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Who is the author of The Third Door?

The author of The Third Door is Alex Banayan.

Career & Success

The Third Door Book Summary - The Third Door Book explained in key points

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The Third Door summary

Name: The Third Door
Rating: 4.4 (109 reviews)
Author: Alex Banayan

Alex Banayan

The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Careers

4.4 (109 ratings)

27 mins

Brief summary

The Third Door by Alex Banayan is an inspiring book about the journey of a young man in search of the most successful people in the world, and how he discovered the key to success by following unconventional paths.

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Success Leadership

Table of Contents

The Third Door
Summary of 10 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 10

What’s in it for me? Learn how the most successful people in the world launched their careers.

Success in life, business or almost any field you choose, is like getting into a nightclub. There are always three doors: The first door is the main entrance, where almost everyone queues, waiting and hoping to get in. The second door is the VIP door, where the celebrities and billionaires slip straight through.

And then there’s the third door. Most people don’t even know it exists, but it does. You have to step out of line, run around the back of the club, bang on the door, maybe sneak through a kitchen. You’ll need a little chutzpah and a little initiative, but there’s always a way.

The world’s most successful people went through the third door, ignoring the queue in their determination to get ahead. In these blinks, you’ll follow the path of an ambitious young man on his quest to track down and interview some of the most successful people in the world and learn the secrets of how they got ahead.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how braving an important phone call got Bill Gates’s career off to a flying start;
how re-engineering your sleeping pattern could give you a competitive advantage; and
why biting off more than you can chew isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

Bill Gates inspired the author to go on a quest for the secrets to success.

Alex Banayan was supposed to become a doctor. At least, that was his parents’ plan for him. But at 18 years old, a month into college as a pre-med, he realized this wasn’t the path for him.

One day, while reading a biography of Bill Gates instead of studying, Banayan started wondering. Bill Gates had become the richest man in the world and revolutionized the software industry. But how? How did he go from a regular 18-year-old kid, just like Banayan, to becoming the wealthiest man in the world? Banayan started looking into other successful people: How had Steven Spielberg, a guy who didn’t even get into film school, ended up as one of the most successful directors in history? What did Lady Gaga do to pivot from waiting tables to nailing her first record deal in 2006?

Banayan couldn’t find a book that gave him the answer to these questions, so he decided to write it himself. Why not? He’d arrange interviews with Bill Gates and of other legends, travel across the US to meet with them, write up his discoveries and share them with his entire generation.

Getting the interviews was one thing, getting to them was quite another. The hard part, he quickly realized, would be funding the travel to all those interviews.

But as luck would have it, the game show The Price is Right was being filmed a few miles away. Winning the show was how he’d fund his quest.

Some googling told him that the wackier the behavior at casting, the more chance of getting selected for the show. So when he turned up on set, Banayan hugged janitors, danced with security guards and flirted with old ladies. It worked, and he got selected. He didn’t actually know how to play the game though, so began chatting to his fellow contestants. One kindly old woman, who said she’d been watching for 40 years, took a shine to him. She advised him to always guess low, as guessing too high would get you eliminated.

Hours later, with studio lights shining in his face, Banayan won the final prize – a sailboat, retail price $31,188, which he sold days later for $16,000. His quest could begin.

Meeting Tim Ferriss taught the author how to be persistent in the right way. Eventually.

After reading Tim Ferriss’s phenomenally popular book The 4-Hour Work Week (2007), Banayan became obsessed with meeting the author.

At a conference where Ferriss was speaking, Banayan hid in a bathroom during the speech, realizing that its location gave him the best chance of intercepting Ferriss as he came off stage. When Ferriss finished talking, Banayan sprung out and snatched a quick chat. Ferriss seemed interested in Banayan’s mission and said he’d get in touch.

Qi Lu, a software superstar, got his break by finding extra hours in the day.

When a contact at Microsoft said he could get Banayan an interview with Qi Lu, Banayan wasn’t sure what to think. Any interview was good news, but he’d never even heard of this guy.

But Banayan’s interest was piqued when he learned that Lu was one of the tech world’s rising stars.

A world champion boxer showed how hidden reservoirs of determination could make the difference between success and failure.

After his initial success in talking to Qi Lu and Tim Ferriss, Banayan hit a brick wall. Qi Lu had helpfully passed on an interview request to Bill Gates, but the message came back that Gates wouldn’t meet. Banayan embraced “Qi Time,” getting up at six o’clock every day to write more cold emails requesting interviews. But the only consequence of more emails going out was more rejections coming back in.

Eventually, “Sugar” Ray Leonard, a six-time world champion boxer, agreed to an interview at his California mansion. Banayan had written to the boxer saying that he believed the younger generation could learn from his advice.

Biting off more than you can chew can catapult you to success.

It’s always good to have a mentor in life. For Banayan, that mentor was Elliott Bisnow. A 20-something kid who dropped out of school and built a company, Bisnow Media, with his dad, that would go on to sell for 50 million dollars in 2016. In 2008, Bisnow also co-founded Summit Series to provide fun conferences for entrepreneurs and the world’s elite.

Impressed at how much Bisnow had achieved so young, Banayan got in touch. They met days later in LA and quickly became friends. Bisnow helped Banayan access a world of entrepreneurs and taught him invaluable lessons. The key one was to bite off more than you can chew.

Sometimes you have to find your own path to success, instead of trying to out-Amazon Amazon.

When Banayan tried to approach Bill Gates for an interview, he got this message from Gates’s office: he would never get an interview while he didn’t have a publishing deal.

So Banayan set out to find a publishing deal. The key to this was finding a literary agent. From that point on, Banayan’s motto was “get a literary agent, get Bill Gates.”

Bill Gates offers lessons in how to break through your discomfort zone and achieve early business success.

After securing his book deal, Banayan eventually persuaded Bill Gates’s office to set up an interview.

Researching ahead of the meeting, Banayan discovered an incident that he felt explained Gates’s early success. It resonated with Banayan, who had always suffered from nerves when he needed to make an important phone call or conversation. The lesson? Sometimes you have to break through your discomfort.

A day shadowing Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh taught the author to embrace ego and ask for help.

One day, at a party hosted by his friend, Miki Agrawal, founder of the period-proof underwear business THINX, Banayan saw Tony Hsieh, CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos. Hsieh was walking around with a clipboard that had “Wishes List” written on it, explaining that, for one day, he was acting as fairy godmother.

When Hsieh asked Banayan what he wished for, Banayan knew straight away. I want to be the Zappos CEO for the day, he said. His 20th birthday was coming up soon and he wondered if he could shadow Hsieh. Hsieh was a little surprised, but agreed.

The author learned from Warren Buffett and Dean Kamen that sometimes you need to think again to solve a problem.

Banayan pursued Warren Buffett for an interview for months. He even flew to Buffett’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, in the hope of bumping into him, only to discover he arrived at the same time as the worst snow-storm for 30 years.

Banayan never met the “Oracle of Omaha,” and instead spent time in his hotel room shivering from the cold. Having read everything there is to know about Buffett, he picked up a few lessons in success.

Steve Wozniak showed that there are different ways to be successful in life.

After hearing who Banayan was interviewing, one man said he didn’t feel worthy of being on the list. He was also, by some distance, the happiest guy Banayan had met.

Steve Wozniak was, alongside Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. But unlike Jobs, or Gates, or Buffett, Wozniak has never been seen as a business tycoon, largely because he left Apple in 1985.

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What is The Third Door about?

The Third Door (2018) tells the tale of an ambitious, 18-year-old college freshman who decided to track down Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Lady Gaga and many more of the world’s most famous people to find out how they got their big break. After hacking the game show The Price is Right and funding his adventure with the winnings, Banayan used his chutzpah and persistence to gain access to the global elite and learn their secrets.

The Third Door Review

The Third Door (2018) is an enthralling journey by Alex Banayan as he embarks on a quest to uncover the secrets of success and fulfillment. Here's why this book is definitely worth reading:

Featuring inspiring interviews with some of the world's most influential figures, it offers valuable insights and lessons for achieving greatness.
With its adventurous storytelling and captivating anecdotes, the book keeps readers engaged from start to finish, making it anything but boring.
It provides a fresh perspective on success, encouraging readers to think outside the box and embrace unconventional paths to achieve their goals.

Best quote from The Third Door

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.

—Alex Banayan

Who should read The Third Door?

Young people considering how to start their careers
Anyone needing a little inspiration to take a risk and follow their dreams
People interested in how the successful launched their careers

About the Author

At 18, Alex Banayan took a break from college and spent five years on the journey that led to the publication of The Third Door. An entrepreneur who’s been named one of Forbes’s “30 under 30,” Banayan has written for the Washington Post and TechCrunch and has presented his Third Door framework at business conferences around the world.

Categories with The Third Door

Career & Success Money & Investments Management & Leadership

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