Summary: The Bruce Lee Code: How the Dragon Mastered Business, Confidence, and Success by Thomas Lee

• The Bruce Lee Code unpacks the iconic star’s philosophies on self-mastery, actualization and his keys to business success beyond physical prowess.
• Learn from Bruce Lee’s all-encompassing personal growth principles to propel yourself to new levels of confidence and contribution.

Recommendation

Bruce Lee expert Thomas Lee deciphers the martial arts legend’s profound philosophies and diverse dimensions. The author is the lead curator of a Chinese Historical Society exhibit about Bruce Lee. He discusses Lee’s enigmatic wisdom in terms of practical applications and advice, offering insights from his transformative leadership journey. The driving forces behind Lee’s iconic work emerge from interviews with successful entrepreneurs he influenced and with his friends and family. Thomas Lee showcases Bruce Lee’s outlook to demonstrate how his multifaceted talent, perceptive observations, innovative ideas and solid values led to his success.

Take-Aways

• Bruce Lee was born in 1940 in San Francisco and died when he was only 32.
• Lee introduced kung fu to many Americans.
• Lee regarded his mistakes as opportunities for self-improvement.
• Lee believed in the ideals and ideas behind martial arts.
• In Lee’s philosophy, a person should be like water, which takes the shape of whatever it touches.
• Lee faced racism with courage and perseverance.
• Lee continually evolved as a martial artist.

Summary

Bruce Lee was born in 1940 in San Francisco and died when he was only 32.

Born in America, Bruce Lee grew up in Hong Kong where he studied martial arts. He returned to the United States to open a kung fu school. A television producer discovered Lee and cast him as Kato in the short-lived but popular television series, The Green Hornet. Due to racism and typecasting, Hollywood didn’t offer Lee any other meaningful roles. He returned to Hong Kong and made five films which together grossed more than $3.1 billion worldwide.

“If Bruce Lee had specifically written a vision statement for his businesses, it would probably look something like this: To integrate the East and West by promoting Chinese culture and ideas to the world through the teaching and practice of kung fu.”

Lee, a pop culture dynamo, used his winning personality to introduce Eastern culture to a Western audience. Though he had no practical training as a filmmaker, Lee put his “vision, strategy and tactics” to work to build a media empire. He defines vision as your never-changing, overarching concept of what you or your organization does. Your strategy is the plan you put in place to achieve your vision. Tactics are the “actions, sequences and schedules” you or your company implement to execute your strategy.

Lee introduced kung fu to many Americans.

Lee loved teaching kung fu and felt he could use it to help people as well as to provide for his family. He believed his mastery of kung fu could negate the stereotype of Asian men as submissive and unsexy. America’s relationship with China was tumultuous in the late 1960s, but just as Bruce Lee was gaining traction, China was opening up to the West. Today, China is the second largest economy in the world and has surpassed the United States in box office spending.

Lee planned to execute his vision of introducing the East to the West through his movies and through the martial arts schools he opened across America. He launched his first school in Seattle and promoted kung fu for self-defense against robberies and assaults. Lee typically taught classes himself and tailored his lessons to each individual student’s talents and outlook. When this approach didn’t prove profitable, he decided to give Hollywood another try. He believed he could become a role model to young Asian Americans, who seldom saw themselves depicted positively onscreen.

“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. (Bruce Lee) ”

Lee bypassed Hollywood studios and created his own production company, Concord Productions, to make his movies. He understood how to use his charisma to market himself and his films.

Ken Hao, Chairman of Silver Lake Partners, which invests in Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) and mixed martial arts (MMA), says he’s always looked up to Bruce Lee as an inspiration, not only as a Chinese-American, but also as an entrepreneur and businessman.

Lee understood that the standard Hollywood route would not work for him and that he had to carve his own path. He sought originality and hated routines and “patterns,” even though human beings tend to see and follow patterns as an ingrained evolutionary strategy. Lee felt that following ordinary expectations leads to “lazy, faulty group thinking” in business. Relying too much on patterns and trends damages a business in the long run. For example, retailers had to change or die when Amazon came to dominate the consumer marketplace.

Lee used six tactics to implement his vision for his films: break current patterns, stay simple, be different, keep it real, spotlight characters and teach the audience.

Lee regarded his mistakes as opportunities for self-improvement.

Lee applied his martial arts philosophy to filmmaking. As a fighter, he watched for his opponents to break their own rhythm and used that moment as the time to strike. To follow Lee’s example, seek patterns that you can disrupt in your life and business. These disruptions do not have to be groundbreaking. Seek small but effective improvements to your existing patterns.

Bruce Lee believed in simplicity. He regarded many styles of martial arts as convoluted and gaudy. As a tactical fighter, he sought to inflict the most damage with the least possible expenditure of energy. In his films, Lee believed in expressing a lot through minimal dialogue and action.

“He fused the kinetic, dynamic action of Hong Kong kung fu movies with the characters and story-driven nature of Hollywood film in ways that elevated mass entertainment to a new level of ambition and excellence.”

In the 1960s, the Shaw Brothers Studio dominated Hong Kong cinema by churning out low-budget, low quality, popular kung fu films. They offered Lee their standard low pay contract, but he refused to sign it.

Lee’s second tactic was being unique. He did things his own way. His films had a depth of character seldom seen in typical martial arts films.

Most of the fight choreography in martial arts films at the time was overly complicated and showy. Lee choreographed the fighting in his movies to appear believable and real. He cast martial artists – not actors – to perform fight scenes. Lee’s scripts used martial arts battles not merely as spectacles, but also to convey insight into the characters. For example, Lee created characters who would fight only as a last resort. Violence isn’t gratuitous or cheap in his films.

Lee believed in the ideals and ideas behind martial arts.

Lee saw kung fu as a way to teach people to live in the moment and to connect with their opponents.

Lee didn’t want to appeal only to Western audiences. He wanted Chinese audiences to like his films. Lee knew he would alienate Chinese fans if he pandered to non-Chinese viewers. He imbued his films with deeper messages than most contemporaneous kung fu films offered.

“He sought to make a more detailed connection between cinematic kung fu and his martial arts philosophy through extended dialogue, intricate choreography and sophisticated cinematography.”

Lee’s tactics succeeded and his films, which had higher budgets than similar movies, proved to be much more profitable than his competition’s films. Lee also attracted audiences by casting pop culture stars such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Chuck Norris in his films.

Executive Dug Song, chief strategy officer of Cisco Security and the co-founder and former CEO of Duo Security, cites Bruce Lee as a role model. He saw that Lee created his own style of martial arts and that inspired him to forge his own path and break the mold in his business. As Lee saw a need for more substantive martial arts movies, Song saw a gaping hole in internet security and convinced clients that they needed his company’s services to fill that gap. Song emulated Lee’s confidence without arrogance. Critics may see Duo Security’s approach as too simple, but Song knows that his service meets his client’s needs because it works.

“No, you don’t need to do all these other things. You just need to do what works, what’s efficient and effective. That summarizes a lot of Bruce’s philosophy. The rest is just wasted motion or in many cases for our customers, wasted money. Dug Song (co-founder of Duo Security, chief strategy officer of Cisco Security) ”

Like many entrepreneurs, Bruce Lee knew that failure was always a possibility, and he saw it as a step toward growth. He dealt with the added hurdle of having to overcome institutional racism. Racism toward Chinese Americans goes back to the 1840s when Chinese people first immigrated to the United States. Hollywood typically cast white actors wearing “yellowface” as Asian characters in low status roles. The censorious Hays Code forbade interracial romances onscreen, thus effectively barring Asians from playing leading roles. Instead, they portrayed “servants, sidekicks and comic relief.”

Lee’s character Kato became a runaway hit on The Green Hornet. He became a role model for young Asian Americans, who had never seen themselves portrayed in such a positive light. However, even with Kato’s popularity, Lee’s pay was drastically less than his costars’, and the show’s scripts gave him fewer lines to speak. In the 1970s, shows such as Kung Fu generally cast Caucasian actors as Asians.

In Lee’s philosophy, a person should be like water, which takes the shape of whatever it touches.

Lee regarded water – which he saw as a life-giving substance in a pure state of being – as the primary metaphor for his personal life, his martial arts and his film career. In his philosophy, you must be ready for change at all times and read to adapt to that change. Be fully in the moment and change course when necessary.

“Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup…You put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. (Bruce Lee) ”

Lee’s background as a ballroom dancer taught him to be flexible and fluid. He believed that the body and mind must work together, a philosophy he instilled in the fighting style called Jeet Kune Do (JKD) and applied to all aspects of his life.

Lee followed three rules: Work within the system. Don’t wait to take control. And, start over when something doesn’t work out.

Lee faced racism with courage and perseverance.

The Green Hornet was a big hit in Hong Kong, and Lee became a sensation there and in America, priming him to become a breakout star while essentially starting over. Lee knew that to become a leading man, he had to create roles for himself. Having his own production company, he retained complete control over his projects.When he made films, such as The Big Boss or Fist of Fury, he took an active role in making notes on the screenplay and choreographing the fights. Both films did well in Hong Kong. Warner Brothers subsequently sought to release Lee’s films in America and co-financed what would become Lee’s most successful movie, Enter the Dragon.

“You cannot win them all, but damn it, I am going to win one of these days.” (Bruce Lee)

Lee’s life and philosophy also influenced Vijoy Rao, a former executive at the PR firm Fleishman Hillard. Rao says Lee taught him to endure life’s difficulties and to respect his competitors. He notes that when Lee built his empire from scratch, he set the example that entrepreneurs need to know a little about everything. As a startup entrepreneur, Rao realized that everything moves fast, and that, like Lee, you must keep up and prioritize which problems to solve. Lee sometimes moved so quickly that the cameras had trouble picking up his motion.

Drawing, poetry, and Eastern and Western philosophy intrigued Lee, as well as filmmaking and martial arts. He invented workout routines, protein shakes and equipment to help him stay strong and polish his skills. He demonstrated that successful people can pursue a variety of subjects apart from their specialties.

“[Lee’s] intellectual curiosity, work ethic, creativity and willingness to experiment are what made him so successful.”

Lee taught himself every facet of making films, in front of and behind the camera. He was never afraid to ask for help and often requested feedback on his projects so he could make improvements.

Lee didn’t take an active part in the civil rights movement, but he believed in diversity and his actions and films were consistently anti-racist. He made friends with everyone of every race and was open to teaching kung fu to anyone, often becoming friends with his students.

Lee continually evolved as a martial artist.

Lee added aspects of judo, boxing and other fighting styles to his skills to evolve as a fighter. He was always working on new projects and collaborating with others. For instance, he tried to create a TV show that would teach women self-defense tactics. He was a master of what now would be seen as “side hustles.”

Based on Lee’s model, former LinkedIn executive Steve Cadigan cites four critical qualities for a contemporary career in his book Workquake: Always experiment, be able to change to a new career if your situation shifts, be willing to pivot in your career even if you’re at the top, and “find joy” in fresh opportunities and pursuits.

Corporate leaders regard people who experiment with new ideas and hobbies outside business hours as high-quality employees.

“Building networks, collaborating, experimenting, and looking for opportunities in your passion projects and your hobbies are the main ingredients for you to thrive in this new world of work. Learning agility is the new superpower that will help you weather the change and uncertainty that lie before all of us.” (Steve Cadigan)

Lee’s life and career also influenced Tony Blauer, founder of the consulting company Blauer Tactical Systems. He sees Lee as unique and draws from his belief that people create their own circumstances in their life and in their career, and that they should unify their “mind, body and spirit” to succeed.

About the Author

Thomas Lee, head curator for the Chinese Historical Society’s We Are Bruce Lee exhibit, is a prizewinning business journalist.

Genres

Biography, Philosophy, Self-help, Martial arts, Business, Productivity, Personal growth, Motivation

Review

While Bruce Lee is best known for popularizing martial arts and action films, in The Bruce Lee Code author Thomas Lee showcases Bruce Lee’s wisdom around personal fulfillment beyond physical prowess. Although Lee died prematurely at 32, the extensive writings and interviews he left behind form a coherent philosophy for “actualizing oneself” and contribuing passionately to the world.

The book unpacks Lee’s worldview around confidence, social skills, discipline, and communication shaped by his intellectual curiosity and obsession with self-mastery. While Lee achieved movie business success, The Bruce Lee Code focuses not on surface-level advice for getting rich but on his holistic, almost spiritual framework for thriving and contribution.

Lee’s Code centers on honing one’s unique talents rather than conforming. He advises embracing challenges and negativity as crucial for growth, rejecting limited perspectives on race or background as excuses. Although some ideas reflect outdated gender norms, Lee’s forward-thinking stands out given the era’s constraints. From productivity tips to relationship insights, the Code combines timelessness with surprising modernity.

While perhaps lacking enough critical perspective on complex aspects of Lee’s life, The Bruce Lee Code skillfully arranges his principles, sayings, and ideas into an inspiring manual. It filters out superficial readings of Lee as simply an arrogant fighter to uncover his sophisticated reflective side. Any reader stalled in their journey would benefit from Lee’s extreme ownership mindset and determination to actualize one’s full potential.