13A Reading Reflection no. 1

1. For this assignment, I chose to read Shoe Dog which is the autobiography of Phil Knight because I have always been interested in Nike's story and knew I would enjoy reading this. The thing about reading this that surprised me the most was that he spent the first couple years simply just selling shoes out of his car. The thing I most admired about Phil Knight was that he had an idea when he was young about something that he loved and he went for it. He saw the business potential in his idea, so he decided he wasn't going to be held back by the possibility of failure. He also recommends that to all of us especially when we are young. While I was reading this there really was not anything that I did not like about him. Phil Knight did in fact encounter a lot of adversity especially in the beginning. For example, the reading said that it took over a year for him to get his first order of shoes to him so that he could sell them. It also said that his first year of doing this he only made about $8,000. He didn't let these things stop him though.

2. The main thing that I noticed the entrepreneur had was tenacity. He had this idea in college and loved it and he wasn't going to let anything stop him from making it a reality. This is also something that he recommends to all of us. If it's a good idea and we put in the work it will pay off.

3. There wasn't really any part of the reading that was confusing to me as I understood everything that it was saying, but there was one part that kind of annoyed me. He stresses that we need to be able to find a partner that we can rely upon with everything if we want something like this to work. He called his mentor and his mentor offered to be his partner. Usually I don't think it is always this easy for someone to find such a partner so quickly. This wasn't something that ruined the reading for me, but it just annoyed me a little.

4. The first question I would ask is did you think when you first started your company that it would be as big as Nike is now? The second I would ask is how do you manage and keep everything together over such a large company?

5. I think that his opinion is that hard  work pays off and if you work for something hard enough a good outcome will come out of it. Yes, I do agree with that.