The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 7 | Alex Banayan | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: October 20, 2018

Glenn talks to Alex Banayan about his journey from being a pre-med college student to becoming a national best selling author. Alex set out to answer one question, what made a person successful? He interviewed Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Lady Gaga and Maya Angelou and shares what he learned from them and what he learned about himself along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blaze Radio Network. On Demand. So what is success? How do you make it? Especially in today's world. Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation. That's the old saying. And sometimes the opportunity reveals itself

and it's intertwined with a good amount of luck. Today, I want to introduce you to Alex Manayan, This guy is truly remarkable. He was actually following his parents' dream. He was going to become a medical professional. He was going to be a doctor. But that's not the path he wanted for his life. The day before his freshman year exams,

he decided, I'm not going to study for exams. I'm going to go on the price is right. He didn't tell his parents until he actually brought the sailboat home. He had to sell that sailboat that. But he won, and he used that money to set out and find out what makes the world's most successful people so successful. He interviewed people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Lady Gaga, Maya Angelou, all these people that he met helped him formulate something he calls the Third Door. Now the Third Door is a national best-selling book, which helped land Alex on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Alex is going to walk us through the events that set him on his path, his decision to leave college,

the courage it took to commit to something that had so many things going against him, and what he learned about himself along the way, and what we can learn from his journey. Today's episode, Alex Benayan. So I'm trying to think about how to describe you. And the best of the best of you. best thing is probably a life hacker. But I think there would be people in your story that might even consider or have considered, i.e. Bill Gates, you are a stalker.

Tell me, before we get into the third door. Yeah. Tell me about your family. The person who I am is because of who they are. And the cool thing about growing up is you start uncovering things. your family you didn't really know. You know, when I was a kid, I knew the basics. You know, my family came from Iran as refugees 35 years ago because of the Iranian Revolution.

Wow. We're Jewish, so if we stayed there, they would have died. My, you know, my grandpa actually escaped. This is another thing about my family. It's like a tight-lipped culture. It's like sort of like a don't-ask. And my whole childhood, I would see family photos where my grandpa would be missing for like two years. and I'd always ask where was grandpa in those years?

And they would always say, in Farsi, Tudan Ashgabudai, which means he was at the university. I found out when I was 20 years old that that was code word for a death camp. Wow. My whole life, they sort of had this fake story they would tell the kids. And the story of my grandpa actually says who I am.

And I didn't learn until very recently. My grandpa was born in Iran at a time when he had a father and a mother, of course, an older brother, four sisters than him. At age three, the father passes away. And in Iran at the time, women couldn't work. So it was up to the older brother to provide for the family. And then when my grandpa was five years old, his older brother passed away. So now my grandpa is the only male left in his family.

So the grandma, you know, his mother, of course, was very wise. and she said, go to school, we'll figure it out, and she's selling her wedding ring. She's selling the couch to make ends meet. But there's a point where food wasn't on the table. My grandpa's eight or nine years old, and he realizes he has to do something. So he starts going through the classifieds of the newspaper and sees the government is asking for bids for paint dinner. He's like nine years old. He's like, how hard could this be?

So he goes and gets an insertion order and just fills it out, and he's nine. And so he grossly under bids because he doesn't know the price. that you're supposed to bid. So he turns it in and the government gives him a bid. There's not a slot on the form that says, how old are you? So they just think he's an adult. So they give him the bid.

My grandpa goes and finds a family friend who has paint thinner. He buys it from him, gives it to the government, gets profit and he is like over the moon. A few weeks later, he's in his geometry class. I think he's maybe in, you know, fifth grade, sixth grade. And the police show up to his class. and they pull him out and they say, are you the one who gave us the paint dinner?

He said, yes. And they said, the paint dinner you gave us is expired. And if you don't give us good paint dinner in a week, we're going to have a problem. And in Iran, by the way, Iran in like the 40s, we have a problem means you're gone. You're gone.

Like nine-year-old kid. So he goes... They didn't say, are you the kid who gave me the paint thinner? You're a kid. What are you doing? No, there's no empathy back then. There's no empathy now either. So he goes back to the family friend.

He bought the paint thinner from says, look, you gave me expired your paint thinner. And he goes, you should have known that. Oh my gosh. And won't help him out. He ends up going, and this is a Jewish kid running around in the Tehran Bazaar. And he ends up finding someone else, gets the paint thinner, gives it to the government, and makes it home free.

But that sort of sets him off being an entrepreneur. And by age 50, you know, he's just working and working and working. By age 50, he actually becomes one of the wealthier Jews. in Tehran, you know, this big high rise in the middle of the town. And right around then, the Islamic Revolution happens. And he's at the top floor of his office. And one day, the Islamic Guard breaks in through the glass of the ground floor, surrounds the building, goes up with guns and puts a bag over my grandpa's head and

takes him to a death compound. my mom and her siblings and my grandmother are able to escape to America while my grandpa's in this death compound and every day he can remember hearing people's names being called over the speaker phone

hearing gunshots and them never returning back to the cell so he figured out exactly what he was doing there and sure enough you know my grandpa's very entrepreneurial he's trying to bribe people he's trying to find a way to escape he can't escape, and then finally his name is called onto the speaker phone. And, you know, they put a bag over his head and take him into the execution room.

And the bag comes off of his head and he's outside of the prison. One of the guards had taken the bribe. So now my grandpa escapes to America with asylum, comes back here, but he's back to where he was when he was five years old, with nothing in a full family to support. So he has to do it all over again. and thankfully he was able to make it and that's the promise of America in many ways but what's crazy is that I went and went on this whole journey not knowing this was my grandpa's story when did you find this out this was maybe the halfway through the journey when he realized

all right he's like he's like come back and he didn't even tell my other cousins he sort of just saw because my grandpa's mantra to us since we were kids was you all are going to be doctors. The girls can be lawyers. But you know, you're a boy. You're going to be a doctor. And I learned the reason he would say that is because he said, you know, if something ever happens to you and you have to, you know, flee like we did, people can take your money. They can take what you own, but they can't take what you know. And if you're a, if you're a doctor, you can save people. And they can't take that away from you. So my whole childhood was pre, I was like a three year old pre-med. You know, I wore scrubs to school for Halloween. I, you know, you think it's funny, but my mom,

instead of putting my finger paintings on the refrigerator and kindergarten would put skeleton charts, like that was my childhood growing up. Wow. And it wasn't until I got to college where I was the pre-med of pre-meds that I began to question what path I was on. So you're on that path. your whole family has designed that path for you. It's not even a path. It's the only path. It's like, you know,

that's who you are. Yeah. What did it take to go to your family and go, um, yeah, I don't think I want to go to college. You know, with my family,

so I, you know, I got into college and, you know, my grandpa literally like took me to my first day of college. And he's like, you know, this is the type of,

tight, tight, tight-knit immigrant family. And I remember it was maybe just the first few weeks. It happened fast where I remember looking at this towering stack of biology books on my desk, feeling like they were sucking the life out of me. And at first I assumed, you know, I'm just being lazy. But very quickly I began to wonder, maybe I'm not on my path. Maybe I'm on a path somebody placed me on it. I'm just rolling down. But I can't tell that to my parents. So they're calling me saying, how are things going? And I'm like, oh, it's great. And, you know, I hang up and I'm having like a panic attack. And for anyone who's gone through the what I want to do with my life crisis, they know it's this all-consuming, existential question. And for me, it was more than just,

what am I going to do? It was really questioning my identity of who I am. Because my whole life, my parents and my grandparents had reinforced that this isn't just a job. This was, you know, their biggest dream was to come to my medical school graduation. You're amazing because I don't know what it is, but you're willing to ask that deep question. Most people are not, and I think it's because they're afraid there's nothing really inside. You know, I know my joy or I know my pain. I know the role that's been created for me. And I don't know what's in there.

and maybe this is as good as it gets, and they're afraid. Yeah. What makes you willing at that age to go? Yeah, that may not be me. You know, what I've learned is that, and I can only see this in hindsight, the moments that, and first of all, thank you for saying that, the moments that have changed my life the most, when I ask the questions that literally changed your entire direction, have been the moments that I've been in the most pain.

Yep. And by the way, it's not like I'm asking myself these questions every year. Yeah. It's a very rare thing. I can maybe point to three or four different moments where I've asked myself a question that's changed the course of my life. I call them pivot points. Right.

They're just pivot points in your life. And they're big. And it's not when the sun is shining. Yeah, never. Because when the sun's shining, do what I'm doing, glad? I'm like, hallelujah, it's working. I'm awesome. That's right.

It's when you're like on the floor. Yeah. crying either literally or figuratively. And what I've learned is that, you know, you don't, I think I've come to realize recently that even if people don't ask themselves these questions, they're still good people. What I've realized is that you just have a choice. You can either, you know, when God is inviting you with these crucible moments to make a decision, it's an invitation, it's not a commandment.

That's my view of it. And I just think life is a lot more interesting when you answer the imitation. I do too. I was afraid at 30 to answer those questions, though. I mean, it's scary. It's scary. So tell me, you decide, okay, this is sucking a life out of me. Tell me the moment you said, I can't do it.

To your parents. So what happened is I need, look, I'm the scaredest kid you would ever meet. I had a nightlight until I was like 12. Some or another, I don't believe that. Okay, I'll tell you, I will call my best friends. They hate going to theme parks with me because I'm the one who's always like dragging my feet on the way to roller coaster. But what's also interesting is that while I definitely feel fear the most out of all my friends, I also am the one who sometimes makes the boldest decisions.

And I've learned recently that there's a big difference between fearlessness and courage. Although they sound very similar, the difference is critical. You know, fearlessness is jumping off of the cliff and not thinking about it. You know, that's idiotic. Courage, on the other hand, is acknowledging how terrified you are, analyzing the consequences, and then deciding you care so much about it, you're still going to take one thoughtful step forward anyway. And while I am consumed with fear, even to this day I still deal with fear a lot. I actually had a friend.

Actually, this happened yesterday. A friend of mine texted me, she was like, she has this big career move and she's really scared. She's like, how do I deal with this? How do I get over the fear? I can't manage getting over it. And I literally just looked at it and I was like, don't get over it, accept it, and do it anyway. You're remarkable.

my son nine he's afraid to do his taekwondo in front of a crowd when he's little and he looked when I was trying to find out how to tell him he looked in my office and I have all these heroes

and he thought he was going to get the lecture of you know be brave like them I don't think anyone unless you're crazy you know maybe maybe Jim Bowie. I don't want to be friends

with the fearless people. I don't want to be with those guys. But the real heroes, if you read Abraham Lincoln, he was afraid. You know, before Martin Luther King was killed, he went and asked for a gun permit.

I mean, he wanted to carry guns. He was afraid. It's just this. And what makes that? What do you think that is inside that that gives you that willingness to go,

yeah, I'm terrified. But it's worth it. I'm going to do it. I can't stand here. I think what happened to me in the beginning was that, and all this, especially when you're young and you're a teenager, it sort of happens unconsciously without thinking. What happened to me is that, for example, with setting off on the journey to write the book,

I had my fear, which I was very aware of. That was obvious. but what was surprising to me was how much I cared about the outcome. You know, the mission of this book from the very beginning was that I believed if all these people came together, not for press, not to promote anything, but really just to share their best wisdom with the next generation, young people can do so much more. And I was going through the crisis, so I knew how much I needed it. My best friends were going through this crisis. I knew how much they needed it. So to me, I had my fear, but I also, for the first time in my life, wanted something so badly.

What was it you wanted? I wanted, I'll tell you what I wanted at the time consciously. At the time, I thought I wanted practical advice. I thought I wanted tools and wisdom. In hindsight, I can see what I really wanted was relief. I wanted possibility. I've learned that you can give someone all the best tools and knowledge in the world and their life can still feel stuck.

But if you change what someone believes is possible, they'll never be the same. And what this journey gave me the past seven years was it blew, like completely demolished my idea of what I thought was possible and created a whole new world for me. I've met so many people that are millionaires that are broke. And they have ever. everything they need to make it big,

except one thing. And many times it's just the faith that they're enough to make it happen. Right. Is there a difference in people? Because I also know people who, they don't want any of that. They're happy going in and just, punching in and clocking out and living life, you know, the way life is happening.

Is there a difference in people? I've realized there's a difference between fulfillment and happiness. I used to, and pleasure. Those are sort of the three words that I've realized that people tend to cluster into one thing called happiness, but they're actually different. And, you know, pleasure, very fleeting. You're sort of just pulling the lever, you know, going to nightclubs, whatever. happiness has this nice, warm feeling to it,

but it also, after a while, can seem to be a bit fleeting. But fulfillment is that thing that when you fill up the glass, it really stays in there. Like, you know things that have made you fulfill that no one else knows. You know when I'm sure someone has stopped you on the street

and started crying, saying that's something that you said, that you, and by the way, this is a stranger that it changed their life forever. and that's fulfillment. And what I've come to realize is that what makes me, me, is going after those moments of fulfillment. And those are the things that take seven years.

Those are like the long journeys. And, you know, there's different people in this world, but I actually think all people want that fulfillment. They just sometimes don't know that's what they want. Are you going to tell me what you said to your mom and dad or not? I actually know exactly how I did it too we keep going off on these sidetracks it's so funny it's like so dramatic in hindsight

how I did it I wrote oh man I remember so vividly I don't really talk about this moment much I oh man this is crazy I had you know I had all these books on my desk because I was going through this life crisis I had all these business books and there was a book called Success Principles

by Jack Canfield who did chicken soup for the soul and I like opened it up and this is when I I was still lying to my parents saying I was going to be a pre-med, but I knew I was sort of backing away. And the dedication said, of this book had said, to all the brave men and women who decide to break out of expectation and pursue the life they were meant to live. Wow.

And this is a thing, though, when you're 18 years old and you read that, I'm like, I thought there was like the secret society of successful people that meet like once a year in Superman's ice cape. We're like, all right, guys. Right. You know, it's, what are we going to tell those suckers this year? Right. Let's tell them, you know, Oprah's like, follow your dreams.

And like, Michael Jordan's like, yeah, tell them hard work helps. Like, you know, there's this like Illuminati. And I literally, when I was 18, I thought like, that's sort of the thing you tell people. But another part of me was like, what if that's actually the truth? And it was literally five minutes later that I was like the only way, wow, this is, I've never told anyone that. in my head I'm 18 and I told myself the only way I'll know is if I try for myself and I opened out my computer and I wrote a letter to my parents and I started the letter with that quote from the book and I said I'm doing an experiment to see if this is true and I went and told them and I remember crying as I'm writing it and I sent it expecting like my phone to blow up with my mom's calls and texts silence with a Jewish mother, you made her angry when she calls you back yelling,

but you made her, you know, apoplectic when she won't talk. And she didn't talk for three days. And I remember going back home because I was going to college about an hour away from home and I go back home. And she was still crying.

And it was like World War III in my house. I, as a dad, if my son wrote that to me, that would be the greatest thing. Because you've been through it. Right. But if I have your family and your family history, oh my gosh, you've, you're betraying generations and you are setting yourself up to be, you know, in trouble.

Right. And my mom, I didn't know at the time. I was like, why is she acting this way? I didn't understand how much she had sacrificed for me to be in college at this point. I had no idea that she had taken a second mortgage on the house to help pay for my college. I had no idea that, you know, there would be notices on our front door from the gas company saying, you know, it's been your sixth notice. We're going to cut it off.

And my mom would sort of just take them in. And look, we didn't grow up poor by any means. But my mom, like a lot of families in America, lived above our means and wouldn't tell the kids. So there was two financial lives. Me and my sisters thought, you know, were pretty good. Pretty good and normal. My mom and dad are just swimming in credit card debt. Yeah.

And by the way, God bless them because it's given me the opportunities that I have today. My mom had a simple premise, which is if she sacrifices everything to give me an education, I won't have to suffer the way she suffered. And in that moment, I was pretty much turning my back on everything she had sacrificed. I want to come back to your mom after. we go through your journey. So how long between World War III and the price is right?

How long between that time? Ooh, it was very close. This is all happening like very close to each other, which when you're living it, every day feels like forever. But in hindsight, this was all happening within months. So tell me what got you. to the price of process right and why?

So when I had pretty much decided, you know, that I wanted to go on this journey, I, the only reason I did it is because I assumed there had to be a book with the answers. I remember going through the library, you know, ripping through business books and biographies. And I even remember which books I was going through, you know, outliers in the four-hour work week

and all these biographies. And I felt empty-handed. There wasn't a single book that gave me exactly what I needed, was I didn't know what I wanted to with my life, so I wanted people from all industries. And I was this nobody kid, so I wanted to know not how Bill Gates leads Microsoft. I wanted to know when he's 19 years old,

how is he selling software out of his dorm room? When Steven Spielberg is an unknown movie director, how does he get his first contract? These are the things they don't teach you in school. So me being this naive kid, I thought, well, if no one's written the book I'm dreaming of reading, why not write it myself? So that was really the start of it.

it, but I had a problem. You know, I thought the easy part would be calling Bill Gates and getting the answers. You know, he's helping kids all over the world. Why wouldn't he help me? I thought he's like, my generation Santa Claus. That I assumed would be the easy part. The hard part I figured was getting the money to fund the journey. I was buried in student loan debt.

I was all out of bar mitzvah cash, so there had to be a way to make some quick money. So two nights before final exams, I'm in the library, doing what everyone's doing in the library right before finals. I'm on Facebook and I see someone offering, you know, free tickets to the prices right. And my first thought was, what if I go on the show and win some money? That's crazy. That's crazy. Everybody thinks that, but nobody thinks that and does that.

Like, I've got to make money. So tomorrow, I'll go to the prices right and win the showcase. Well, this was the thing. I in that moment had the same time. I'm like, this is idiotic. You know, I had finals in two days. I'd never seen a full episode of the show before. I'd seen bits and pieces.

I'd never seen a full episode. The people who go to that watch the show. For decades, they've been watching it. So I tell myself it's a dumb idea and to not think about it. But I don't know if you've ever had one of these moments where an idea just keeps clawing itself back into your mind. Always.

So to prove to myself was a bad idea, I remember being in the corner of the library. actually had a table very similar to this, a round wooden table. And I opened up my spiral notebook and wrote best and worst case scenarios to prove to myself it's a dumb idea. Great. You know, worst case scenarios. Fail finals.

Get kicked out of pre-med. Lose financial aid. Mom stops talking to me. Mom kills me. You know, there's 20 cons. The only pro was maybe, maybe get enough money to fund this dream. And it felt, I can remember very very. very vividly, it felt as if somebody had tied a rope around my gut and was slowly pulling in a

direction. So that night, I decided to do the logical thing and pull an all-nighter to study. But I didn't study for finals, they said how to hack the prices right. And I went on the show the next day and did this ridiculous strategy and I ended up winning the whole showcase showdown, winning a sailboat, selling the sailboat, and that's how I funded the book. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. Thank you. That's why I said you're a life hacker. because you have these ideas and you don't, you don't dismiss the crazy. And it's the crazy that is either crazy

or genius. You know what I've learned? Through all the interviews and through the Price is Right story in particular, the moments that change people's life the most. And you and I actually talked about this, the moments that change people's life the most is when there's 20 good reasons not to do it. Yeah.

You know, there's logical reasons, financial reasons, all your friends and family are saying not to do it. Brilliant people say don't do it. And when you're staring at that pro and cons list and there's 20 reasons not to do it, yet something within you still is just whispering and it's the faintest of whispers telling you to move forward anyway.

It's when you listen to that whisper that your life changes forever. So when you, have you had to, that happened and and it just was a massive failure? I thought it was one of those moments, but it wasn't. I was acting out of fear or acting out of desperation. So I just, so I don't even count those. Yeah.

But yeah, of course I've done dumb things. My whole life is a series of dumb things that don't work out. It's the times when I actually do something out of, you know, belief and faith and possibility for my heart's in it that works out. This, and you may not have experienced this, and if you haven't, prepare. Okay. Because I have spent the last 20 years of my life doing that. I read something years ago in the 90s called the Celestine Prophecy.

Okay. And it had, it's just this cheesy, you know, new age kind of book. And it just had one line in it that was, don't dismiss coincidence. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And so I thought, all right, you know what? I'm going to take every coincidence and I'm going to run with it. If I'm thinking about something and I meet somebody, I'm going to run with it. Right. And people think this is really bizarre. And it will, it's weird because sometimes people will come into your life and they're supposed to be with you for a long time. They're supposed to be with you for three days. They're supposed to be with you for 10 minutes. You'd never know. know, but it's like, I don't know why we met, but we should explore and learn as much as we can. You know what I mean? But then when you have an idea, for instance, hey, let's start a network. And you, I mean, I'll be real frank with you, you spend your entire life almost to zero. And you are standing there going, wait, I'm going, I'm going.

I know. I know. I think there are two points in people's lives where they quit too early or too late. You know what I mean? 100%. Something happens and they're like, you know what? I was wrong. I'm going to let. And you quit. Or you refuse to see, no, there was a jumping off path right here. You were just blind to it. Right. Do you think if, how can I phrase this, how do you know the difference between one of those feelings and one of those feelings that don't do it? Right. Do you, is there a difference?

Or is it, because I got to almost zero? Wow. And I was like, oh my God, I'll tell you. Yeah. About a million dollar control room. Okay? Million dollars. I didn't even know there's a such thing as a million dollar control room.

It's crazy. It's crazy. And I had just paid it off. Oh, wow. And I paid it off the day I was like, I'm out. I'm out. Wow. And I remember I turned the lights off in that room and I said, well, and I closed the door and locked it up.

And I thought, because we're going to just do, you know, podcast and things like that. That's not needed anymore. And I'm like, why? Because it was needed at the beginning of the journey. I closed the door two days later. Now, if I would have gotten, if I would have given up and been angry and spiteful, I wouldn't have taken a phone call that said, you're the only one that you have a linear control room for live broadcast back and back.

And I went, yeah. Huh. You're the only one that has it in this. particular yada yada yada yada it's going to be something that we launch in 2019 that's awesome and so it's you have to i don't know that's like a movie moment talking about there's a great line i heard that said coincidence is god's way of winking at you and i love that yeah and that was almost like right when you were turning off that light you got that phone call and i think i just like because i think people they do something and then they panic and they don't give it enough time or they don't look for the

other thing. That's not what I bought that control room for. Right. But I get that call and I immediately looked at my wife and I said, you're not going to believe this. And I'm convinced, I could be wrong. I'm convinced that's why they bought that control room. I was just ahead of the game. Right. You know? So speak to somebody who has followed their gut, and it hasn't worked out. What I've learned is that, you know, the biggest mistakes I've made on this journey. Like, for example, I spent eight months hounding Warren Buffett. I was like, look, if there's anyone who's going to do an interview with me, it has to be Warren Buffett. By the way, I believe this may lead into the why I called him a small.

stalker moment. Yes, this is actually a very fair, very fair case A. You know, with Warren Buffett, I thought, you know, if anyone would do an interview, it had to be him. He always talks about how much he loves college students and how much he loves helping young people. So I was like, look, Bill Gates might be a hard interview to get, but Buffett, that has to be easy.

So I, this is like thoughts of a 19-year-old. So I, like, put on the top of my list, I'm like, you know, Warren Buffett, and I end up, this is after I've left college, I'm spending. I'm waking at 6 a.m. My only job is researching Warren Buffett. I have 16 books stacked up on my desk. I'm going through all of his biographies. These big 800-page biographies.

And after two months, I finally feel like I know. I have a good grip on it. And I write a two-page letter by hand, like pouring my heart out asking him for this interview. And he actually writes, hand-writes, a response back. and I'm like, oh my God, this is crazy, you know? And sure enough, I read what it said. You know, I sent two pages.

He sent two sentences back, but he essentially wrote, thank you, but no, thank you. But I'm thinking, look, if he's handwriting a response back to me, I'm at like the 99-yard line. So I just have to keep at it. He's old school. Right? Every business book says persistence is the key to success.

So I thought, if that's the key, I'm just going to keep turning the key until it opens the door. So I post, you know, persistence quotes all around office and I'm waking up literally now at 4 a.m. I was a maniac. I would put, you know, eye of the tiger in my earbuds and I would be sprinting. I'm not kidding. I would be sprinting down the sidewalk. Imagine Buffett would be at the end. Like I'm just all Buffett and, you know, month two, month three, month four. And it feels like every rejection. You know, Paula Cuelo, the author of The Alchemist has a great quote. He says, when you get an F in school, it hurts.

when you get rejected with your life's calling, it's debilitating. And I'm just getting no after no, after no, after no. By month four, month five, month six, it feels like I'm going to cough off blood. And I had never been more desperate in my life. I had left school and told my family to trust me. And now I'm pretty much spending my entire time, 24 hours a day, writing letters to a guy in Omaha. and my family is like, you left being a doctor for this. And I actually made one of the biggest mistakes in my life.

I met a guy who told me to send Buffett a shoe with a notes and I'm just trying to get my foot in the door. And the guy's like, look, I worked for Warren Buffett. Don't worry. Trust me. I just was making all these mistakes. And it wasn't until much later when I finally got the interview with Bill Gates, that Gates's office loved it so much. They're like, can we help? And I was like, yeah, that'd be awesome.

Do you think you can introduce me to Warren Buffett? And they're like, easy. Gates's office calls Buffett's office to set up the interview. And I'll never know exactly what happened. But essentially, Buffett's office was like, look, we know all about Alex. This is not happening. And I got an email back from Gates' chief of staff saying, no more contact to Warren's office.

Thanks. Whoa. And I realized not only is the answer, no. I had gotten myself blacklisted. And every business book talks about persistence, but none talk about the dangers of over-persistance, where you're, you know, you're not just banging on the door a few times.

You're banging on it so many times they're calling the police on you. And what I've learned is that my problem was that desperation clogs intuition. Desperation clogs intuition. Explain that. And that really goes back to your core question of, When people are pursuing their life calling and it's not working out, you know, how do they make that call?

You sort of have to step back, which I wasn't at the time asking yourself, is my desperation, my fear of failure, does it have its hands around my neck? Is it cutting off circulation? One of the benefits you have in the story you shared, in my opinion, is that while you were down to the wire, you're at a stage in your life where you believe in yourself so much. that while you were getting to drastic times, you were never desperate. You knew you had enough faith in yourself, enough faith in God, enough faith in the people you work with,

that you would figure it out. Kind of. I will tell you that I have been rich and I have been poor. The happiness doesn't change. Right. So you're not afraid of it. Not afraid of it. I can be poor and I know I will be happy and whole.

doesn't change. Only thing that changes private air travel, that changes your life. Other than that, rich and poor doesn't make a difference. It really doesn't. And I also know, because I have been rich and then poor, and then rich and then poor, that you can do it again.

It's a mindset, it's a mindset. It's just truly a mindset. 100%. What do you say, to people your age that are being taught that you can't make it. You can't do it. You're not capable.

People are standing in your way. Well, first of all, make a list of the people saying that and write the do not talk to these people list. Because what I'll tell you, it sounds like I'm joking, but what I'll tell you is that one of the biggest things that you can do to hurt a child, to hurt a teenager. who's just starting out is to infect them with pessimism. Now, now, any parents listening to this would be like, look, but you have to be realistic with your kid.

You can't tell them they're going to be an astronaut. I'll tell you an anecdote that I heard recently. I didn't even remember where I read this, but it was a teacher who's teaching for Teach for America. And she was assigned to a school in Baltimore, you know, a really rough part of town, a really tough neighborhood. and I think she's teaching maybe third or fourth grade and she's like look these kids need some inspiration so she's like guys today instead of our math lesson I'm going to pass out sheets of paper

and crayons and we're all going to draw pictures of our biggest dreams in life you know what you want to be when you grow up you know she's like dream whatever you want to dream and all the kids are coloring except this one boy sitting in the back of the class won't pick up a crayon and his face is very stoic and the teacher's watching him and after about about 20 minutes. His eyes light up and he starts coloring. And, you know, the kids turn in the papers and they go home and the teacher's reviewing them.

And she sees that that young boy drew a picture of a pizza delivery man. Oh, my God. And the teacher was very concerned. So she called the mother that night of the boy. And the mother wasn't surprised. She said that the only male figure in his life who's not in jail or on drugs is his uncle who delivers pizza. And what I took from that story

is that young people will always reach for the highest branch they think is possible. They'll always reach for the highest branch they think is possible. So it's our job, whether it's families or schools or the media at large, to illuminate more branches. It's not the kid's fault. They will always reach for the highest branch they think is possible. I know you are a fan of Bill Gates.

Yeah. But Bill Gates is in many ways responsible for Common Core. And the sorting that he, and look, if you have this point of view that I want to grade your aptitude early on to see what you're good at, will fast-tracked you into there, that's fine. But I do believe that there, I don't know what I would have been fast-tracked into. Certainly not this. You know what I mean? what would you have been... Right, or do they have empathy test and communication?

Correct. I mean, what do they have? You probably would have been a doctor today. These schools and the way we're measuring everything, it is putting a heavy box around people. And I talk to parents all the time that say, I don't know what to do. I got to send my kid to... college. No, you don't. No, you don't. They don't have some. You want to be a doctor. You got to go to

college. You know, you want to be a comedian. Go get a great creative writer, you know, and take some acting classes and go. Right. Give it a shot. There are things that you need, but you don't need the four years of college. Right. What do you suggest? I think this is the theme of our whole conversation, which is stop and actually ask yourself the hard questions. I think whether you're the 18-year-old deciding if you're going to go to college or if you're the parent deciding what you're going to tell your child, life is, it just feels easier when you follow, you know, the check the boxes routine, which is, you know, go to high school, go to college, get a job.

But that's not how the world works anymore. You just said, you know, if you're being a comedian, that's a big waste of $250,000. Right. Right? Huge waste. You're not going to be able to survive as a comedian because you have to pay student debts and you just literally killed your career without even starting. However, my son wants to be a comedian and he was learning about diagramming sentences. And he said, I'm never going to use this.

I said, really? No, you're really going to use this. I took him backstage to meet Jim Gaffigan. And Gaffigan said, no, no, no, no. You need to learn this. And I didn't set Jim up. I said, hey, as a comedian, would you ever use diagramming sentence? Do you need that guy's stuff?

Maybe it's because he's got so many kids, but he immediately went, oh, yes, absolutely. There are things that you do need for each skill. But you don't necessarily, you can get it at the Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Or YouTube. Right. This is the whole thing.

What's shifting in our society right now is that you have all these course lectures on YouTube. You know, Harvard and Yale and Stanford putting their best professors out for free. MIT, every single course is online free. How many people, just, I'm curious, do you know have watched any of those lectures? I probably know.

And you have very smart friends. Yeah, I probably know two. Right, and you have the smartest friends. I have, you know, super ambitious friends, zero. So what it tells me, though, is I don't think it'll be zero forever. I think it's going to shift over the next 10 years. Yes. But I think right now we're still.

stuck in a, you know, I need the diploma to prove that I learned something. It's not, you know, the value of college is on the wrong syllable. Instead of it being on what I learned, it's, here's proof that I learned. But I don't think you, I think you learn in college what to think, not how to think. Right. And that's, if you're lucky, you get a one professor. One professor. And that's all you need how to think, how to challenge basic premises, how to find the answer on your own. Right. We're cookie cutter. Right. Exactly. And nobody wants that, that is, I mean, with the future of AI and the future of just unemployment by 2030, it is going to be all about the uniqueness of you. There's no room for cookie cutter people. Right. And what's going to happen is that the

people who have the mindset of, I'll figure it out on my own. I'll make it work will be the ones who will survive. You know, a great way to think about it, you know, like you said, in 2030, that might be hard for people to understand. A great little micro case study is the music industry. You know, Napster came in and literally, there's not many industries that can talk about overnight flipping. Yeah. Napster came in and just with overnight change the entire music industry. And what happened was people could start getting the essential product, the song, for free. And the musicians who thrived during that time were the ones with that entrepreneurial mindset. And one of the interviews I did in the book was with Pitbull. And he said, growing up a drug

dealer was the greatest education you could have gotten for what Napster would do to the music industry. And it's great. It's very funny because before the interview, you know, the PR person was like pit bulls people speak operas like don't talk about drugs and i was like okay i promise i won't he brings it up but but i asked about what he needed to learn and he's like oh you want to know what i need to learn and then he just started laying it all out for me and it's going to be true for 20 30 for the whole population if you have a job right now where you're literally pulling a lever moving a steering wheel something a robot can do i hate saying this because i feel like i'm the messenger of bad news but You're in this position every day telling people, warning people, sounding the alarm.

I will tell you, I just had this experience. I have been warning my family. Radio and television are a thing of the past. Radio and television people say, it'll go on forever. I've seven or eight years ago said, I think it has 10 to 15 years. I think it's got about another five left in it. before it dramatically is impact. Where are all the new talent coming five years ago?

Where's the new talent coming from? There's no farm team. Yes, there is. Podcasts. It's over. It's over. And the biggest lesson that you have to learn, and people my age, especially people yours,

by 2030, we will have 20 years of technological change every day. Right. So you cannot, you have to be a jack of all trades. You have to be somebody who is adaptable that can change. That's why institutional cookie cutters are so dangerous because you're not prepared to be flexible. I agree 100%. And I think one of the problems people have that I used to have is that you see this coming change and you argue it.

Yeah. You say, well, that's not how it's. going to be. That's not how it should be. People love to hold on to shoulds. What you're saying is, look, I'm not saying if it's good or bad. I'm saying it's happening. You don't have to put the genie back in the bottle. What are you going to do about it? Right. And that's the whole premise. What are you going to do about it? And the whole point of the third door mindset is that I believe that, you know, the analogy is that life and business and success, it's sort of like a nightclub. There's three ways 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. And you know, that line's only going to get longer. There's the second door, the VIP entrance where the billionaires and celebrities go through. But when no one talks about and what school doesn't teach you

is that there's always, always the third door. And it's the entrance where you jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door 100 times, crack open the window, go through the kitchen, there's always a way in. And it doesn't matter if that's how Gates sold his first piece of software or how Lady God got her first record.

deal, they all took the third door. So that's not only, you know, the title of the book and the message, that's really the energy I'm trying to inject into the next generation. Because when you're talking about 2030, I'm like, if they can just understand the concept that you can take control of your life, but you have to stop waiting in line. The world for the first time in centuries is being completely redesigned. Right. You are either going to stand and watch and then work on somebody else's design or you're going to design it yourself.

Right. I mean, the possibilities are endless, endless. Tell me about Lady Gaga's third door. Oh, man, she's great. She, what most people don't know about her is when she was starting out, she wasn't a surefire hit. she couldn't even get her own manager. So she would, you know, call up, you know, local nightclubs in the Lower East Side of New York and change her voice.

Like, hello, this is, this is Joan, Lady Gaga's manager. And Lady Gaga only does Friday at 10 p.m. You know, and she would do her own negotiations pretending to be her own manager. And then after that, she would go work as a waitress, you know, making money to make ends meet. And she would take the money she would make as a waitress, go to the local print shop. make these big posters of herself and put them up right in front of the nightclub she wanted to perform at.

So when the nightclub managers would have to walk to work every day, they would just pass by these posters and be like, who the hell is this lady Goggan? Why is she's so famous? You know, she... This is David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust. Right. But this is from the dawn of time.

Yeah. This has been going on. Right. The only thing that's changed is that for the past 20 and 30 years, society has been telling us, wait in line, wait to your turn. Wait in line.

wait your turn. And I sort of went and did these interviews and realized that's a recipe for disaster. Can I go back to your mom? Please. Yeah. Look, there's nothing I like to talk about more than my mom. We can do that for like three hours. When if, when and if, did your mom say, wow, good choice. It's hard to say and put in towards how much I love my mom. And the hardest part of the journey by far. There's not even a close second was having to choose between pursuing my dream and my mom being in tears. There's not even, you know, as hard as the Buffett stuff was, as hard as the gate, nothing even comes close to the emotional pain of, because at the time, I didn't know that my mom would come around. It wasn't, you know, oh man, it was such a good feeling.

On the day the book came out, my mom flew to New York with me for the book launch day. And this is a few months ago. And there were a friend we got, you know, the NASDAQ tower in Times Square. They turned the NASDAQ tower into the third door tower. They put the cover of the book. Oh, my gosh. And I remember standing in Times Square. This is the morning of the book launch.

And my mom's on the other side of the street and we're going to go meet. And I didn't know. they had just turned on the billboard in Times Square. And I see my mom and I see her face. Because my back is to the tower. I see my mom. My mom's looking up at the NASDAQ tower in Times Square. I have the photo.

I wish I could show it to her now. Her face, I had never seen that before. And looking at my mom's face in that moment was a million times more fulfilling. And they're looking at that tower. because I knew that for my mom it wasn't about the tower, it was about the symbol, which is he's going to be all right.

Talk to the mom or dad and tell them it's going to be okay. You know, any parent right now who's losing sleep over their kid's future the first thing I would say is, you know, thank you, that you love your kid that much. Because what I've seen just with different friends is, you're lucky if you have a parent who cares about you that much. Now, if you're worried about your kid, I think the thing parents forget is that they used to be just like that too when they were, you know, 19 and 20 and 21.

I think what happens is that you get into your 40s, you get into your 50s, you get into your 50s, and you see your teenage kids without a sense of direction. And you almost have amnesia about how you used to be as a kid. And you're like, how come they don't have a 401K? They're going to die on the streets, you know? Look, it's very natural. When you have a kid, you know, I don't have one, but just from friends who I've talked to, a part of your brain literally becomes consumed of that kid will, will die and suffer.

And that's, it's biological. So any parent who's nervous and worried, that's a natural biological reaction. your kid is smart. If you're a parent, first of all, who's smart enough to be listening to something like this, who's smart enough to be staying up a night worrying about it, your kid's going to do better than you think. And the biggest thing that a parent can do for a kid

is to stay calm and say, I trust you. You know, the biggest detriment to me on this journey, my parents gave me everything. The one thing I wish I could have had, though, was them saying, we know you'll figure it out. Oh my God, just saying that, literally it's all I had wanted. And thankfully, they're at that point now, but I went through a lot of unnecessary pain,

losing sleep, making bad decisions, because I was worried I was disappointing my parents. You're listening to this in your 18, 17, 16. 25. Yeah. 50. And you want to, you just want to break out.

You want to do something different. Talk to them. I think your question was very on point because I don't believe it's an age. I believe it's a stage. You know, you just met Cal Fussman very recently. Cal is 62 years old. Five years ago,

I had a completely different career. I couldn't be more proud of him. Yeah. Cal has done a transformation that you normally see happen when someone's 20 or 21 years old. Case you don't know, Cal Fussman is one of the greatest interviewers of all time. Bestselling author, a writer at Esquire magazine. Yeah, I mean, he's just amazing. He's talked to everybody.

Right. And, you know, so whether it's Cal at 60 years old or it's someone who's 18, who's just trying to make that first move, the biggest thing I would tell them is that the biggest place people fail when it comes to making a big life transition or going after a dream. It's not that running down the alley and banging on the door and finding the third door is the hard part. I think everyone thinks executing on the dream is the hard part. What I've learned every single time without fail from studying all these different people is that the part people mess up is that they're standing in line for the first door and they're so consumed by fear and what ifs that they never

actually leave it. because this is what happens. You're standing in that line for the first door. It's well lit. You're on the pavement. It's safe. All your friends are there. All your family expects you to be there.

And what happens is I've realized that people don't even know how much they're trapped by the comfort of certainty. People are trapped by the comfort of certainty. And no one achieves a dream in the comfort of certainty. Can I go back to the, the, the story with you and Buffett. Mm-hmm. Because I think this is important, at least a lesson I have learned on the other side,

being not Buffett, but being somebody that I don't believe in coincidence. But so many people see their third door as a person. Hmm. I have to have access to this person. Right. You were focused on, I have to have access to.

to Warren Buffett, and that caused problems. Right. Your calling is your calling. What your dream is your dream. And it can't rely on convincing someone else that it's the great- One person. One person. Right.

I mean, you know, you might say, you know, the toothbrush. It's really a great idea. You will have to convince people. But it's not one person. Right. And I think, you know, talking from personal experience, experience. The moments I've messed up the most is when I become transfixed again on one person. Or even let's say, right. Or let's say you want to sell a book to a publisher. You get transfixed on

one publisher. Or even publishing it that way. Correct. Yes. A great thing of friend has Tommy is that you can be committed to your dream and not attached to the methods of achieving that dream. you can be committed to the dream but not attached to the methods. And my problem with Buffett is I was 100% focused on the method, which is I need to get to Buffett. And that's the thing about the change that is coming now. The method doesn't matter. Right.

The medium doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's all being blown up anyways. It's all being blown up. Right. Are you familiar with my philosophy of I am? And tell me about it. So.

This is the way. What your dad taught you? Yeah. When, you know, Moses says, who shall I say sent me? Right. I am that I am. Which my father used to tell me all the time. And it puts a different spin on,

thou shall not take the Lord that God's name in vain, if his name is I am. Because it, he doesn't, I can't imagine a God who is like, hey, hey, hey, hey, a little careful with the name there. You know what I mean? He's warning us for a reason. and it's not just reverence, I think, is because his name, you're Jewish, has power.

Okay? I am. You follow that, and if you don't fill that in, somebody in your life will fill it in. Okay? And a lot of people never get, people don't get past the childhood that somebody has filled that in. I was the stinky younger brother.

you know, I am blank. You. What do you fill it in with? I'll tell you the first thing that came to mind, but it surprises even me. I was on an airplane

a few days ago. It's weird to be telling you this, like, before I've told, like, my sisters. I've been on the road the past weeks. I haven't, like, to see my family. I haven't told this to my mom. But I was on an airplane. a few days ago and I just started

sobbing like sobbing sobbing and the reason was I was reflecting back on the past two years my dad died a year and a half ago just a couple months ago

the day after the book came out my grandpa passed away two weeks after that my grandma his wife gets a stroke then she dies two weeks later and our family in many ways has really come apart. And I was reflect on this airplane. I was reflecting back on all of the miracles that happened the past two years. And specific, not like miracles in general, like my best

friends who carried my dad's casket, the second cousin who's become like our lifeline and our family. And that to me is God. And on this airplane for the first time in my life. And I, grew up, you know, with a religious background, but this was the first time my life I ever had the thought that God loves me. And I was just sobbing when he said I am. The first thing I came to mind, mine was loved by God. Whoa, this is getting free. This is weird because this is the thing that you have to understand about me. I was the kid who went to, you know, temple because that's what our parents told us to do. And, and I think a lot of young people have this relationship. relationship with religion where it's given to you.

And I think one of the coolest things of the past couple years for me has been choosing to move toward it as opposed to it being forced down my throat. And I think when you choose to move toward it, it takes on a whole different meaning. My son was afraid just recently. We were talking about church and God and things like that. And he said, you know, I don't like going to church. And I just don't like this. I don't like that.

And I said, tell me what's really happening. And he, I could tell he hesitated, but he trust me enough, thank God. That he said, I don't know if I believe in God. And I said, good. Good for you. Is the nine-year-old? Yes. No, he's now 14.

And I said, good for you, good for you. That's good. Because God doesn't just come. You have to go to him. You have to find him. It's strange how we have, how we don't, we don't appreciate the fact that it's an individual journey. Yeah. You come to a time where you find him.

And I think, and I know you've had similar experiences, a death of a parent forces you to ask those questions. We live in a world of safe spaces. I think that's the most dangerous thing we can have. Tell me more. I've never learned anything new when I was happy and whole and perfectly comfortable. Why would I do anything different? Why would I learn anything new? I'm uncomfortable.

You know, there's cognitive dissidents. Is that uncomfortable feeling that you believe something, but your actions are, you know, going against that? Cognitive ease is something, and advertising knows this. The first time you hear something, you have cognitive dissidents. Right. You don't really hear it. Yeah.

Cognitive ease is after you've seen it over. and over and over again. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah, Coke. Okay. First time you see Coke, you know, if you're coming from someplace else, you don't know what that is. Okay. Cognitive ease doesn't give you any growth, doesn't, it's the dissidents. It's the, I don't know. I don't know. Either my actions are wrong or this philosophy is wrong, or I misunderstand it. It's always the taking things apart. It's the failure. that makes you great. Yeah.

If you choose. Right. I was literally going to go up and say, if you choose, because one of the best lessons I learned from Quincy Jones in the interview was he said, you know, 90% of people hate their failures.

They're ashamed of it. They don't want to talk about it. Embrace them. And if you, yeah, and if you bring it up, they'll hate you for it. Yeah.

What he said is if you treat your failures, treat your mistakes as friends, and you embrace them, and you cherish your mistakes. Only then can you grow, and only then can you succeed. You have to cherish your mistakes. It's funny. Teddy Roosevelt said, and I'm going to butcher it, but it was Teddy Roosevelt or Kipling.

I think it was Kipling in his poem, if you can treat those two impostors just the same. Right. You know, your success and your failures, they just are. They just are. Don't get big head and don't get so down. They're both. Well, this is the thing.

They're the same thing. Success and failure are the result of the same thing. Trying. You know, they're different sides of the same coin. And I think everybody makes this mistake. And I definitely made this mistake when I was starting out. I thought success and failure were opposites. And it took me seven years to realize the opposite of success is not failure.

the opposite of success is not trying. Good for you. How old are you now? I just turned 26. What are you going to do with your life? Now you sound like my mom. Where are you going to be? Where do you see yourself at my age?

Oh, wow. Do you know what's, there's been a lot of very cool, I call them like inadvertent lessons. What's happened? So when I was researching the book, I had to go through these massive like, you know, 600, 800 page biographies on all these different people.

And I was looking for specific, you know, lessons. But what ended up happening, I got all these inadvertent lessons. Like, I can pretty much, I want to do a whole like series on parenting because I learned all these parenting lessons from studying all these biographies. A whole other thing is I just was able to see that, you know, big career, you know, from a 30,000 foot perspective, the career journeys of, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of people. And if there's one thing that I picked up inadvertently is that none of them knew where they would be 20 years from now. But they knew what they liked. They knew what kind of

challenges they enjoy and they knew what kind of difference they want to make. And they know what kind of life they want to live. And I have decided, I'm not going to put that expectation of what am I going to do 20 years from now. Look, I'm not a bohemian. I know what I want. A year from now, from five years from now, 10 years from, I definitely have a goal, but I'm not so attached to it that, you know, someone calls about my control room and I'm not listening. Let me end it back with your grandpa. We're living in a time where Americans who are Americans for generations, I think are so bored with ease.

that we don't see how good we have it? Do you think you would be who you are if your grandfather and your family hadn't have come from some place where it was life and death and then came here? Zero percent. Like, not even, there's not even a 1% chance.

I would have been completely different. There's something about growing up. You know, we are human beings and we function off of narrative. I grew up with the narrative of do not throw away this opportunity. America is a place where if you study hard, if you work hard, you can make something happen. Now, with my grandfather, there was an extra element, which was we were this close to but it death

forget about being poor yeah from just you're not even being alive and it's given me I think actually

a very healthy gravity in the sense that I know you know between my grandpa's story and between

seeing my dad pass a year and a half ago I'm not gonna waste this you know I understand for the first time

you know when I was a kid I didn't understand how blessed I was to be born here, to have parents that cared so much that they would sacrifice so much for me. And one of the best things that I've learned about, humility comes from Maya Angelou, where she said, you know, modesty is saying, oh, you know, little old me, like I'm not that special. Maya Angelou says, if you meet a modest person, run the other way.

But humility is when you know deep down that everything you have in your life, came from the people who came before you who paid their way. And I know that my dad and my mom and my grandparents, my great-grandparents paid my way. And it's my job to pay the way for the people my family who aren't even born yet. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.