The Jordan Harbinger Show - 49: Alex Banayan | Why Mentors Are Important and How to Get One

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Alex Banayan (@alexbanayan) is the author of The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World's Most Successful People Launched Their Careers, which chronicles his seven-year quest tracking down icons from Bill Gates to Lady Gaga to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers. What We Discuss with Alex Banayan: What Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Steven Spielberg, Maya Angelou, Steve Wozniak, and Jane Goodall all have in common. The role of luck in success (it's probably not what you think). Why mentors are important (and the mistakes people make when trying to find one). How you can reach out to potential mentors even if you don't have a connection in common to make the introduction. How Alex hacked The Price Is Right to fund this book venture and his speaking career. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Luck is like a bus. If you're not prepared, the next one's going to show up if you're standing at the right bus stop. But, you know, your preparation is your fee to get onto that bus. If you don't have it, no matter how many times you wait at that bus stop, you won't be able to get on. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. On this episode, we're talking with Alex Benayan, author of The Third Door, which chronicles

Alex Larger Than Life Journey, tracking down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Stephen's. Spielberg, Maya Angelou, Steve Wozniak, and dozens more of the world's most successful people to essentially uncover how they broke through and launched their careers. This is a kid who just went after it and got in touch with these amazing folks. We'll talk about the role of luck in success. It's probably not what you think. We'll also discuss the role of mentors, why they're important, how to get one, mistakes people make when they try to make that happen, which also includes some cold outreach scripts

to help you with that here. And we'll wrap with how Alex hacked the game show The Price is Right in order to fund this whole book venture, which has since launched his speaking career. This is a really unique way of making things happen for himself here. Of course, we have worksheets just like we do for every episode. Those are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And the fee, of course, for this show and every show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which is hopefully every episode. And the worksheets are how we make sure of that. All right.

Here's Alex Benayan. I think it just takes like the previous generation does not do what we do, Alex, where we're like, I want to start a business. Let me call Bill Gates. They're like, oh, I have to research it and think about it and like, you know, do all this. I have to plan for it. And you're younger than me, probably even previous generation. You're probably Gen Z, you know, you guys eating freaking tidepods and stuff. But like.

Oh, God. I hope not. But like our generation and yours, we, maybe it's just. the entrepreneur people that I'm surrounded by, but I feel like people go, you know, it'd be pretty cool if I got into wilderness photography. And then a week later, they're in Antarctica with a DSLR. Right. And an Instagram account, you know? And they've updated their bio and their website. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, you just went ahead and did that. And that has its, that has its pluses and minuses. But it's a good segue into the show because it sounds like you kind of

have a little bit of that as well. Tell us how you got into what you got into. You decided to just call Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Steven Spielberg, Maya Angelou, and Woz, and go, I have a question. Call me back when you get a chance. Well, to my surprise, you know, Bill Gates doesn't normally call back 18-year-olds. So that was a very crushing realization. I thought that did surprise you while you're chewing on a tide pod waiting for the call. Where is he? It's been like an hour. So the very basic idea in the beginning was very naive, which was I was going through this life crisis. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And I had no idea how all these people who I looked up to, how they did it.

You know, how did Bill Gates sell his first piece of software out of his dorm room when nobody knew his name? Or how did Spielberg become the youngest director in Hollywood history without a single hit under his belt? Those are the things that they don't normally teach you in school. So I just went through a bunch of books looking for answers. And after, you know, piles of self-help books and business books, eventually I was left empty-handed. And like you guys said, that's when I had this very naive thought of, well, if no one's going to write the book, I'm dreaming of reading, why not just write it myself? And I thought, you know, I could just call up Bill Gates, interview him, interview everyone else. I'll be done in a few months and I'll be ready for, you know, sophomore year of college.

Right. That's how this show works, too. Hey, man, let me know when you're ready. Has Bill been much more receptive to you because he wasn't to me in the beginning? Yeah, we're still working on. The thing that's funny about that is people who start shows go, hey, how do I get the guests on? And I'm like, you've just covered 90% of my problem. You know, like, you've just covered 80% of the work that my team does when you're not looking.

And you know better than anyone. It's such a timing trick, too, right? because maybe, let's say you want to get Tony Robbins on your show, maybe there's a one week period per year where he wants to be on every podcast. And you're like packed that one week. So it's such a tricky timing thing. Yeah, I can see that. But I would imagine people like Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, they don't have PR windows because they don't need it. And universally, it's a waste of time for people in that position.

I'm very happy we're having this conversation now and not when I was starting. Because if we had this conversation when I was starting, I may never have written this book. The reason I got going is because I thought this would be a really simple idea. You know, I just had this very simple belief that if all these people came together, you know, 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. So that was really the guiding belief that helped me go through this seven-year journey because it took two years to get to Gates, three years for Lady Gaga. So it's really been this really long quest. All right.

Well, I definitely want to back up and get into how you got these folks, of course, and some of the how-to. But I know that you learned some other meta lessons when it came to this, including the role that luck plays in some of these people's success. Did you get any insight there? We did a show about the role that luck plays in success a long time ago. And the takeaway kind of was, well, luck plays a role in everybody's success. But one, we don't see it most of the time because it's kind of this factor that operates in the background.

And two, even if we do see it, we don't want to go, hey, you know it was really lucky? Me stumbling into this and being interested in this at this time when nobody else was and having the resources at my fingertips and then starting a company and getting a corporate gig that then spilled over into it. You hear that about Microsoft a lot as well because the role that Luck played was, yes, these guys are brilliant. Yes, they were interested in it, but they had access to a computer in, I don't know, the 70s or something like that. And then they snuck in and they would stay there all night. So they'd get six months of work done in two days. And they did that for years. And then they started a company when everyone went, hey, how about those computer things helping us work 100 times faster?

And they were the only game in town for a while. Exactly. So what else did you take away from this other than Bill Gates got lucky, but hey, returned your call so we're friends with him? I mean, I assume you got some really good insight into this because I know that you asked about it. So luck, I think everything you just played out about the debate of luck, both sides actually have very valid arguments. And it wasn't until I met this man. His name is Chi Liu that I really understood the role luck plays in success. So this guy almost, you know, no one's heard of him.

He grew up in a village outside of Shanghai, China, with no running water, no electricity. People were, you know, so poor that they had deformities from malnutrition. And, you know, we think our education system is bad in America. But in his village, for every 300 kids, there was one teacher. Yikes. Right. So, you know, you probably could. couldn't count on a unluckier hand to be dealt.

But, you know, she was very smart and worked really hard. And by age 27 was making the most money he had ever earned, $7 a month. I was going to say it was like $2 a day or something. And that's $7 a month. And to understand, it took $6 just to live and survive himself. And then that one extra dollar he would send back to his parents in the village. Oh, man. Now, fast forward 20 years later, and he's a president.

and Microsoft. And I sat down with him. And the story is, no one knows the story because Chilu believes that every hour he talks to a journalist is an hour he's not contributing back to the world. Like, he's that kind of guy. And you're like, thankfully, I'm a teenager, not a journalist. So we're okay. You know, that's actually why he did the interview because I was a college student. I was 18 years old. And I sat there trying to understand there had to be some crazy luck in his story. And I actually found out there was. So Chi Lu really. realized that, you know, there are so many brilliant, brilliant young people in China who are all dying to get this same one dream, which is to go to America to study in an American university.

And she knew that, you know, relying on just his talent alone was, you know, idiotic. He needed to create a system to give himself an edge. So he went to the library and started researching all these famous people in history who had re-engineered their sleep patterns. you know, Da Vinci and Thomas Edison. And he realizes, you know, he needs to create his own system. Because his thinking is that if he's spending eight hours in bed like everyone else, if he can find a way to cut that down, that will give him, you know, months of productivity

per year. And he eventually creates a system where he can, in his words, function, you know, just as well, using four hours of sleep. But he creates what he calls chi time. which added two months of productivity per year. And finally, one Sunday night when he was in college, a visiting professor from Carnegie Mellon was at the university to give a guest lecture. And it was a Sunday night.

And normally on Sunday nights, Chi rides his bike back to his village to visit his parents. But because it was raining, that was the first Sunday night he was ever in his dorm room in years or in months. and a friend knocked on the door asked Chi to come down to fill the seats. And she goes down there. And during the lecture, the professor compliments him on asking such good questions. And at the end of the lecture, he asked Chi if he had done any research on the topic. Chi hadn't done some research.

He had written five entire papers on the topic. And that was the, you know, that's the power of Chi time. He was not only the most prepared person in the room. He was miles ahead of everyone else. So he runs, the professor asks to see the papers. He runs to his dorm room, gets them. They're like sitting on his desk. He runs back, gives them to the professor.

On the spot, the professor starts reading them. He asked Chi if he's ever wanted to come to America and study. And she tells him it's his biggest dream, but he can't afford to take the entrance exams because the $1 month he makes extra goes to his parents. On the spot, the professor offers to waive the fees, and two months later, Chi gets a letter saying that he got a full ride to Carnegie Mellon. Now, on the one hand, that's probably one of the luckiest stories I've ever heard because every Sunday, religiously, he leaves campus to go visit his parents. The only Sunday that he was there, so happened to be the day that Carnegie Mellon professor was there. But on the other hand, there was nothing lucky about him being the only one in the room who had done five research papers.

on that topic. This isn't really the role that luck plays for a lot of people. People think, oh, this guy just happened to be at this university and then the professor walked in and said, hey, I need a research assistant for this virtual reality thing I'm going to try out and suddenly, or this internet thing that I think is going to be a hit. And he's the only person who takes the gig because he has no other choice. That's the luck that I think most people are envisioning in their head. And it's never, I've never in seven years of studying this, Not a single person who I interviewed ever had that fantasy of luck that for some reason, movies and television propagate. Yeah, it's not Goodwill hunting where he's like drawing on the blackboard and the math professor walks by and goes, by golly, you're correct.

Exactly. That's not what happens. What happens is this guy was so damn prepared that when his opportunity did arrive, he went, oh, yeah, I just happened to have a stack of qualifications. Now, the opportunity, the timing happened to be fortuitous, but had he not had a stack of papers, he just would have been the guy putting out and filling the chairs. Bingo. Yeah. And what, you know, the quote Chilu told me in the interview, he said, luck is like a bus.

If you're not prepared, the next one's going to show up if you're standing at the right bus stop. But, you know, your preparation is your fee to get on to that bus. If you don't have it, no matter how many times you wait at that bus stop, you won't be able to get on. And that's exactly what you were saying, which is all of these lucky moments are sort of serendipously happening around us. We just never are prepared to make it happen. And, you know, that sort of sent me down a track to study the science of luck. There are scientific studies that show why some people do get quote unquote luckier over and over

and over again while some, you know, never get a break. So yeah, let's actually hear the science because this is a show filled to the brim with geeks like me who would love. love to hear why this is a qualified opinion instead of just a gen X and Gen Z are wrapping about getting in touch with Bill Gates once. Absolutely. Tell us about the science of luck that you've encountered. Because I would imagine at that point you went, hold on, hold on, hold on. There's more to this and I want my shred of luck and I want to be ready for it when it hits

me in the lap or the face. Exactly. So, yeah, so after I spoke to Chilu, I sort of became obsessed with understanding how luck works from a scientific background. And what I uncovered was this one study, which I found fascinating. And this study sort of went like this. They got a sample group of people and gave them all the same assignment. They gave them a newspaper.

And they said, you have, you know, X amount of minutes. Let's say, you know, you have 10 minutes to find how many times the word, you know, for example, dog is in this newspaper. Go. You know, everyone had the exact same assignment with the exact same newspaper. Before the study started, though, they gave each person a questionnaire of like, you know, 20 random questions. And one of the questions is, do you consider yourself as lucky? And, you know, no one in the study knew what the study was for.

And what they found out is that all the people who said they consider themselves lucky, you know, disproportionately got the right answer of how many times the word dog is using the newspaper. And the reason is, on the, I think, second or third page of the newspaper, there was a headline that said, the word dog is used 63 times in this newspaper today. And the point of that study is that people, and, you know, there's multiple studies of different variations of this. And they all have the same conclusion, which is people who tell themselves and have a narrative in their head that they're lucky. See the world in a different way.

And the way they see the world is they keep themselves open to possibilities. It's an internal narrative that you tell yourself that actually has real world outcomes in your career. So when you say open to possibilities, I mean, look, I'm open to possibilities. Nobody listening to this is going to go, ah, that's my problem. I've been closed off to possibility the entire time, right? Everyone's going to say, of course, I'm open to possibility. who isn't. So what are what are these people who believe that they are lucky naturally? What are

they doing differently? Because no one's going to say, I don't believe that I'm open to possibility. Sure, some people definitely believe that they're not lucky. In fact, a lot of people believe that they are unlucky, but I don't really understand what the behavioral changes in this. You know, they might believe that it's like, like you said, luck is like lightning. It doesn't strike once. It's like a bus. It comes back over and over as Chi Liu taught you. But what are they doing differently for real? Okay, so there's two ways to go about this. There's the natural default way where it happens to you. Then there's a way that you can try to make a change yourself. The first one, how some people, you know, even as kids think they're lucky, it's for one reason.

And Dean Kamen, one of the greatest inventors alive when I had interviewed him told me what it is. And he calls it the internal bias. And what that means is that. when people are young, for reasons that actually don't have much logical standing, they create this internal bias of a narrative they tell them. Let's say they went to a school where, you know, all the kids were really crappy at basketball and they tried out for the basketball team and they got on the team. You know, they're not actually good at basketball, just the circumstances allowed them to get on the team, but they now created this narrative in their head subconsciously. I'm really good at something.

You know, I'm really good at basketball. If I try out for the team, I'll win. So that internal bias actually really makes a huge difference. You know, we can't go back to our childhood. So let's push that to the side. How can someone who doesn't see themselves lucky or wants to be more lucky actually make a difference in their life today? What's the practical approach? So there's a book called The Magic of Thinking Big, where the author talks about creating memory banks.

And it's essentially the same concept as Dean Kamen's in, in terms. bias, which is if you train your brain to rewire the narrative that you have about yourself, it actually works. And the way you do that is, you know, if someone here listening wants to actually make a difference to make themselves feel luckier, what I would tell them is for the next 30 days, every night spend 10 minutes with a journal, journaling a new story every night of a moment in their life where they were incredibly lucky in what the circumstances were surrounding that situation.

And at the end of the 30 days, whether they're conscious of it or not, there will be a subtle change in the way they see themselves, which will affect outcomes in the future. Okay. So what we do is we basically convince ourselves that we are lucky by continually writing narratives about how we are lucky. Correct. And the whole thing is you're subconsciously convincing yourself. and there's a huge difference because trying to consciously convince yourself of something.

I've tried it. I've tried to convince myself to like get rid of my insecurities. It doesn't work. Oh, yeah. No, we've all been there. I mean, that's why I had a job for 11 years on the old show because I was going, hey, you can't just tell yourself to be confident. It's like telling yourself to be taller.

It doesn't work. The subconscious does respond to stories. This is why going to therapy and journaling have such huge impacts on people's lives. It's not magic. The subconscious really respond. to writing out and speaking stories. I can see why this works as well, because when you journal something or when you continually tell yourself a narrative or develop a narrative for yourself, look, I'm really lucky. Look at this lucky thing that happened today. It's the same thing that

happened when I started, well, similar to what happened when I started editing my own show 11 plus years ago, maybe even longer, where I would edit out the ums and the us. And then I would consciously get rid of those in my current speech because I knew subconsciously I was going to have to edit it out later on anyway. And so if you're telling yourself, I was so lucky today, this happened, I was so lucky today that happened, you're going to be looking for those opportunities to tell yourself that you're lucky, regardless of how that opportunity came about. So you could probably tell yourself that you also are really good at spotting opportunity. And I bet you that it would have the same effect. It absolutely would. And one of the key things to that exercise,

that I think a lot of people mess up on is they don't understand how important the repetitiveness is. I have a lot of people who I've told this principle to who come back to me a year later, or like it didn't work. And I'm like, well, how many times did you do that? And they're like, oh, I tried it all weekend. Right. I did it a couple weekends in a row. I'm like, yeah.

The whole point is it needs to be night after night after night for a significant amount. Like in the minimum would be 30 days. I would really recommend, you know, 60 days or 100 days if you want to make a giant difference in your life. But 30 days is the minimum. You need to convince your brain that no matter what happens, you have all of this opportunity falling in your lap to the point where it's just ridiculous. If you just try it a couple of times and you have to rack your brain both times, it's not going to work. Exactly. And what I've learned is that when you change what you believe is possible, you change what becomes possible. And there's a science to it. Yeah, I mean, it has its limitations,

but I definitely agree when it comes to luck or opportunity that convincing yourself to have that internal bias where you can spot it. That internal narrative that you're lucky, that you're successful, inclines you to actually try more in the first place. And that's like getting more lottery tickets. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I like the idea of creating that internal bias. And I love the idea of doing it via journal. It's cheap. It's very effective to do things like this. In fact, I did this when I was learning German. I started journaling when I lived overseas. And I remember writing all this negative stuff that I didn't like and my attitude was really poor. And then when I decided I'm not going, I didn't want to, what I found this by accident because I didn't want to read that journal

in 20 years ago, what a little shit. I can't believe how negative I was. I wanted to create a narrative where I was at least having fun. So I started looking on the bright side, even on terrible days. And I would always end the journal entries on a high note. And what started happening was I started looking at each day and going, today sucked. Well, actually, this other thing happened that was good. Oh, there's another thing that happened that was good. And I started to program my narrative of being abroad in Germany and going, actually, most of the things that happened to me are good.

I'm just letting one or two pieces of homesickness ruin the entire thing. And it's kind of embarrassing. When you see things like that on paper, you can create an internal bias for pretty much anything, as long as you're not trying to make magic. This isn't some BS law of attraction type of thing. it's really scientifically crafting a narrative for yourself that you eventually start to believe whether or not you are actually going to be successful in doing that lies in the repetition and lies in the results.

And you know, everyone sort of jokes about this whole law of attraction like, you know, voodoo, whatever. It's just the unscientific term for what we're talking about. And it's a much less tangible and practical way to go about it. I have my own issues with the law of attraction. thing when people are trying to manifest Ferraris in their drive-way while sitting on their couch watching Netflix, but I don't want to get into that whole mess. I mean, there's a reason that some of those guys, there's a reason that you don't hear from those guys anymore, aside from the fact that one of them went to

prison for, I think, manslaughter if memory serves. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, tangent that we don't need to go down that road. Yeah, exactly. That's right, Jason, Lambo, baby. All right. Now, going after these high-profile interviews, interviewees, I should say, it smacks of this kind of buzzword stuff that I'm getting in my inbox. I'm not saying this is what you did, but a lot of folks will write in and go,

will you mentor me? How do I get a mentor? And whenever I hear that word, I kind of think like, okay, you've watched a lot of Tai Lopez videos or something because, you know, that's just, it's like a buzzword in the entrepreneur community, especially in the younger generation,

where it's like, oh, you don't have to be. have a mentor, you're never going to succeed because you need a sensei or something like this. And I don't necessarily believe that, but I do believe in the power of having influential people helping you along, having people mentor you in different phases of your life. Can you discuss some of the mistakes people are making when they're trying to reach out and make this happen? Because I know that you've been through this process. In fact, that's probably in part how this whole thing started for you anyway. Yeah, the whole reason this journey worked is because of other people who are, you know, far more accomplished and far more wise than me,

for some reason, trying to help. And, you know, throughout this book, I've realized in the journey of making it happen, I made a ton of mistakes. And in hindsight, I'm able to sort of point them out and hopefully it helps other people who are on the journey. The biggest mistake by far, like there's not even a close second that people make, you actually just touched on. it's specifically and explicitly asking someone to be your mentor.

It's like if you're a, you know, a woman and you see a guy that you like at a party saying, hey, would you be my husband? It's like it's just such a, you know, even if it's not husband, hey, would you be my boyfriend? Like they don't even know you, you know. And you're asking them for a really big commitment. Because normally, you know, Jordan, like people of your caliber have been helped by mentors. and you understand that having a mentor is actually a very big, you know, it's a real relationship. So for someone to be cold emailing you saying, hey, Jordan, I would love about, you know,

five hours of time a week from you for the next six years as I launched my career is a really big ask. So the biggest number one mistake people make is explicitly asking to be a mentor. Now, the flip side, so I believe when you say talk about the don'ts, let's also talk about the do for the same advice. the things to do would be starting off really simply with one question of advice that the person can answer in about five to ten seconds. You know, Jordan, if a young person emails you and is like, hi, Jordan, I know you're super busy. This will only take, you know, 10 seconds.

If I'm looking to become a podcaster, what's one book that you really recommend I read? that takes you what like or if i'm looking to get into entrepreneurship whatever it may be right that takes you about five seconds to respond and you know if you're if the person's lucky you might have five seconds you'll respond you know and this is something bill gates taught me in the interview is one of the best ways to get someone to take you under their wing is to show them almost the ROI of their advice so someone recommends a book to you you need to read that book within days or weeks. And then you need a follow up with a letter of gratitude, not by asking for more things,

but a letter of gratitude about how much their advice helped you. And it creates, and again, we talk about like subconscious narratives. It creates the subconscious narrative in the mentor that, hey, my five seconds of advice to that kid who I don't even know really, you know, made a giant difference in his life. That felt really good. And then slowly you can start, you know, moving up the ladder in your asks. You know, the book Persuasion, actually it's called Influence, talks about, you know, the yes ladder, which I know you're familiar with.

And it's very similar with getting a mentor. So explicitly asking people to be your mentor, not good. I agree. It is weird. It's like too much commitment because I don't even know what that means. Are you asking me to hold your hand until you're successful? How do I know you're going to do anything? are you going to run around telling everybody that I'm mentoring you and then what are my obligations

and then how does that reflect on me and we just met and oh my gosh right it's like a date asking for too much too soon very similar note on that one but I think a lot of folks will go hey I just need a quick bit of advice and there's six paragraphs and it's like okay how did you get to where you are now it's a whole interview how did you get to where you are now I didn't research you at all I could have but I'd rather put it in email and have you write back to me and tell me exactly what steps I need to do to build a big brand that will allow me to do what you're doing, what are the skills I need to build. And it's just like, oh, man, if I even type this out, I'm probably spending more time typing this out, then you will be applying it. So why would I ever do that? And you end up

questioning, should I even reply to this? And I often will just say, look, there's a lot here. Not sure what to do with all this. I don't really have time. And that's the truth, because you need to get people's toes wet first when it comes to this. I agree with you on the rapid timing. If someone recommends a book or if I recommend a book to somebody, which I very, really do, but if someone says, hey, what would you do if you were me? And then three days later or a day later, they follow up and they went, I did this thing. I'm always impressed.

But if I hear from them in six months and they go, you know, life got in the way, I just go, yeah, you're never going to do this. Right, because it shows you that your ROI of helping them wasn't very high. Yeah, they clearly didn't value it more than they valued screwing around for three, four, or five, six months with something else or doing some other thing that clearly they thought was more important despite asking me what I thought was the most important. And additionally, I'm impatient. And I think a lot of successful people in general, and I'm not trying to be like, I'm so successful. But I think a lot of successful people are super impatient. They want everything yesterday.

And so if someone says, hey, this book is going to make you a better interviewer, I will read it immediately. I'll move other things. I'll figure out how to do it. I'll hire that coach. I'll figure out what's next. I'm not going to go, yeah, you know, I definitely should slot that in for Q4 when I start caring about my career again, right? That doesn't make any sense. So when I see other people do things like that with kicking my advice down the road for a reason or not taking something with urgency, I just figure, well, we don't really have a whole lot

in common. So there's no point in me continuing to mentor you. Right, exactly. The second biggest mistake people make is they ask mentors. who are in the limelight. And it's a very understandable thing to do. Like, you know, you brought up Ty Lopez. A lot of young people see his videos and really admire what he's done. And it's really easy to make, you know, Ty or Grand Cardone or Gary Vaynerchuk who, you know, are really out there to be in your mind, your dream mentor. But what I've learned is that because, you know, all those guys are very generous,

but they only have so much time in a day, even if you're lucky enough to get some advice from them. The impact that another mentor can have on you who's not in the limelight, who isn't being hounded by thousands or even millions of other people, is exponential. So what I would recommend to a young person or to an older person, because it's not about an age, it's really about a stage for someone who's looking for a mentor, is look at people in your life and index them as people who do have the time to help. and sometimes some of the smartest, most successful people aren't famous. For example, someone who changed my life tremendously is a guy named Cal Fussman,

who Jordan, I know you know. And I met Cal when he didn't even have a website, he didn't have a Twitter page, he hadn't been on a single podcast, he had never given a single speech in his entire life. But he was just as successful and accomplished, just no one knew about him because he was a magazine writer and magazine writers don't normally have, you know, public personas. And Cal completely changed my life more than any other, you know, well-known author who I've come across. So that's the second one. And the third biggest mistake is, and I'll phrase this not as a mistake, but almost as an insight. One of my mentors is a man who really brilliant guy who used to be a vice president at Goldman Sachs.

And our relationship got to the point where I could be really honest with that. them and I was like, why are you spending time, you know, helping me so much? And he said that in his career, he realized people mentor other people for three reasons. And again, subconscious reasons. Number one, the mentor sees a part of themselves in the mentee. Number two, the mentor wants to help the mentee be more like them, whether that's succeeding in a certain career or whatnot. And the third one is the most surprising. The mentor, wants to be more like the mentee. That is interesting.

And that I couldn't see coming. At first, I remember when he told me that, I thought he like misspoke. But what he was telling me is that sometimes, you know, a 65-year-old CEO really misses having enthusiasm about their industry. You know, they're worn out. They've been doing this for decades. And there's something really valuable to them. And I could, I still have trouble understanding this.

but this is how it works, it's valuable meeting with a, you know, a 19-year-old who thinks they have the most exciting job on earth. It gives them a sense of energy where they can't find anywhere else. Or maybe it's curiosity or maybe, yeah, it's a sense of adventure. But the mentee, whether they know it or not, needs to bring something to the table that the mentor is also looking for.

In my relationship, we talked about with Cal Fussman, you know, Cal had no, understanding of how the internet worked and how entrepreneurship worked. So while I was, you know, desperate to be mentored by Cal, I had no idea. He was also very interested about learning about other things, which I was able to help with. Yeah, that is interesting. He is on Twitter. He is, I think, on Instagram. You know, he's all over the place. Yeah. I remember going to Twitter.com and helping him make the login. It was a very big moment in his life. Yeah, that's really funny. I can, I can see that, though, because a mentor would go, oh, man, I'm going to try to, all right,

This kid's hungry, right? So they see a little bit of themselves in here. They want to make you more like them. But then, yeah, oh, man, if I was 20 and I knew this, this, this, this, this and this, oh, I would have been crushing it. I'm going to help this kid get to where I'm at now so that I can be, yeah, I can see the symbiotic relationship between those things. And I think that's very useful.

And I think that it becomes those, that of course becomes useful later on down the line. But how do we use this to our advantage, right? we want to be more like them. We want them to be more like us. What do we do with this? I mean, now that we know that, how does that change our approach? I think it changes the approach drastically. And this is what I'll tell people who are looking to get a mentor.

For example, I had a, you know, a young, you know, 19-year-old guy come to me and he was from, I think he was Japanese. And one of the biggest pieces of advice I gave him is, and he wanted to get into venture capital. I told him these three criteria, and I said, now that you know it, try to reverse engineer it. Okay, so the first one, they want to mentor someone who reminds them of themselves. All right. So the easiest thing that you can do, and, you know, this sort of sucks and this does prove that there are a lot of issues in Silicon Valley, but it is the way it is, try to find someone who physically looks like you. I'm not Asian. So I'm not a lot of white.

A white dude, Silicon Valley could be tricky. All right. Right. But right. There are VCs who are Japanese immigrants that instantly, you know, checks off the first one and gives you an advantage of the person subconsciously wanting to help you. You know, also try to track down people who have similar backgrounds as you, who have similar personality traits. I know all this stuff sounds very esoteric and nonsensical, but it actually does make a huge.

difference. The next one is make sure that the advice that you're asking for is actually that person's expertise that they can just, it doesn't take any effort for them to give you that kind of advice. It's fun for them. Right. So you're not asking somebody who's in creative arts, hey, what college should I go to? Right. To study engineering. You're really successful. Because then they have to think about it or they feel like, oh, I'm faking my way through this. there's a pause which will likely, I would say, reduce the chances that they're going to reply, or at least even to give you something useful. And of course, if they do reply and they give you something they don't necessarily think is useful,

they're going to avoid doing that because you don't feel good. Right. And I think the mistake people make is, you know, people aren't asking a basketball player for advice on, you know, quantum physics. But I think people make mistakes even in like the world of tech. They think, oh, just because someone is a, you know, a software engineer, they understand about, reaching out to VCs. And, you know, the two jobs couldn't be more different. So it's about being super, super thoughtful about making sure the person you're asking for advice from that really is

what they know best. And the third one is the most important one that you have control over, which is, you know, what you bring to the mentor relationship that the mentor also wants in their life. And, you know, it's hard to know what someone's looking for, but you can have pretty thoughtful guesses. You know, you can make sure if someone is a bit older and doesn't understand tech. You know, that's a huge advantage that I always tell young people. Like, I remember the first time I was at breakfast with Larry King doing the interview, one of Larry's best friends was like, did you know that, uh, you can watch videos on these iPads? And I was like, uh, yeah. Oh, man. Do you want me to, you want me to help you do that? And he's like, I have my son got me a,

I bet for Hanukkah still don't know how to turn it on. And literally I was like their tech tutor. Another one of Larry's friends wanted to, you know, get in contact with YouTube stars because he heard like they're going to be the next like Hollywood stars. So I started making introductions to YouTube stars. With Cal Fussman, I talked about like I helped him get an online presence. So there is a way to be really thoughtful about, okay, if you put yourself in their shoes, what are they looking for?

whether that's just having the person with the right energy around them or if it's actually tangible things like helping them with digital stuff. Yeah, I think a lot of folks think, oh, man, I can't give anything in return. I'm just starting out. But this person's so far ahead of me. They don't realize, we don't realize this is a symbiotic relationship. Yep. And this is a fucked up one, but it's important.

Sometimes what someone needs is to feel good about themselves. Oh, yeah. Like, that's something no one wants to talk about and no one will admit. But it's weird to talk about, but, and I haven't had this experience at least consciously, but, you know, maybe someone's going through a divorce. You know, they're losing a lot in their life and hearing from a young person who has read everything about them and just is so thoughtful and so appreciative is exactly what that person needs in their life.

So how do you go about finding out? out what the need is. How do you elicit the need? That's the tricky part. You know, that's where massive amounts of empathy come in. And the truth is no one can know exactly what it is, but doing your research makes a difference. And we'll go back to Cal Flusman again because he's a great example of at the time when I met Cal, I think in 2013, all you had to do was Google Cal's name to know that there was a massive discrepancy in his life as he's one of the greatest magazine writers on earth, yet you Google him, and there's like one article from the Austin Chronicle in 2006, like about him, which doesn't make any sense. He wasn't on any social

platforms. So literally, what I'm just shocked is that people won't take one hour. Like Jordan, I'm sure you get tons of cold messages from people who haven't even spent, you know, two hours on Google researching what you need in your life and what you're working on. Yeah, I get a lot of that. I mean, I get a lot of great pitches too, but I also certainly get a lot of people that go, hey, I have a question for you or how did this work in your life? And I'm like, wow, you literally've never even listened. Right. You've never even listened.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I heard that this and this and this. How did you get started? You're literally asking me how I got started. I mean, I've told that story hundreds of times on multiple shows, this one and others. and but I think people don't really think about this. They think, oh, well, you know, this is the first time this person's hearing this question or because maybe nobody asks them about themselves.

I don't know. I'm trying to be trying to be understanding here. Right. But I feel like if I was going to reach out to somebody, I wouldn't not have a clue who they are before I do that. The email to that person personally should probably not be your very first step. Exactly. How do we reach out to these folks in the beginning?

You know, we got to research them. Okay, great. how does that process look? You spend a couple hours reading, you spend a couple hours going through the press on the website or their shows, and then you reach out and you ask them. But how do we get their attention, especially if they're getting hundreds of emails a day? So one of the most practical and useful things that came from the writing of this book was a cold email template that Tim Ferriss gave me.

And the way I met Tim was really funny because it's pretty much I did every mistake you can possibly make and reaching out to a person. I sent his assistant 32 emails asking to interview Tim for my book. I could not have been more of an idiot. I wrote, you know, I wrote short emails when those wouldn't get responses. I would write nine paragraph emails. When, you know, those wouldn't get responses. I would write the most preposterous things like I verbatim said, doing an interview with me, this is very embarrassing to admit. I said, doing an interview with me would be one of best uses of one hour of Tim's life. Wow.

Like, it just shows, like, I was 19. And, you know, that's why I have so much compassion for people who, you know, send those silly emails. Because it's not that they're dumb. They just haven't, they haven't gone through it, you know? Yeah. And whenever I get anything like that, it's a pretty sure immediate delete. I'm that guy.

Yeah. I understand that. We've all been there. But I think we can help people avoid that mistake. I think that you honestly believed that to be true in the moment. And the thing is, we've heard that so many times. And that's never been the case from somebody who's not a journalist. Exactly.

And, you know, the way I ultimately got to Tim is I had to, I flew out to a conference he was speaking at. And I saw there was a bathroom by the speakers, by the stairs that led to the stage. Tim was on stage. And I knew everyone in the audience wanted to talk to him. So I hid, this is, again, very embarrassing, but I was 19, and I hid in the bathroom by the stage with my ear pressed against the wall, crouching beside a urinal for 30 minutes, listening and waiting for the applause. And as soon as the applause happened, I jumped out of the bathroom and Tim was standing directly in front of me all alone. And that's how I made the pitch. Wow.

You know, the book is full of, you know, a lot of very embarrassing moments. But what Tim gave me is this cold email template because I asked him the same question, which is how do you reach out to these VIPs and CEOs or potential mentors who are busy, who do get a lot of emails? How do you get them to actually respond? Because my problem was no one was responding to me, you know, for obvious reasons. And this is what Tim taught me. You know, Tim launched his career by doing very similar things.

And when he emails a very busy person or a VIP, this is the composition of his email. Let's say he's emailing Jordan. Hi, Jordan. I know you get a lot of emails, so this will only take 60 seconds to read. Literally, that's the entire opening paragraph. And then the second paragraph is very, very briefly in two sentences. Who you are and what your credibility is of why they should keep reading. And again, if you don't have credibility, it's, I'm a 19-year-old student at blah, blah, blah,

who's been listening to every episode of your podcast three times. Like just something that shows that why you're not a random person. The third paragraph is where you ask your very, very specific question. Again, like you mentioned, you're not asking what's your life story had you get started. It's what's the best podcast production software that you have, whatever that question is. And then the final paragraph is the clincher. You go, because everyone loves to close with, you know, thanks in advance or looking forward to hearing from your favorable, for your favorable response. Like, I hear that all the time.

What Tim said is to do the opposite. Finish it with, I completely understand if you're too busy to reply. If for some reason you have time for a one or two sentence response, it would mean the world to me. All the best. And if you look at each paragraph, because of first, if you look at each paragraph, because of Of course, I've, like, psychoanalyze this, you know, way too much. The first paragraph is fascinating. It's one sentence and the first half of the sentence where it reads, I know you're busy

and you get a lot of emails, immediately shows that you have some sort of grip on their reality. And the second half of the email, and, you know, it shows that you're thoughtful. It shows a lot of good things about you, just that first half of a sentence. The second half of the sentence, this will only take 60 seconds to read. again, cements in their mind that this person is very thoughtful about my time and respects my time. Then I also think, and this is just my theory, it creates a sense of curiosity in them of, first of all, what kind of person says something like that in an email? And second of all, is this actually going to take 60 seconds to read?

And what I've played around with to actually better results is I make it like more specific. like this will only take 45 seconds to read. And it makes people even more curious. And again, the closing line is also critically important where you're not just saying what everyone else says with just thanks in advance because it's presumptuous. And again, I used to say in all 32 emails I sent Tim Ferriss as assistant, I ended all of them with thanks in advance looking forward to hearing from you soon. And, you know, God bless Tim because he was trying to save me. for myself. He saw those emails and he was trying to help me and he was getting nothing in return,

but he was kind enough to sort of slap me and say, you got to change your ways. And I'm very grateful that he did. We'll throw this cold email template into the worksheets as well. So if people want that, they don't have to take notes here on the show. They can grab that at the worksheets, which will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. I want to wrap, though, with this particular story because I heard that you won the prices right and that's how you ended up funding the book. How did that happen? So when I originally had the idea to go on this mission, like I told you earlier, I thought the easy part would be, you know, calling up Bill Gates and interviewing him. I thought that was the easy

part. The hard part I figured was getting money to fund the journey. You know, I was all out of bar mitzvah cash. I was buried in Soon-Alone Day. There had to be another way. So two nights before final exam is my freshman year of college. I'm doing, you know, I'm in the library doing what everyone does two nights before finals. I'm on Facebook. Yeah. And. Right.

Exactly. You know, it's just the library before finals is just a sea of Facebook. And I'm on there and I see someone's offering tickets to the price is right. And it's filming a few miles from my campus. And the first thought that comes to my mind is. what if I just go on this show and win some money to fund the book? You know, not my brightest moment, but, you know, I had much bigger problems. I'd never seen a full episode of the show before.

I'd, of course, seen bits and pieces when I was homesick as a kid. And I had finals in two days. So I'm sitting in the library and for some reason, I don't know if you've ever had one of these moments where just this stupid idea keeps clawing into. to your mind. So to prove to myself it was a bad idea, I remember opening up my notebook and making, you know, the best and worst case scenarios. And it was, you know, pros and cons, you know, worst case scenarios, fail finals, get kicked out of pre-med, lose financial aid, you know, mom stops talking to me, no, mom abandons me, you know, look fat on TV, there were 20 cons. And the only pro was maybe win enough money to fund this stream.

So that night, I did the logical thing and I pulled an all-nighter to study. But I didn't study for finals. I studied how to hack the prices right. Nice. And, you know, I went on the show the next day and did this preposterous strategy. And I ended up winning the entire showcase showdown, winning a sailboat. selling the sailboat and that's how I funded the book. So wait, how exactly did you hack?

I mean, you don't have to get into the details, but what does it mean to hack the price is right? I'm curious. So if you look at the prices right, because at the time I had just finished reading the four-hour work week, this is right in the start of my journey. And I was like, all right, what's the 80, 20 of the price is right? And what I realize is there's 300 people in the audience and then eight get called down to play.

and then one out of those eight win. So if you do the odds, the one out of eight is not as bad as the eight out of 300. So I was like, all right, if I have only one night to figure out how to hack the prices, right? I'm just going to use all of my time figuring out how to ensure I make it past the round of 300 into the round of eight. Right. Okay. So it's about getting selected to play more so than it is about knowing how to guess the price of everything. Exactly. And in my all. all-nighter, I sort of figured out that there is, you know, they make it look random. Jordan, come on down, as if they pulled your name out of a hat.

But during my all-nighter, I discovered there was a system to how they select contestants. And what I learned is that there's a producer who interviews every single person in the audience before the show goes on. What no one knows, and I found this out about, you know, three or four a.m. during my all-nighter is that there's also an undercover producer. who's planted amongst the audience. So the Price is Right has contestants show up four hours before the show begins filming to wait in line and do paperwork. And the biggest mistake people make is they think, you know, only the 10 seconds you're in front of the producer is your interview. But it's actually a four hour long interview. Ah, nice.

So once I figure that out, the second, you know, my cars, wheels touched the premises of CBS Studios. It was, the interview was happening. So, you know, I'm flirting with the security guards at the front desk. I'm, you know, I'm dancing with the custodians. I'm breakdancing and I don't know how to break dance. You know, it's a four hour long thing. Yeah, you're just making total ass out of yourself. Got it.

Okay. Right. Exactly. And another thing, and again, this actually goes back to everything we've talked about over the past hour on this podcast. I went in making sure that I knew. every single thing possible about the casting producer. You know, his name was Stan, and I knew where he grew up. I knew where he went to school.

I pretty much knew what he ate for breakfast that morning. I had read every tweet he had ever put out. Like, I just knew everything about him. So by the time I got there, you know, it's finally my turn in line. And I already knew his entire system. I knew he walks down this long metal pole asking the same question. You know, what's your name where you're from? What do you do?

What's your name? Where you from? What do you do? If he likes you, he'll ask you another question. And if he really likes you, he'll turn around and look to his assistant and she'll write your name on her clipboard. Before the show began filming, I already knew if I was a contestant or not, which almost no one knows that. Nice. And, you know, Stan comes up to me and he's like, what's your name?

What's your name where you're from? What do you do? And I go, hey, I'm Alex. I'm 18. I'm a freshman in college. I'm studying pre-met. And he goes, pre-med, you must have a lot of time studying. How do you have time to watch the prices right?

And I go, oh, is that where I am? No, like, I didn't even get that. Like, I didn't get a pity laugh. He was just like, yeah, that's not like. Yeah, exactly. And he starts, his eye start wandering. And he's not turning back to his assistant. So I know what I need to look for to make sure I win.

So I know he's not looking at assistance. And so I'm like, all right, fuck, I have to do something else. And I had read in, I think it was a Tony Robbins book, that human contact speeds up a relationship. So I had an idea. I had to touch Stan. Oh, my God. But clearly they have created systems to prevent this because they put the contestants behind like these metal railings, like this cage. So, and Stan's like 20 feet away.

So I'm like, Stan, Stan, come over here. I want to make a handshake with you. And he's very reluctant. So I get the whole audience chanting his name until they finally comes over. And we make a handshake. I teach him how to pound it and blow it up. And he starts laughing. And, you know, all the contestants think that I just, you know, pass the interview.

But then I see Stan walk away and doesn't look at his assistant. She doesn't write anything down. Dang. So you just were annoying for no reason. That's not the first time in my life. So. And again, I don't know if you've ever had one of those moments where you have your entire dream right in front of you. And it's almost like sand slipping through your fingers. And the

worst part is, you know, you didn't even have a chance to really prove yourself. So I don't know what got into me, but I just started yelling at the top of my lungs. Stan! Stan! You know, the whole audience shoots their heads around. Everyone goes quiet. They think I'm like having a seizure. And Stan like runs over and he's like, are you okay? Are you okay? what's going on. And now I really don't know what I'm going to say. You didn't have a plan for that? You were just going to yell his name and you didn't have a plan after?

I don't know what I was doing. This is like plan Z. So he's looking at me. I'm looking at him and he's like very typical Hollywood, you know, turtledic, red scarf, even though it's like 70 degrees outside. And I just look at him and I'm like, you're scarf. And now I really didn't know what I was going to say next. And Stan is just looking at me

This is so cringe Oh my God, it was so bad So he's just looking at me The whole audience is staring And the only thing that I can think of Is I look at Stan With all of the seriousness I can And I yell

I'm like Stan, I'm an avid scarf collector I have 362 pairs of my dorm room And I'm missing that one Where did you get it? And Stan starts cracking up And I think he finally figured out what I was trying to do. And he was laughing more at why I was doing it. He like gave me his scarf.

He's like, look, you need this more than I do. He's, you know, starts joking around a little bit more, turns around, winks. And assistant makes a mark on the checkboard. Oh, dang. So it finally worked. Shut this kid up. And that, that's pretty much a foreshadow of the entire journey of the book. Oh my gosh. So in the end, be as annoying as you can without pissing people off. That sounds like the hack of the process.

But so you end up, okay, so you end up going on the prices right and winning a sailboat, you pawn the sale, well, you hawk the sailboat and you end up with the money to create the rest of the book. Why didn't you just keep going back on the price is right? That's the question. You know, they've thought of that because after you win, they gave you, you know, a mountain of paperwork. And as I'm reading the paperwork in like giant bold letters, I hereby swear to never return to the prices right for 10 years. Really? Yeah. So I did the second best thing and I taught my friends how to do it. Why don't they want you back for 10 years? You know, I have no idea.

Maybe it's now that I know how it works, it's a lot easier. or truthfully, maybe, you know, they don't want repeat contestants. But what I did end up doing a year ago, I was, you know, coming to the end of writing the book. And I realized I needed some money for the book launch and to, you know, fund that whole process. And as I'm trying to, I know that this sounds ridiculous, but as I'm trying to figure out how to get money for the book launch, my sister said that she found tickets to this game show that was filming the next morning. And it was a game show I'd never heard of. It was on the game show network.

It was a brand new show, so there weren't even episodes to study. And there were only three tickets left. This is 8 p.m. And the show's filming at 6 a.m. the next morning. And I call my two best friends. I tell them to clear their schedules for the morning. And we just decided we're going to see if the Price is Right Strategy can transcend on to other shows. And we end up going on the next morning at 6 a.m.

And four hours later, I walked away. with a brand new car. And on that note, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it. And I think reaching out to mentors, influencers, things like that, and really going for what you're looking to do, but having a system to do it while acknowledging the role of luck and your success really is useful for people of all ages.

So I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. This was really, really fun. Interesting show, Jason. I mean, I didn't see the game show thing happening. He must have annoyed the crap out of those poor people. but hey, it worked. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, you could just name this book, Giant Hutzpah. Yeah. Because this kid has it in spades. It's just like, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go find that back door and find my way in no matter what it takes. And he did it. I mean, balls of steel, I think is the only other way to really describe this kid. Yeah, great big thank you to Alex.

The book title is The Third Door. And if you enjoyed this, don't forget to thank Alex on Twitter. That'll all be linked up in the show notes for this episode, which can be found. And as always, Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Tweet at me your number one takeaway from Alex. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. So if you share the show, you can always tag us. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply everything you heard from Alex,

make sure you go grab the worksheets also in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. We've got our Alexis skill. If you want a quick refresher on some of the episodes you've already heard, as well as little sneak peek on what's coming up or on episodes you have not yet heard, you can go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa to get those installed in your daily briefing. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DePhilippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. Booking, back office, and last minute miracles are by Jen Harbinger.

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