Shoe Dog

The questions

1. Knight borrows to the edge every year for two decades. Would you have slept? What is your actual tolerance for that kind of risk?
2. Bowerman cares about the shoe, not the company. Which of the two men do you want working for you, and which do you want to be?
3. The book is honest that the family absorbed the cost. Was that a fair trade, and who got to decide?
4. Knight hires misfits and cranks nobody else would keep. When have you seen that pay off, and when have you seen it wreck a team?
5. The Buttface meetings are shouting matches that end in agreement. Does your work have a room like that? Should it?
6. He treats the Onitsuka betrayal as the making of Nike. Which betrayal made you?
7. Knight barely explains the Nike name or the swoosh. What does that tell you about how much brand mattered at the start?
8. He says he wanted to leave a mark. What is the difference between leaving a mark and being remembered?
9. If your kid told you tomorrow they were doing this with their twenties, what would you actually say?

Running the night

• Pick the night before anyone leaves the last meeting. A fixed weeknight beats a good date.
• Text the sheet's first question two days ahead. It is the only prep anyone will do.
• Something to eat that does not need a plate on a lap.
• One person keeps time. Ninety minutes, then the book talk stops.
• Start with the round: one sentence each on where they got to. No apologies allowed.
• End by naming the next book and the next date out loud.

For this bookThis one runs long on tangents. Start the meeting with the last question, not the first.

BringThe book, something to write with, and the one passage you underlined.