The third door

 

“if you’re doing what everybody else is doing, you’re doing it wrong”

When you’re a kid, you’re never afraid to dream, we love attempting to do things, people tell us we are unlikely to do, so you dream of becoming a scientist, becoming an astronaut or even a president. You never question whether it’s possible but as you grow up you’re told that your dreams are too crazy and that what you truly want out of life is unachievable and that you should be realistic. But what we forget is that people’s opinion on what they think is possible means absolutely nothing.

People we spend time with try to rationalize by saying, you don’t have enough resources, you don’t know enough people, YOU JUST CAN’T GET IT DONE!!

Let me tell you its never the lack of resources, its always a lack of resourcefulness

How many times have gone through with the “what I want to do with life crisis”, I know I have

We constantly feel like we are stuck in this rat race, in some ways we are. Stuck in this long traffic , not even knowing where we are headed. how are we supposed to figure out what our career should look like at an age when we are not even old enough to drink legally.

The schools were meant to teach us how we can contribute and make our own mark in the world but instead they just show us how we can fit in it and make us believe that “it is what it is”(which is a very dangerous notion to have in you’re head)

But what if there was a way, a way to make your dreams come true.

 

you know when you go to a nightclub. there's the main door where everyone has to wait in line then there's a second door for VIPs(the rich folks) and then there’s a third door for the hustlers who don't want to wait they will go around the back and find their own way in. they'll knock on a door a hundred times or pry open a window and walk in through the kitchen and that's how every success story in the book became successful.

The third door is about Alex Ben Ian's five-year quest to interview famous people like Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Maya Angelou, Warren Buffett and Steve Wozniak in order to uncover their secrets to success.

Alex, one day asked his friends “ guys if we can create our dream University who would be our professors so my friends started calling things out, Bill Gates will teach business, Lady Gaga music, Quincy Jones production, Larry King broadcasting, jane goodall science, maya angelou poetry, mark zuckerberg Tech and we went on and on and on and that became the treasure map for this journey”

The funny thing about this was all the people he dreamed of actually said yes. Every single adventure to get an interview reminded him what was possible.

He was 18 years old, a freshman in college and was going through a life crisis . not only did he not know what he wanted to do with his life but he also had no idea how all the people he looked up to, did the impossible. How did bill gates sell his first piece of software when nobody even knew his name, how did steven Spielberg become the youngest director in the Hollywood history without a single hit under his belt. These are the things, they don’t normally teach you in school. So he did what any person looking for answers would do, went to the library and started ripping through biographies and business books looking for answers but eventually he was left empty handed. So that’s when the naïve 18 year old decided “if no one’s going to write the book I am dreaming of reading, why not write it myself”

Alex was a (18 y/o)student with no money. so how could he spend time researching, traveling and interviewing for months. He was lucky enough to get an invite to the show (the price is right)from an acquaintance who couldn't make it then he studied how to get selected to play and asked people at the show for tips on how to win and it worked. He won thirty one thousand one hundred eighty-eight dollars and that's how he funded the book.

a few years later he employed the same strategy to attend Warren Buffett's annual conference and managed to ask four questions when getting even one question in has a chance of 1 in 1,000.

A common theme throughout the book is the value of mentors. the book chronicles Alex's struggles even though he did succeed in meeting an impressive array of famous people it never looked easy. his mission was full of hard work, constant rejection and many mistakes. by the end he realized that success and failure aren't really opposites but simply the result of trying and that's what matters the most trying Alex made many mistakes on his quest but he often learned more from the mistakes and they were the ones that changed him the most.

Lets take a look at this recent example of someone finding their “third door”

Cold calling and emailing simply don't work no matter how creative your approach, based on a mentors advice Alex sent Warren Buffett's assistant a shoe with a note just trying to get my foot in the door such strategies are often hailed by sales professionals but ultimately their success rate is miniscule and only going down because everyone is employing the same tactics what really works getting back to basics meeting people in person only then can they see that you're genuine and start caring about helping you after speaking with many of the greatest minds alive Alex distilled their success into one common element they didn't follow the prescribed path………

He has changed our perception of what humans thought was possible to accomplish giving hope and most importantly to inspire a new generation of unconventional thinkers and doers.

To anyone out there, trying to figure out who they are and what their passions are. Alex says “don't focus on your passion, just ask yourself what excites me and if you go home every night with a journal and write down what excited me today and then what I learned about myself today after about day 30 you will start seeing a pattern and that pattern is probably your biggest neon sign to your path”

 

“Doesn’t matter what age you are, figure out your origin story”