It's How We Play the Game

By: Ed Stack

Narrated by: Ed Stack

Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's Summary

For fans of Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog and Howard Schultz’s Onward, an inspiring memoir from the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods about building a multibillion-dollar business, coming to the defense of embattled youth sports programs, and taking a principled - and highly controversial - stand against the types of guns that are too often used in mass shootings and other tragedies.

In 1948, Ed Stack's father, Richard, started Dick’s Bait and Tackle in Binghamton, New York, with $300 borrowed from his grandmother. A few years later, Dick expanded to a second location. In 1984, Ed bought the two stores from his father. Today, Dick's Sporting Goods is the largest sporting-goods retailer in the country with more than 800 locations and close to nine billion dollars in sales.

It’s How You Play the Game tells the absorbing story of a complicated founder and an ambitious son - one who transformed a business by making it more than a business, conceiving it as a force for good in the communities it serves. The transformation Ed wrought wasn’t easy: Economic headwinds nearly toppled the chain twice. But Dick's support for embattled youth sports programs earned the stores surprising loyalty, and Ed was vocal in sounding the alarm about schools’ underfunding not just of sports, but of other extracurriculars, which earned Dick's even more respect.

Ed’s toughest business decision came in the wake of yet another school shooting; this one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. The senseless loss of life devastated Ed on many levels, and he decided to take action. Dick's became the first major retailer to pull all semi-automatic weapons from its shelves and raise the age of gun purchase to 21. Despite being a gun owner himself who’d grown up around firearms, Ed’s strategy included destroying the five million dollars of assault-style-type rifles then in Dick's inventory.

It was a profit-risking policy that would earn the outrage of some - even threats of harm - but turn Ed into a national hero.

With vital lessons for anyone running a business and eye-opening reflections about what a company owes the people it serves, It’s How You Play the Game is the insightful story of a man who built one of America's most successful companies by following his heart.

©2019 Ed Stack (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio

Great story read by the Author

Truly enjoyable and interesting story. Tons of great business lessons. CEO obviously had a tough time being reared by his dad but maybe helped to give him backbone.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

A Street Fight for principles

Every life is a story of obstacles and achievements, but the tale that Ed Stack tells of his life and the company that he and his amazing team built from humble beginnings is heart warming, instructive and inspirational. And the story goes on.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

The author sounds like he’s reading an obituary.

I really wanted to listen to this book, but the author is a terrible narrator, after listening for 10 minutes I want to throw my phone out the window. I will return this audiobook and buy the print version instead. (Too bad, because I usually like listening to books that are read by the author.)