Your Circumstances Aren't That Hard (Part Two)

Adi Dassler was a German teenager when World War I began.

Day-to-day, through the grim reality of gunfire and explosions, Adi made deliveries to clients of his mother’s laundering business.

After the war, Germany went into an economic depression. To earn a living, Adi repaired shoes for the residents of his hometown. Supplies were hard to come by, so Adi scavenged battlefield debris for scraps of leather for the soles of his shoes.

The electricity in Herzogenaurach was so unreliable that Adi and his brothers occasionally pedaled a stationary bicycle to power their shoe-making equipment.

In spite of this, Adi’s business grew.

His unique insight was that shoes should be custom tailored to their use case. Sprinters needed different shoes than boxers, who needed different shoes than soccer players.

In 1936, Adi supplied American sprinter Jesse Owens with Adidas cleats to wear in the 1936 Olympics. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler oversaw these Berlin Olympics.

Wearing German-made shoes, Owens "single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy".

Adi Dassler displayed exceptional ingenuity, resilience, and bravery in his entrepreneurial journey. That journey began in the ruins of world war.

Your current circumstances are no excuse.

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