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Don’t Miss ‘Shoe Dog’ — The Must-Read Gem of 2025

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I’ve repeatedly mentioned here and almost everywhere else that memoirs are a thousand times better than novels. They offer the same level of enjoyment but with a huge difference in terms of benefit. Unfortunately, they don’t receive the same level of acceptance among us.

Before this book, I read a memoir that was simple in its expression but contained extremely valuable information. If the same content had been presented as a novel, I would have criticized the author for writing a silly story!

Anyway, do you know who Phil Knight is?

You don’t? That’s normal—I was just like you. Even when I saw the book and noticed it had achieved high sales numbers on Amazon, I didn’t understand who this person was. Then I read in small print that the author is the founder of Nike. And I thought, “Oh, right, who is the founder of Nike?!”

I’ve read many biographies, but what’s completely different about this one is that you see an ordinary person who built something massive. Let me explain further. When you read the memoirs of Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, you immediately realize that these are extraordinary individuals—from the circumstances they faced to their daily routines and their (unusual) approach to life, and so on.

Phil Knight is a normal person like me… like you. He loves sports, is shy, makes many mistakes, has an excellent relationship with his family, and comes from a good academic background. You’ll notice that he’s someone you can see yourself in.

The idea for Nike (it wasn’t called that at the time) came from a lecture he gave as a university student about shoes from an accounting perspective, combined with his love for sports—specifically running. But he didn’t graduate and immediately jump into founding a company. Instead, he literally traveled around the world with a modest amount of money, and during his journey, he met two Americans in Japan who convinced him that Japan was the future (Japan in the 1960s was like China today in terms of industry). There, he boldly approached a major company and asked to become their agent in America (he lied to them, claiming he owned a company when he didn’t). This was the spark that started it all, and the events continued with ups and downs, including intense conflicts with the company (the book is full of conflicts, by the way) and struggles with American banks (banks at the time were very cautious about lending to companies, unlike today). He then transformed his company from Blue Ribbon to Nike (he wasn’t the one who came up with the name; he wanted to call it Dimension Six).

There are many events, most of which involve conflicts, and many of them threatened the company’s survival, almost leading to bankruptcy. But today, Nike is the number one brand in the sports world (in his youth, Adidas was the market leader). Today, Nike’s sales are one and a half times those of Adidas!

Of course, Phil has retired, but he remains a relatively unknown figure, even though his company is on par with Apple in the sports world. Ironically, both companies went public in the same week!

He shares a story about being unrecognized: once, he was at the cinema with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and someone passed by and whispered to his wife, “I know Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but who is that strange guy standing with them?!”

The book is engaging and easy to read, and I deliberately avoided summarizing the main events to encourage you to read it yourself.