I chose to read the autobiography of Nike’s founder, Phil Knight.
I was surprised the most about the whole story in general. Knight, although
very successful because of Nike, has always stayed out of the spotlight. Unlike
some other highly successful CEO’s, Knight was always very quiet about his endeavor,
which made this story very interesting. I admire Knight in a lot of aspects,
but I most admire his courage to go all out for his dream. One very courageous
move that Knight made was calling for a meeting with Mr. Onitsuka, the CEO of the
Tiger Brand in Japan. He secured a meeting and that was the beginning of Knight’s
journey. I can honestly say that there is not one part of Knight that I do not
admire from what was shared in his book. He stayed humble throughout his career
and built an empire in the process. One notable struggle that Knight faced in
the early days of Nike was finding customers. He started out very small, selling
very small amounts of athletic sneakers in retail stores.
One competency and highlighted characteristic of Phil Knight
was his ability to never give up. Knight was as persistent as they come, and no
challenge or obstacle he faced brought him down from building his successful athletic
sneaker company. One part of the reading that was a little confusing to me was
how he kept getting banks to believe in him enough to continue investing in his
company. Even at Knight’s lowest points, he was able to convince banks to
continue loaning him money to further his journey of creating Nike. I believe
that if this were to happen now, it may be a little tougher to convince banks
to loan money without any signs of progression and numbers to back up the request.
If I had the opportunity to ask Phil Knight two questions,
they would be:
1)
What pushed you to keep going after
facing all of the struggles you did?
2)
How did you look past your generally
shy and introverted personality to gain the courage to reach out to the CEO of
Tiger and execute a meeting with him?
I would ask him the first question because I am always
interested in learning of an entrepreneur’s mindset when facing adversity. I believe
that mindset is what separates entrepreneurs from the rest. I would ask the
second question because I can relate to it personally. I am generally more of a
shy individual, but also understand that networking and taking bold moves to
meet with higher level executives who can help can be extremely beneficial to building
on any business idea. I would be curious to his mindset on how he overcame is
introverted personality to gain the courage to reach out to Mr. Onitsuka.
If I had to guess, I would say pretty confidently that Phil Knight
thoroughly believes in hard work and would credit it to a lot of his success. I
share this opinion with Mr. Knight. I believe that there are no short cuts, and
a combination of hard work and persistence is the key to success in anything
you set out to do.
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