The Third Door by Alex Bayanan

Hello, Book Thinkers family! As part of my 2020 goals, I'm actually rereading 30 of the books that have had the biggest impact on my life. I've read hundreds and hundreds of personal development books over the last 5 years, but a small number of them, in this case 30, have had such a disproportionately positive impact on my life. These are the books that I've drawn the most actionable insights from, so I'm going to reread those books this year and then do video reviews on them. So the first one is The Third Door by Alex Banayan. The subtitle of this book is The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World's Most Successful People Launched Their Careers. This book isn't a sales book. It's not a self-help book. It's not a book on entrepreneurship. It's a book on all of those subjects, which is why I loved it so much. I really identified with this book. I listened to it for the first time back in 2019. And I found a lot of valuable content in it. Alex is a fantastic, uh, Audible narrator. He actually reads the book to us, and you can sense how genuine he is about the lessons that he's learned throughout this book. So the third door is a really cool metaphor, and here it is. I'm going to read it to everybody. Life, business success— it's just like a nightclub. There's always 3 ways to get in. There's the first door, the main entrance, where the line curves around the block where 99% of people wait around hoping to get in. There's the second door, the VIP entrance, where the billionaires, celebrities, and people born into it slip through. But no one tells you that there is always, always the third door. It's the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door 100 times, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen, There's always a way, whether it's how Bill Gates sold his first piece of software or how Steven Spielberg became the youngest studio director in Hollywood history. They all took the third door. Now, I won't spoil it for you, but Alex interviews some amazing people, including— I'll just name one— Tim Ferriss, who's basically my idol. And these interviews are so fun and they're creative and they're catchy. And all of these people's stories, including Alex's, are fantastic. One in particular that I'll talk about today is Pitbull. We all know Pitbull as the Miami native, the guy kind of fist pumping on stage, singing crazy music, having fun. It's always upbeat, up-tempo. But Pitbull is a student of the game. Pitbull is always trying to level up his life. And one thing that he told Alex is, look, you need to always be an intern. No matter how great you become in one area of your life, there are so many other things that you can learn. So take your ego off, put it to the side, and become a student. Become an intern to anybody and everybody because everybody has something to teach you. And recently in the Daily Stoic, they were actually talking about this concept as well. If you can forego the ego, if you can put it down, put it to the side, keep it in check, and sit there and in ignorance ask questions, be open, don't care about what other people think of you, you will always learn more than the guy who Says, "I know everything. I don't need to learn anything. I'm not going to try to ask questions because I might look dumb. Whatever." Those are the people that have insecurities. Those are the people that won't progress their learning at a faster pace because they're just scared of what everybody else is going to think. They're scared of that judgment. So that was a really cool lesson. I mean, Alex was so, for lack of a better term, ignorant when he started this process. As another example, he called Tim Ferriss. Or his assistants or emailed him, whatever, week after week after week after week after week after week. And he wasn't the guy that people wanted to help. He wasn't the guy that people wanted to let interview them. He was just kind of that incessant fly always buzzing around. Finally, just, okay, you know, I'll deal with it. I'll let you interview me. You don't want to be that guy. You want to be the guy that people want to help. Just ask questions, be friendly. And Pitbull is out kind of making music and he's He's won a Grammy or something like that, and then the next day he's in a business walking through the halls of Apple, learning from people around him, studying entrepreneurship. It was pretty refreshing to hear that. So with that, I hope everybody has a fantastic day. I would highly recommend this book. These 30 books that I'm going to review are in no particular order, so this isn't my favorite book or anything like that, but it's in my top 30, so I'd highly recommend it. All right, take care everybody. Go read something. Bye.