When a friend recommended this as a book worth listening to I was initially skeptical. I, for no reason what-so-ever, pictured Nike as a corporate machine churning out expensive shoes and wasn't very interested to hear what its founder had to say.
Well, lesson learned. Shoe Dog is one of my favorite recent books and tells a very vulnerable story of the company and it's founder struggling with one hardship after another. Phil Knight ran track in high school and founded Blue Ribbon with his high school running coach, Bill Bowerman.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Knight, fresh from graduating at Stanford wanted to travel the world and see all he could see and planned to stop in Japan to pitch his idea of selling Japanese running shoes in America. He and a buddy fly out of San Francisco and during a lay-over in Hawaii decide to just get jobs and stay in that paradise forever. Day one of their trip and plans are immediately derailed.
Knight eventually makes it to Japan where he cold calls running shoe companies until he gets a meeting with the Onitsuke shoe company. You're going to have to read the book to find out how he went from sitting in that board room, without even a name for his company, to being the 15th richest person in the world. It's certainly not a straight line and I would hazard to say, it's not what you might be expecting.
Shoe Dog offers a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at a company that believed they were not afraid to fail and that they would always learn from their failures, and be better for them.
Norbert Leo Butz does a wonderful job narrating the Audible version.