13A - Reading Reflection No. 1

1. The thing that surprised me the most was the fact that Phil Knight was originally the distributor of other shoes called Tigers from Japan before he came up with the groundbreaking idea for Nike. The thing that I admired the most about Phil Knight was that he stuck to his morals no matter how hard the times got. He did not want to take the company public and no matter how hard it got, he came up with other options until he was convinced that it would be the right thing for his company. The thing I least admired about Phil Knight was his ease of lying about things to get what he needed done. Although he usually fixed the lies before people figured out he had lied, I still did not find it admirable that he did that more than once. Yes, Phil Knight encountered much adversity and failure. His partnership with Tigers was dissolved, some of his shoes had to be recalled, he was in a lawsuit, he was fined by the government for importing, and he had an employee quit and go and work at the competitor’s firm, Adidas. Through all of this, he constantly continued on and leaned on his family as well as his employees for support.
   
   
2. Phil Knight was a hard worker and extremely competitive. He did not accept losing, he worked as hard as he could to always be the winner. He never let people tell him what he could and could not accomplish. His own father did not initially believe in him or his idea; he found this line of work to not be respectable. He was also extremely gifted in seeing past people’s physical appearance and hiring them for what they could do for the company.
   
   
3. One part of the book that confused me was that it never talked about his daughter. When I looked him up on Google after reading the novel to find more information, I found out that he has a daughter named Christina.
   
   
4. I would ask Phil Knight if he ever imagined having his own brand of shoes when he started importing Tigers. I think it would be interesting to hear if this was ever a plan for him, or if it was just something he did when times got tough. Another question I would ask would be what his best memory of starting up the company was. I think sometimes it's easy to just talk about the hard things that we have to get through, but there are good things too and I’d love to hear them.
   
   
5. I think Phil Knight’s opinion of hard work was that it was absolutely necessary. I think he’s say that without hard work, he probably wouldn’t even have his empire anymore. I definitely share this opinion because of my dad. He is a college dropout, and is now a Senior Vice President of ClubCorp Inc. He worked his way up from the bottom and he has always instilled in me that hard work is what gets you places.