Author: Phil Knight
Genre: Autobiography, Memoir, Sports
Rating: 2/5
Verdict: It was an interesting book, but gave me the "take the risk if you have rich parents backing you up" vibe, didn't get a feel for any real leadership lessons.
I've seen this book on many people's list of must read or read. One of my favorite genres in (auto)biograhies/memoirs of famous personalities because I look forward to drawing inspiration and learning all about hard work, dedication, passion, lessons from mistakes that I can apply in my own life to make it better. I read this with that hope. It is a good book about grit and passion but lacks any real leadership or life lessons. To be honest, the biggest outcome or revelation for me after reading this book is that I don't like Phil Knight very much!
The book follow's Phil Knight's life from his early 20's after graduating from Stanford into his life starting a business. Some of the incidents where he talks about how he persuasive he was when he went to Japan to initiate his business idea and further overcame the betrayal from the Tigers partnership demonstrates grit and courage. But that was it for me. The latter parts of the book was all about Phil bragging and proudly saying he never encouraged or supported his employees even during times of distress and it felt like he was watching out for his own fame and covering up his base all the time without giving his employees any credit. Nor did he spend any time with his sons and even goes to the extent of saying he was disappointed that they didnt turn out to be athletes like him. The part where he describes about his older son's death was very shallow and insincere which was shocking to me. He didn't even talk about his son in even as much about the famous sports personalities who called him with condolence messages.
Overall, I felt that much of Nike's success was more because of Bowerman and his innovation than Phil himself. In fact, I did love Nike's early employees so much more than Phil himself. This book does not have a lot to learn from, its probably best listened to in a concise version as a podcast.
