Alex Clouser- Reading Reflection No. 3 Assignment 27

1. I read about Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. What surprised me the most in his book, Shoe Dog, is how Phil Knight managed to not write some boring autobiographical book about his rise to success, but how he actually made it extremely interesting and a very interesting and motivational read. I most admire his tenacity and passion that he put into his business from the time that he was in college. Phil Knight wrote an entire paper his senior year of college that explained how Japanese cars were becoming very popular in the United States, so Japanese shoes would be no different and he saw the opportunity for this market to be very lucrative. After college, he actually traveled to Japan, after traveling all over the world, and set up a meeting with a top Japanese shoe manufacturer and actually made them believe that he owned his own shoe company in America and faked his way into a deal that allowed him to distribute their shoes in America. I least admire the way that Phil recklessly took action like that and did not even have a way to pay for the shoes he had just negotiated a deal for. I think that you do not always need to plan out every aspect of a business, but I believe that you need to at least plan out your financial risks and expenses or have a general plan before you start to take action. He did encounter adversity as his motto was "fail fast" because this early failure can lead you to bigger and better opportunities in the future by learning from failure. Most of his adversity came in the early stages of Nike when he made almost no profit off of Nike because he reinvested every penny into buying more shoes to sell. He even had to take a full time job with an accounting firm to be able to pay his bills and support his new wife and kids.

2. I noticed that Phil Knight exhibited competencies such as tenacity, passion, and a growth mindset. He was not particularly skilled in the finer parts of business, but he was able to learn because he had passion for what he was doing and the tenacity to make his dreams a reality. He also accepted risks and failure because he believed that these would ultimately help him to grow and expand his ideas in the future through the lessons and wisdom these experiences provided.

3. One part of the reading that was confusing to me was how he would reinvest every single penny into ordering more shoes in order to expand Nike as quickly as possible. I found this very confusing because I would never do this because although it worked, it is extremely risky as you can have a bad sales year and then you are left with inventory that you already paid for and are not going to make any money on, losing money in the long run.

4. If I was able to ask two questions to Phil Knight, I would ask him how he managed to stay so focused on his business throughout everything that went on and also how he managed to fake a company into reality when meeting with the Japanese shoe company. I would ask these questions because they both fascinate me and I think it would be cool to hear his entire experience word for word about his meeting with the Japanese shoe company for the first time.

5. I believe that Phil Knight's opinion of hard work is that hard work can get you through the most difficult challenges and with a little hard work, you can make your dreams a reality just as he did. I share this opinion as I am a big advocate for work ethic and it correlation to success. I believe that if you put in the work, you will see the rewards.