The Bruce Lee Code by Thomas Lee

Author:Thomas Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633412873
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

CHAPTER 4

Overcoming Adversity

In the United States, we admire the success of entrepreneurs—perhaps to a fault. We frequently forget that most entrepreneurs, like everybody else in life, failed more than they succeeded.

For example, Harland David Sanders, known popularly as Colonel Sanders, was sixty-nine years old, living off Social Security, and sleeping in the back of his car when he started to peddle his fried-chicken recipe to restaurants. By then, Sanders had already failed at law and several businesses, including a stint selling life insurance, before he was fired for insubordination. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos struck out with Pets.com, zShops, and LivingSocial. And Apple famously fired co-founder Steve Jobs in 1985 after he clashed with CEO John Sculley.

But all of these people ultimately persevered and adapted. Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 a much better, less intractable leader, which Sculley himself admitted:

The Steve Jobs that worked with me in 1985 never, ever would have created a product like iTunes and put it on Microsoft. When he came out with the iPod and iTunes, it was brilliant. It was exactly the right product. It reinvented the music industry, and he put it on Windows.1

Bruce Lee fits in this category as well—but with one important caveat: none of these other entrepreneurs, who are all caucasian, ever encountered setbacks because of the color of their skin.

Nonetheless, we can't examine Lee's successes without examining his failures. And we can't examine his failures without examining the deep-rooted institutional racism that permeated Hollywood at the time. Only then can we fully understand and appreciate Lee's unlikely emergence as a global movie superstar. As his friend Doug Palmer tells us:

He was able to make his way against headwinds in Hollywood where Asian actors were not particularly esteemed. I think that struck a chord with a lot of people: his ability to prevail over all kinds of odds.

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