The Rich Roll Podcast - There’s Always A Way: Alex Banayan on The Third Door

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

The day before his freshman year final exams, 18-year old Alex Banayan hacked The Price Is Right, won a sailboat, sold it, and used the prize money to fund his quest to learn from the worldʼs most successful people. Over the next seven years, he pursued a graduate degree in persistence and perseverance from the University of Life. He snuck into Warren Buffett's shareholders meeting. He chased Larry King through a grocery store. He celebrated with Lady Gaga in the hottest nightclub. Along the way, he landed remarkable one-on-one interviews with Bill Gates, Maya Angelou, Steve Wozniak, Jane Goodall, Quincy Jones, and many more. Alex's major discovery? Each and every icon shared one thing in common: they all took something he calls The Third Door*. Since that fateful day on the Price Is Right, Alex went on to become the world's youngest venture capital executive, a coup that landed him on Forbesʼ '30 Under 30′ list and Business Insiderʼs ‘Most Powerful People Under 30.' He has delivered keynotes at prestigious organizations like Apple, Nike, IBM, Dell, MTV and even Harvard. He has contributed to publications like Fast Company, the Washington Post, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch. And he has been featured everywhere from Fortune, Forbes, Businessweek and Bloomberg to Fox News, & CBS News. This week, Alex's new book chronicling his wild seven-year adventure — aptly entitled The Third Door* — hit bookstores everywhere. I first met Alex about 6 years ago. Just 19 at the time, he was in the very early stages of putting his book together. I liked him instantly, and left our lunch impressed with his rare mix of precociousness, infectious enthusiasm and raw authenticity. We stayed in touch. And that day I made him a promise: should he ever finish his book (something I doubted at the time) that he had an open invite to share his story on the podcast. Today I honor that promise. This is a conversation about one young man's determination to find his way in the world. It's about a quest to learn what cannot be taught in the confines of a classroom. It’s about never giving up. And it's about always finding a way. But most of all, this is a very personal exchange between two friends about what it really means to pursue a dream. Peace + Plants, Rich

Someone mentors you for three reasons, and they're all subconscious reasons. One, they see some of themself in you. Two, they want to help you be more like them, whether it's because they have a special expertise they want to help you with, but they want to help you and they feel they can help you be more like them. The third one is the most interesting. They want to be more like them. The third one is the most interesting. They want to be more like you. And that's sort of confusing,

but if someone's a 70-year-old CEO, sometimes the thing they need most in their life is 19-year-old enthusiasm about their company. That's Alex Benayan, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Let's say for the sake of argument as a thought experiment that you have an idea, you have a goal, perhaps it's even a dream. Well, right now, it's just this thing that's swimming around in your head. Making it real, well, that's a different story

altogether. And making it a success is a completely different ballpark. It's something that at times can be so challenging that, quite frankly, most people end up abandoning it long before capitalizing on the opportunities presented. Not necessarily because of lack of will, but because they fail to see what this week's guest, Alex Benayan, calls the third door. Let me explain. Alex analogizes it like this. Life, business, success, it's all just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in. There's the first door. That's the main entrance. That's where the line curves around the block, where 99% of the people just wait around, kind of just hoping to get in. Then there's the second door. That's the VIP entrance, where the billionaires, the celebrities, the people who

are just kind of born into this kind of thing slip through. But what no one really tells you, what really goes unaddressed, is that there is always, always a third door. It's the entrance where you got to jump out of line, you got to run down the alley, you got to bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, and sneak through the kitchen. In other words, there's always a way, a way to more creatively approach and tackle the obstacles that inevitably stand between you and the actualization of your goals and your dreams. My name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast. And today I explore this idea and much more with my young and quite enterprising friend, Alex Benayan. Alex is a guy who is wise well beyond his years. He's a really cool dude with a rather amazing and inspirational personal story that I think you

guys are going to enjoy very much. As always, there's a couple of things I want to say about Alex and this conversation before we dig in. But first, we're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

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I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So where to begin with Alex Benayan? Well, this is a guy just to kind of paint the picture, a portrait of who this young man is. The day before his freshman year final exams, freshman year in college, rather than study like all his friends and peers, Alex decides to instead test his luck by going on the television show, The Price is Right. He ends up figuring out, he kind of figures out the system so he can win.

He wins a sailboat, he sells it, and he uses the prize money to fund this harebrained crazy quest that he had to go on a journey to learn from the world's most successful people. And that adventure becomes the basis of a new book that he spent the last seven years writing entitled, I think you guessed it, The Third Door. And since that kind of fateful day on The Price is Right, Alex has gone on to accomplish many things. He became the world's youngest venture capital executive. That was a coup that landed him on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, as well as Business Insider's

Most Powerful People under 30. He has delivered keynotes at all kinds of prestigious organizations like Apple, Nike, IBM, Dell, MTV, even Harvard. He's contributed to publications like Fast Company, The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch. And he's been featured basically everywhere, everywhere from Fortune, Forbes, Businessweek, and Bloomberg to Fox News and CBS News. On a personal note, I first met Alex, it had to be more than six years ago at this point, when he was in the very early stages of putting this book together. I think he was like 19 at the time.

And we kind of go into this in detail in the podcast. So I don't want to get too much in the weeds here. But I just remember him being this super impressive young man, this kid who had a very rare mix of precociousness, but also like authenticity. And I just liked him instantly. We stayed in touch. And I distinctly remember telling him that if he ever finished that book, he was writing that he had an open invite on the show. And I will admit to periodic doubt that he would indeed ever finish it, but finish it he did. And today I honor that promise.

So this is a conversation about many things. It's about one young person's efforts to find his way in the world, to really learn what he couldn't access in school. It's about persistence and perseverance and really never giving up and always, always finding a way to actualize your dreams. But mostly, it's two friends talking about what it means to pursue a dream. Here's Alex.

It's great to see you. Thanks for coming out to do this, Matt. I'm really excited for you. This has been a long time coming. I think I said to you like six or seven years. Like at the very beginning of the podcast, I was like, well, let me know when the book's done and come and tell me about it. And I was like, I wonder if that guy's ever gonna finish that book.

Every time we've seen each other, you're like, so how's it going, Alex? Was I that dire? No. No, that time it came off to me because inside for me, I was drowning, you know? Uh-huh. Because it's been seven years.

I can't believe you've been working on this book for seven years. So just to kind of lay the foundation for this, I remember, this is how we sort of first connected and met. My editor on Finding Ultra at Crown is an amazing guy called Rick Horgan, who we can talk about because he deserves to be recognized. He's incredible.

And I was having a phone conversation with him. I can't even remember whether Finding Ultra had even come out yet. Like it was probably sometime in 2012. And he's like, hey, I'm working on this book with this young guy, he's really cool. I think you'd really like him. Like, I wanna connect you guys.

Like, this is gonna be a really cool book. And that's when your name first came up. And we had lunch. I can't remember when that was, but all I know is it was a long time ago. Yeah, and you told me your story, which I thought was amazing, in this book that you were working on.

And then we would bump into each other once or twice a year and I'd be like, how's the book going? And you know what's funny is that I know other people who get stuck in this kind of situation where they're working on a book and it gets protracted and a lot of them don't end up finishing it. So I was like, I wonder if maybe he's never gonna finish his book, like, I don't know what's gonna happen here.

So here we are, it's coming out in June. Thank God. I'm proud of you. I feel very emotionally invested in this journey that you've been on. So it's really cool to be able to talk about it today. And thank you for all the encouragement along the way. Yeah, it's great.

I mean, so Rick Horgan was your editor on this book. And just so people understand, when I first pitched Finding Altra, like when you write a book, you write a proposal, I'm sure you did this as well, right? And then my book agent sent it out to a couple of publishing houses and she was very tempered with me. She's like, listen, you really got to thread the needle here. You have a good

story, but like, you know, it's really tough out there. And like, you know, I'm going to do my best, but I'm just not sure. And then we got a bite with Crown. She's like, we got a call with Crown. And it was my very first like pitch over the phone. I'd never done anything like that before. And he's like, you're gonna have like 10 minutes or five minutes on the phone with this guy. Like you gotta sell yourself. So we did this call.

And I remember I was like at the Calabasas Commons. It's like outdoor mall down the street here. And the service was not very good. And I had to, I like hid behind a bush to like do this call to like make sure there wasn't any kind of like noise. And I was to, I like hid behind a bush to like do this call to like make sure there wasn't any kind of like noise. And I was like crouched down and did this call and it went well. And he ended up like bidding on the book. He really wanted the book. And we ended up selling Finding Ultra to Crown. And I remember saying to my book agent,

I'm going to bring this around to you. Don't worry. I remember saying to my book agent, yeah, but this guy, Rick Horgan, like he's not actually going to be my editor, right? Like they're going to assign me some kind of junior person because this guy, Rick Horgan, who I later found out, I would have panicked on the phone had I known this during the call, had like edited, you know, Hillary Clinton's biography. Like he was the editor on like huge books, you know? Bill Gates' book. Yeah. I'm like, this guy's way too senior and important to be interested in what I'm doing. I was like, no, no, no. He's going to be your editor. And we had this amazing collaboration.

And I learned so much about the art of writing and storytelling. And he really pushed me. And I remember at one point he said to me, he goes, listen, here's the little secret, dirty little secret about New York editors and the publishing industry. Editors don't really edit because they have too many books. So you have this romantic idea that you're going to have this amazing relationship with this editor and you're going to be on the phone with him at midnight having these conversations about philosophy, you know, and it's like, it doesn't work that way. And he was basically saying like, I don't have time to really even read everything that's coming across my desk that I'm responsible for, but I really like your story and I really want to help

you and I want to make this book the best that it can be. And he really did roll up his sleeves and he really helped the book become the book that it became. Like I couldn't have done it without him. And I'm just forever grateful to him. And so I'm interested first. And I would imagine you had a similar relationship with him. Yeah, you nailed it. When I first met Rick, so I've been through three different, because I've been working on this for seven years

and turnover in the publishing industry is very high now. I've gone through three different editors. Right, because he left Crown. He left Crown. But he was my original editor. Right. And the thing Rick did that changed my life, and I really mean that, is when I had originally started this book, it was a book about, in my head, you know, I'm this 18-year-old kid. I'm going to go interview all these people who I admire, figure out how they launched their careers.

And each chapter is a different person. Chapter one is Bill Gates. Chapter two is Warren Buffett. And that was my thinking. So it took two years until I got the deal with Crown. And then a year into the deal, Rick calls me into his office. And you're going to appreciate this. He calls me into his office. And he has that like gruff New York voice, right? And he's like, Alex, what's the goal

of this book? You have to understand, this is a year into me working with it. Like, what do you mean, what is the goal? I thought we were clear on that. It's a very strange question to get. And he's like, what's the goal? Is it to change people's lives or to inform them? And I'm like, well, that's clearly a leading question. Yeah, I want to try to change lives. And he goes, well, the book you're writing isn't going to do that. And I'm like, we've been working together for a year. How are you bringing this up just now? And he's like, well, I have a son your age. You wouldn't have listened. And essentially what he told me is that if you look at any magazine Q&A, you know, there might be great information in there, but it's never changed a life.

But if you look at all the stories, and we actually talked about this in our first launch, I don't know if you remember, but the stories that change lives are this same story arc. You know, there's this person who everyone can relate to. And as, you know, she or he goes on this journey and evolves, so does the reader. And that's how you change someone's life. Yeah, I do remember having that conversation with you. And I think that's one of the reasons why he suggested that you read Finding Ultra, because one of the things that was sort of core and key, I mean, look, my book is about my story. It's different than your book. But I think what he was trying to convey to you is you have to get people emotionally invested in what you're doing

here. And if it's too dry, if it's just informational, you're never going to have that connection. So people aren't going to be as engaged with the material as they could be. They need to see it through your eyes and your experience. So to the extent that you can invest yourself in this story and make your journey core to that narrative, the better off you're gonna be in that quest to transform lives. And you've accomplished that.

I mean, that's ultimately what you ended up doing in this book. Right, and it took me really like at least three months, because I think when we had first spoken, I was in that three-month period of like awkwardness of not knowing if I was going to follow Rick's advice or not. Because I had spent years saying I was not going to even use my name in the book. Like this wasn't about me at all. And what Rick had to, you know, drill in my head. So you're writing a textbook?

Essentially. And he helped me realize, look, it's not about you literally. You're a conduit for the reader. And that's how the book is now. Right. You have to be a cipher. You have to be a stand-in for the audience member. Yeah, cool. So let's talk about how it all came together. I mean, your story is so crazy. Like, how old were you when I first met you? When I first met? 23 or something like that? I had just turned 20 when you and I first met. You were just, you had just turned 20.

So I've been working on the book for about two years. Right, right. All right, so backing it up from there. Well, let's go all the way back. You grew up in Los Angeles. Uh-huh. Iranian Jews. Your grandfather was living in Iran. Like, I love this story about your grandfather was living in Iran.

Like, I love this story about your grandfather. Because I think that, I feel like you share a lot of DNA with him. And I feel like that part of your story kind of informs your ethos and perspective on business and life. So, and it's so funny because I didn't know this story until much later in my life. When I was a kid, it was sort of kept secret from us. To fully understand who I am, you actually have to go back, like you said, to 90 years ago when my grandfather was born. And he was born in Persia, in Iran. He was the youngest of six siblings. So five older siblings, boy, four girls,

and then him. And when my grandfather was three years old, his father passed away. And the thing you have to know about Iran at that time is that women weren't really allowed to work. So it was up to the men in the family to provide. Thankfully, there was an older brother and he was about 18. So he started working and taking care of the family. And then two years after that, the older brother dies. So now the only male left in the family is the five-year-old child, my grandpa. But the mom, thankfully, was very wise. And she said, look, you're going to school and I'll find ways to make ends meet. So she's selling her wedding ring. She's selling the Voss in the living room.

She's just making things work, barely putting food on the table. And by the time my grandpa was about eight or nine, he realized this isn't very sustainable. So he was flipping through the newspaper one day, and I think it might have been the classified section. He sees an order from the Iranian government asking for paint thinner for a government building. And he's like nine years old. And I think he was like an apprentice at a local shop, so he knew what an assertion order is. So he gets out the bid, but because he's nine, he doesn't know how much the cost of these things are. He fills it out and sends it in.

And because he gave such a low bid, he, he won the contract. Right. Because they don't know that he's nine. No, nowhere on the form to say how old are you? This bid looks good. You know, his handwriting must've been fine. So, you know, he wins this bid and he's nine years old, has no idea what to do. So he, you know, goes to the bazaar and has this, you know, family friend who has paint thinner.

And he's, you know, gets the paint thinner from this guy, gives it to the government, makes a profit. And he even remembers like buying like pistachios on the way home. And it was like this big bag of pistachios. And he was like the happiest day of his life. A couple weeks later, he's in geometry class and he's in like elementary school. Right. And the police show up in his class and they pull him out of class and they say, the paint thinner you gave us is expired. And if you don't get us new paint thinner,

you're gonna have a serious problem. And especially when you're a Jew in Iran, when the police are saying you have a serious problem. They're literally gonna arrest and imprison this elementary school kid. They don't give a shit. And it's, yeah, it's so wild. Cause what he ends up doing is he goes back

to that family friend and says, hey, the paint thinner you gave me is expired. And he goes, that's your problem, not mine. So now my grandpa has to go, you know, this young little Jewish boy in this, you know, bazaar in Tehran ends up finding another paint thinner dealer, uses his profits to buy that paint thinner, gives it to the government and is home free. to buy that paint thinner, gives it to the government and is home free. But that sort of sets him on this track of, you know, doing more orders for the government. And he starts getting better at it and better at it. In the meantime, he's getting his, you know, PhD in chemistry. And by age 50, he had done really well for himself. He had one of the, you know, tallest buildings in the tallest buildings in the nation's capital, working on the top floor. And at age 50, he had four kids, my mom included.

And right around then, the Iranian revolution happens. And they did something very ingenious, very cruel, but very ingenious, which is before the revolution literally started, he sort of created this list of influential Jews that they needed to take out to make it much easier to have the revolution. And my grandpa was on that list unknowingly. So he's in his office one day and it's still crazy to hear him tell this story because he doesn't do it often. But to my understanding, loads of men with masks over their head break in through the ground floor and surround the building, go up all the staircases. To the point where he knew through a telephone system that they were coming, and he had like 30 seconds. But all the staircases were covered. And oh, there's one part of the story that's crazy,

which is he got his passport and like threw it into an air conditioning vent and told his assistant who was Muslim, look, they're not gonna get you, they're only here to get me, like recover my passport in case I find a way out. And my grandpa gets captured at gunpoint. They put like a bag over his head and take him to this compound,

which is essentially an execution compound. And even to this day, when I ask him about the scariest time, he's been through a lot. And when I asked him about the scariest time in his life, he said it was there because every night you would hear gunshots and a different person who's being held doesn't come back. So you figure out very, it's not like the reading you Miranda rights. You're just held there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're just, you're counting down until you're the person who's picked. Yeah, and you know, my grandpa is trying to find a way out of this thing. He's trying to, you know, talk his way out, offer bribes, like nothing. And soon enough, over the speaker, they call his name. And they put a bag over his head and, you know, walk him down this corridor. And when the bag comes off, he's out of the compound. of the compound. One of the guards had taken the bribe.

And my grandpa, you know, escapes Iran during the revolution, makes it to America as a refugee. Wow. And sadly actually has to go back to where he was 50 years ago, you know, with nothing, having to rebuild a life. Except this time he has a wife and four kids.

He brings, he's able to bring his family. Yeah. And so that's how your parents- So that's how my mom- Made it to America. My mom came here as a teenager through the revolution. So my grandpa, again, just I think 12 failed businesses in America before he started this random spectrophotometer company and has rebuilt his life. his life. But what that story really shows me is that it's just this incredible story of possibility, which is he started out in this unbelievably dire situation, built himself up and was taken to the darkest place that I can't even understand and was able to come out the other end. So that's

really what I've taken from my grandpa. Yeah, the resilience, the perseverance, but also like this guy, I mean, what he was doing in elementary school, like that's just built into the fabric of his DNA is like a little Gary V hustler, like right out of the womb. And I see aspects of that, elements of that in your path. I appreciate that, man.

Thank you. You know what I mean? Like, I think you're carrying part of your grandfather with you. I mean, is he still around? You know one of the craziest things? He's still around. He's 92 and still goes to the office. He doesn't know another way to live.

Yeah. He's never taken a vacation. Yeah. It's wild. Well, I would imagine part of that is, you know, when you've suffered to the extent that he has and lost it, like there's a connection with holding onto it or continuing to grow something. Yeah. That's probably a little bit more deep than we can understand. Yeah.

What he's been through is, like you said, it's very hard to understand. Right. So your parents really grow up in the United States. So your grandfather was on your mom's side. Yeah, so this is my mom's dad. My dad came when he was about 19, and my mom came when she was about 10, and they met here. And I can't fathom what life would have been like if I went through what they went through as teenagers. You know, leaving your entire, and they didn't come here thinking they were refugees.

They came here thinking they were coming for a two month vacation as the riots calmed down back at home. And then they would go back. They had all their stuff. They're like, oh yeah, just pack a day bag. We'll be back in a month or so. And they just never been home ever since. Right, right, right. So how does that inform like their worldview and how does that worldview trickle down into the expectations placed on a young Alex Benayan? Well, so how that affected their worldview, whether they knew it or not,

was I grew up in a family where like fear was in the walls. And- Understandably. Not to an eight-year-old Alex. I'm just like, why won't my mom let me sleep over

at a friend's house? Why won't my mom like let me go on a field trip like without her physically driving? Like, it was crazy um like even school trips were giant debates in my family because there was just this tremendous amount of trauma that my parents had

gone through yeah and a betrayal of trust too nobody's safe who to trust you know you're gonna get on a bus and go across town right with the school the government funded school and of course like as a kid you i had no comprehension what are you talking about i'm like we're just going to yosemite let us go and they're like with my younger sister my mom was my mom followed the bus. I've never told anybody this, but, you know, it's a testament to my mom's love and also to the trauma they went through. Yeah. But she came over at 10. Does she remember what her dad went through or is that a memory that she can't access? It's in your blood, you know, when you're, and there's a certain amount of shame too with it because when I was growing up, I would look in family photo albums and see my grandpa wasn't in pictures for like a year period or two year period.

And I would ask where he was and they would say, which means he was at the university. It wasn't until I was 18 I found out he was actually at death camp. Right, they weren't even telling you what it actually was. No, so it was almost this like skeleton in my family's closet that my grandpa was held to be executed. It's hard to understand why that would create shame, though. It certainly wasn't, you know, by any fault of his. You have to spend more time with Persia, too. Does everything create shame? It's like, oh, the way I poured my water, it's very shameful.

Hang your head low, Alex. Exactly. All right. So, you come out of the womb though, and they're like, this kid's going to be a doctor. Because again, I came out of the womb, my mom cradles me in her arms and stamps MD on my ass and sends me on my way. And that's what happens when you're the son of, you know, these Persian Jewish immigrants where, and I have a bunch of friends who I grew up with who went through the same thing.

Because, and this is something my grandma would tell me, in a revolution, they can take your money, they can take your possessions, but they can't take away what you know. And if you're a doctor and you can save people, no one can take that away from you. So me being a doctor as a kid, wasn't this like amazing, fun fantasy. It was like, and it was a very focused, cemented life track. I wore scrubs to school for Halloween. I went to pre-med summer camp in high school. And by the time I got to college, I was like the pre-med of pre-meds.

And it wasn't until the first month where I was living in the dorms that I wasn't surrounded by my parents, my grandparents, and this weird phenomenon happened. All these things that in my entire childhood were my identity started sucking the life out of me. I remember looking at this like towering stack of biology books, feeling like they were like dementors, totally sucking the soul. And at first I assumed maybe I'm just being lazy. And that's when I started to wonder, well, what if I'm not on my path? What if I'm on a path somebody placed me on and I'm just rolling down?

And thus ensues like this life crisis of, it wasn't about switching a major as much as it was changing my identity. Right. And prior to that, I would imagine you didn't spend a lot of time really contemplating what makes you happy or what would be fulfilling for you. I don't even know those questions existed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no discussion of happiness in an immigrant family. Yeah, I mean, my rearing is very different than yours,

but I can relate to that. Like I was in a somewhat analogous situation and it took me a lot longer to have that kind of dawning epiphany that you had much earlier. But I understand on some level, you know, what that's like. And, you know, coming up in this family

where shame was very much a part of the sort of, you know, family ethos. It's not a part of it, it is the family ethos. Like, is there anything more shame provoking than confronting the fact that you may not wanna pursue this path that you've been on your whole life? And what would that look like, you know, in terms of communicating that to your parents?

Oh, my God. It was terrifying because when I first started even questioning what I wanted to do with my life, going through that life crisis, I couldn't tell my parents I was even questioning it. So it was almost like I was living this double life where my mom would call me and ask how my pre-med classes were going. I'm like, oh, it's great. Then I would like hang up on her and like sneak the four-hour work week under my like blanket and read it. Were you still enrolled in the pre-med classes or had you just- Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, but you're just, you know, checked out.

Oh, yeah. Of course. Because the questions that evolved naturally were, okay, not only do I not know what I want to do with my life, how did all these people who I look up to, how did they do it? You know, how did Bill Gates, when he was a sophomore in college, 19 years old, nobody knew his name, sell software out of his dorm room? Or how did Spielberg, when he was rejected from film school, become the youngest director in Hollywood history? So I thought, all right, before I figure out what I'm going to do, let me just get some base knowledge so I can figure it out. So I just went to the library and just ripped through these biographies and business books and self-help books. But eventually I was left empty-handed. And that's when this naive 18-year-old thinking kicked in. And I thought, well, if no one's going to write the book I'm dreaming of reading, why not just write it myself? Right. And you're 18. So, are you a freshman in college at this point? I'm a freshman. And it doesn't really, it's like the perfect caliber of naive, where I'm dumb enough to not know anything,

but I also have resources in the sense that I'm in a dorm room with a computer and a lot of free time. Naivete is underestimated. Like there's nothing like the power of not really knowing what you're getting into. Like looking back now, seven years later, like had you known, okay, this is gonna be a seven year adventure, like with all of these pitfalls and valleys, you would have never undertaken it if you really understood what it entailed. Yeah. And that's, I like think about this all the time that while there's like

tremendous value in being an expert in a field, you know, you have connections, you have all this knowledge and expertise. One of the biggest, you know, advantages of being naive and being an amateur is you're not limited in the way an expert is. Because an expert sees the world through a lens of limitation because they know how things work. But, you know, someone who's naive

sees it through a world of possibility. And that is incredibly powerful. Yeah. And I can understand how at that time you would think, well, how hard can it be? Like, I'm just going to go find all these people that are super awesome and I'm going to interview them and they're going to be happy to sit down with me. Bill Gates helps kids all the time. Why don't he help me? Right. That was my thinking. But the idea was from the very beginning, like, this is going to be a book. I'm going to write a book. My thinking was, you know, I was smart enough to know Bill Gates won't do an interview

for a blog. Right. Because if you're writing a book, you're legit. And this is the book, like, this is the book you wish had been available in the library that would, that would convey all the secrets and the wisdom to a young person about how to answer that question, what should I do with my life? Is that at its core? Is that correct? At its core, at that time especially, it was less about an age and more about a stage. When someone's starting out, it doesn't matter if they're starting out from college or they're an executive switching industries. When you're just starting out and no one wants to take your calls, no one wants to take your calls,

no one wants to take your meetings, how do you find a way to break through? Because that was my problem. And I didn't want a book just focused on business or just focused on entertainment. I wanted a book that covered every industry. So what ended up happening is me and my best friends one night, and you actually know one of them, Kevin Heckman. Kevin, yeah. happening is me and my best friends one night, and you actually know one of them, Kevin Heckman. Kevin, yeah. So, you know, we're all 18. I call them up. I'm like, guys, you know, I need your help. Because I didn't know what really the definition of success was. So I didn't know who to interview.

And I don't really believe in these like Forbes 100 lists. So I was like, guys, if we can create our dream university, who would be our professors? And then that made it really easy. You know, Bill Gates would teach business, Lady Gaga music, Steve Wozniak computer science, Jane Goodall science, Maya Angelou poetry, you know, Pitbull can teach Latin American studies. You know, we're just dumb 18-year-old kids. And we created this dream list and I wrote it on a note card, and I put it in my wallet, and I was like, you know, how hard could it be? That, I assumed, would be the easy part. The hard part, I figured, was getting money to fund the journey. Right,

how are you going to do this? I mean, was the idea that you would stop out of college, or you were going to try to write this while you were in college? I mean, there's still a looming conversation with the parents that's out there that's got to be causing you some strain. All of this was like my secret double life at this point. My parents didn't know any of this was happening. That's why even with the money thing, I couldn't like talk to them

and brainstorm how to make it happen. I had to figure it out for myself because I was buried in student loan debt. I was all out of our 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 and I'm doing what everyone's doing in the library.

I'm on Facebook. And so I'm there and I'm on Facebook and I see someone's posting tickets to The Price is Right. And it's filming the next day. And the first, I know this sounds like preposterous, but the first thought was, what if I go on the show and win some money to fund this dream? You know, not my brightest moment, but I had a bigger problem. You know, I'd never seen a full episode of the show before.

I'd seen bits and pieces growing up. I'd never seen a full episode. Plus I had finals in two days. You know, I told myself it was a horrible idea and not to do it. I don't know if you've ever had one of those times where like this horrible idea keeps clawing. You have a stupid idea, but you can't shake it.

Exactly. So I had the stupid idea. I can shake it. And I remember, because I needed to focus on studying. I didn't have much time because finals were in two days. I opened my spiral notebook to make a best and worst case scenario list to prove to myself it was a bad idea. So I remember like so vividly, I'm sitting in this corner table in the library and I'm like, best and worst case scenarios. You know, worst case scenarios, fail finals, get kicked out of pre-med, lose financial aid. Mom hates me. No, mom stops talking to me. You know, look that on TV. There are like 20 cons.

Only pro was maybe, maybe win enough money to fund this dream. And it felt almost as if someone had tied a rope around my gut and was 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. I studied how to hack the Price is Right. All right, well, first of all, why not just go on the Price is Right after finals? Dude, I had the tickets.

I had one chance. Oh, I see. I got you. I didn't know how to get tickets. I just, they like fell into my lap. I see. And how do you hack the Price is Right? That's your inner parent right now. You're looking at me like, you idiot.

I mean, you know, the price is right isn't going anywhere. It's been around for a while. Oh my God. So how do you, all right. So how do you hack the price is right? Like what's the secret? So they make it look completely random, you know? Alex, come on down.

As if they like pulled your name out of a hat. During my all nighter of research, I learned there's actually a system to it. It wasn't just luck. There's like blog posts out there. People who are like, it wasn't even a blog post. It was like 1992 message boards with like the 50th comment. Like I was, you were deep. I was like on the 23rd O of Google. I'm like super deep in this. And it's around 3 a.m. where I find out there's a producer who interviews every single person in the audience. And then I started, you know, researching everything about the producer.

And I learned, you know, what his name was, where he was born, where he went to college. I essentially knew what he ate for breakfast that morning. And then I found out something even crazier. Because, you know, I would assume a lot of people know about the producer. I then found out there's also an undercover producer who's planted in the audience who confirm or denies the main producer's selection. So while some people might know that, you know, you have a one minute interview with a producer, no one knows that your four hours waiting in line is an interview in and of itself. Right. So this person's sizing everybody up, trying to figure out who's going to be the

best guest to get picked. Right. So I, the second I get to the CBS studio lot, the morning of the Price is Right, I just, you know, I don't know who the undercover producer is. So I just assume everyone's the undercover producer. You know, so I'm like dancing with the security guards. I'm flirting with old ladies. I'm breakdancing and I don't know how to breakdance. And I'm waiting in line. And eventually it's my turn to meet the producer.

And, you know, I knew all about him. I knew, you know, that he had a clipboard, but it was never in his hands. The assistant sitting behind him, you know, maybe 20 feet away has the clipboard. And if he really likes you, he'll, he'll, he'll keep talking. And if he wants you on the show, he'll turn around, wink, and she'll put your name on the list. You knew that. I knew that going. So I knew what I had to accomplish.

I knew it wasn't just him shaking my hand and saying, good luck. I knew I had to see the physical check. Right. So I get there, and I'm standing right in front of him, and he has a rhythm. He's like, what's your name? Where are you from? What do you do? And I go, hey, I'm Alex.

I'm 18. I'm a freshman in college. I'm a pre- do? And I go, hey, I'm Alex. I'm 18. I'm a freshman in college. I'm a pre-med. And he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're pre-med? You probably spend a lot of time studying. How do you have time to watch The Price is Right? And I go, oh, is that where I am? Like, no, I don't even get a pity laugh.

Like, you're giving me more of a laugh than I got. So I don't even get a pity laugh. And I can see his eyes wandering. And like like quickly, I knew I had to do something. And in one of those business books I had read, it might, I think it was like a Tony Robbins book. It said, human contact speeds up a relationship. So I had an idea. I needed to touch Stan. So I go to the producer, Stan. I'm like, Stan, like, come over here. I want to touch Stan so I go to the producer Stan I'm like Stan come over here I want to make a handshake with you and he is very hesitant

and I'm like come on come on and he comes over I teach him how to pound it and blow it up and he laughs and he's like oh you're going to do great good luck and starts walking away it doesn't turn around the assistant doesn't write around. Right, strike two.

The assistant doesn't write anything on a clipboard. And this was like one of those moments where you can see your entire dream like right in front of you and see it walking away, almost like slipping through your hands like sand. And the worst part was that you know you didn't even have a chance to fully prove yourself. So I don't know what got into me, but I started yelling at the top of my lungs,

Stan, like the whole audience shoots their head around. Like, what's going on? And Stan runs over, like, they think I'm having a seizure. He's like, are you okay? What's happening? And now I have no idea what I'm going to say. So I'm just looking at him. You're either going to get tossed out for being a lunatic. But my thinking was, you know, you're already gone. Yeah. What's the point of staying, right? I'm not on the show at this point, so I might as well go all the way in. So I'm looking at him. He's looking at me. And this guy's like, you know, typical Hollywood, like turtleneck, you know, red scarf, even though it's 70 degrees. And I just look at him and I'm like, your scarf! And now I like really don't know what I'm going to say next.

And, you know, it's dead silent. Like there's so much tension right now. They're like, let's watch this guy just bury himself. He's digging his grave right now. So I end up just looking at Stan with like all the confidence I can. And I just say the only thing I can think. I'm like, I'm an avid scarf collector. I have 362 pairs in my dorm room and I'm missing that one. Where did you get it? And I'm like freaking out. And he starts cracking up because I think he realized what I was actually trying to do.

And he like gives me his scarf. He's cracking. He's like, look, you need this more than I do. He turns around, winks, and his assistant makes a mark on the checkboard. And you know you're in. I know I'm in. That's so bananas. Make some work on the checkboard.

And you know you're in. I know I'm in. That's so bananas. It's not like you gave him the secret to the universe or like imparted some wisdom that was undeniable that made him, you just kind of like threw a ninny. I mean, that was like a Hail Mary. I don't know what that was. The book journey is pretty much me

desperately throwing Hail Marys and missing nine out of 10. But the one that makes it is like the craziest shit ever. But I think, you know, behind that is your willingness to throw Hail Marys. Like you have like, look, you have gumption, you have hustle, you have charisma, you have personality. I would imagine your grandfather must have seen this in you. Did he identify you as some kind of kindred spirit,

even though you were on this MD track? You know, funny enough, that's actually why he doubled down so much on me becoming a doctor. Cause he didn't want me to live and suffer the way he had to as an entrepreneur. It was almost like he saw too much of himself in you and wanted something different for you. That's crazy. I never thought of that. Yeah. So, all right. So you can, you get on the show and like you win big, right? Like what you win, like a sailboat or something. I end up, yeah. So the way the hacking of the show worked, it was less Einstein and more Forrest Gump. And I ended up winning the whole showcase showdown, winning a sailboat, selling the sailboat.

And that's how I funded the book. And the sailboat I sold for like $20,000, which for a broke college student is like a million bucks. You know, my most expensive expense is like Chipotle with guacamole. So, you know, I'm feeling like a billionaire and I use that money to fund the journey. And, you know, it took two years, but I eventually got to Gates. It took three years to get to Lady Gaga. And, you know, it's like you said, seven eventually got to Gates. It took three years to get to Lady Gaga. And, you know, like you said, seven years later, the book is just finally finished. Right. And so you take this money. Do you end up stopping out of school?

Are you still a student while you're doing this? So I'm still a student because, you know, I love college. And I had some awareness of just how much my parents had sacrificed for me to be in school. I remember, so when I got into college, my mom said I couldn't go because we couldn't afford it. And she really, really insisted on me going to a community college that was less expensive. But I remember my dad, you know, the night before the deadline enrollment date, the day you have to either confirm or deny.

And my mom was like 100% against me going. And I remember through the walls hearing my dad, like cry, my dad never cried. Like at funeral, just never would cry. The first time I'd ever heard him cry in the house in my life was that night, pretty much telling my mom he'd do whatever it takes. And I had to go and my mom said yes. So I understood that how much my parents had given to help make this possible. So dropping out wasn't even on the radar. But what ended up happening is now that I had won The Price is Right, I was like gung

ko on making this mission come together. And to me, the holy grail of interviews was Bill Gates. Because when I was 18, I thought, you know, if anyone had the answers to the universe, it had to be Bill Gates. So I spent a whole year trying to get in contact with Gates's office. And part of that is to legitimize this project, not only to yourself, but to your parents, and to kind of solidify that this is a real thing? Maybe subconsciously. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if that was going on in my subconscious.

What I was thinking at the time was, and, you know, this might sound like a naive idea to some people, but to me, I really believe it, which is, I just really believe that if all these people come 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. And... Yeah, that's an altruistic pitch. That's a pitch that's hard to turn down if you're somebody like Bill Gates. That was my hope. That was my hope. To my surprise, Bill Gates doesn't do interviews with 18-year-old college students.

So, you know, I spend a year getting in contact with Gates's office. And finally, at, you know, a year into it, I'm 19, I get on the phone with Gates's chief of staff. And we're on the phone and you talked about the, what was it, the Calabasas Smart, where you're on the phone with Crown? So I have a similar story where I'm in a CVS parking lot holding an ice cream cone when my phone rings and I see like the Seattle area code.

And I knew who it was. I like pick up the phone and on the line is Bill Gates's chief of staff. Who like, it's like Melinda, Bill, and this guy. Like they run it. It's crazy. And he's like, so you want to interview Bill, huh? It's very, I'm like, yeah, it's my biggest dream.

I'm 19. I'm like, it's my biggest dream. And he's like, look, I love what you're doing. I love that you're doing this to help others. And I'm like thinking I'm in a 95% there. And he's like, but the thing is, we don't really do interviews like this. He's like, especially, you know, with a book that doesn't have a publisher. And he's like, look, if you can go get a publishing deal from, you know, either Penguin or Random House and go build more momentum, call me back. Click. So that then, you know. Now you have a mission.

So now, well, I was torn. A part of me was like my head in my hands. But a few days later, I was like, okay, fine. He told me what I needed I what's the what the fuck is random house? Like I had no idea like how hard could that be? So I then go on this eight month journey of you know getting rejected every single day trying to get this publishing deal because I was a 19 year old kid trying to write a business book and right, I mean like just let's just take a step back and like I was a 19-year-old kid trying to write a business book. Right.

I mean, like, just take a step back and, like, analyze the preposterous nature of that. And I'm going to them, and I'm like, God. Your biggest business achievement is, like, hacking prices right. And the funny thing is, too, you know, maybe if I had interviews lined up, it would be a better thing. But I remember my book proposal. It was, like, interviews that I'm very likely to get. I couldn't even say like, these are the interviews I was going to get. At least you were honest, you know, most people aren't. So, so I would imagine you put a proposal together. I mean, how did you get it in front of

Rick Horgan and sell him on the idea of doing this book with you. So what I had learned over, so at this point, I'm about a year into my journey. And, you know, I'm reading every business biography. And I'm getting like some good interviews. I'm interviewing Tim Ferriss. You know, there's some early traction. And one thing I had learned is that, and Tim Ferriss actually gave me this in my interview with him. is that, and Tim Ferriss actually gave me this in my interview with him.

He gave me this cold email template where he launched his career by emailing VIPs and CEOs. And he gave me this cold email template that gave me sort of this like amazing tool. I don't know if you want me to go into it, but he gives me this tool that I then use to email about 30 different New York Times bestselling authors asking for their advice on how to get a book deal. And the overwhelming advice I got from all of them, they gave me a lot of tactics, but the biggest thing was the number one thing to getting, you know, if you're unknown, the number one thing to getting a big publisher is a big agent. You know, no big agent, no big publisher. So my thinking was no big agent, no Bill Gates. So that eight months journey was really about getting the agent.

And once I got the agent, and, you know, I was rejected by dozens and dozens of, it's just crazy. Yeah. I was rejected by dozens and dozens of, it's just crazy. Yeah. But when I finally got the publishing deal, well, this is a month before I got the publishing deal. I got the agent, and she had told me, look, Alex, you know, we're not going to go to the publishers during Christmas time. That's, you know, crazy. We can either go next month, or we can wait for the spring. It's up to you. And I knew it's already been a year, like almost a year since

I spoke to Bill Gates, chief of staff. And I was like, look, I can't wait anymore. Like he's probably already forgotten about me. I need to make this happen. The only problem was my junior year of college was starting the next week. And I knew, you know, trying to finish my proposal in a month was hard enough to begin with. Doing it while balancing school was impossible. And that's when I had to make, at the time,

the hardest decision of my life between moving forward on my dream but turning back on my parents' sacrifice in their dreams. So how'd that conversation go? A conversation is a very generous way to put it. So what's crazy is when I started on my book, even before I even talked about leaving college. You know, my grandparents and my parents sort of sniffed this was coming. So my grandma, who, you know, I love dearly.

I was just on the phone with her 30 minutes ago, an hour ago. She was like, fine, you want to write this book, you know, in your part-time? Fine. you know, and you're part-time, fine. But you're not going to become one of those, you know, crazy American kids who drops out of college and travels the world to find himself. You know, she had seen the movies. She's like, beg you, June man, swear on my life that you'll graduate undergrad and get your master's. And only then will I support what you're doing. I like how she threw a master's degree in there. Slid that in there too. Oh my

God. And it was non-negotiable too, because she understood that, you know, in America these days, an undergrad doesn't have the guarantees it used to. And I was like, fine, fine. I promise. And she goes, no. Begu junaman, which literally means I swear on your life. It's the strongest promise in the world. So fast forward a year later, when I'm talking about leaving school, this junaman promise is looming overhead. So I had a problem because I don't want to, I don't want to break my grandma's promise. I didn't want to ruin, you know, my mom's dreams. So I call my mentor who I know, you know, Elliot Bisno. And I tell him, Elliot, this is, I don't know what to do. How, how can I choose between my family? Cause you know, family is the most important.

But at what point do I stop living for them and start living for myself? And he's like, I don't understand the problem. And I'm like, well, dude, the only way I can get this publishing deal and get to Bill Gates is if I drop out of school. And he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. You are not dropping out of school. And I was like, what?

And he's like, look, no one smart actually drops out of school. And I was like, what? And he's like, look, no one smart actually drops out of school. Go, you know, do your research and you'll see what I'm saying. And he hangs up and I'm like, what is he talking about? And he ends up sending me on this, you know, mini like 24 hour quest where I started ripping through Zuckerberg and Bill Gates' biographies, and I finally found out what Elliot was talking about. When Zuckerberg had started the Facebook, that summer, he was working on a full-time. He went to go meet with Peter Thiel to get a half-million-dollar investment. Thiel goes to Zuckerberg,

you're going to drop out of school, right? Zuckerberg's like, not a chance. Thiel's like, oh, okay, let's see what happens. And even when school was starting, Zuckerberg still didn't want to drop out. It was only his friend, Dustin Moskovitz, who was like, look, man, we'll barely survive if we did this full time. Let's take one semester off and see what happens. Then I looked at Bill Gates' story and I realized he did the same thing. He took one semester off to work on Microsoft. and when it wasn't working out, he actually went back to Harvard, which no one talks about. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, no one talks about this.

That Bill, everyone calls, you know, Bill Gates dropped out of college and, you know, threw his middle finger in the sky. No, he actually went back to school when things weren't working out as well as he wanted. So I called Elliot back up, and he's like, bingo. Yeah, don't drop out. Take one semester off and it doesn't work. You didn't break your grandma's promise. So I feel like I just discovered the secret to life. So I like drive to my college campus. I asked for like this leave of absence form, which says I have a seven-year window. I drive home to tell my parents the good news.

This is not good news. Literally, I remember my mom yelling, my son will not be in college. Just, you know, she's gone hysterical. And for weeks, I'm just going back and forth with them. And at the end, I had to come to terms with, although my mom might be right, although this might be the biggest mistake of my life,

I'd rather be 80 years old and know that I tried than 80 years old and know I had failed. Yeah. I think the bigger issue here is that divining line between living your life for somebody else and living it for yourself with the understanding that you know that this is your true north. After a year or so into this project, I think you had paid your dues enough to know like, okay, this is the path for me. And that's tough as a young person. It's tough for anybody in any situation to have to wrestle with that. Yeah. You want to know the craziest thing that happened on that day? So it's the day to turn in the leave absence form.

And I finally wait until the final day to, you know, sign the form. There's like two hours left until the deadline. I'm going to go drive to campus. I'm at my parents' house. I have the green form. I fold it up in my pocket, and I hear the doorbell ring. So, you know, I grab my car keys, and I walk towards the door, and I turn the knob, and I open it up,

and standing on the front step is my grandma, you know, just tears streaming down her face. And still to this day, I'll never forget what that felt like. And how's it now? Ah, I love her. I feel like half the time I run into you at this event or that event, you're with like 20 family members. So I feel like it the time I run into you at this event or that event, you're with like 20 family members.

So I feel like it all worked out. We actually have a picture with me and you, Cal, and my parents at one of NQ's shows. Oh, is Cal in that picture too? I don't think you guys knew each other yet. No, you know what's funny? And I want to talk about Cal in a minute, but I just ran into Cal like a week ago. Where was it? I was down at Dodger Stadium to do this.

The Spartan thing. and up in one of the sky boxes, he was doing podcast interviews and like video interviews. And so he's like, come down, like I'd never met Joe in person. He's like, come down, like, let's, you know, come on my show, which was great. You know, we had a great time, totally cool. And then he's like, hey, I'm also, I'm doing this documentary thing.

I'm trying to, he's like, I'm taking this guy, I'm putting this guy through the paces, you know, I'm trying to get him fit. I'm trying to, he's like, I'm taking this guy, I'm putting this guy through the paces, you know, I'm trying to get him fit. I'm trying to sort out his diet. And like, he just, the guy's not listening. I was like, I'm having such a hard time. He goes, will you talk to him? Did you know him before?

No, well, first of all, like, he just didn't say who it was. He's like, will you talk to him? Like, we're doing this, maybe we'll film you a little bit. Like, we'll have a little interaction. I was like, yeah, whatever you want. So we go out into the parking lot and I'm with this film camera, Joe. And like, you know, there's a cinematographer there.

And we walk up and Joe introduces me. He's like, hey, this is Cal. He's like, hi, I'm Cal. And I'm like, oh, Cal Fussman. Like, Cal doesn't know who I am. But I was like, yeah, I know who you are. Like, cool, nice to meet you. And he's wearing the fedora hat

with the Spartan bandana on his fedora. Oh my God. And I'm like, yeah, I hear from Joe, like you're resisting. So we get into this weird conversation and the bizarre thing is that I feel like we were like ships in the night. Like whatever Cal was saying, whatever I was saying, we were just this weird conversation. And the bizarre thing is that I feel like we were like ships in the night. Like whatever Cal was saying, whatever I was saying, we were just missing each

other. And I look at Joe and I go, you got your hands full with this guy. Like, I don't know if I can help you. I love Cal. At the same time, everything you just said makes, I can see that happening. Yeah. And I hope it's okay that I told that story. No, that's very- It's like a secret or something like that. No, he would probably say the same story too, because it's- So next time you see Cal, I'll tell him. I'm going to call, as soon as we're done, I'm going to call him on the drive home and tell him that. But what's cool, and to bring it back around to your story, like Cal becomes,

we should probably explain who Cal is and how he kind of came into your equation. We should probably explain who Cal is and how he kind of came into your equation. So this is probably the most miraculous coincidence that happened on the whole journey. And there were a lot of miraculous coincidences. This was a few years into the journey. And I had just spent eight months trying to track down Warren Buffett, writing him letters, and I was just getting rejected at every turn. To the point where at the end of the eight months, I was completely depleted. Just all the life was beat out of me. And one of my best friends, Corwin, was trying to get my spirits up. And like, come on, let's go, let's grab a bite to eat. So we go to this grocery store and we grab sandwiches and we're, you know,

sitting on the, on the sidewalk and, you know, I'm just venting to my friend, you know, and I'm telling him, man, I don't know what the point of this, I don't know how I'm going to do this. And he's like, come on, you gotta,, you got to interview, you know, you got to have some interviews lined up. And I'm like, I got nothing. And he's like, come on, you got, you got to figure something out. Like, dude, do you know what? Even if I had interviews, like I would probably fuck him up, you know, look what happened

in the last one. And he's, as we're complaining about how hard interviewing is, this car pulls up right in front of me. The door opens and out walks Larry King. And I don't know if you want me to go into the whole story. No, I love the story. I know the story, but like, it's a great story. So I think it, it really, it, it, it creates the foundation for everything that follows. Like, I think it's, you know, an integral part of

the whole book, because I think, and we can get into this later, but just to kind of like define it now, I think the value of the book is much more the journey that you go on to create the book than it is the wisdom imparted by these people that you ultimately end up talking to. And yes, they're providing these insights and that has, you know, tremendous value, but you're learning experientially through this and you're answering your own questions. You know, the book is called The Third Door and you can explain why that is, but ultimately, you know, you're finding the third door all the way through in every opportunity to try to make this happen. So it's almost like the solutions that you're looking for, you're practicing along

the way, and it's a process of just coming into an understanding of that as you go. Thank you, man. That feels really good to hear. So back to the story. Okay, so back to me just harassing Larry King. So his car pulls up, he walks out. And it's weird because I know I sound like this extroverted person who's down too many Red Bulls, but I'm really very shy and introverted. And I grew up with a tremendous fear of rejection and failure.

So as Larry King opens that car door, I'm paralyzed. And I call the feeling the flinch. And he's literally walking right in front of me, right past me and goes through the store sliding windows. And I can't say a thing. And my best friend, Corwin, like nudged me. He's like, dude, what the fuck? Like, why don't you say something? And this is where the flinch gets very good. I start explaining all the good reasons why I shouldn't have said anything. I don't you say something? And this is where the flinch gets very good. I start explaining all the good reasons why I shouldn't have said anything. I don't want to bother him. He's like, dude, come on.

And, you know, I'm like, look, he's already in the grocery store. I can't find him. He's like, dude, he's 80 years old. How far could he have gone? Right. And you're complaining about how this isn't working out. And then God just delivers like this dream, you know, interviewee right in front of you. Exactly.

So just to not be embarrassed in front of my friend, I very reluctantly get up. I walk through the stores, you know, sliding glass windows. And I look around the bakery section. No, Larry. So I jog over to the produce section, you know, fruits, vegetables. No, Larry. So I jog over to the produce section, you know, fruits, vegetables, no Larry. And that's when I remember I had spent, or no, Larry had parked in the loading zone, which meant he was leaving any minute now. So that like bolt of adrenaline and the fear of, you know, failing again, you know, overtakes me. And I start sprinting

through this grocery store, going down every aisle. No, Larry, no, Larry, no, Larry, no, Larry, no, Larry. You know, I cut down the frozen food section. You know, I'm dodging old ladies. Like, I'm, you know, swerving around cans of tuna fish. No, Larry. So, he has to be at the checkout counter. He has to be at the checkout counter. So no Larry, no Larry, no Larry, no Larry. And at this point, I want to, you know, kick myself because it was, like you said, it was right in front of me and I blew it. So I'm walking out of the parking lot and I'm looking down at my feet and I lift my gaze and right there, 20 feet in front of me is Larry King. And similar to that

Stan story I told you about on The Price is Right, this feeling like overtakes me. And I just, I'm trying to project, but I think all of this, you know, pent up anger and energy inside of me combusted. And I accidentally shout, Mr. King! It was an indoor parking lot, so it echoed. And literally, I'll never forget the look on Larry King's, the poor guy, he's had like quadruple bypass surgery. He like jumps up like this, his shoulders arch up, and he turns his head around slowly like like every wrinkle in his face you know sprung back his eyebrows to his hairline you know as if he's seeing the grim reaper so he

you know starts you know heading towards his car get in my car as quickly as possible to get out of here and i'm thinking like shit i'm too deep in this to to stop now so i like run after him like mr king mr king my name is alex i'm you know i'm 20 years'm too deep in this to stop now. So I like run after him. I'm like, Mr. King, Mr. King, my name is Alex. I'm, you know, I'm 20 years old. I've always wanted to say hi. And he's like, okay, hi. And, you know, goes off faster. And we're finally now in front of his car.

He's like putting his groceries in the trunk. He opens the driver door and I just go, wait, Mr. King. Can I, can I go to breakfast with you? And his look of confusion. Oh my God. And, you know, he's about to say no, but he looks around at the sidewalk and sees there's about like 10 people watching this go down. Right. So he better behave himself. So he literally just like shrugs and it's like 10 people watching this go down. Right, so he better behave himself.

So he literally just like shrugs and is like, okay, okay, okay. And I'm like, oh my God, thank you. Thank you so much. Great, I'll see you tomorrow. And he like gets in the car and closes the door. And I go, wait, Mr. King, what time? And he looks at me and like starts the engine of this car. He can definitely hear me.

I'm like, Mr. King, what time? He like puts the car into drive. I'm now standing like in front of the car, waving my arms in front of the windshield. Mr. King, what time? And he just looks at me and he's like, nine o'clock and just speeds off. And the next morning- You're like a celebrity's worst nightmare. You're schooling on like having a little more deft approach to, I mean, that's just like sheer desperation. Look, that's what happens when you drop out of school and lie to your grandma and put it all on the line.

You do some crazy stuff to try to make it work. And so I go to Larry King's restaurant. And I show up there at 9 o'clock. And there he is sitting in the corner booth with his friends. And, you know, I had a little bit of self-awareness at this point where I knew. Right. We're talking about Nate Niles, right? I've seen him in there.

Does he still go there every morning? He goes to, he has like a schedule where every week there's a, every day of the week, if you name it the day of the week, I can say where he's at breakfast. Right? So, right. That makes me sound normal. Okay. Yeah. You know a little bit too much about this. All right, go ahead. Okay. So I get there and I was a bit embarrassed by how I had acted the day prior. So I was trying

to be a lot calmer. So although there was an open seat, I didn't sit down. I'm just like, hey, Mr. King, good morning. And he goes, you know, sort of waves me away. So I'm like, all right, he wants some time alone with his friends. So I sit at the table next to him waiting to be called over. And 10 minutes passes, 30 minutes pass, an hour passes, and finally he stands up. And he's walking towards me and I can like feel my cheeks lifting. And then he walks right past me and heads for the exit. And I just like wave my hand.

I'm like, hey, Mr. King. And he goes, what is it, kid? What do you want? And at this point, I'm just like, I have no energy. And I'm just like, honestly, I just wanted some advice on how to interview people. And this smile like spreads across his face, almost as if to say, why didn't you say so? What do you think he thought you were trying to do? In high, he deals with a lot of crazy people.

Anyone of his caliber, especially someone as approachable as Larry. Because you have to understand, he, when he was at CNN, he was, if not the, one of the most recognizable faces on earth. He also doesn't hide from the public. Like you said, he's out, you know, like if you want to find him, you can find him. Like he doesn't ensconce himself in his house. Like he's out in the public.

So he's probably getting rolled up on quite a bit. Right, especially by crazy kids. I was like in a urinal next to him after a movie many years ago. Oh, he loves going to the movies. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. I have a funny movie story with him later. So he's like, you know, he smiles and he ends up, you know, putting a hand on my shoulder and giving me, you know, this one minute monologue of the best interview advice I'd ever heard. And at the end of and giving me, you know, this one minute monologue of the best

interview advice I'd ever heard. And at the end of this monologue, he goes, he like looks up almost as if he's like debating something in his mind. And he looks at me in the eyes and like puts a finger in my face and goes, all right, kid, tomorrow, 845, see you here. And I show up the next morning at 845. He calls me over to his table. I sit down, he asked me like, what.45, see you here. And I show up the next morning at 8.45. He calls me over to his table. I sit down. He asks me like, what are you even trying to interview for? And I tell him about the book.

And he's like, all right, I'm in. And over the course of the past few years, I've been at breakfast with him about 50 times. Wow. And this all comes full circle because the next thing that happens at the table is we start talking about the book on that first morning of breakfast. And, or now this is the second morning, this is my first morning at the table. And I'm telling him about my dream and he goes, I got someone you want, I want you to meet. Hey, Cal. And this younger guy who's, you know, in his late fifties, cause everyone else at the table is in their eight. And this younger guy who's, you know, in his late 50s, because everyone else at

the table is in their 80s, this younger guy in a fedora turns around and Larry goes, you have a minute? And, you know, sort of sends me off with Cal. And Cal, I learned, Larry tells me that his name is Cal Fussman. And he is, you know, the writer of Esquire magazine's, What I've Learned column. And he's interviewed Muhammad Ali, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Clooney, you know, every person who's defined culture the past 50 years. And Cal's a New York Times bestselling author. And Cal and I end up for what's supposed to be a minute conversation, we talk for three hours. And that conversation turns into another conversation the next day. And Cal and I create this relationship where he realizes how much help I need. Because I have this big lofty dream of writing a book that changes people's lives.

Yet I have zero writing experience. And Cal was working in the magazine industry when it was shrinking at a very scary rate. And he didn't know, he didn't even know how to create a Twitter account. Forget about how to tweet. He didn't even know where the login page was. Yeah, he's full analog. So we sort of create this relationship where I start helping him with his, you know, his, you know, create a Twitter account. I make a website for him. And he starts teaching me how to, like, write a sentence. And, like, again, like a miracle.

While the Larry situation feels like a miracle, what Cal did for me was a miracle. And he sat down with me over the past almost four years, every week at least three times a week for about three hours at a time, looking over my chapters and teaching me how to write. That's amazing. Why do you think he was willing to invest so much of his energy in you? The obvious number one is he's so kind. And, you know, you can't... You can't fake it.

You're either... You have that heart or you don't. I got that... I actually asked this guy who I met, he's really smart guy. He was the, he used to be a VP at Goldman Sachs. And I asked him, cause he was giving me a lot of advice too. I asked him like, how do you choose like which people to mentor? You have such little time. And he has this theory, which I think is really brilliant, about why someone chooses to mentor someone subconsciously. Because it's never really a conscious decision when you give of yourself in that way. And he said, someone mentors you for three reasons. One, they see some of themself in you. Two, they want to help you be more like them.

Whether it's because they have a special expertise they want to help you with, but they want to help you and they feel they can help you be more like them. The third one is the most interesting. They want to be more like you. And that's sort of confusing. But what he explained to me is like, you know, if someone's a, you know, 70-year-old CEO, sometimes the thing they need most in their life is 19-year-old enthusiasm about their company because they're so, you know, lackluster at that point. Right, right.

No, I totally get that. I totally get that. And just not really knowing that much about your relationship with Cal and the dynamic, you know, it's clear to see how you were able to bring that to him because I've watched his career change in a very dramatic way just in the last couple of years

from, you know, James Beard award-winning magazine writer to a guy who's now like very well-known in the digital universe. You know, he's been on Tim Ferriss' podcast like twice, I think. And I saw him speak at The Shine and I know our mutual friend, Kevin is now his manager. And I believe you're the one who introduced him to Elliot. And then he became a speaker at Summit. And so now he's like this guy who has, you know, like this whole life and career that he could not have conceptualized prior to meeting you. Cal, I always mess with him because I like to remind him. By the way, Cal's Twitter is fantastic.

He puts out all these great quotes and he gets tons of retweets. But I always joke with him because in our first conversation, I asked him if he has a Twitter account and he laughed in my face and said, Twitter is my kryptonite. And he like literally laughed in my face and he's just done so well. And you know, all credit goes to him, but like you said, he, you know, his podcast is incredible. His, his speeches bring people to tears. He, he has a newsletter now it's just night and day. And I'm just so proud of him. And he's like family to me, his goddaughter, his daughter is now my goddaughter. I had her bat mitzvah.

I went up and lit a candle, and it's been one of the biggest honors of my life. Super cool. And what was it that he, like, what's the main thing that you learned from him about writing? Oh, wow. I have this fantasy of one day after the book launch, teaching a 10-hour course of what Cal taught me over four years. I'll give you three things just off the top of my head that are the biggest things, though. It's like my dream to pay it forward because what he gave me was life-changing. Number one is, oh man, it's crazy because when I first sat down with Cal, I don't think I've ever told this publicly. In our first conversation, he said Twitter's my kryptonite and I said something even more preposterous. He asked me what my plans were of how to write the book and I said i can't believe i'm i'm admitting this but i said cal i've read a lot of statistics and blog posts and i know that

with a business book and i'm writing a business book 90 of people don't read past the first chapter so i'm not too worried and he looked at me like that's like the worst thing you could tell a guy, like a real writer. Right. It is his profession. He's an artist. And so Cal taught me how to do the opposite, which is how to write a book where 90% read the final sentence. And there's three ways to do it. Well, there's a lot of ways, but the three main things he taught me. Number one is every single chapter, you cannot have an exception,

needs to have tension. Every single one. I thought I could get away with like, you know, the first chapter having some tension, the middle chapter and the final. Every, it doesn't matter. And that is really hard. My issue was, if I was writing a fiction book, Cal's advice would have been very, much easier

to implement. Because it was a nonfiction book and I had to write about some of the, look, some of the chapters were my stories and I could tell them, but some of the chapters were me and Bill Gates sitting in an office for an hour with an audio recorder and Bill also recorded, his team was smart enough to also record it. So I can't even change a word of what was said in there. Yeah, but what you can do is describe what was happening with you emotionally, because I feel tension just hearing that. Like, okay, you're a kid, you walk into this office,

there's a whole team of people. They're recording it on their end. What are they gonna do? What's their agenda? Like, how am I gonna navigate that? Like, you know, my palms can get sweaty just hearing about that. There's a lot to work with there.

Yeah, well, I'm so happy that you're a brilliant writer. I've been like, no. But that's, Cal had a big job of teach me that of, you know, every chapter needs tension. So that's number one. And I actually, there's this great thing from, I don't know if you've ever seen Masterclass. Yeah. It's an online course. Right, right, right. They're incredible. And they're all like super high end. It's like HBO for an online course. The Malcolm Gladwell one? The one that I recommend to any creative writer, filmmaker,

anyone is the Aaron Sorkin one. And he, in a perfect sentence, says what the key is to tension. And Cal taught me this too. He says, you need very strong intention and very very very crazy obstacles because you can have all these crazy obstacles but if there's not an intention like if i don't

do x y will happen right Like you can do a movie- Consequences. A consequence, stakes. And that's what Cal taught me. You need to have stakes. Right, so then you're like, just to extend the analogy of the Bill Gates interview, what are the stakes?

Like, okay, so he doesn't wanna talk to me or the interview doesn't go well. Like what's the worst thing that could happen? Like, it's hard to come up with like stakes that are super high. Well, what Cal is so good at is because he's one of the best interviewers on earth, he would help me. He would ask me questions, almost like a therapist that would pull the answers out of me that I didn't even know. Like he would, like I would write the first draft of the bill. So the Bill Gates chapter, for example,

that was the hardest chapter to write by far. That took 134 edits. And that's before I sent it to Crown. Drafts, you mean drafts. Drafts. That's like insane. And that's before I sent it to Crown. And then once it got to Crown,

I went through probably another like 30 to the final one. So it's probably about 160 at this point. And then proofreading, it's probably- Meanwhile, I'm like on my phone looking at your Instagram and you're like sitting down to rewrite this chapter again. I go, this guy's just afraid. Like, I'm like, this guy is paralyzed

because he's so afraid of sharing what he's written that he thinks the solution is to rewrite it again. And I was like, is this guy ever going to like finish this thing? So not knowing that that's what was really going on. So that was what was going on behind the scenes. And Cal and I made a promise. He was too, he's like, look, this is your book. I'm not going to write a word of it. So you can't have that expectation. But the one thing I'll promise you is that if you send me something, I'll read it and I'll let you know when it's good enough to move on to the next chapter. And I was like, great. Now, to my surprise, like with Bill Gates, it took 134, you know, drafts for me to Cal go, all right, fine, move on. That's amazing. So some of the things, okay, so we have tension.

That's what Cal taught. The second thing is there needs, needs, needs to be a grip. And that was the hardest thing for me to understand. And what he means by that is every chapter and every story, Because every chapter and every story, you can't just, you know, throw it out. So there's a chapter where I go to meet Mark Zuckerberg and it ends up being a disaster because security comes and they think I'm an imposter and they threaten to call the police. And it's this whole crazy story. But I'll tell you, for example, the opening of that chapter is, the founder of TED once told me, I live my life by two mantras.

One, if you don't ask, you don't get. And two, most things don't work out. And that created this grip, or some people might call it a frame, to almost – and there's a sense of confidence that, you know, someone like Cal has over writing, that you really have to grab it like a, you know, a slab of clay and hold, grip it in your hands and throw it down on the table. As opposed to just sort of being like, it was a bright summer day when I got the email from Mark Zuckerberg. The story owns you. You need to own the story. So that's number two is grip it. And number three, which is a very practical one.

And again, why the book took so long to write. This is the attention of detail Kyle forced me, thankfully, to have with the writing of this book. Every sentence, he said, you need to treat like a restaurant. And every sentence, by the way, this book is about 80,000 words. So we're looking at about 8,000 sentences, right? Maybe more, maybe less. And he goes, think of it like a restaurant. The first the pacing of that sentence needs to depend on what the mood is of the customer. Is it a straight through course? Is it fast food? Then you can't have commas in that sentence. Is it an eight course meal, like very extravagant? Then you can use commas and a semicolon, maybe an MDA and you have this elegance to it. And then the final word is dessert. And if you can have the best maitre d', the best courses, but if the dessert is too salty,

it's the worst restaurant you've ever been to. So every sentence of the book, you know, starting at the first word, no one will believe the amount Cal and I obsessed with. The first word we debated for months and we decided the best word is right. R-I-G-H-T, right. First word of the whole book. The whole book. The opening sentence is, write this way. And that sets off the whole tone of the book. Right, it creates, yeah, it creates a tone. And the final sentence, oh my God, that was weeks of brainstorming

because it had to be the perfect sentence. And what's the word that you end an entire story, you know, on, and it's the word home. It's beautiful. Thanks, man. So of all the people that you interviewed, on and it's the word home. It's beautiful. Thanks man. So of all the people that you interviewed, all the wisdom that you collected. I don't know why we're laughing.

The most impactful was the guy who helped you write the book. It seems like. To you personally. Cal, yeah, it's crazy because I set off on this journey to learn from Bill Gates and to learn from Buffett and to learn from Spielberg. And while I did learn so much from them and what they taught me changed me forever, the greatest and most valuable thing that happened on this journey was both Cal Fussman and Elliot Bisno being like family. So let's talk about Elliot for a minute. I mean, this guy's

become your mentor, sort of, right? This is my bet, and I'll say this on this podcast, I want to plant my flag in the ground. In 20 years, he will be one of the most, you know, impactful names in business. The only reason no one knows him right now is because he's purposely by design tried to avoid all, you know, public opinion and attention. Attention. I can see that. I mean, I love Elliot and his wife. You know, Julie and I have become close with them. And I think the world of him and I think what he's built is so extraordinary. You know, it's so extraordinary that like I can't wrap my head around it.

Like it doesn't make sense. And maybe a good way to kind of launch into this part of our conversation is like, It doesn't make sense. And maybe a good way to kind of launch into this part of our conversation is like, I first became aware of like these summit people many years ago, long time ago. A friend, a yoga teacher called up Julie and said, hey, I'm supposed to go teach this class at this house.

These people, I can't do it. I gotta go to a temple. Will you just fill in for me? And Julie wasn't like really a yoga teacher at that time, but as a favor to a friend, she said, sure. And here's the address. Go to this. She goes to this house and it's like, I don't know, 15 people in Malibu. This was many years ago. I mean, this had to be 2002 or something, a long time ago. She comes back from that experience and she's like, yeah, I don't know who these people were. And like, it was kind of weird.

Like I'm in this house and it's sort of like a commune. And I taught yoga to these people and they were all like so engaged and like friendly and present and so much so that it like weirded me out. Like, I'm like, what is happening? Like, I don't know what these people are doing, but there's something going on here, you know?

And then I think it was a couple couple months later where there was like a double page ad in Vanity Fair and they're all like walking down the beach together. And she's like, those are the people I taught you. And that was my first introduction to what Summit is. And then I started to learn about what they were doing. And, you know, I've now been to Eden, these people like Elliot, you know, at, at, at, at with Elliot at the helm, this group bought a mountain in Utah and they're creating this community and they host these annual events or biannual events where they bring incredible speakers in. Bezos was one of the best speeches I've ever seen in my life.

And they cultivate this community around ideas. And I think it's truly remarkable. around ideas. And I think it's truly remarkable. And I think Elliot is somebody whose heart is in this amazing place and the team that he's built is incredible. It's disheartening when you read press and they don't get it or it gets missed sort of, you know, they're portrayed in a way that is different than I think what is real. But I have nothing but the utmost respect for Elliot and what he's created.

It's mind-blowing. And how he came into your life is a crazy story. Oh my, well, and it's funny because we sort of touched on that moment a little when I was sharing, when I was in that CVS parking lot on the phone with Bill Gates, the chief of staff. He said two things, right?

Get a book deal and go build momentum. So, you know, I had some thoughts on how to get that book deal or figure it out. But the word momentum, like what the, I'm 19. I'm like, what the fuck is momentum? And I remember going back to my room that night and just like, literally my head in my hands, like momentum. And I'm just sitting there like rocking in my chair and i don't know how this happened but you know sometimes like just thoughts flurry in your mind when you're just in a panic so i'm just thinking like momentum like if i'm only like five percent of there for bill gates i must be at like negative 20 with you know you know, Bill Clinton or Richard Branson.

And I'm like, wait. Bill Clinton, Richard Branson. Didn't someone tell me last summer that Richard Branson was on this like cruise ship or something? It's almost like procrastinate. I take out my computer and I google like bill clinton richard branson cruise ship and this article pops up and it's on fast company and it is like summit series takes the high seas with a cruise ship packed with richard branson gary vaynerchuk um the roots as the house banned by the pool bl Blake Mycoskie leading shark tagging.

Tim Ferriss canoeing. Like it just, I was like, what the fuck is this? Right? It sounds like this, like, you know, entrepreneur's dream. And I'm reading this article and it's like, Elliot Bisno, the founder and CEO of Summit Series with many companies to his name is 26 years old. And I'm like, what? 26 is like my cousin's age. Like, how is that possible? I thought you had to be like

this big CEO. So I just start, I Google Elliot Bisno and I'm just ripping through it, going down this rabbit hole. And, you know, I miss like two meals without noticing. And I'm just clicking and clicking. And the weird thing about him is that there was a lot of articles that mentioned him, but none that actually said what he did. So it was almost like I was this detective trying to piece it together. It's part of the whole mystique. Right. I learned later it's by design. And it's almost like Googling the guy from catch me if you can. You think you're onto something and then you get thrown off. And it's almost like Googling the guy from Catch Me If You Can. You think you're onto something, and then you get thrown off.

And so I'm Googling and Googling. And by the end, I'm like, if there's one person on earth who can teach me about momentum and show me what I need to do to get to Bill Gates. It has to be this guy. And I remember this night very vividly. I, you know, closed my eyes and said a prayer. And then I opened my journal and I, at the top wrote dream mentors. And I underlined it. And on the first line, I wrote Elliot Bisnow. And a couple of weeks later, I was again, studying for an accounting final this time. And I couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like to instead be learning from Elliot. So again, I can't focus on finals. So I just, I'm like, all right, let me get it out of my head and out of my system.

So I open my computer and I start writing this email for Elliot. But I end up spending three hours writing what I think is like the perfect email. I use the Tim Ferriss cold email template. I email Elliot. I send it off. And literally the next morning, he goes, great email. What are you doing Thursday? And I look at my calendar and Thursday is my accounting final. So I say the only thing that I can, I'm completely free. What do you have in mind? And just to kind of put a punctuation mark on this,

your greatest skill might be finding all these people's emails somehow. Like, how are you doing? There are surprisingly a lot of very effective systems. But do you know what's crazy, actually? This is wild. It was easier for me to find Bill Gates' email address than it was to find Elliot's. Wow. So when you emailed Bill Gates,

you were actually emailing bill gate you weren't like emailing an assistant or something um but with people of this caliber they have assistants who read their stuff read their stuff and filter out the junk so what's left in his inbox is stuff for him and so i got intercepted really quickly anyway Bill. Anyway. Yeah, all right. So somehow you get Elliot's email through some kind of cyber sleuthing. I don't know. Well, for Elliot's, actually, I can tell you the way I did it for him because I remember I couldn't, with all my methods, it didn't work. So with him, I was like, all right, I'm just going to pick, you know, 10 of the likely things that might be.

And I just guessed. You literally guessed it? I put them all in the BCC field. And one of them was the, I got nine bounce backs and one didn't bounce back. Oh, that's smart. So he ended up responding. And, you know, so I say, I'm completely free. And he says, great, meet me at this hotel. I'm there for this conference in Long Beach. And before you come, like, read a chapter of this book. And this is like my dream mentor. So if he says read a chapter, I'm reading the whole book, right? So I read the whole book. I don't save for my accounting final. What was the book? It's an unbelievable book. It's called When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead by Jerry Weintraub. Unbelievable book. And for anyone who's like an entrepreneur on their hustle, this is one of the greatest empresarios of the 20th century.

It's his autobiography. And I go, I think, all right, it's not a big deal. Elliot's going to meet with me for 15 minutes. My accounting final isn't until noon. It's only, the hotel's only an hour away from school. I can still make it on time. So what ends up happening is I show up the morning of, you know, 8am, I get there early. Elliot walks in right on time.

Our 15 minute meeting turns into four hours. And it turns out that we're meeting at the Westin Hotel in Long Beach during TED, which is the main lodging of the TED conference. So I'm sitting at this breakfast room with everyone. Larry Page is sitting five feet away. And then over there is Tony Hsieh. Then over there is Reid Hoffman. And I'm 19. and I'm like, what? It's literally like The Wizard of Oz from black and white to color. And my four-hour meeting with Elliot turned into an entire summer traveling the world with him to now him being one of my best friends. That's amazing. And what do you think you said or impressed upon him in that meeting that clicked with him? I think, and you know, there's no way to know for sure.

But I think when it comes to having a mentor, they can only help you as much as you're willing to help yourself. So I knew that everything Elliot would advise me to do, I'm going to go, you know, 10 X. So, you know, he, he says, Hey, can you read this chapter for me? I'm going to read the whole book. He says, Hey, I remember when we had first met, like I didn't have any, you know, I was 19. I didn't have like a debit card or a credit card or anything. And he is like, you fucking idiot. Like, how do you expect to be traveling around without it? So, you know, the next morning I opened up like, you know, I just did everything he advised, um, you know, to the 10th degree. And what, you know, my theory is that when someone like yourself or like Elliot, who, you know, has very limited time, if you're going to invest in a young

person, you want to make sure there's some, you know, in addition to doing it out of the kindness of your heart, you want to make sure there's an ROI that the advice you're giving is actually going somewhere. And with Elliot, everything he told me, you know, I ran with it and, you know, it started small and it got bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where it's now not only a mentor relationship. He, he was standing on my dad's bedside when he took his final breath. So he's very much like family. Wow. That's amazing.

You know, I think it's pretty rare. I mean, you have Cal Fussman and Elliot as like, you know, on your speed dial. I love them. As this kid, I mean, I think your talent really is your people skills, your ability to connect with other human beings. I appreciate that. I know that that's been the history of our relationship. And I don't know how much of that is teachable versus just the way you're baked.

So first of all, I appreciate that. I've thought a lot about what things I can pull out that I've learned along the way. And, you know, I've made a ton of mistakes. So, while my relationship with, you know, you or Elliot or Cal is great, you know, there's some relationships that I've completely fucked up on. You know, to the point where I'm like blacklisted from some people's, well, it might be on Elliot's feed, I'm blacklisted from some people's phone. It's like this crazy guy just won't stop emailing me kind of thing. Right, so with, so like Warren Buffett, for example, I spent, like I told you, I spent

this eight month quest, you know, trying to track him down. And I spent literally eight full months. It wasn't part time. You have to understand every morning waking up, I'd put in my headphones at 6 a.m., run down the sidewalk, imagining Warren Buffett was at the end as I'm doing my sprints, like obsessive. And I would write handwritten letters to him that I would take weeks editing and I'd hand write these letters and mail it to him.

And he would actually hand write some responses back. So is this like very awkward pen pal situation. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Alex. Go away. He was much kinder, but that was essentially what it said. And I just kept every week calling Buffett's assistant week after week after week. And it almost felt like I was in this, you know, boxing, you know, world championship with, you know, this young kid who's never picked up boxing gloves versus, you know, Floyd Mayweather. And I'm just getting pounded in the gut, punched in the face, you know, I'm bloody, I'm spitting up blood, you know, my insides are bruised and, you know, each rejection felt like I'm just getting pounded. And by the end of these eight months, you know, each rejection felt like I'm just getting pounded.

And by the end of these eight months, you know, I had flown to Omaha. I had sent, so stupidly, Buffett a shoe to try. You know, I did all these crazy things where at the end of the eight months. How did you send him a shoe? Oh, this is a very embarrassing story. We, so someone who was advising me, who had said he worked for Buffett was like, trust me on this. They'll think it's funny.

And I was like, are you sure? I can go in. It's a whole nother. All right, forget it. It was a misfire. It was a giant misfire, but pretty much I kept pounding because I just believed every business book says persistence is the key to success. So I thought the more I pounded on the door, the sooner I'll break it

down. Yeah, there's a limit to that. But ultimately you end up bum rushing his shareholders meeting, right? Correct. So I ended up. Did you get tossed out? Oh my, okay. So for that, what ended up happening was, you know, after this eight months, Buffett's assistant, you know, she knew me. I had sent her flowers. It's Alex again.

Right, yeah. She knew who I was and she, I think, felt bad for me. And she goes, look, I know Warren. I know he's not going to say yes. So why don't, you know, as my guest, you come to the shareholders meeting. And I was like, oh my God, like, thank you so much. Do you think I can bring some friends? She's like, of course. So she sends me six tickets.

And when I'm on the phone with her, I'm like, hey, her name is Debbie. I'm like, hey, Debbie, isn't it true that people at the shareholders meeting in the audience can ask warren buffett questions and she goes alex alex i know what you're trying to do but it's just not possible there's 30 000 people there and only 30 ask questions your odds are one in a thousand i wouldn't get your hopes up. But Debbie doesn't know it. I'm the king of hopes up. And you're also the guy who figured this out with the price is right. So you're going to apply your price is right tactics to. So what's funny is it actually was very similar to the price is right in the sense that it's advertised as this lottery luck system, but

there's a system and the odds aren't exactly the same. So me and my five childhood best friends, again, Kevin is with me, we go there, we end up finding a loophole in Buffett's lottery system. And out of the six of us, although the odds were one in a thousand, four got winning lottery tickets. And that's how I asked Buffett my questions. And the question was? So there was four different questions. One was about raising a fund. Another one was about negotiating skills. Another one was about value investing. Another one was about how he focuses his time.

But like straight up questions. You didn't get up and say, hey, it's Alex. No, no, no. No, my thinking was, look, you know, I have, let's say, 20 questions I want to ask him in an interview. All right, let me take the top four and ask them in front of 30,000 people. Mm-hmm. What ended up happening is, you know, Buffett, I think, caught on to what was happening. And by the time my fourth friend went up, the spotlight turned on. Buffett saw my fourth friend and goes, well, this is a great time to end the shareholders meeting.

Thank you for coming. And, you know, who knows if he knew what he was doing, but it was a very great, this in my friend, as he started asking the question, the microphone got cut off. Right. So Debbie's like, but you sent him this, right? Tell me that you sent him a book. I haven't sent it. How could you not have sent this to him with a note saying like, I think he'll fall into his hands eventually. I don't want to like rub it in his face, haven't sent it. How could you not have sent this to him with a note saying like. I think he'll fall into his hands eventually. I don't want to like rub it in his face. But what ended up happening after the shareholders meeting was I ended up interviewing Bill Gates and the interview with Gates went so well that his office was like, look, how can we help this mission? And I was like, well, I still really would like to sit down with Warren Buffett.

And they go, easy. They contact Buffett's office. And I'll never know what was said, but I do know that Gates is- That guy? Yeah. Essentially, my assumption is they're like, we know all about Alex. We're not doing this. Right.

And Gates's office sent me an email, like very terse. Please no more contact to Buffett's office. Thanks. Whoa. And they're like my buddy. You're like, they're right. We're friends. So I was like, oh my God.

And what I learned, finally, I learned my lesson that there's a such thing as over persistence. You know, you can bang on a door so much that they'll call the police. And no business book talks about that. No one talks about the dangers of over persistence. And I realized I had dug myself into such a deep hole that even Bill Gates couldn't pull me out. Yeah, you need, I mean, that level of, you need EQ, you need emotional intelligence

to be able to read those cues and understand where those lines are. Well, I couldn't do that. It's like exuberance got the best of you with that one, I think. Yeah. Good lesson to learn. So in the wake of all of these people,

you know, Lady Gaga, Spielberg, Maya Angelou, Wozniak, Jessica Alba, Pitbull. That's like, I'm too old to like understand that one. It was a good interview. So we don't have time to talk about all these people, but is there, I guess my question is like, what is the through line? Like what is the consistent, you know, piece of advice or what is it that unites all of these people that you talk to? If you could condense that down into some wisdom that the person who's listening to this or who's going to read this book is going to take away with them. When I had started out on the journey, I was very cognizant of I'm not looking looking for this, you know, one silver bullet.

You know, we've all seen those TED Talks or those business books, you know, the one key to success. And I sort of roll my eyes. What ended up happening was as I went on the journey, you know, do these interviews and on that outside, you know, Bill Gates and Maya Angelou could not be more different, right? Like, Maya Angelou grew up in rural Stamps, Arkansas. Gates, you know, a wealthy suburb in Seattle to a rich lawyer. And, you know, I just kept doing these interviews.

interviews. And about like 70% of the way into them, I started realizing that almost like a good musical album, there was like a common melody to every interview. And the analogy that came to me, because I was, you know, 21 at the time, was that it's sort of like getting into a nightclub. So what I realized is life, business, and success, it's just like a nightclub. There's always three ways in. There's the first door, the main entrance where the line curves around the block. And that's where 99% of people wait in line hoping to get in.

You know, you're just standing there with your resume. There's the second door, the VIP entrance, where the billionaires and the celebrities go through. And school and society have this way of making you feel like those are the only two ways in. You're either born into it or you wait your turn like everybody else. But what I've learned and what you know very well is that there's always, always the third door. And it's the door where you jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred 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 Gaga got her first record deal. They all took the third door. So that's not only the title of the book and the thesis of the book, but that's really the energy I'm trying to inject

into the next generation. It's another way of saying you have to think creatively and out of the box. Like there's always a solution that's not immediately self-evident if you're willing to experiment and explore and be unconventional in your approach. And grab life by the collar, roll up your sleeves, get messy, get dirty. There's always, always a way. But I would say this to you, young Alex Benayan, not everybody is cut out to go through that third door. Some people are just wired to, you know, they're better off in line waiting to go through the front door. What I've learned is that, and something that I had to learn along the way, is that taking the third door isn't always about, you know,

yelling, Stan, your scarf! You know, that's what worked for me. You can look at Chi Lu, for example. He's one of the most fascinating people I've ever interviewed in my life. He grew up in a- He's this Chinese guy, right? Yeah. He grew up in a village outside of Shanghai, China

with no running water, no electricity. People were so poor that they walked around with deformities from malnutrition. For every, you know, we think our education system is bad in America. For every 300 students, there was one school teacher. So those are the circumstances he was born into. And he's, you know, very quiet. You know, he was smart.

So he worked very hard. And by age 27, he was making the most money he had ever made in his life, $7 a month. Fast forward 20 years later, and he's a president at Microsoft. And his story is, and you know, throughout the book, there's a lot of people who, you know, aren't these extroverts who are very introverted, who are very quiet, who do like to stay in line. But the third door isn't about, you know, being wild and loud or, you know, being crazy and creative. It's about doing whatever it takes to find a way and taking your life in your hands and making sure that you're going to do everything you possibly can to make it happen. First, you got to figure out what that is. Yeah. You know, that's the struggle you went through. You know, I can't help but listen to

you and try to think how that relates to my own life experience. And of course, you know, I struggled for a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And, you know, I'm sitting here with you today only because I had to figure out my version of the third door, which was a door into a room that, you know, I don't know that there were too many people in. You know, it's like, it's not like I'm trying to break

into a room where there's a bunch of people already there. It's like, I'm trying to find a path to something that I don't even know exists. Like there's no template for it, like learning as you go. But I think I always bring it back to that internal journey of like trying to really figure out what it is that I'm trying to express in the most honest way possible. So that before you start trying to break down the third door, you want to make sure it's the right third door, right? Yeah, absolutely. So how do you think you figured that out for yourself? Well, Elliot told me this great quote once. He said,

out for yourself. Well, Elliot told me this great quote once. He said, sometimes going down the wrong path leads you to the right one. And I think that's very true, but that's only if you're paying attention and you're listening. For me, when I started with this book, it was never to be an author. It was, you know, I wanted to find out this information, share with my generation, move on to what I actually want to do with my life. For me, as this journey has unraveled, I've realized that in many ways, it's so closely tied to what I feel my purpose is. And again, I didn't, it's not this overnight realization. I feel my purpose is. And again, I didn't, it's not this overnight realization.

I'll tell you this story that I heard once. It's this woman, she's teaching in Baltimore for Teach for America in this really tough school. And she's teaching young kids, eight years old. And it's just, they're in a really tough neighborhood. So she decides one day she's not going to do the math lesson. She's going to, I think, you know, grab some paper and some crayons and help them write and draw their biggest dream in life. So she passed out the paper and the kids are running and, you know,

coloring and everyone's having a lot of fun. And then there's this one kid in the back who like is frozen and she's watching him. And about halfway through, he has this idea and starts calling a picture. And at the end of the lesson, you know, she collects the papers. And at the end of the day, she's flipping through them and sees that he drew a pizza delivery man. And she calls the mother that night because she was concerned. And the mother wasn't surprised. The mom said the only man in his life who's not on drugs or in jail

is his uncle who delivers pizza. And what that story showed me is that young people will always strive for the highest branch they see possible. It's our jobs as a society to illuminate those branches. And in many ways, when I had started this book, you know, we talked about how I wanted it to be, you know, very informational, like, you know, Q and A's. And while there's still a ton of practical and tactical lessons and tools in the book, 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 that's very much what my purpose is with this book.

Yeah, I believe that. That's a good purpose to have. Thanks, man. You know, I think what's interesting about you, you know, one of the things we kind of didn't even get to, we glossed over is the fact that like, you know, part of your story is that at 19, you become this venture capitalist. You get hired by a VC firm.

You're like the world's youngest venture capitalist. It gets a lot of press. There's articles about you in like Fortune and stuff like that. You make the forbes like 30 under 30 my question for you is i mean ultimately you made this choice to like not do that anymore so that you could finish this book i would imagine there were a couple people who told you that's crazy that you had this you know burgeoning career as a successful venture capitalist. How did you

make that decision to walk away from that? The book is actually what led me to the VC job. When I first joined the VC firm, and they're incredible people, they knew from day one when I started working with them that the book was my number one priority. So it wasn't really this like shock or plot twist as much as them saying, you know, thank you for all you've done. It feels like now's a good time, because it got to the point where, you know, my book was always my number one thing. And something can be your number one taking 80% of your time, but it sort of becomes unfair to that number two. So I still love venture and I think it's fascinating. And my time with Al So Alsop Louis Partners was incredible. But to me, it was a very obvious decision of, my heart is this book. My heart is this mission. And Venture was this great opportunity along the way. Right. And what's really insane about how this is unfolding is that you're going off and like

giving keynotes at Nike, IBM, Apple, Harvard. And essentially from what I can tell, this keynote is all about like the third door, this book that hasn't even come out yet. Like, okay, let's say the book comes out. It does huge. Then you go talk to Apple. It's like, how are you like- You just hit on my biggest mystery in my life. And as somebody who's like, you know,

been doing this for a little while, I'm like, I haven't spoken at Apple or IBM or Harvard. Like, how are you doing this? What's going on? How can I learn from you? Is that a rhetorical question or is that a real? You're like, Alex, will you be my mentor? You're way too smart for that.

It's crazy. I was, I think I was maybe nine, I was 20 when I got my first like corporate speaking engagement. It was, it was with Nike. And, you know, I had like talked a little before about the book. They're all free things. I like a startup thing or this entrepreneur thing. It's the two year promotional tour for the book. Which turned two-year promotional tour for the book. Which turned a seven-year promotional tour for the book.

What's been very fascinating to me is, you know, I started out writing this book, really, initially, just with my friends in mind. You know, we're going through this life crisis. We don't know what we want to do with our lives. We don't know how to break through. I'm going to write this for us. And I had mentioned this slightly before, which is I learned that the book is less about a specific age than a stage. And I learned that through corporate speaking, where these big corporations would reach out to me, which I, you know, it wasn't like I was pounding the phones for corporate gigs because I was pounding the phone trying to get to Bill Gates. My focus was on finishing this

book. What I realized is that there's tremendous value in not only stories that inspire risk-taking, but also someone coming in to help break down the science of it. And that's what I've been doing with a lot of these big corporations, which is going in and really decoding the art of risk-taking for them. You know, breaking down the steps, also telling the crazy stories along the way. And obviously, I think it's going to be a lot more fun when they can actually hold the book, you know, starting now. But over the past few years, these keynotes have been even surprising to me of how well they've gone. Because I didn't understand, because I've never worked in a big corporation, how hungry they are for that kind of energy and that kind of insight. Because we've talked about it.

Um, because we've talked about it. Sometimes it gets very, you know, linear there where there's a lot of bureaucracy and innovation only happens with risk-taking. And I didn't know this at the time, but this book in many ways is a, an entire study on risk-taking, you know, how Bill Gates dropped out of school and started Microsoft, you know, how Spielberg, you know, snuck onto the universal lot to become the youngest director. All these crazy stories, in the end, will be the same thing. Well, baked into your story, you know. Right.

Right? Which is your own risk-taking adventure and journey to this point. Or in my mom's words, how I made her life a hell for the past seven years. But they're good now, right? Yeah. All right, well, we got to wrap this up, but I don't want to end it without, I think a good place to kind of land the plane

is to talk a little bit about your relationship with your dad who passed away this past year. And I know you're somebody who's very close with your family. So I'm interested in how that process of letting go and kind of being there when he was passing, how that's informed your perspective on your career, your life, ambition, what's important and what's not.

It was, it goes without saying, the hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life. Not only the dying process, but there's something, there's something very life-altering to see the person who gave you life like in front of you taking his final breath. And what I've learned is what matters in the end. the end. It's weird to almost like couch this into the story of what we're just talking about, because when I was starting out, I think it was this like subconscious belief that at the end of life, you know, if you really know, you get punished. And, you know, my dad had pancreatic cancer for 14 months, or he probably had it for longer. But from when we found out

of his diagnosis to when he passed, it was a 14-month period, where it was pretty much 14 months of me sitting with death every single day. You know, going with my dad to the chemo ward, sitting down at the hospice people, reading on grief and grieving. You know, really. Yeah, I'm the one who told my dad he had three months to live. When you spend that much time with death, you learn how to live. And you find out what matters in the end, you know?

For the final, about Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, for the final five days of my dad's life, he had no access to anything that today, like if he was alive, he would count as giving him pleasure. You know, food, he loved food. He couldn't eat. He couldn't drink. He couldn't talk.

My dad loved to talk. He loved to go out. He couldn't do that. He couldn't, he loved to like watch TV. He couldn't open his eyes. He had no access to money, possessions. Literally every material pleasure was gone for those final five days. And I remember the day he first slipped into his coma where I was at Elliot's apartment.

It was a Wednesday morning and I got a call from my dad's doctor saying she had just visited him at home and it looked like he had just a couple days left to live. And though it's very hard to describe what that feeling is because it's not like a cognitive moment. It's not a, you're not thinking of like, all right, what to do. And although you know that call was coming at some point, it's one of those things that once you hear it, everything changes. So I called my sister who lived not too far away. I picked her up in the car. We went to go visit my dad at my parents' house. And we get in there and I see my dad and my mom and my dad's caregiver, because he was on hospice in the living room. But my dad, um, visibly did not look the same. I had seen him,

you know, a day earlier, two days earlier, where he was moving around and talking. And he was very still and his skin had yellowed. And his breathing was very labored. And I remember like trying to, you know, touch his hand and see if he was resting and definitely wasn't resting. And I remember sitting on the couch with my sister, looking at my dad and

realizing he's slipping into a coma. And a few minutes later, my dad's caregiver said it was like time for him to take his pain medication because with pancreatic pancreatic cancer is very painful it's literally like imagine like a football growing inside of your abdomen so all those nerve endings are being squeezed so i knew if he didn't take his pain medication and he had slipped into the coma very rapidly so there wasn't time to get like an IV in him or something because he was at home on hospice. So he had to take this pain medication. So the, you know, the caregiver is trying to give it to him and she's saying,

David, please open your mouth. And he's unresponsive. And, you know, she's asking over and over and over again, and I'm really panicked. And then my mom stands up, and she kicks off her shoes and grabs the pill in her hand and kneels down on the floor. And I remember seeing her. I'm sitting on the couch, and she's kneeling down, and she puts her hand on my dad's hand. And the second she opened her mouth, asking him to open his mouth,

his mouth opened seamlessly. He took the pill and swallowed it very easily. And I remember just sobbing in that moment. Not out of sadness, because I wasn't sobbing when I saw him in the coma. I was scared when I saw him in the coma. But in that moment, I was sobbing out of like the beauty of it. And what I learned that day is that, and I remember writing that down that night, was that like at the end of life when you don't have, you know, access to money or possessions, all you have is your breath, your heartbeat, and your connection to those you love. And that's, you know, probably the biggest lesson my dad's ever taught me.

And how have you carried that into how you live your life now? You know, if my dad didn't pass, and this sounds weird because I am, you know, working as hard as I can on this book launch because I care about it so much, but I would probably be doing it and being a lot more tightly wound and probably miserable. Because what I learned is that, look, I want this, look, this is, this book is my dream. You know, I spent seven years on it. I want it to, you know, do as best as it possibly can and touch as many lives as it possibly can. But I also, I saw the end.

I know what, when I'm dying, it doesn't matter if I'm a best-selling author. It doesn't, and truthfully, it doesn't even matter how many lives I've touched. While that does matter to me personally, in the end, what matters is if the ones you love are like sitting behind you, beside you. And it's shifted the priorities to the point where, you know, again, if my dad hadn't passed, you know know mother's day is this month and father's day is

next month like i probably would have been like guys i can't i gotta stay at the office um it's a no-brainer for me to take the entire day off forget about having a mother's day breakfast it's a mother's day day and it's helped re-prioritize in a very major way that no, no lesson from Bill Gates ever could have given me. Yeah. I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking, well, this is the most powerful, you know, lesson that you've learned in this seven year exploration. Yeah. And it's crazy.

He passed away as soon as the book was done. Like, and he was, he had his wits about him enough to know what you were doing and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end it, my friend. Thank you, man, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's powerful.

I'm super proud of you. You stuck with it. The book is amazing. Thank you, man. You did an incredible job, and I think it does have the potential to impact a lot of you. You stuck with it. The book is amazing. Thank you, man. You did an incredible job. And I think it does have the potential to impact a lot of people. So I can't wait to see it out in the wild. I want to see it in the airport next time I'm in the airport. And anything I can do to help you, man. It means a lot. Yeah. Much love, Alex. Thank you.

Cool. So The Third Door, you can pick it up wherever you buy fine books, independent booksellers, Amazon, all those good places. Are you doing any talks that are open to the public or book signings or anything like that? Yeah, absolutely. It's on my book website. So it's thirddoorbook.com, T-H-I-R-D, thirddoorbook.com. Yeah, all the tour stuff's on there. Are you doing like a full tour? Are you doing a multi-city kind of thing? You're going to do that? Yeah.com. Yeah. All the tour stuff's on there. Are you doing like a full tour or, you know,

in a multi-city kind of thing, you're going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. It's going to be really fun. Awesome, man.

All right. We'll come back and we'll talk some more. Thank you, man. This was really, really enjoyable. I appreciate it. Cool.

Peace. What do you know, people it's over. It's done. We did it and it was good. This officially concludes episode 370 with Alex Benayan. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Do me a favor.

Give Alex a high five on the social networks. He's at Alex Benayan on Twitter and Instagram. Pick up the third door wherever you buy fine books. There's a link in the show notes, a nice hyperlink to do that very thing. And speaking of show notes, check them out on the episode page at richroll.com. Why? Because we put a lot of work into them. They're almost like a syllabus to extend your learning, your edification, your entertainment beyond the conversation. And simply because they are awesome. Don't forget to pick up a copy of the Plant Power Whey Italia

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delicious. So for more on all this, go to meals.richroll.com or click on meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. And if you would like to support my work, it's easy. Just share this show with a friend or on social media. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. This episode is on YouTube in video format for the visually inclined, youtube.com forward slash richroll.

Subscribe if you're enjoying the videos. All of this just helps with the show's visibility, extending reach and audience. And all of that helps me to, in turn, book the very best people for future shows. You can also support the show and my work on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. And as always, I want to thank everybody

who helped put on this show today because I do not do this alone. It is a team effort. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, show notes, production, interstitial music, Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for the video work and the editing and the graphics and theme music, as always, by Analema. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days. Until then third door bust it open walk through realize your dreams peace plants Thank you.