The Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 Pages: There's an Amazing Story Behind Every Amazing Story (Entrepreneur Education Series) by Patrick Bet-David & Thomas Ellsworth

Author:Patrick Bet-David & Thomas Ellsworth [Bet-David, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Valuetainment Publishing
Published: 2016-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

My comments about committment invariably lead to a simple question I put to people: what exactly is holding them back? What is the real reason for their lack of commitment?

I found two reasons – thinking small and being afraid of, or unwilling to do, the hard work.

Those afraid of hard work are usually Level 1 people who think they want to be entrepreneurs but are really only in love with the idea of making or having money, not the idea of making a difference with the business they want to build. Yes, there is a huge difference.

When I think of commitment, I also think of athletes who need to be committed first to training and then to competing and then to winning and finally to winning professional championships or the Olympics.

What better example of commitment is there than Phil Knight of Nike?

Three events shaped Knight's future as the leader of Nike. The first occurred in 1957 when he met Bowerman, his coach on the University of Oregon track team. Bowerman was a former Olympian whose passion for athletes and innovation would eventually inspire Knight to create a business dedicated to those two things. When Knight began his business selling shoes to track athletes, Bowerman became his partner.

The second event occurred when Knight was attending business school at Stanford University. In response to an assignment from Professor Frank Shallenberger, Knight devised a business and marketing plan for importing high-quality running shoes from Japan and selling them in the United States at a high profit margin. In a sense, the vision of Nike was born in that class. The third event occurred in 1963 when Knight traveled to Japan and met with executives from the Onitsuka Company, which distributed Tiger running shoes. Knight talked himself into a distribution contract with the company, and when the executives asked which company he represented, Knight blurted out the first thing to come into his head: Blue Ribbon Sports. The trip initiated Knight's lifelong fascination with Japanese culture and presaged the globalization of Nike.

In 1964 Knight and Bill Bowerman both invested $500 to start Blue Ribbon Sports, which would work together with the Onitsuka Company to develop and distribute running shoes for the North American market. As the company struggled to grow, Knight worked as a certified public accountant and taught at Portland State University. Over the next few years BRS retail stores opened in Santa Monica, California, and Eugene, Oregon, and the company began to assemble employees who would later take on key roles at Nike. In 1969 alone Knight sold $1 million worth of Tiger shoes. By the end of 1971 contract disagreements with Onitsuka prompted Knight and Bowerman to consider starting their own shoe company. Knight paid a former Portland State student to develop the swoosh design, and Jeff Johnson, a Blue Ribbon Sports employee, literally dreamed up the Nike name. The first model of shoe, the Cortez, debuted at the 1972 Olympic trials, and in that first year, Nike had revenues of more than $3 million.

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