The Third Door

The Third Door follows an 18-year-old’s wild quest of interviewing many of the world’s most successful people to discover what it takes to get to the top.

Want to know the secret to getting your big break? Never give up. I know it sounds cliché, but persistence really is critical to reaching our dreams.

The one thing all interviewees had in common is that they were tenacious. We need to be determined to fight our way to that third door. It is important, however, to be persistent in the right way.

Banayan is a huge fan of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and became obsessed with interviewing him early on. After catching him at a conference, Ferriss told him they’d keep in touch for an interview. After time passed with no contact, Banayan sent email after email with no reply. But he kept them positive and cheery nonetheless.

Finally, Ferriss agreed to talk. When they did, he taught Banayan an important lesson: be persistent in the right way.

Ferriss explained how he was able to get his foot in the door with a startup by being determined. They turned him down for a job 12 times. Finally, he called, said he was in the area, and wanted to stop by. Except he wasn’t. When the CEO agreed, Ferriss took a plane across the country to make the “casual” drop-by happen. This landed him the job.

Ferriss stresses to keep your balance between persistence and rudeness and to never to be presumptuous. Make sure that you don’t give up, but don’t harass people.

Only when he landed his book deal did Banayan meet the man who inspired him in the first place: Bill Gates. Founder of Microsoft and now one of the richest men in the world, he was once a 19-year-old kid, scared to make a phone call. In the ’80s, when a company called MITS released the world’s first mini-computer, Gates and his partner offered them to sell software to run it. After hearing nothing back, both of them were too scared to follow up. Eventually, Gates got over his paralyzing fear and made the call. Had he not swallowed his self-doubt, he might not be the billionaire he is today. The lesson? Pick up the phone and get out of your comfort zone! We see Banayan be vulnerable repeatedly throughout the book, from telling his parents about quitting his pre-med degree to coming to terms with how difficult his goal was. He often didn’t even know how to talk to the people he admired without being immensely nervous and freezing up. But whenever he gets out of his comfort zone, the payoff is real. As a…