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The Third Door by Alex Banayan

The Third Door by Alex Banayan

by Parker · 183 things on Twos

The Mindset of Success
The wild quest to uncover how the world's most successful people launched their careers
Step 1: Ditch the Line
Chapter One: Staring at the Ceiling
Chapter Two: The Price Is Right
Chapter Three: The Storage Closet
Step 2: Run Down the Alley
Chapter Four: The Spielberg Game
Many times the hardest part about achieving a dream isn’t actually achieving it—it’s stepping through your fear of the unknown when you don’t have a plan.
Having a teacher or boss tell you what to do makes life a lot easier. But nobody achieves a dream from the comfort of certainty.
The Spielberg Game
Jump off the tour bus.
Find an Inside Man.
Ask for his or her help to bring you in.
I told him about the mission. The words spilled out almost unconsciously. This wasn’t an elevator pitch. This was what I believed.
“There’s something about you that tells me you’re actually going to make this happen. I believe in you. I believe you can do this.”
Chapter Five: Crouching in the Bathroom
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
If you sense someone getting annoyed, you need to back off. You need to be polite and deferential and recognize that, if you’re emailing someone like that, you should have your hat in hand. There’s a fine line between being persistent and being a hassle.
Dear So-and-So, I know you’re really busy and that you get a lot of emails, so this will only take sixty seconds to read. [Here is where you say who you are: add one or two lines that establish your credibility.] [Here is where you ask your very specific question.] I totally understand if you’re too busy to respond, but even a one- or two-line reply would really make my day. All the best, Tim
Never email someone and ask to “jump on the phone,” “get coffee,” or “pick your brain.”
Put your question right in the email. It might be as simple as, ‘I’d like to discuss a relationship of some type that could take this-and-this form. Would you be willing to discuss it? I think a phone call might be faster, but if you prefer, I could throw a couple of questions your way via email.’
Never write lines like, ‘This is perfect for you,’ or ‘You’ll love this because I know this-and-this about you.’ Don’t use superlative or exaggerated words because they don’t know you and they’ll assume, quite fairly, it’s hard for you to determine if something’s perfect for them.
Don't end with something like, ‘Thanks in advance!’ It’s annoying and entitled. Do the opposite and say, ‘I know you’re super busy, so if you can’t respond, I totally understand.’
Certainly, watch your frequency of emailing. Don’t email a lot. It really does not make people happy.
Chapter Six: Qi Time
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” - Steve Jobs
“Luck is like a bus. If you miss one, there’s always the next one. But if you’re not prepared, you won’t be able to jump on.” - Qi Lu
Qi Time wasn’t just about sleeping less. It was about sacrifice—sacrificing short-term pleasure for long-term gain.
Every minute of every day, it’s about empowering people to know more, do more, and be more.
Chapter Seven: The Hidden Reservoir
“I didn’t have the experience, but I had the heart, the discipline, and the desire.” - Sugar Ray Leonard
“You may have the heart—you keep fighting, you keep fighting, you keep fighting—but your mind is saying, ‘Man, forget this. I don’t need this.’ The head and the heart aren’t going together; but they have to go together. It all has to connect. Everything has to connect to reach that level, that pinnacle. You may have a desire, a wish, a dream—but it’s got to be more than that—you’ve got to want it to the point that it hurts. Most people never reach that point. They never tap into what I call the Hidden Reservoir, your hidden reserve of strength. We all have it. When they say a mother lifted up a car off a trapped child, that’s that power.” - Sugar Ray Leonard
“How many times have people told you, ‘You can’t interview these types of people’? How many times have they said, ‘No way’? Don’t let anyone tell you your dream isn’t possible. When you have a vision, you’ve got to hang in there. You’ve got to stay in the fight. It’s going to get tough. You’re going to hear no. But you’ve got to keep pushing. You’ve got to keep fighting. You’ve got to use your Hidden Reservoir. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s possible. When I saw in the letter that you’re nineteen, I remembered how I felt when I was your age. I was eager. I was excited. I was hungry. I wanted that gold medal more than anything. And when I look at you, don’t let anybody take that away from you.” - Sugar Ray Leonard
Step 3: Find Your Inside Man
Chapter Eight: The Dream Mentor
when I stop talking you’ll know I’m dead
Chapter Nine: The Rules
There is no tipping point. It’s all just little steps.
Rule number one: Never use your phone in a meeting. I don’t care if you’re just taking notes. Using your phone makes you look like a chump. Always carry a pen in your pocket. The more digital the world gets, the more impressive it is to use a pen. And anyway, if you’re in a meeting, it’s just rude to be on your phone.
Rule number two: Act like you belong. Walk into a room like you’ve been there before. Don’t gawk over celebrities. Be cool. Be calm. And never, ever ask someone for a picture. If you want to be treated like a peer, you need to act like one. Fans ask for pictures. Peers shake hands.
Rule number three: Mystery makes history. When you’re doing cool shit, don’t post pictures of it on Facebook. No one actually changing the world posts everything they do online. Keep people guessing what you’re up to. Plus, the people you’re going to impress by posting things online aren’t the people you should care about impressing.
Rule number four: Never, ever go back on your word. If I tell you something in confidence, you need to be a vault. What goes in does not come out. This goes for your relationships with everyone from this day forward. If you act like a vault, people will treat you like a vault. It will take years to build your reputation, but seconds to ruin it.
Rule number five: Adventures only happen to the adventurous.
Your mission is nice, but this story tells me more about who you are than anything else you could possibly say. This story commands attention. Everybody has experiences in their lives, some choose to make them into stories.
Chapter Ten: Adventures Only Happen to the Adventurous
“He’s a good kid. Let him go.”
Chapter Eleven: Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Just tell yourself you’re calling your friend, dial the number, and start talking right away. The best cure for nervousness is immediate action.
Bite off more than you can chew. You can figure out how to chew later.
Chapter Twelve: That's How You Do Business
Chapter Thirteen: Exponential Life
You have to make a calculated judgment that the amount of money you’re going to put in is going to either pay off way bigger in the long term or enough in the short term to offset your costs. Aside from the money you live on, the rest is your money to play the game.
You have to go for it, even if there’s a chance you’ll fail. The planets are never going to perfectly align. When you see an opportunity, it’s up to you to jump.
Chapter Fourteen: The Avoidance List
You never know when your life will be over and I felt I would be an idiot to waste my days living out someone else’s life rather than living my own.
Write a list of twenty-five things you want to accomplish in the next twelve months. If you could only do five of those things in the next three months, which would you choose? Copy those five things onto the second sheet of paper, and then cross them off the first. You now have two lists. On top of the list of five, write: ‘The Priority List.’ Now over the list of twenty, write: ‘The Avoidance List.’ That’s Mr. Buffett’s secret. The key to accomplishing your top five priorities is to avoid the other twenty. You have a choice, you can be good at those twenty- five things or you can be world-class at the five. Most people have so many things they want to do that they never do a single thing well. The Avoidance List is the secret to being world-class.
Success is a result of prioritizing your desires.
If that’s what you have to do, then that’s your decision— and I respect you even more for making it.
Chapter Fifteen: You Can't Out-Amazon Amazon
While there’s a time for studying what’s worked for other people, there are moments when you have to go all in on what makes you unique. And in order to do that, you have to know what makes you, you.
Chapter Sixteen: No One Ever Asks
What are your end goals?
“Most people never take the time to ask themselves why they’re doing what they’re doing and even when they do, most people lie to themselves.” - Tony Hsieh
“Ego isn’t particularly healthy, but what’s worse is having it and lying to yourself that you don’t.” - Tony Hsieh
“Don’t judge the motivations as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Just ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Choosing the right tactics becomes easy once you know your end goal.” - Tony Hsish
Don’t be an idiot. If you tell him, he’ll always see you as a fan. You can either be seen as a friend or a fan.
No one ever asks.
Chapter Seventeen: It's All Gray
Ever since I’d watched The Social Network, I’d thought of Zuckerberg as a rebel who dropped out of school, threw his middle finger to the sky, and never looked back. The film never showed Zuckerberg doubting Facebook’s future. It never showed him cautiously debating taking one semester off.
The truth is never black and white. It’s gray. It’s all gray.
If you want the whole story, you have to dig deeper. You can’t rely on headlines or tweets. Gray doesn’t fit in 140 characters.
Gates didn’t impulsively drop out of college either. He took just one semester off during junior year to work full-time on Microsoft. And when momentum for the company didn’t fully pick up, Gates went back to college. Again, no one talks about that. It wasn’t until the following year that Gates took another semester off, and then another, as Microsoft grew.
Maybe the hardest part about taking a risk isn’t whether to take it, it’s when to take it. It’s never clear how much momentum is enough to justify leaving school. It’s never clear when it’s the right time to quit your job. Big decisions are rarely clear when you’re making them —they’re only clear looking back. The best you can do is take one careful step at a time.
“Success is a result of prioritizing your desires.” - Dan Babcock
Family of course comes first, but at what point do I stop living for others and start living for myself?
“Told ’em I finished school and I started my own business They say “Oh you graduated?” No, I decided I was finished.” - Kanye West
Step 4: Trudge Through The Mud
Chapter Eighteen: Hallelujah!
Chapter Nineteen: Grandpa Warren
“I tell college students, when you get to be my age, you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you.” - Warren Buffet
“No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” - Warren Buffet
“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business...So I do more reading and thinking, and make fewer impulse decisions than most people in business.” - Warren Buffet
“I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.” - Warren Buffet
“The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything—you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you’re a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, ‘Swing, you bum!’ ” - Warren Buffet
“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” - Warren Buffet
Although people won’t meet with you for the reason you want, that doesn’t mean they won’t meet at all. Just find another angle. Figure out what they need and use that as your way in.
One path leads to a linear life, the other an exponential.
Read the footnotes.
When everyone else skims a report, Buffett is obsessively scouring the fine print, going above and beyond, studying every word, looking for clues. You don’t have to be born a genius to read the footnotes—it’s a choice. It’s a choice to put in the hours, go the extra mile, and do the things others aren’t willing to do. Reading the damn footnotes isn’t just a task on Buffett’s to-do list—it’s his outlook on life.
Chapter Twenty: The Motel 6
“Persistence—it’s a cliché, but it happens to work. The person who makes it is the person who keeps on going after everyone else has quit. This is more important than intelligence, pedigree, even connections. Be dogged! Keep hitting that door until you bust it down!” - Jerry Weintraub
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” - Benjamin Franklin
“The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” - Thomas Edison
“You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.” - Babe Ruth
“My success is based on persistence, not luck.” - Estée Lauder
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” - Albert Einstein
“We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.” - Helen Keller
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” - Winston Churchill
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.” - Calvin Coolidge
“You’ve got to stay in the fight. It’s going to get tough. You’re going to hear no. But you’ve got to keep pushing.” - Sugar Ray Leonard
Learning how to get the yes on your own is what matters. You just need to get more creative in your next letter.
Attach the letter to a single shoe. Put the shoe in a nice package, and on the box write, ‘Just trying to get my foot in the door!’
You need to understand that business is not target practice. It’s not about obsessing over a bull’s-eye. It’s about putting as many balls in the air as possible and seeing which one hits.
You need to start working on building a pipeline and getting other balls in the air. Business is not target practice.
Chapter Twenty-One: Frog Kissing
If you keep kissing frogs, eventually one will turn into a prince. So even when you’ve kissed dozens of frogs—and all you have as a result is a nasty taste in your mouth—Dean Kamen says to keep kissing them, and eventually, you’ll find the prince.
“Let’s say there’s a one-in-one-hundred chance you’re going to get something right. If you’re willing to do it more than a hundred times, you start to approach the probability that, eventually, you’re going to get it right. Call it luck. Call it tenacity. You will eventually get it if you exhaust all your efforts.” - Dean Kamen
“If you can convince yourself that a problem can’t be solved, you can quit without feeling like a coward.” - Dean Kamen
“You should kiss one of these, one of those—but don’t try to kiss every possible frog. First figure out how many kinds of frogs there are and then see if you can kiss one of each kind.” - Dean Kamen
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Shareholders Meeting
“To attract money, you should deserve money. And you should develop a record over time that does it. You should explain to people why that record is a product of sound thinking rather than simply being in tune with a trend or simply just being lucky.” - Warren Buffett
“The best way to raise money before you have a track record is to do it from people who already believe in you and trust you, because they’ve seen you do other things in the past. Those people can be family, friends, college professors, former bosses, or even the parents of your friends. It’s hard to do when you’re young and that’s why people start so small.” - Charlie Munger
Chapter Twenty-Three: Mr. Kinggg!
Some people are not who they say they are.
Desperation clogs intuition.
When we are the most comfortable in our seats, our guests are the most comfortable in their seats—and that’s what makes for the best interviews.
“The secret is: there is no secret. There’s no trick to being yourself.” - Larry King
It’s still a human being making the hiring decision. Only after looking you in the eye can someone get a sense if you’re genuine. You may be using the same words in an email, but it’s a different experience in person. People like human beings. People don’t like random names in their inbox.
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Final Bullet
“You want to know the secret to changing the world? Stop trying to change it. Do great work and let your work change the world.” - Richard Saul Wurman
“You won’t get anywhere significant in life until you come to the epiphany that you know nothing. You’re still too cocky. You think you can learn anything. You think you can speed up the process.” - Richard Saul Wurman
“How does one become successful? You’ll get the same answer if you ask that to any other older, wiser, and more successful person: you have to want to do it very, very badly.” - Richard Saul Wurman
“I don’t understand why people give speeches with slides. When you speak with slides, you become a caption. Never be a caption.” - Richard Saul Wurman
“I live my life by two mantras. One: if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And two: most things don’t work out.” - Richard Saul Wurman
Step 5: Take The Third Door
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Holy Grail: Part 1
The potential to unlock your future is in your hands—but first you have to pick up the damn phone.
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Holy Grail: Part 2
The first step in a sales meeting is having to blast through skepticism, and the best way to do that is by overwhelming people with your expertise. Gates would talk fast and dive immediately into the details—character sets, computer chips, programming languages, software platforms—to the point that it became undeniably clear he wasn’t just some kid.
His advice to overpromise isn’t new, but Gates was selling IBM on his speed in a way that was obviously impossible. In reality, it took Microsoft months to deliver the software. But that didn’t matter in the long run. What mattered is that Gates understood that one of the problems large companies have is they move slowly—so he was selling them on what they needed most.
He bet it would be better to take less money from IBM than to squeeze it for all it was worth. He believed that other companies would come into the PC market, and if he could close the IBM deal, other PC companies would make even more lucrative deals with Microsoft.
Gates wanted to be paid in something more valuable than cash: strategic positioning. It’s better to make a fair deal today that sets you up for more deals down the road than a great deal that doesn’t set you up for anything. The takeaway was clear: choose long-term positioning over short-term profits.
Figure out your opponent’s fears, then use them to your advantage.
It’s critical to become an expert on the background of the person you’re dealing with.
Ask for their advice, spend as much informal time with them as possible, and get them to take me under their wing.
The best negotiating tactic is to build a genuine, trusting relationship. If you’re an unknown entrepreneur and the person you’re dealing with isn’t invested in you, why would he or she even do business with you? But on the other hand, if the person is your mentor or friend, you might not even need to negotiate.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Third Door
Life will keep hitting you over the head with the same lesson until you listen.
There is no tipping point. It’s all just little steps.
A tipping point only appears in hindsight. You don’t feel it when you’re in the trenches. Being an entrepreneur is about pushing, not tipping.
They’re called bullshit no’s. You just have to build a pipeline so when you get a bullshit no from one person, there’s still thirty others to work on.
Because of an external factor you couldn’t have predicted, one of those things worked. You have no way of knowing what’s going on in the lives of the people in your pipeline. You can’t anticipate their mood or how generous they’re feeling. All you can do is control your effort.
You have to do two things: One, think bigger. And two, think differently.
You just have to give people an offer they can’t refuse.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Whenever you wonder, the answer is yes. People don’t want to do small shit. You need to think bigger and think differently. Don’t ‘I wonder’ through life. Just make it happen.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Redefining Success
“When I was a kid, I had two goals for my life. The first was to create something with engineering that changes the world. The second was to live life on my own terms. Most people do things because that’s what society tells them they should do. But if you stop and do the math—if you actually think for yourself—you’ll realize there’s a better way to do things. I’m happy because I do what I want every day.” - Steve Wozniak
“Society tells you that success is getting the most powerful position possible, but I asked myself: Is that what would make me happiest?” - Steve Wozniak
Who’s to say that Steve Jobs was more successful?
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Staying an Intern
“A true hustler is always looking for the next one. It’s like playing a video game—let’s say Mario Bros. Okay, you beat the first level, now you got to beat the second level, now you got to beat the third level. Once you beat the game, you’re like, ‘Whoa, whoa. Where’s the next game? Where it at?’” - Pitbull
“That’s number one in anything: understanding the opportunity you have.” - Pitbull
It’s about always staying an intern.
It’s about humbling yourself enough to learn, even when you’re at the top of your game. It’s about knowing that the moment you get comfortable being an executive is the moment you begin to fail. It’s about realizing that, if you want to continue being Mufasa, at the same time you have to keep being Simba.
Chapter Thirty: The Collision
It’s the biases we don’t know we hold that are the most dangerous.
Chapter Thirty-One: Turning Darkness into Light
“‘I’m a human being. She was a human being. She overcame all of these things. And she’s still working at it. Amazing.’ Take as much as you can from those who went before you. Those are the rainbows in your clouds. Whether they knew your name, or would never see your face, whatever they’ve done, it’s been for you.” - Maya Angelou
“It’s going to be better. If it’s bad, it might get worse, but I know that it’s going to be better. And you have to know that.” - Maya Angelou
“‘Every storm runs out of rain.’ I’d make a sign of that if I were you. Put that on your writing pad. No matter how dull and seemingly unpromising life is right now, it’s going to change. It’s going to be better. But you have to keep working.” - Maya Angelou
“Nathaniel Hawthorne said: Easy reading is damn hard writing. And that’s probably just as true the other way around; that is, easy writing is damn hard reading. Approach writing, approach whatever your job is, with admiration for yourself, and for those who did it before you. Become as familiar with your craft as it is possible to become. Now, what I do, and what I encourage young writers to do, is to go into a room alone, close the door, and read something you’ve written already. Read it aloud, so you can hear the melody of the language. Listen to the rhythm of the language. Listen to it. Before you know it, you’ll think, ‘Mmmh, it’s not too bad! That’s pretty good.’ Do it so you can admire yourself for trying. Compliment yourself for taking on such a difficult, but delicious, chore.” - Maya Angelou
“You have to know that you have certain natural skills, and that you can learn others, so you can try some things. You can try for better jobs. You can try for a higher position. And if you seem assured, somehow your assurance makes those around you feel assured. ‘Oh, here she comes, she knows what she’s doing!’ Well, the thing is that you’re going to the library late at night and cramming and planning while everybody does their thing. I don’t think we are born with the art. You know, if you have a certain eye you can see depth and precision and color and all of that; if you have a certain ear, you can hear certain notes and harmonies; but almost everything is learned. So if you have a normal brain, and maybe a little abnormal, you can learn things. Trust yourself.” - Maya Angelou
“Don’t narrow your life down. I’m eighty-five and I’m just getting started! Life is going to be short, no matter how long it is. You don’t have much time. Go to work.” - Maya Angelou
Chapter Thirty-Two: Sitting Down with Death
“I think you can remove some of those hurdles in the road, if you surround yourself with the right people. If you try to go it as a lone wolf, if you’re just angry and fighting the system the whole time, no one is going to want to be around you because you’re always going to be mad, fighting the good fight. But if you can run the race with grace, dignity, and integrity, it makes it a lot easier to get to the finish line. Nobody is in control of who they are when they’re born. You’re born into the family you’re born into and you’re born into the circumstances you’re born into. So you just have to take what you can from where you’re at and not compare yourself to other people. You have to look at your path and know that whatever got you there, and where you’re going, is unique to you. You weren’t supposed to be any other way. And it’s so easy to get distracted. The man in the left lane is still going to get to his finish line. He doesn’t care. He may look over at you in the beginning, but then he’s off. If you’re constantly looking over your shoulder at him, you’ll never finish your race. And you know what? The obstacles women face just make for better businesses. Because in the end, we know how to deal with some shit. This man in the cartoon won’t be equipped, because you really only learn if you’ve gone through it.” - Jessica Alba
“It’s tough to find job candidates who are intelligent and focused, but who are also dreamers. The dreamer part is that entrepreneurial spirit—where if this door is closed and that door is closed and that door is closed—how the hell are you going to get in? You just need to figure it out. You need to use common sense, build relationships; I don’t care how you get in, but you’ve got to get in somehow.” - Jessica Alba
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Impostor
“I live my life by two mantras. One: if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And two: most things don’t work out.” - Founder of TED
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Greatest Gift
“Frank Gehry always says to me—he’s a Pisces too—he says, ‘If architecture is frozen music, then music must be liquid architecture.’ All great art is emotional architecture.” - Quincy Jones
“When Spielberg came to my studio, he said he directs the same way I conduct. He creates a strong structure, and on top of that, he improvises. You have to give people room to put their personalities on it.” - Quincy Jones
“I teach the musicians I mentor to become themselves. To know themselves and to love themselves. That’s all I care about...Know yourself and love yourself.” - Quincy Jones
“Young people are always chasing. It’s because they think they’re in control of everything. They have to learn to be connected to the universe. Just let it happen to you.” - Quincy Jones
“There’s a statute of limitations that’s expired on all childhood traumas. Fix your shit and get on with your life.” - Quincy Jones
“You have to cherish your mistakes. You have to get back up no matter how many times you get knocked down. There are some people who face defeat and retreat; who become cautious and afraid, who deal with fear instead of passion, and that’s not right. I know it seems complex, but it’s relatively simple. It’s: let go and let God. You can’t get an A if you’re afraid of getting an F. It’s amazing, the psychology of growing in your field, no matter what you do. Growth comes from mistakes. You have to cherish them, so you can learn from them. Your mistakes are your greatest gift.” - Quincy Jones
‘Quincy, your music can be no more or no less than you are as a human being.’ - Nat King Cole
I’d always seen success and failure as opposites, but now I could see they were just different results of the same thing—trying. I swore to myself that from now on I would be unattached to succeeding, and unattached to failing. Instead, I would be attached to trying, to growing.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Getting in the Game
Best marketing strategy ever! Steve Jobs Think different / Crazy ones speech (with real subtitles) - YouTube
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - Dumbledore
Everyone has the power to make little choices that can alter their lives forever. You can either choose to give in to inertia and continue waiting in line for the First Door, or you can choose to jump out of line, run down the alley, and take the Third Door. We all have that choice.
When you change what you believe is possible, you change what becomes possible.