第一本要阅读的全英书籍,且是个个人传记。词汇量少之又少的我为了能顺利阅读,基本上以不影响大段意思时,直接跳过不去查这个陌生词汇,当在书中高频出现时才查。断断续续翻阅好多天后第100页,Phil Knight 的美国区Tiger跑鞋的代理已经默默被替换。日本方主要嫌他的销售量小,1966年Phil销44,000USD,1967年销86,000USD.这一页,他到日本谈判无果。
这本书里有一段早前跟日本人交易的描述:
The key is don’t be pushy. Don’t come on like the typical asshole american, the typical gaijin-rude, loud, aggressive, not taking no for an answer. The jepanese do not react well to the hard sell. Negotiations here tend to be soft, sinewy. Look how long it took the Americans and Russians to coax Hirohito into surrendering. And even when he did surrender, when his Country was reduced to a heap of ashes, what did he tell his people? ‘The war situatiib hasn’t developed to Japan’s advantage’ It is a culture of indirection. No one ever turns you down flat. No one ever says, straight out, no. But they don’t say yes, either. They speak in circles, sentences with no clear subject or object. Don’t be discouraged, but don’t be cocky. You might leave a man’s office thinking you’ve blown it, when in fact he’s ready to do a deal. You might leave thinking you’ve closed a deal, when infact you’ve just been rejected. You never know.
与日本交易不多,可以做参考。
-2017.4.19
书里一些句子也不错,Phil新雇佣的John bork跑到Johnson面前说你被取缔了,后来phil解说后一段描述Johnson的反应:
Johnson was flabbergasted. Then furious. Then freaked. All in the space of one minute.
2017.04.20
Phil的销售入不敷出,开始在学校做助教来补贴,一个月700美金,时间花的不多还能有时间继续他的卖鞋公司。到122页,他找了他的学生当助理,2美金一小时,Miss Parks.
有一段描述他在教室刚看到Penelope Parks的时候
I wondered how old she was. She couldn’t yet be twenty, I guessed, snapping my rubber bands against my wrist, snapping, snapping, and staring, then pretending not to stare. She was hard to look away from. And hard to figure.
2017.04.21
1968年phil与penny结婚了(在假期中,Penny给他做了助手,并约会求婚完成婚礼),再开学时,坐在第一排的penny已是Mrs. Knight。Phil开始有了整个Nike的运作想法,准备脱离Tiger的代理角色。Penny 难道是Penelope的简写?还是说只是她小名,美国的名字规则文化回头查了备注过来。
I told her that i flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.
2017.04.22 06:20-07:00
Phil开始全职于自己的事业,并为自己开80000$一年,招越来越多的销售代表。鞋子每卖出一双2$,还找到街头画画者做广告(还没到怎么用)。也开始全新的家庭生活。好几段Penny is learnning xxxx 来描述他们生活中不一样和相互的磨合,还不错。另外,事实上父母考虑房子和孩子学校事宜中美雷同嘛。
Our cozy apattment was now completely inappropriate. We’d have to buy a house, of course. But could we afford a house? I’d just started to pay myself salary. And in which part of town should we buy? Where were the best schools? And how was I supposed to research real estate prices and schools, plus all the other things that go into buying a house, while running a start-up company while starting a family? Should I go back to accounting, or teaching, or something more stable?
Learning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tired to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.
2017.04.23 06:40-07:10
当日本Tiger联系了多家美国代理,并要取缔phil的代理后,且在签三年不愿意签五年的情况,中间货错没有尺码之类,让phil觉得供应不受控制且之间的销售热情已经渐渐降低。1971年,phil开始寻找自己的出路,找了墨西哥厂给自己做鞋子。并建立了品牌Nike。有趣的是Nike是从梦里来的。
“There is …one more suggestion,” Woodell said.
“From Who?”
“Johnson phoned first thing this morning,” he said. “Apparently a new name came to him in a dream last night.”
I rolled my eyes. “A dream?”
“He’s serious,” Woodell said.
“He’s always serious.”
“He says he sat bolt upright in the bed in the middle of the night and saw the name before him,” Woodell said.
“What is it?” I asked, bracing myself.
“Nike”
“Huh?”
“Nike.”
“Spell it.”
“N-I-K-E,” Woodell said.
I wrote it on a yellow legal pad.
2017.04.24 6:30-7:30
Phil取好品牌在墨西哥工厂生产的鞋子不够理想后,找到鞋子设计师,并找到了一家日本工厂。比较大的厂,挑选了系列鞋子并取了名字之后(系列也是当时蹦出来的,比如篮球就以他家乡的NBA球队来取)。在完成之后,有这样一个心理描述的话。
It was dark as I walked out of the office building, into the crowded Tokyo street. A feeling came over me, unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I felt spent, but proud. I felt drained, but exhilarated. I felt everything I ever hoped to feel after a day’s work. I felt like an artist, a creator. I looked back over my shoulder, took one last look at Nissho’s offices. Under my breath I said, “We made this.”
2017.4.25 6:30-
第250页,Phil与日本公司的纠纷完结并取得胜利。他开始拉人开始他的事业。一段拉Strasser入伙的心理活动及描述。
I opened by telling Strasser that it was all a foregone conclusion, really. “You’re one of us”, I said. One of us. He knew what those words meant. We were the kind of people who simply couldn’t put up with work to be play. But meaningful play. We were trying to slay Goliath, and though Strasser was bigger than two Goliaths, at heart he was an utter David. We were trying to create a brand, I said, but also a against drudgery. More than a product, we were trying to sell an idea — a spirit. I don’t know if i ever fully understood who we were and what we were doing until I heard myself saying it all to Strasser.
虽然后面接着得到一直在点头吃东西的Strasser答复先问他爸,但是最终还是一起干了。
1974年,销售额8$million,建了个鞋厂$250,000
1975年,银行资金链断裂差点进监狱之后,找到了个偏远的小银行,可预支1million,然后phil终于可以松口气。
描述状态句子:
That night, for the first time in about two weeks, I put my head on a pillow and slept.
Money wasn’t our aim, we agreed. Money wasn’t our end game. But whatever our aim or end, money was the only means to get there. More money than we had on hand.
Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
1977年遇到Rudy开始air shoes。
2017.5.9 7:05
1978年另一个大危机,25million的美国海关税收。
1980年,phil到北京,从北京到上海坐了绿皮火车,看看他的印象
Near the end of our visit we took a nineteen-hour train ride to Shanghai. We could’ve flown, but I insisted on the train. I wanted to see, to experience to countryside. Within the first hour the men were cursing me. The day was dripping hot and the train was not air-conditioned.
There was one old fan in the corner of our train car, the blades barely moving the hot dust around. To get cool, Chinese passengers thought nothing of stripping dowb to their underware, and Hayes and Strasser thought this gave them licebse to do the same. If I live to be two hundred years old, I won’t forget the sight of those leviathans walking up and down the train car in their T-shirts and BVDs. Nor will any Chinese man or woman who was on the train that day.
第352页,一段关于business man的思考
It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always actutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher — and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money.” For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacturer red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living – and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make sonething, when you add some new thing or service to lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everthing should be done but so seldom is – you’re participating more fully in the whole grand humman drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.
Maybe it will grow on me.
在phil多次觉得上市会被动之后,以上市结束本书。
这是一个创业者的经历,一个创业者的故事,他和大部分企业家一样,需要坚持,韧性,追赶那些机遇,奔波于那些危机,遗憾那些不能腾出的家庭陪伴。
2017.05.11 08:00
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