It’s How We Play the Game: Build a Business. Take a Stand. Make a Difference. Audiobook (Free)

For readers of Phil Knight’s Shoe Pet and Howard Schultz’s Onward, an inspiring memoir from the CEO of DICK’s SHOE about creating a multibillion dollar business, arriving at the defense of embattled youth sports programs, and taking a principled—and highly controversial—stand against the types of guns that are too often found in mass shootings and additional tragedies.

In 1948, Ed Stack’s father, Richard, started Dick’s Bait and Deal with in Binghamton, New York, with $300 lent from his about It’s HOW EXACTLY WE Play the Game: Create a Business. Have a Stand. Make a Difference. grandmother. A few years afterwards, Dick expanded to a second area. In 1984, Ed bought both shops from his father. Today DICK’s Sporting Goods is the largest sporting goods retailer in the united states with over 800 locations and near $9 billion in sales.

It’s How We Play the overall game tells the absorbing story of an elaborate founder and an ambitious child—one who transformed a business by rendering it more than a business, conceiving it being a force once and for all in the neighborhoods it acts. The transformation Ed wrought wasn’t easy: financial headwinds nearly toppled the string twice. But DICK’s support for embattled youngsters sports programs gained the stores astonishing commitment, and Ed was vocal in sounding the alarm about schools’ underfunding not just of sports but of other extracurriculars, which gained DICK’s even more respect.

Ed’s toughest business decision came in the wake of another college shooting; that one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. The senseless loss of existence devastated Ed on many amounts and he decided to do something. DICK’s became the 1st major dealer to pull all semi-automatic weapons from its racks and improve the age of gun buy to twenty-one. Despite being truly a gun owner himself who’d grown up around firearms, Ed’s technique included destroying the $5 million of assault-style-type rifles after that in DICK’s inventory.

It was a profit-risking plan that would receive the outrage of some—even threats of harm—but switch Ed right into a national hero.

With vital lessons for anyone owning a business and eye-opening reflections about what a business owes individuals it serves, It’s HOW EXACTLY WE Play the overall game is the insightful story of a man who built one of America’s most successful companies by pursuing his heart.