What do you get when you mix a kid who has an unquenchable thirst to learn, who is empathetic, diligent, obsessed with solving problems, is nick-named “the Professor” who believes in the Dale Carnegie philosophy that you earn people’s time by being prepared, who is believed to have no heart-beat because of his unmatched endurance and overcomes all challenges through his shear optimism? Be prepared to be inspired by listening to this interview with ArcherGrey’s retired kid, Larry Leu.
Transcript
The transcript is close to a literal transcript of the spoken word. Please excuse any grammatical errors, spelling errors or break in the flow. The podcast is a non-scripted conversation with natural flow aimed to deliver value.
[00:00:02.090] – Intro
Welcome to PLM Evolution, your gateway to the forefront of digital thread and digital transformation and all things PLM. On this show, we’ll unpack the perspectives of industry pioneers, bringing you compelling conversations from the dynamic world of product innovation at today’s leading enterprises. Now, here’s your host, Patrick Sullivan.
[00:00:27.610] – Patrick Sullivan
Alright. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Digital Transformation through the eyes of PLM podcast, formerly known as the PLM Quick 30. So if you’re looking for the PLM Quick 30, you are in the right place. I’m your host Patrick Sullivan, and I’m very excited to have this conversation today with an individual, especially at this point in my life. Up to this point, you always ask yourself, I wish I had somebody who’s been there, done that, and can give me words of wisdom on how to be more efficient, how to be better at what I do and my outlook in life. And today you’re going to have the benefit of learning from this individual. He’s been coined as the professor within the organization of ArcherGrey, and I’m pleased to announce that today is his official day of being reborn as he officially retired from ArcherGrey as of yesterday. And so, February 1, 2023, our guest today is Larry Leu, and he has a bright rebirth future ahead of him, but he has accepted the invitation to record this podcast, and I’m thrilled that you’re doing it. Thank you for getting up early, Larry. I appreciate it.
[00:01:58.710] – Larry Leu
Actually, the first thing I got up this morning is that my wife told me that, Larry, you are famous because Tom Brady follow your footsteps. He has announced his retirement.
[00:02:13.930] – Patrick Sullivan
You’re a trendsetter. All right? So normally I like to go through a little process of background and an introduction of self, you know, Larry, you know what? You’re retired, and I view you as a close friend and a respected person in my life. So I’d love to just kick this off with a quick story of and I don’t know why it replays in my mind, but it does frequently. But when somebody says, Larry Leu, and I’ve already said the thing about the professor, which is very true. And I’ve got some things that I want to ask you about. I have one particular vision in my brain about you. And we were at a conference where it was PTC’s conference, and I think it was the first time that you had joined us at a conference. And I saw you halfway through the day, and you had a huge spring in your step. And I said, hey, Larry, how’s it going? And you’re like, oh, my gosh, I can’t even believe it. I feel like a kid in a candy store. There’s so many classes I want to go to. Oh, my gosh. Your enthusiasm and thirst for learning, I think, is really something that I want to understand more about, because your optimism and your enthusiasm and your passion and how you approach life is inspiring, and I just want to know more about that. Where does it come from? Were you born with it? Is it learned?
[00:03:59.390] – Larry Leu
It just got me excited when I learned new things. As a consultant, you never really feel that there’s enough knowledge that you could provide to the customer. And every time when I go to the PTC conferences and there’s just so many different area, because when you are working that there are only specific area that you are focusing on. Right. But when you are in that particular conferences that there are so many different area that outside of your normal focus that you could really expand. It’s something that really you never even thought about it. And that is what really decided. And when I learned new things, I don’t know, I feel excited. Actually, just yesterday, I just learned how to program a new UB box. I just purchased, and I received it yesterday for myself as a retirement gift. And I just learned
[00:05:16.480] – Patrick Sullivan
What’s a UB box?
[00:05:18.150] – Larry Leu
A UB box is a box, very much similar to the fire stick that allow you to be able to get to the, instead of just the prime or get to all the different app. It allow you to be able to see all different type of TV program, movie program, and everywhere around the world, not just the US. Japan, Korea, Asia, Turkey, India, and even have some game. And I know I just felt there is that excitement even when I was a kid.
[00:06:08.710] – Patrick Sullivan
I think it’s that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about, because most people talk about retirement, of settling in and getting to do more of what they do, like golf or what have you. But no, you’ve started a new project in an area that you’ve never done anything before. And although you get to relax and watch the TV or programs around the world that you want to do, in order to do that, you have to figure out how to program the UB box.
[00:06:42.530] – Larry Leu
Yeah, it’s something that I think I was very similar when I was a young kid. I think when I was in junior high, high school, and outside of school, I learned harmonica, I learned English, I learned Japanese, I learned to play guitar, and all at once the same semester.
[00:07:08.670] – Patrick Sullivan
What do you say to people that say you need to focus on one thing at a time in order to succeed at that?
[00:07:17.950] – Larry Leu
I think you need to have your focus, but it does not mean that you cannot have additional expanded territory. For example, only in the music. I enjoy singing and I enjoy choir, and I enjoy playing guitar. That’s my main thing. But that does not stop me from pick up a violin and try to scare the neighbor people and create a squeaking sound, whatever, right. So you can always learn something new. And that’s how I look at it and just make it more fun because if you spend 8 hours on one thing, you probably got tired of it and then so in the meantime, if you have time, do something else and do something for example, do some reading and do some biking and walk the dog. And at the same time, when music wise, I play guitar and I tried to learn piano and I tried to learn the violin, although I’m not very good at either one of them. But I focus on guitar.
[00:08:31.650] – Patrick Sullivan
That’s, that’s incredible. There was a gentleman, I think I was walking at Venice Beach in California and I think it was by Mussel Beach and this guy had a large crowd of people around him and he was taking requests of songs from people. And so I looked over the crowd and he had a guitar in his hand, he had a bass guitar at his feet. I saw that he had a snare drum on his back. He had another thing and he was controlling him with his elbows and then he had a harmonica and obviously was singing the song and somebody says Michael Jackson beat it. So he starts with the bass line with his feet playing with his toes and come to find out I don’t know if this is true, this might be myth, but I found out later that he was a runner, a good one, and also a doctor, possibly. I don’t know if those are myths or not, but regardless, just the sheer talent to play all those instruments at one time, it’s incredible.
[00:09:44.530] – Larry Leu
And I even saw one guy that was doing everything, the multiple instruments and guess what? He put all the instrument attached to his bike and riding the bike while doing it.
[00:10:01.730] – Patrick Sullivan
That’s a talent.
[00:10:05.970] – Larry Leu
There’s always another level you can take it to.
[00:10:09.650] – Patrick Sullivan
I know. Forget Bluetooth and having a phone for music, you just play it while you ride.
[00:10:15.350] – Larry Leu
Your imagination is what really take you to, you’re only limited by your own imagination. That’s what I look at.
[00:10:25.930] – Patrick Sullivan
So let me shift stories here and then to your point of imagination. We’ve worked together for nearly 15 years and I remember going to you to ask to help with developing a proposal for a client and you said because it wasn’t a specific technical challenge, it was kind of like hey, let’s structure this. They want to improve and there’s lots of different areas. So it was an assessment to build a roadmap and then determine what things they wanted to invest in from there. And we had some preliminary things that they wanted to do and they were kind of grandiose. And you said what’s their budget? Because I can do some variation of an assessment and deliver value, but let’s just capture the budget that they have available and let’s not make it difficult. And your comment on imagination of taking some type of parameter and then building from there was what I appreciated about that experience. I also deal with folks that want to know the specific scope and then the level of effort is what it is, whether you have enough money or not. I don’t know if I’m explaining it accurately enough, but there’s a disparity in philosophy there. Can you help kind of navigate to an answer of why you say, well, let’s just make something good of what we can make it with versus wish we had something else?
[00:12:12.090] – Larry Leu
I don’t know. Maybe we just try to be more realistic and try to work with a parameter, because I always try to find out, try to define the requirements and to set a parameter, because you could draw up a pie in the sky. But when you come to the customer, you always have to put yourself in the customer’s shoes first. The person that you deal with also have someone that they have to deal with. They have a lot of the people they report to, all right? So you have to put yourself in their perspective if they have certain budget they were given. And you have to realize that for them to go back to the wheel and asking for more money, it’s going to be an extra burden to your customer you are serving to. So you have to put yourself in their perspective first and have the empathy in what kind of difficulty they will have to go through in order to do that. It doesn’t mean that you cannot put, forge another follow up proposal. So you put an initial proposal that fit into the parameters that you have to work with, allow them to be able to build a success story. And to me, for them to be able to build up a success story that they can quickly take it and share with the people and take it to the management and say, hey, this is something that we achieve with what was given. Now if you allow me to have additional funding, this is what I can achieve for them. I think it’s a win win situation.
[00:14:23.910] – Patrick Sullivan
Yeah, as you were talking about that. So you had a previous relationship. As I stated, we’ve been working together for 15 years. So you had a relationship prior to coming to Archer Gray and now I consider them a friend as well, this particular client, and I know that you know who I’m talking about. So your key word in what you were describing there is empathy for their situation and then building success stories. So I’m curious for this mutual friend now, and I’m proud to be able to say that and thank you, by the way, bring me all the way back to the beginning of that relationship. Why did it come to a culminating event where one friendship and then when you break down the meaning of friendship, there’s loyalty, there’s trust right? There’s honesty, there’s a whole bunch of things that you can start to peel apart. But in business, unfortunately, it’s not a regular thing that people typically experience. The things that we just described about your creativity to take what’s given to you and make something of it. How do we apply that to that scenario? What were the beginning stages and what was your approach that helped you one, well, just develop such a long lasting friendship and relationship built off of those values that I just described.
[00:16:00.050] – Larry Leu
I think it all based on one very basic principle. You always put yourself at the other people’s shoes and as a consultant that we work for a client, we work for the mutual success. You look for the win win situation. So in that particular situation actually we eventually built a very good relationship, but it didn’t start out that way. On the contrast when we first started, the story is that they had a system that was set up by another consulting firm and they spent a lot of money in blog. Initially the individual had some idea and he was very adamant about using that and because he wanted to look at it from the user perspective, make some customization to make some things that’s simple for a user to use it and for some reason not sure if that’s the main reason or not, the system was very unstable. They have the system really crashing on a constant basis. If I say it on the daily basis, probably it’s not over exaggerate. They, they struggle that over almost a year and then until almost they were going to give up on it, the entire system, the PLM system. And so they come to us and asking, say hey, if there’s something that you could help and they were very suspicious at the very beginning. They asked a lot of questions. They have IT people, they have the technical expert, they have multiple people asking the questions and we have multiple call and even after that and they asking us to put a specific things that we want to do and they’re asking for a specific deliverable and only give us three weeks in the beginning. And so we know that was an uphill battle from the very beginning but we took on it and we went in there and look at it and do an honest evaluation and realize that what that individual asked to do, it was really unnecessary because it really does not provide that much benefit. But add a lot of customization and actually in the PLM system, you actually created a lot of custom lifecycle. It really does not make sense. So I went in there, the first thing that I have to tell them is that your system, your process I have to look at their process. I say your process is not that complicated. You’re engineering team, whatever, you guys did this out of the box. That simplified process is your best approach because that not only simplify your process and make it easy for everybody to adapt it, make the system much more stable because that’s how system was designed. You can eliminate a lot of customization, but most importantly, in the future, upgrade. Guess how much money you will be able to save and how much easier you don’t have to spend extra money for additional customization for something that really does not provide you that much benefit. Because that was maybe his personal baby. We were having some different opinion, but eventually we have to bring his boss, the CIO, into the discussion. And when I explained it to the CIO, CIO saw the value and said, I think Larry’s right. Why don’t we just give that a try? And we did that. And that in few weeks, the system started to stabilize, that we back. And once the system started to stable and that really opened up the eye for them, and then they started to build a trust. And then, of course, they extended from three weeks to six weeks. And then gradually from six weeks, they extend another six week. And then when things starting to get better and better, they say, let’s extend to three months. And that three months extend to six months to a year. And now I have been working with them for the past 15 years, on and off, and we build a relationship.
[00:21:39.150] – Patrick Sullivan
Yeah, that’s a tremendous story, which I know the history on to some degree, and then to your last point was a relationship that’s on and off. I also know that the same thing exists for other clients that you’ve worked on while at ArcherGrey as well. They came back to us and specifically requesting you to be involved. One, because of that success, you made them look good because of your philosophy of putting yourself in those shoes. But two, and this is another area that I wanted to talk with you about, like your philosophy on overcoming is the back half of a challenge, right? You have to address the challenge first. And there’s plenty of stories on challenges, right. I can’t remember what was going on with golf, but if I remember the story correctly, you decided you wanted to play golf. Historically, your wife was better than you at golf, and you couldn’t figure out your swing. You woke up in the middle of the night, like one or two in the morning, and you were so lost in watching video and trying to figure out your swing, actually swinging the golf club in your bedroom. And your wife woke up and she said, Larry, what are you doing? And you said, honey, I think I figured it out.
[00:23:12.670] – Larry Leu
It was at 03:00 a.m. in the morning, and it’s something that I woke her up and show her my new swing that we still have a good laugh. And I’m so appreciative she did not hit me in the head with the light. For.
[00:23:42.870] – Patrick Sullivan
I bring in that example because similar to this project work that we’re talking about I know that on these projects you encounter in some scenarios are showstop, situations and like I think of the other client where it was Go-Live weekend and it was not in your roles or responsibilities and IT infrastructure team was stressing out and this was a Global Go-Live and it’s a fortune 1000 company and you didn’t sit and wait. I think you were staying up basically two days in a row helping them troubleshoot it and I believe you were the person that found it even though it was not in your realm of responsibility. So showstopper situation for Go-Live and you saved the Go-Live. I would say so, just that philosophy of overcoming challenges and we joked about the golf scenario, but I think it’s the same thing. Can you walk us through that a little bit?
[00:24:54.670] – Larry Leu
The story is that it was a Global Go-Live. You have people from all over the world, from Brazil, from British, from the US and Germany all accumulating one war room. And I have done my part of my portion of it was done, it was successful, but for some reason after that the Go-Live system starting to become still very unstable and in the wincho term that was something called a cluster setup. And it was something that really is not my mainstream and I did not have a lot of experience, I have some reading on it so that they were struggling with that and by that time actually I already went through an entire night without sleeping. But since everybody was still struggling, they just stay there with them and listen to what they were talking about and realized that and just kind of lessened. And then as they continued to talk and they actually will bring in the experts on talking to them and they were troubleshooting and everything, so I had the benefit of listening to it. And then I just decided to went online and did some search on that particular topic. Then I find out and as I keep looking at it and looking at it, I found something just does not add up in my mind and I wasn’t quite sure because that really is not my specific area expertise, but I keep working on it until I have more confidence later on. Then I just signed the join their conversation and I bought that particular coin to that particular expert say hey, how about this particular property? If we change this property, it’s this one set right old room and that person look at it. Oh, that is where you guys have the problem with if we change this, that would have solved a problem and then that is what it was very specifically the cluster set up because you have multiple background foregrounds type of scenario, so you have to really done something different than what you would have done otherwise. And that was something that it was not very obvious in a lot of documentation. And whenever we caught that and solved that and system, all of a sudden system just becomes stable and people it works. It was working, it just wasn’t stable. And now finally it was stable because the handshake was finally there. And that was one of those situations. The pure luck probably.
[00:28:24.770] – Patrick Sullivan
What’s consistent, whether lucky or not, is a challenge comes up and as you said, your role was finished. Why participate in something that you don’t need to and you’re not required to? Why address a challenge but you didn’t need to get your hands dirty?
[00:28:50.650] – Larry Leu
That’s my philosophy. When you’re working with the client, you always put clients interest up most at first. And the other thing, it’s a team success. Your individual success really mean something, but doesn’t mean that much if a team fail. And if a team ultimately success. This is enough credit to go around. You don’t have to ask for the personal accolade or anything. And to me, I can care less about the personal accolade or anything. And actually, I didn’t say anything about that. It was to our company, was the customers that mentioned that relay that information back to I already forgot about it after I finished. I was so exhausted because I was 30 hours. But to me too, then you always put clients interest first. Secondly, it’s a team effort. And that’s just my philosophy for my life. Individually, at home, that’s the same thing. I cannot put myself interest above me and my wife as a family and my children’s, totally collective interest, it’s the same thing that when I work for archigui, it’s the archigui’s interest. It’s above my personal interest.
[00:30:36.730] – Patrick Sullivan
I said at the your nickname within Archer Gray was coined the professor. And right, I know that you’re a dynamic speaker. And so I associate speaking with being a professor, and I know that you are good at teaching, but just walking through that where I’m asking a question about what I perceive to be a complicated process of seeing a challenge and rolling up the sleeves and what I’m deriving and hearing you talk. The art of a good professor is somebody who can explain a complex thing simply. And I think you just did that beautifully. You just have a life philosophy that’s broken down to two things, right? Essentially putting other people first and starting with empathy. And I think that’s a beautiful explanation. So thank you for that on the professor topic, since I’m kind of a visual guy. So we had our company event, I’m sure you remember this. This was after again, another client where you had spent three years helping train, I don’t know, 3000 people. So we asked you to present what your methodology was, your approach around it. And I’ll tell you the thing that I remember very specifically, and I thought it was spectacular.
[00:32:04.950] – Patrick Sullivan
So we’re all in this room, I think we’re in Las Vegas, and you’re presenting and you have a clicker in your hand, a remote clicker. And so the whole thing was on the screen and you were explaining of like bringing life and value to the press and the click of a button and what it meant to the user community and all of that stuff. So you would go up to the projection screen, which was just a flat screen essentially against a wall, but it was being projected up there and you would press the button. And as you physically press the screen, which was not dynamic, it had no functionality, you would click the button in your opposite hand and it would advance to the other screen. I’m like that is somebody who takes it down to the molecular level and makes an experience out of something that could just be a click of a button and you don’t even need to be standing there. I’m like, this guy really is a professor. Did you intentionally do that or was that just something that you did?
[00:33:17.310] – Larry Leu
That’s how I normally teach to begin with. Yeah, that was part of my presentation. I planned it and I planned that and I say, well, if I did this, I did that, and it just come normal because I thought, well, here’s the screen and I have to put myself on the people’s audience shoes again. You have always pursue yourself on the other people’s shoes. If you just look at something, you point something. Why would people know why you’re pointing at? So you go there and you’re pointing at this. They know this and then you click and then you say, oh, okay. So you can simulate the mouse click on a projective.
[00:34:10.690] – Patrick Sullivan
I thought it was incredible. There’s so many little memories that I remember. And I’m so happy you agreed to record this because I wanted to hear what was happening in the preparation of this because I know that you rehearse also.
[00:34:31.670] – Larry Leu
Yeah.
[00:34:32.390] – Patrick Sullivan
The first time you’re standing up is not I’m sorry, what is the first time for me to see you standing up? It certainly is not the first time that you’ve gone through it because it is so polished.
[00:34:45.370] – Larry Leu
Yeah. And I think that’s part of a job as a consultant, particularly in the training that you always have to go through multiple process and keep refining and refining it until and oftentimes I have to record myself and then critique myself until I can see, oh yeah, if I have done this better or something. I think it’s the same philosophy. The best time that I learned how to play or singing is that when I record my own singing, I will be able to hear a lot of things. Sometimes when you singing, you thought, oh, I did a pretty good job. But once you record it, you hear a lot of little mistake that you did. I think that lawyer saw the Dell Carnegie course that I taught way back when I was in the took two courses of the Dell Carnegie. One in the late 80 and the other one is with Archae. And the one thing I learned about Dell Carnegie is that you always have to earn the time for your own time for your speaking. And to earn that, you have to earn it. You don’t take that for granted. So you prepare that, you prepare the material, you prepare your presentation, you have to rehearse that, and then you have to hear, listen to yourself.
[00:36:35.250] – Larry Leu
And then you have to keep working only until that you feel really comfortable. And one thing that I did earlier in my career is that I always ask my kid or my wife to listen to my presentation. And then we record it and I listen to what they have to say. And your family will give you the most honest critique. If you can withstand a critique, I think you can withstand anything.
[00:37:05.690] – Patrick Sullivan
Yeah. When we travel as a family, once in a while I’ll pop on one of these podcasts and as soon as they hear my voice, they all are like, oh my gosh, why are you talking like that? I don’t think that I transform into a different type of person, but who knows? To your point, I try to rehearse in my brain and then I definitely get some feedback. But I will have you know, my oldest is in college right now and he texted me a couple of days ago, he’s like, dad, I listened to one of your podcasts last weekend. It wasn’t bad, I’ll take it.
[00:37:51.910] – Larry Leu
That’s a huge cover of it, trust.
[00:37:54.220] – Patrick Sullivan
Me, I think he’s homesick.
[00:37:59.210] – Larry Leu
That’s a huge and one thing that you’ll find out is that as your kid grow older and older, they would appreciate you more and more.
[00:38:11.310] – Patrick Sullivan
That’s good to know. That’s good to know. I’ll look forward to that. Another thing about this, on the thirst for learning, and one thing that I wrote down, because I think I told you before we started recording, I wanted this just to be a conversation, but I did put down just some topics from a mind map perspective of things that I wanted to talk about. And a characteristic of you that I value greatly is your optimism. And I think it comes out in everything that we just described of all these different examples and kind of exploration of project work and addressing challenges, whether it be golf and having epiphanies in the middle of the night, or staying up 30 hours and helping team, the overall team, be successful. I feel like a kid in the candy store, but nobody has said that to me in the professional world ever. And so, aside from your Thirst for learning, your level of optimism is contagious and it really has a profound effect on people around you. Can you talk to that a little bit?
[00:39:32.390] – Larry Leu
I don’t know, how do I pinpoint it? If there’s anything I think just. Put things in the proper perspective and you look at life in the total package and it’s a perspective I think it built up on my personal belief. I have a belief, I have a face. So you know that there is something that you always have something to lingo. And when I encounter the difficulty, I do not get desperate because I know in the grand scheme of things in life, the difficulty that you encounter right now, it’s just a bullet of the things that will always pass. And also it built on top of the experiences that I had before I have encountered in my professional career so many difficult challenges, difficulty and it’s come from small, too big, too large and in the past. Then I realized that it’s okay to be frustrated at the time but you don’t need to get angry or blame other people and just focus on the issue in itself an issue. And then if you are not able to solve the issue and think about why am I not able to solve the issue? Did I not look at it from the right perspective?
[00:41:38.350] – Larry Leu
Do I not bring in the right people or the right team to help me to solve the problem? And then if you look at it and do not ever put that on yourself say oh, I’m just so stupid, I’m just not good enough. It’s my inability to solve the problem or don’t blame other people that you work with so get out of the blanking, don’t blame yourself, don’t blame other people then look at it from the perspective say why am I not able to solve this problem? So now maybe I’ll ask for help, maybe I need to study more, maybe I’ll asking other people’s perspective and then take a walk and let your subconscious mind to work and asking other people say hey, why am I not looking at it right? Even someone does not understand your technical specific sometimes can point out oh, what if that this is that? And sometimes it could be just a typo. In my most recent project we struggle with a connection with the Active directory and for over a month and we’ll keep back and forth, back and forth at the end of the day it was just because the information we got had a typo.
[00:43:25.010] – Larry Leu
And so once you get out of feel self pity, blame other people, blame game. And then you sign to look for other people, sign to study more and then if you can’t solve it, just take a walk. And you’re always the next day and be honest to communicate the issue and asking for more people to their advice or something eventually. So far, every single issue always get resolved. Honestly, every big project that I worked on, there’s always one critical moment that you have to overcome. Almost never have exceptions there’s always one critical challenges you have to overcome but guess what? Once you overcome the challenges. Everything is selling.
[00:44:34.630] – Patrick Sullivan
Yeah. Thanks for taking my non question and giving me an excellent answer to it around optimism and how to have things in perspective. I think that’s really a strong perspective and counting on the challenges. We were talking a little bit earlier before we started recording. You were telling me a story about a former colleague and the topic of endurance. I wouldn’t mind spending some time revisiting that and then getting into your expertise in taekwondo as well. I know that this is another story. We were traveling with a client and we were walking by a Taekwondo place. We being you and me, I don’t know if you remember it or not, but we were walking to dinner. I think we were going to a Peruvian restaurant.
[00:45:38.670] – Larry Leu
It was in the outside the suburb of the Los Angeles. Next to a Peruvian restaurant.
[00:45:53.330] – Patrick Sullivan
Yeah. So we’re walking by this taekwondo place. Class is in session. And I didn’t know that you had your black belt before this moment. And we were walking by, you looked and you said, he’s teaching them improperly. And I said, what? And then you just did this quick swift kick at a 45 degree angle. And the way that you snapped your leg, sometimes you just immediately know when somebody is proficient. When you snapped your leg, I’m like, I am never going to mess with Larry, ever. And so that’s the night that I learned that you’re a black belt. Could you reshare the story of this colleague, this younger colleague who is very persistent and diligent about working out and the topic is endurance?
[00:46:57.590] – Larry Leu
Yeah, I know this person for many years and he’s strong. He is tall and handsome man, very strong in the wealth field.
[00:47:11.310] – Patrick Sullivan
Well, handsome is a little generous.
[00:47:13.250] – Larry Leu
No, I believe he is very handsome and good looking man and very nice people too. But he is exercise fanatic. Every time when I have a go out on an assignment with him, he always gone and go to find a gym and never exception every single day and always exercise. So one day that he invited me and that we went to a gym that he was exercising and then he was pumping the iron and show me how to do those kind of things. And then we went on the treadmill and he would try to show off about how to run the treadmill. And he looked at me this all and sitting old man. And he was deteriorating to kind of show me how to do it. So we run on the treadmill next to each other and then we’ll run and I try to keep pace with him. And after 30 minutes then he started to look at turn his hand and look at me like in disbelief. What’s going on? Judge Goods able to keep up with me and they would continue to run and continue. And at that time I was just like, you know, what I’m going to show you.
[00:48:44.730] – Larry Leu
The old man has some capacity too. So I just keep running and running. Normally I don’t run more than 40 minutes, 30 minutes, but I just decided that, you know what, I’m just going to outrun.
[00:48:59.050] – Patrick Sullivan
So we just keep rolling and rolling.
[00:49:01.850] – Larry Leu
And until I just saw him, he just shook his head and then he stopped me and step off the treadmill. And then I run for a couple more minutes. Then I stopped, step off the treadmill and he looked at me. And then after that you would tell the people never mess with Larry on the treadmill.
[00:49:27.910] – Patrick Sullivan
Well, I always knew this person was smart. My realization of never to mess with you was when I saw you do a kick. And his realization was when you let them in the dust on a treadmill, if that’s possible. Oh, man, that is such a good story on endurance. But for those of you listening who know anything about running, this is where we kind of transitioned about mentality because it’s a paradigm shift. If you aren’t used to running and you go to run two or 3 miles, you are proud of the two or 3 miles and you should be. But if you’ve got the capacity to go out and say, I’m going to run 10 miles today or 15 miles, it’s a whole different mental shift to say, oh, I have to run ten or 15 miles, which brought into the next topic I’m like, that’s not normal, Larry. So let’s dive into this. Why were you able to just start running and just decide you were going to stop? Because it was time to stop. Because you have to have that paradigm of of course I can run for 10 miles. It’s normal. So where did that come from?
[00:50:48.490] – Larry Leu
I think it started from all of my early age. And I started taking the martial art training early age when I was in the middle school. I take that actually from my father, too. My father was actually the first person in Taiwan. I grew up in Taiwan and in Taiwan the first person over 60 that earned a black belt in the history of the Taiwan history. Because that’s when they brought the Korean coach over from the Korea and he was the one that took the lesson and build a good relationship with them and actually became body. Then he was a first person and I think I took some of that from him. So I picked up that wake up early in the morning during the middle school and I will run a couple of labs in school yard and then I will ride a bike through the dojo and then I have my Tigran doe training session and ride back home and then ride the bike to school, which is right now. Think of it, it was probably another 40 minutes ride one way. And I did that for years and I think that probably built up my mentality and my stamina.
[00:52:45.670] – Larry Leu
The funny thing is that I think I probably growled few inches in those few years. Seriously?
[00:52:55.590] – Patrick Sullivan
Yeah.
[00:52:58.470] – Larry Leu
I didn’t realize that. I just enjoyed doing it. And then it turned out it was one of the things that actually built a very good foundation for me in life, too. And then when I also play at the school baseball team and we always baseball team, you know, that besides the baseball practice that you have to run a lot. So we ran as a team, and then we ran and I realized that, hey, I can outrun most of my teammates. And I didn’t realize know, when school had a marathon competition, people say, hey, Larry, you should join and you should enter the competition. Lo and behold, I did. I didn’t realize that. And then I always won the first place. I only lost to one guy that people say that he has no heartbeat by the last second of the sprint. And that’s when I realized all the discipline, all the time. The years of the wake up early, running the lab, riding the bike to dojo practice, because when you do the taekwondo practice right now, you’re looking back, some of those are pretty intense, those kicking, those are nonstop. And the coach will purposely try to wear you out if you’re able to hold it.
[00:54:46.570] – Larry Leu
And I didn’t realize, I just never want to give up. And then during the process, you build up your stamina without even realizing.
[00:54:58.430] – Patrick Sullivan
So I told you I had this mind map, and the reason my head was down at different times is because I was just writing a few things down as we’d been talking. And then I just took some time to put boxes around some things that you had mentioned that jumped out to me. And at the center of my mind map was thirst for learning. And when I think about this conversation, we cover the topic of endurance, right from your childhood and your perspective on optimism, which is rooted in your beliefs and how you practice those. And then the topic of you, I think, as a person and how you brought that into your professional life around empathy. And the example that I cited, although there were multiple that we talked about, was your comment of earn the time. If you’re going to, from a professional standpoint, request people’s time, you need to earn it. Be prepared, rehearse, ask for feedback so when they’re spending the time with you, they’re getting the most value from it. And then just your consistency in always being open to learn something new in the spirit of helping people be successful.
[00:56:32.930] – Patrick Sullivan
And it wasn’t just professional, as you mentioned, with your wife, too. And as I was thinking about all of these boxes and hearing you talk, it’s not often that people reflect with the eye of being critical of themselves. And your story about not getting into the blame game and saying, get out of the blame game. Focus on the issue, look at it from a different perspective. Are there other people that can help? And it’s not your fault. When I think about that story, specifically, you can’t say all the things that you’ve said on this this recording without having wisdom. And I view you as a very wise individual, and I think it’s rooted in your desire to learn. And it’s not just learning information. It’s being self reflective and constantly improving. And then the last word that I boxed around this after this whole monolog is grace. And from the first day that I met you, Larry, you’ve operated in all of these things that you’ve talked about. I can’t see anything that I’ve experienced that’s been inconsistent. And I would just know you are at this utopian point and you conduct yourself with grace.
[00:58:04.710] – Patrick Sullivan
And I’m so proud to have had the opportunity to work with you. And I just want to thank you for spending your career, or at least the last part of your career with us.
[00:58:14.090] – Larry Leu
I appreciate it.
[00:58:15.210] – Patrick Sullivan
Thank you.
[00:58:17.290] – Larry Leu
Walt, my thought just jump into my lap.
[00:58:34.870] – Patrick Sullivan
So, Larry, given your dog wants to go for a walk, do you have any parting words of advice before we end the podcast?
[00:58:43.830] – Larry Leu
Well, I appreciate it and personally, I feel very fortunate in my last 1315 years of the career to know some of the people at ArcherGrey. I could not be more happy and satisfied to work towards a place that I can actually go home and feel very comfortable. And I think a lot of that is because I know the people that I work with, particularly the people that leading the company, has the same integrity and trust and character that I always hold very high for that. I think it’s really personally, I feel very fortunate because you’re able to find a place that you work, but you also feel that at end of the day, you can go to sleep with a peace of mind and with a gratitude. As I kind of enter my new phase of my retirement, I’m going to go out and meet more people. I’m going to go drive around the country and enjoy the life. But my goal is that spend more time with my wife and with my family, but at the same time, go visit small town that I didn’t have time to go to in the past. I always have to rush through big town, big city and highway.
[01:00:31.190] – Larry Leu
I’m going to stop by the small town, go through the small diner and sign to talk to some people and get to know them, meet people and have fun. That’s how I want to do. But again, I could not be more grateful or when I was supported and treated, I’ll just go, well, we feel.
[01:00:57.090] – Patrick Sullivan
The same and we feel very fortunate. So thank you for everything, Larry, and you deserve all the best. And I appreciate everything you’ve given.