This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. I'm thrilled to say to be joined by Amber Walsh, Amber's leader in health care and in private equity. She's got a different topic for us today. Today we're going to talk about, I think the concept is Bruce Lee and some of the lessons on lifelong learning that you could get from Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, of course, famous martial artist expert, but let me leave this to Amber to explain and to talk about the genesis of the discussion. Amber, tell the audience a little bit about because depending on age and vintage, you're barely old enough to really know who Bruce Lee is. I'm X amount of years older, which is a lot, so I'm very familiar, but talk to the audience first about who Bruce Lee is and what we can learn about from Bruce Lee that applies to business and life. Amber Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast Yes, Scott. I'm very happy to do so, and I always love a podcast that starts with me being young, so thank you for that. And yes, in fact, Bruce Lee actually did die suddenly shortly before I was born, and it is kind of funny to talk about lifelong learning in the context of Bruce Lee's life when he had such a short life. He died unexpectedly young at age 32 in 1973, but in his short time on the earth, he had this philosophy that became really famous, but during his lifetime and since then, continued by his daughter, Shannon Lee, who has written, spoken, she has a decades-long podcast with over 500 episodes, this philosophy of lifetime learning and adaptation. And there's an aversion of his philosophy that doesn't quite speak to me as much, and that's the Be Water, my friend, philosophy, where he talks a lot about what I think of as more reactive and a little bit more passive, more going with the flow, and he talks about this in the context of your body in martial arts, but also in your life. What speaks to me more that I've been thinking about a lot more lately is the more active version of the philosophy, which is to adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own. That is one of his quotes that I think is really impactful that I think about a lot, and I talk to that philosophy a lot with young lawyers who are coming up in the firm and people who are looking for ways to kind of structure what their next move is going to be and how they're going to think about, you know, planning their own lifetime learning. Thank you. And take a moment on sort of, give us that quote again, the Bruce Lee quote again. Yeah, it is adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own. Great. So I love that. And talk about how you view that, you know, to be as personal as possible, how you view that in your own adaptation, your own growth, you're choosing what you want to do and not do. You've been this remarkable leader, you've chaired the health care department, you serve in the executive committee, you're a leader in all things, you're one of the very most absolutely professional persons that I know every single day. It's literally remarkable. How do you adopt some of these thoughts into your own life and thinking? Well, I have certainly done this and I have watched others do this very successfully as well. What I love about this philosophy, if you take each one of the component parts, it's each one is very active. It's very intentional. And it's all premised on watching and learning from others, trying the things that may work for you that others are already doing, emulating them to the extent that they actually work for you, actually testing them out, but then adding your own flair, your own modification to make it work for you. And I think that's really, really helpful. And Scott, you and I have talked a lot over the years about one of the things that I think is a shame is when people give advice that assumes that there's only one formulaic way to accomplish a particular goal. When I very, very strongly believe that you should be learning from those that you respect, testing out what works for you, and then making your own change. I saw you do that with what you've built. I did that as well. I learned from you. I learned from one of our mutual mentors, Bob Pristave. I learned from others, and then I put my own spin on it. For me, my spin on business development included a lot of teamwork, building teams, going to market together, a lot of focusing on women and the way that women were uniquely positioned in the private equity, healthcare and legal industries. But what I was really doing is taking what was comfortable for me, what was natural and fun and interesting to me, and putting that onto what had worked and what I'd seen work for others and kind of making it my own. But this Bruce Lee philosophy on adaptation and rejecting what doesn't work and then adding what is specifically your own, that's just a variation of that. But it's kind of nice to hear it in those kind of pretty different words for somebody who is a pretty remarkably skilled and gifted person. 100%. I find it fascinating that so many ways, and so many of you say resonate with me, we all over only have doing things and every once in a while have moments that are so clear to us that, oh, even though I did it this way, this person is doing it that way, and that may be more successful or less successful or just as successful as the way that I did it. And those opening one's minds and aha moments of there are different ways to accomplish things are so healthy in one's own behavior because as you learn to adapt and try out different things, and even though you did it this way for so long, trying to do it that way, there's that old adage for Marshall Goldsmith, we'll got you here, we'll get you there, and all of us need to adopt ourselves anyways to develop and grow. But more important is a mentor and coach to coach others. You may have your one way of doing it, and you might want to teach that to somebody, but with that teaching should come, there are other ways to do this too. And the real goal is adopt it, take what works for you, but develop a strategy for you that's ideal for you and grow from there. I mean, and that seems to be a lot of what I hear from you and it resonates with me very much. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I also find this approach, this view to take out a lot of the stress from my own children. I'm talking to my own children about their goals and what they're trying to accomplish. And young lawyers in the firm, as they are setting their sights on perhaps its partnership, or it's a particular client related goal, whatever it is, you can really take a lot of the stress out. If you give people the space to recognize that number one, it is okay to borrow and emulate. None of us created what we have from scratch, from nothing without foundation. But it's also okay to do it in your own way. And it's okay to not yet know what your own way is. You will figure it out. If you just observe, you try, you test, and you continue to adapt. I just think that approach just allows people to take a deep breath a little bit and just move forward without worrying too much about perfectly crafting exactly the way everything's going to play out at the beginning, because you and I both know that's really hard to do. 100%. And when you sort of talk to your children about this philosophy, or a young lawyer about this philosophy, or someone else, how do you try and explain it to your children are doing fantastically well? How do you try to explain it to them? This, I do talk to them about these ideas. Absolutely. And I definitely will use examples that are within their knowledge base. Talking to my children, we talk about family members. And those in our community who they have seen as successful and to recognize that there were different ways to get where they were going, we also have to talk about the trial and error component of this. That's part of learning. I think that's core in the Bruce Lee philosophy. But using real life examples of people that my children know and value and respect, it's the same way when talking to young lawyers in the firm. It's really helpful to talk about your pathway and to talk about different of our colleagues' pathways to get where they're going. I think it makes it really accessible and a little left daunting to know that there's not just one way to do it, that you can find success. And you've got to give yourself a little bit of breathing room. And then of course, a big part of the conversation is then circling back and continuing the dialogue with the person that you are mentoring to see how it's going and to give your own perspective as an outsider of what's working. So all of this I find really comforting. And I think it's especially comforting to share that most of us will continue to do this throughout our careers. And if we're lucky, beyond our careers and our lifetimes. When you think about things that you've adapted most recently, things that you've added onto your repertoire, your toolbox to how you do things, are any things over the last six months or a year that come to mind for you in terms of newer adaptations, newer changes in how you do things? Well, certainly I have adapted to using AI. That's less about business development and client management, but that's more about work management. So that's been a big point of adaptation for me recently. I think most people in most industries are having that same adaptation. Whereas there are other things that I will always keep central, which is working in teams. That's always been a big part of what I do. I've also adapted because the environment calls for it right now, is I've adapted how I talk about the regulatory environment. And I've adapted that not just because the regulatory environment has changed, but because people's acceptance and perceptions of it are different right now. Well, I have had to adapt that very much in the past, probably six to nine months. And that's been a great adaptation. And I'll be really interested to see where I am a year from now on all of these different things that I'm doing right now that are presently a bit different than what I did a year ago. That fluidity, that ability to adopt and to add on and change and keep growing and evolving. I'll ask you this question. How satisfying is that personally and professionally, that ability to do that? It's very satisfying. It's very comforting. And I think it's what gives me the confidence that I can do something more than one way. And that's really comforting because we all know that the world is going to change. Things are going to change around us. And if we can only do something in one way, then it's pretty scary. And you will begin to believe that you aren't made for a changing world. So I find it extremely comforting to know that I can work in different ways, but to also have some of those core, not just core values, that's a whole separate conversation, but core components of my approach. I mentioned teamwork. I mentioned a focus on heavy content. That's something that I learned from you being content rich. There are some things that I don't see myself ever changing, but it's comforting to know that I can adapt around the edges. No, 100%. No, you've done a remarkable job. I mean, I don't think I've seen a professor I work with grow and develop and just become the most complete professional. I know better than I've seen you do that over the last 20 years or so. It's literally been remarkable to watch amazing. And it is fascinating. And part of it is being a student of growth is what's made you successful at doing so. So I love the tie-in to this philosophy of Bruce Lee. I'm hoping that in a further podcast, we could try and tie together some of the legend of Chuck Norris to go with Bruce Lee. So we're hitting both these great martial arts icons at some point, but in all seriousness, Amber, a fantastic professional and fantastic to visit with you about this concept of adopting and growing. I just love it. It reminds me of Jimmy Valvano's Survive in Advance. Here it's adopting and growing. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you. You
