In this post I want to give it a review and also go through 3 pieces of advice that Phil Knight gives in his book: Shoe Dog that should help you with your business.

Check my video and my article:

3 Golden rules from Phil Knight:

Let’s start with Phil Knight’s rule #1:

1.      Work with the best

When Phil was launching Nike, he didn’t know 2 things: how to design shoes, and who would supply them.

Those were 2 big problems, because if you don’t have a product, how are you going to sell it?

So he recruited his high school coach as his co-founder, who was obsessed with testing different shoe concepts on him and the team in school.

Phil ended up giving him 50% stake in Nike to come on as the designer. This was before he had any kind of revenue, so he worked with the best there.

The other thing was solving the production problem.

He was reading a lot about how Japan was the manufacturing powerhouse at the time, and this was in the 60’s, where the country was still recovering from the Second World War.

Thus, Phil Knight flew to Japan, and in Tokyo, where there was still buildings in ruins due to the war; he found these manufacturers and was able to talk his way into getting the rights to sell these Japanese shoes in America.

This brings us to the second point:

2.      Ignore contracts, focus on results

What Phil Knight didn’t know was that, though the Japanese manufacturer he was working with said they would give him an exclusive contract; that exclusivity was only for the west coast of the US.

The Japanese actually gave the nation-wide contract to another former sports star, which had a lot more cloud.

Phil could’ve let this take him down, right?

Nevertheless, he kept going forward, to the point where he ended up going back to Japan to talk with the distributor to negotiate the exclusive right assuring a specific amount of shoes to be sold in a length of time.

But wait, this isn’t the end. Phil Knight went all the way to the point where he ditched that manufacturer plant in Japan to bring on a whole different one. He didn’t let what was written on a piece of paper get in his way.

Let us help your business grow by contacting us. We’re confident in our ability to deliver our best for your company.

There’s another piece of advice that might be common to everyone in e-commerce, but in services is a little different:

3.      Pay your employees before you pay yourself

Phil was building revenue in the first few years of business, he completely decimated the west coast sales and he was moving over the east coast, opening an office over there.

And yet, for the longest time, Phil wasn’t even taking a salary.

Did you know that Phil Knight only started taking money from his enterprise 4 to 6 years later? His salary was coming from his work as an accountant at a firm!

Without a doubt, Shoe Dog is an amazing book on entrepreneurship. I would even say that is a book that every aspiring entrepreneur should read, so check it out.

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About The Author

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Alex Berman is the founder and chief content creator of X27 Marketing. He is passionate about promoting efficient B2B lead generation channels and executing on data-driven strategies for his clients.