- the first came to me while I was reading it, the second and most important, upon completion.

Lesson 1- To a degree everything is blagged

I am not always unaffected by perfectionist thinking which is, as I get older, something I see can hinder me in areas of my life. Prevent me from action. When Hanumantra and I started Kosmos my first inclination was that I needed to read everything available on textiles and business before we got going. While some planning is preferential sport has taught me that it is nearly always better to just get moving and that most things are best worked out on route. You don’t need a super detailed plan to begin with. As the old saying goes, “The best way to start is just to start.” Or, I suppose more inline with the topic, one could say that the slogan is “Just Do It,” not, “Just plan it.”

A younger me would look at a wildly successful global company like Nike and think they had everything mapped out straight from the off. The first major example in Shoe Dog that began to counter that kind of thinking was regarding the ‘Swoosh’ logo. On being released by Onitsuka, the trainers Phil Knight was importing into America to sell, he and his company Blue Ribbon then decided to develop their own brand. In terms of logo he paid a graphic design student from the university he was teaching accountancy at (Blue Ribbon was still a side project at this stage) 2 dollars an hour to come up with something. Knight wasn’t really ecstatic with her final designs, however he was on a deadline so picked the one he preferred the most, that one being the Nike smoosh we all know today.

The second example was upon having a deadline of the following morning, the evening before they still hadn’t decided on the name of the brand. Phil Knight was still adamant he wanted to call it ‘Dimension 66!’ The word ‘Nike’ came to one of the team members overnight and they just, and only just, got Knight to agree- he had visited the temple of Nike as a young man so, although he didn’t love it, that just about swung it for him. 

Again, Phil Knight wasn’t overly enthusiastic about either the logo or the name. No grand designs or divine visions, both came about mainly due to the need to meet deadlines. They just got it done and moved onto the next task.

Lesson 2- Never, Ever, Stop

I enjoyed the raw honesty Knight showed in the book regarding all the obstacles he had to overcome. In his mid seventies when the memoir was released, it really felt to me I was reading the personal story of a very successful, content person with little left to prove to the world. He appeared truthful around his low moods and some negative behaviours when encountered with hurdles thrown in his way. Far from the “Hoorah, I smashed everything in my path” style attitude, he’d say stuff like, “we suffered a major setback and I thought it was all finished, so got upset for the week, and just sat in front of the TV for days on end eating Doritos until I got to the point where I thought, ‘ok, maybe I should see if this issue can be dealt with.’” I found his honesty very real and relatable.

On finishing the book I was struck with that most important message that we are taught in competitive sport, a trait I see in all the successful people from various walks of life I’ve been lucky to encounter. It’s something we have written on on our gym wall at Camberley Judo Club. Don’t Stop. Ever.

Something I was aware of long before I began coaching, through my own experience of being a young athlete, is that most international players are normally one of two things; either a very successful junior athlete or, largely, one of the ones that were left.

What Shoe Dog encapsulates best for me is that although the journey was far, far from perfect or ideal, Phil Knight and his team were ultimately prepared to overcome anything put in their way. Even when they weren’t motivated. Even when they felt like they didn’t know what they were doing. Even when they weren’t sure if it was possible. They kept going. They didn’t stop.

Danny

Kosmos jiu-jitsu. Kosmos Judo. Kosmos Grappling.