4.8 • 985 Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2017
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Bryan takes a break from the technical talk and tells a quick story about how two brothers fueled an industry and created an empire with raw sibling rivalry. Bryan co-owns a family business, and we understand that many people in this trade work with family, so we hope you'll enjoy this story.
Many of us are competitive, and nobody enjoys failing. We especially try to avoid failing in front of our family members. However, the drive to succeed and avoid failure can sometimes get a bit out of hand.
In the early twentieth century, two brothers named Adi and Rudy Dassler worked in their father's shoe business. Rudi was the more outgoing older brother; Adi was younger, quieter, and focused on making shoes. Business practices had changed as industrialization occurred across Europe, and many shoes were made in a factory instead of by hand. With all of the innovation going on at the turn of the century, both brothers realized that they, too, could own a factory.
After serving in World War I, Adi began making shoes in his mother's laundry room. Rudi talked their parents into helping start up a shoe business. The brothers established their own athletic shoewear company, which became popular with help from the Modern Olympic Games. Adi approached Jesse Owens, a famous African-American track athlete from the United States, to wear his shoes in the Olympics. Jesse wore the shoes to victory, angering many Nazis. Rudi was the more ardent Nazi, and a rift started between the brothers.
Rudi was arrested for war crimes during World War II, though historians suspect that Adi may have snitched on him. The sibling rivalry came to a head in 1948 when Rudi officially split from the company and formed Ruda. Adi formed Adidas, which was more successful than Ruda (now Puma).
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0:00.0 | Hey, this is HVAC School, and I'm Brian. And today's episode is going to be outside of the regular flow. It's just an extra bonus episode. I just got back from |
0:14.4 | AHR and I took a red eye from Vegas back to Tampa and then drove from Tampa home and I was |
0:19.5 | intending on actually going and attending a business breakfast that I generally go to locally and yeah |
0:26.2 | that wasn't happening. When I was younger I used to be able to work all night and then continue |
0:30.8 | on in the day and I don't know I think I think my age is getting to me |
0:35.2 | that or I'm just a weeny one or the other but I wanted to go ahead and release this |
0:39.2 | because there's a guy by the name of Tersch from Georgia who listens to the podcast and he's one of these guys who does |
0:46.0 | his research I guess and he apparently looked up my name in a podcast app and I've produced |
0:51.0 | a lot of different podcasts and one of them that I started off producing my first |
0:55.2 | podcast actually was called the Wow Small Business, which is kind of a cheesy name in retrospect |
0:59.4 | I don't even like to say it but towards the end of that project I did a couple story-based |
1:05.4 | episodes which were based on businesses from history and one of them is the |
1:10.8 | story of Audie and Rudy Dausler. |
1:14.0 | And that's what this story is today, |
1:16.0 | and it's titled The Businesses |
1:18.0 | that Sibbling Rivalry Built, |
1:20.0 | and it's one of my favorite business stories from history |
1:22.0 | because it's something that I think |
1:23.8 | anybody who's in business can relate to, but especially if you are ever in the position where you're |
1:28.4 | working with family, which I do. |
1:30.9 | So I do want to quickly thank True Tech Tools. They just gave us an 8% discount code instead of 6 and that |
1:39.6 | code is Get School. So if you go to True Techtech tools and you can use that to buy great tools. |
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