No brand becomes a multimillion dollar success over night. It takes a lot of scraping, management and grit to get any company up, running and profitable. It doesn’t matter what business you are in, starting a business is hard, but taking lessons from successful business owners can help give you the tools to succeed.  This week we are talking about the in-depth memoir “Shoe Dog” by the founder of Nike, Phil Knight.

The Lesson to be Learned

You’re probably asking yourself: What does a shoe brand have to do with the restaurant industry? How is this relevant to me?

No matter who you are or what your business is, there has been a point where you are just barely getting by. Some months you will be looking at your bank account wondering how you are going to make payroll and how you are going to make it through. Believe it or not the Nike company was there at one point too. It took over two decades before they moved past just making ends meet and started turning a real profit, and Knight has some valuable advice on how to get through those times and turn your business into something of value.

Quality

Knight was a stickler for making sure that along every step of the way, his shoes were being made meticulously and out of high quality materials. At the time this set him apart from a lot of other shoe makers of his time. With your restaurant, do the same thing. Insure that your food is the best it can possibly be. Train your staff well and make sure they too are dedicated to insuring guests have a quality experience. Pay attention to detail and go through everything with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that every step is being done with care.

Innovation

Nike has consistently come up with new innovative ways to make sport shoes better. In your restaurant you should constantly be looking for ways to innovate your menu, service delivery model, guest experience, etc. It may be through use of technology it may be something else, but whatever it is, try to find a way to give your guests what they want/need in a new way.

Put Your Foot Down

If your supplier is sub-par or an employee has a bad attitude with customers, don’t be afraid to let them go. If something isn’t working for you, it is time for a change. You should be striving for the absolute best and if someone or something isn’t working-let it go.

Guerilla Marketing

Knight was way ahead of his time with his marketing strategies. He never really paid for conventional advertisements, instead he found sports stars to represent his brand and used word of mouth to get his brand out there. While this strategy alone doesn’t work for every business, it certainly can be implemented. With your restaurant, find a way to break the marketing mold. Embrace yelp, become a staple in the community, utilize social media. If you are a sports bar, make yourself the place in town where everyone comes to watch the big game and run with that. Get involved with the community and the community will get involved with you. People value hearing good things from trusted friends and families over an advertisement, so give people something to talk about. Do good things and make some positive changes.

Notable Quotables

“The art of competing, I learned from track, is the art of forgetting. You must forget your pain your doubts, your past. You must forget that internal voice that says, ‘Not one more step!’ and when it is not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it.” We’re running businesses, people’s livelihoods are in our hands. You can’t get caught up in the past or in your worries. You have to learn how to push through and perceiver so you can get to the next step. Don’t let your negative thoughts rule you. Forget about the failures of yesterday and push through to the success of tomorrow.

“One lesson I took from all my homeschooling about heroes was that they didn’t say much. None was a blabber mouth, none micromanaged everything. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”  This is something we could all do better at. We all have our own way of doing things and it is important to let people have theirs. If you are constantly telling your employees what to do and how to do it, they will only be an extension of you, and they and your company will only be able to expand to your level. When you let people create how to get things done, it can help you expand into something larger and better.

“We were more alike than different, and that gave a coherence to our goals and our efforts. We were mostly Oregon guys, which was important, but we all had an inborn need to prove ourselves to show the world that we weren’t hicks and hayseeds and we were mercilessly self-loathers which kept the egos in check.” At some point every big business has been the underdog. You need the right group of people that are similar enough in your mentality and your goals that you can all work together seamlessly. When your whole team is trying to prove themselves, they are more likely going to work together to make that happen.

Phil Knight’s story is not the only one like this, every successful business started out on the bottom but they didn’t give up and they kept working. We all have that drive in us. We all have the ability to strive to make ourselves better. Take everything as an opportunity to learn and to grow and you are sure to see improvement.

To listen to the full podcast, click here.

To buy Phil Knight’s book click here.