Just do it. We have all heard this phrase. What average Joe didn’t ask their parents for a pair of Nike football boots to look the part in PE? Saying that I am an adult now and my most recent google search is “cheap Nike trainers". Playing basketball and football throughout high school and university resulted in a minor obsession with the world-famous athletic company and that is why I originally bought this book. However, upon reading it I must admit it had me hooked for completely different reasons.
Before reading this book I will confess my knowledge of Nike as a company was very small. I knew many of their sponsored athletes but I had never looked into the people behind the business. I never knew about Phil Knight. I kind of expected that the founder of the world-famous swoosh would have been a world-beating athlete or at least the son a millionaire. To say I was wrong would be an understatement. Phil Knight did run track at the university ay Oregon for coach Bill Bowerman (a big name in the world of athletics) but he was far from a household name. Also, the handout he received from his father from which he built an empire was $50. That’s less than the price of a pair of a Nikes.
I loved this book and I think it’s the fact that Phil Knight seemed to me to be an average Joe. At the start of this book Mr Knight is 24 years old which is the age I am writing this. Being 24 is no easy task. Some of my friends are married with a house and kids, some of them are travelling the world (or at least they were before COVID-19) and some of them live at home working part time on the weekends. The standards you compare yourself to at age 24 in this social media driven climate are ridiculous. In fact, at this point I am not even sure what the standard is? The beauty of this book is that Phil Knight didn’t have an advantage, yet he still managed to meet his goals. All he wanted to do aged 24 was travel (just like many of us) which isnt’t exactly what you expect a man worth 35.2 Billion USD to be doing in his early twenties. At 24 he could have been any of us.
This book tells you of the struggles Phil Knight went through, the numerous times he managed to make things work despite not having the money in his account, the shoes in his warehouse or the support that other companies had promised him he would have.
Are you ready for an extremely cringe comment that I can’t believe I am going to write? This book left me with an overwhelming feeling that if you have a goal then throw yourself into it completely and you will appreciate the outcome no matter what it is. Buy this book. Just do it.
10/10
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