Shoe Dog: A Spiritual Memoir
Or, Why the Founder of Nike is a Hegelian
Shoe Dog, Phil Knight’s memoir about how he bootstrapped Nike, from epiphany to public company, is striking for its spiritual message. The book happens to be about business, but is more essentially about having a calling and sticking to it, through thick and thin. The contrarian idea of the book is that a spiritual calling is a competitive advantage—which should ruffle both spiritual purists who reject the mundane and technocrats who are embarrassed by romantic sentiments. Here are my own take-aways:
Adversity can be a blessing in disguise. Knight is not quite good enough to become a professional athlete, but his inability to realize this dream leads him to create a company that can bring him as close to it as possible. Had he become a professional runner, he wouldn’t have been the founder of Nike.
Athleticism transcends competition and is a way of being. Even when competing, there is an intimacy shared by those who strive for athletic excellence. Athletes may have big egos, but their “no-self” is proportionate. Nike found a way to sell love of athleticism—in the form of shoes.
Many of the most valuable and fateful events come through chance and serendipity and our openness to them, like the name Nike, and the swoosh logo, both of which came about haphazardly. The seed for Nike’s name was planted when Knight visited the Acropolis the year he founded his shoe company. But the name itself only came into being when he was forced to stop selling Tigers owing to some skulduggery on the supply-side.
Knight’s triumph is mixed. His success comes at the cost of his family life. Glory involves tradeoffs. Knight made the right decision for himself, but the multi-billionaire handily dispels the myth of “having it all.”
Longevity and sustainability require love, faith, and conviction. Money, fame, and other mundane incentives only work in the short-run. Morale can go up and down, strategies can pivot, but a calling can’t be vanquished.
Knight’s story ends with a Hegelian insight. The only thing that makes a life complete is recounting it and reflecting on it. The only thing that can compete with the life of Spirit, so to speak, is the phenomenology of Spirit: going back and considering one’s stages of consciousness.