For readers of Phil Knight’s Shoe Pet and Howard Schultz’s Onward, an inspiring memoir from your CEO of DICK’s SHOE about creating a multibillion dollar business, coming to the defense of embattled youth sports programs, and going for a principled—and highly controversial—stand against the types of guns that are all too often used in mass shootings and various other tragedies.

In 1948, Ed Stack’s father, Richard, started Dick’s Bait and Deal with in Binghamton, NY, with $300 borrowed from his about It’s How We Play the Game: Create a Business. Have a Stand. Change lives. grandmother. A few years later, Dick extended to a second area. In 1984, Ed bought the two shops from his dad. Today DICK’s Sporting Goods may be the largest shoe retailer in the united states with over 800 locations and near $9 billion in sales.

It’s HOW EXACTLY WE Play the overall game tells the absorbing tale of a complicated founder and an ambitious boy—one who transformed a business by rendering it more than a business, conceiving it like a force for good in the areas it serves. The change Ed wrought wasn’t easy: economic headwinds nearly toppled the chain double. But DICK’s support for embattled youngsters sports programs gained the stores amazing devotion, and Ed was vocal in sounding the alarm about schools’ underfunding not only of sports activities but of various other extracurriculars, which gained DICK’s a lot more respect.

Ed’s toughest business decision came in the wake of yet another school shooting; that one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. The senseless loss of existence devastated Ed on many levels and he made a decision to do something. DICK’s became the first major dealer to pull all semi-automatic weapons from its shelves and raise the age of gun purchase to twenty-one. Despite being truly a gun owner himself who’d developed around firearms, Ed’s strategy included destroying the $5 million of assault-style-type rifles after that in DICK’s inventory.

It was a profit-risking plan that would earn the outrage of some—actually threats of harm—but turn Ed right into a national hero.

With vital lessons for anybody running a business and eye-opening reflections about what a business owes individuals it acts, It’s How We Play the overall game may be the insightful story of a guy who built among America’s most effective companies by pursuing his heart.