Jargogled Impressions.

We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman ~Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Shoe Dog by Nike founder Phil Knight falls under one of those types of books that is in fact difficult to slot into any specific genre. You could call it a business book in that it recounts anecdotes and business learning from Phil’s journey as an entrepreneur and as a business leader. You could pronounce it as a memoir in that the book showcases as much of Phil’s inner philosophy as it is a fond recollection of his early days as an endearing athlete and lover of sports. You might as well call it a self-help book as it recounts the mistakes Mr. Knight made throughout his career in a candid, unencumbered fashion. On some pages, you would be hard pressed to deny the philosophical dotage he provides on living life as if chasing a single dream.

A single, unified dream is how it comes across – this passion and perseverance that Phil depicts in his own wry, candid, honest, and introspective account. Chasing that ultimate dream of helping human beings achieve paragons of success in the physical realm, achieving feats of power and stamina that inspires countless souls.

“Pre reached down, found another level..”

An amazing turn of the words, and yet it works wonders when you realize the full extent of what Phil was hinting at. Deep down inside of us lies that warrior spirit that can unlock levels of performance none of us believe we have in us. And yet, when you are singularly focused on the goal – in this instance, Pre’s determined focus on giving it his maximum effort, you could be surprised at what levels you could get into. Move over super heroes, its the ordinary folks who can reach down, and find that level.

You’re remembered for the rules you break – General MacArthur

Phil recounts multiple instances where he ran the business on murky moral and ethical grounds. And yet, his honest recounting fails to bring that sense of vindication that non-founders tend to demonstrate when faced with the nature of actions businessmen have to take to become successful. The clarity of thought, and his belief in the value of his vision makes the rules themselves as a barrier that one needs to overcome.

“You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.”

In his stories around assembling that rag-tag team of eccentric individuals who went one to become the senior executives at Nike (or shoe dogs as Phil likes to call people who meet his wavelength), there is a defined sense of purpose and of kinship that emerges from how we treated his employees and partners. As you would find in the last pages of the book, Phil’s camaraderie with his team met its fair share of ups and downs, with several purges in the journey. But in the end, and what Phil is most nostalgic about, is the family he developed while working on the company and how, over anything else, this family came to be the single most biggest achievement in his life. Surrounding yourself with people whose opinions you value mirrors those who value your opinions. This ecosystem of mutual respect and of standing up in their eyes, is hard nugget of wisdom not many perceive.

Below are some quotes from the book that I really liked:

Philosophy

Expect nothing, seek nothing, grasp nothing—

All are proud of their craft. God speaks of his work; how much more should man.

“happiness is a how, not a what.”

We must all be professors of the jungle.

Startup Wisdom

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results

Inspiration, he learned, can come from quotidian things. Things..

You cannot travel the path until you have become the path yourself

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.

People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.