PDF Summary:The Third Door, by Alex Banayan

Alex Banayan writes that success is like a nightclub with three doors: The first is the main entrance, through which you enter by working hard and playing by the rules. The line to this door is crowded and moves slowly. The second door is reserved for billionaires and celebrities and is off-limits to ordinary people. In The Third Door, he focuses on the last option—the door that allows regular folk to skip the line, find hidden opportunities, and think outside the box. He argues it’s the best—and really, only—route to getting ahead of the crowd.

Banayan interviews successful people from a wide range of fields to discover what insights, tricks, and motivations helped them find their unique paths to success. In this guide, we’ll review major themes he came across in his interviews, and we’ll explore how the insights he gleaned compare to theories of success from other thinkers.

(continued)...

(Shortform note: Gates was essentially trying to convince IBM executives that the benefits of his knowledge outweighed the risks of his youth and inexperience. Such calculations are part of any business deal, as companies try to balance the potential upsides and downsides of entering into a partnership with another organization.)

Know Your Client

Gates also leveraged his knowledge of IBM’s desires and fears to secure a more favorable contract than would have been expected of his new and inexperienced company.

Desires: He knew IBM valued speed so he emphasized how fast his company could deliver—even deliberately overpromising what Microsoft was capable of at the time. He did so knowing that if he said what they wanted to hear, they’d be more inclined to work with his company.

(Shortform note: Although overpromising helped Gates in this situation, doing so can backfire. In the Mythical Man-Month, Frederick Brooks notes that when a company overpromises on a deadline, either to please a client or to outdo a competitor, they risk disappointing that client—or worse, adding complexity to a project that ends up causing errors. Brooks argues it’s better to be honest with a client as to your capabilities, even if it disappoints them, as that’s better than disappointing them by breaking a deadline.)

Fears: Gates knew IBM feared potential lawsuits, and he used that knowledge to secure what he wanted, which was to keep the source code to his product a secret. He implied that if he disclosed the code to them and it was leaked, they’d be liable for billions of dollars. Fearful of this possibility, they agreed to his terms, even though normally, IBM, as the company with more leverage, would have been expected to extract the source code from Gates as part of the deal. Gates was thus able to establish his company as the one with more power in the negotiation, despite the fact that it was far smaller and less experienced.

(Shortform note: By mining IBM’s fears, Gates was taking advantage of the paranoia that successful companies often harbor: what Jim Collins, in Great by Choice, calls “productive paranoia.” Gates himself let productive paranoia guide many of his decisions at Microsoft over the years, constantly imagining all possible threats the company might face. Collins argues that by considering every worst-case scenario, companies can prevent unfavorable circumstances from arising—as IBM sought to do with their paranoia of lawsuits.)

Maya Angelou: Fake It—Then Be Sure to Make It

Poet, writer, activist, professor, and Grammy Award-winner Maya Angelou told Banayan her secret to appearing credible when starting out: Trust your capabilities, oversell your existing skills, and then work hard to improve those skills.

When Angelou applied for a job at a newspaper early in her career, she lied about her credentials and experience. She told Banayan that she promised the interviewers what she felt she needed to so that she could get the job, and she trusted that she’d be able to later learn the skills she’d promised. Then, she made sure she did—she spent lots of time at the library studying and learning until she had developed the expertise she’d claimed to have.

(Shortform note: Angelou’s advice to oversell your abilities echoes Bill Gates’s. As discussed above, this strategy can lead to problems if you’re unable to deliver on your promises, and most experts advise that you only promise what you’re currently capable of. However, only promising what you’re currently capable of can put people who are just starting out at a disadvantage, as their current capabilities often aren’t strong enough to set them apart from competitors. By emphasizing that you should immediately work to gain the skills you promised, Angelou acknowledges this reality and offers young people a way to position themselves competitively while mitigating the risks of overpromising.)

Follow Your Own Path

One lesson that Banayan repeatedly came across was that even if you copy everything someone else has done, you can’t expect to replicate their success. This is because what works for one person won’t work in the same way for another person—there will be different factors and details that make it impossible to fully follow someone else’s path. Instead, you have to figure out what path will lead you to your own, unique success. What can you do that will leverage your particular strengths, skills, and circumstances?

(Shortform note: Many career advisers recommend finding your own unique path in life, but in The Defining Decade, Meg Jay cautions against taking that advice too far. She writes that young adults often get caught up in the idea that their life should be as unique and original as possible, which ironically, can set you up for failure: If you’re caught up trying to do something no one else has done, you might miss out on mastering basic skills and getting fundamental experiences that can actually launch you to success. Jay urges you to instead think of your career like a custom-made bike: The parts will be the same as everyone else’s, but the result is a unique expression of you. Thus, don’t be afraid to be unoriginal for a while in your pursuit of originality.)

Larry King: Don’t Copy Someone Else’s Style

Legendary interviewer Larry King told Banayan that the secret to getting good interviews with people was to be comfortable with who you are and not imitate the style of others. What makes another person successful might not work for you because each person’s style reflects their individual, unique way of seeing the world. Thus, for example, what worked for Oprah (being enthusiastic and emotional) wouldn’t have worked for Barbara Walters (who instead was thoughtful and strategic).

King argued that it’s only when you’ve adopted a style that reflects who you truly are that you’ll be able to genuinely connect with other people. And it’s only when you’ve established a genuine connection that they’ll open up to you.

(Shortform note: King’s advice that being genuine will foster deeper connections to others aligns with advice from many psychologists, who point to trust as the underlying issue. When a person comes across as authentic—as if they know their values and will dependably act upon them—other people trust them to not be manipulative, to not be judgmental, and to treat others with respect. This sense of trust, in turn, encourages people to reveal their own emotions and values—leading to, for example, the quality interviews that Oprah and Walters were able to obtain.)

Warren Buffett: Pay Attention to What Others Overlook

Banayan wasn’t able to secure a private interview with Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and chairman of financial firm Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most valuable companies in the world. However, Banayan read many books about Buffett and attended a shareholder’s meeting where he was able to ask him a few questions when Buffett took questions from the audience.

One of the main insights he gathered from Buffett’s wisdom was that you should pay attention to details that others overlook, and in doing so, follow your own path instead of following the crowd. Banayan credits much of Buffett’s success to his habit of “reading the footnotes”—scouring information for details that others miss. He notes that “reading the footnotes” encapsulates Buffett’s approach to life in general: It requires you to put in extra effort and dig deeper than others, seeing what some might consider a boring task (reading footnotes) as the real secret to success, as it leads to overlooked insights.

(Shortform note: Malcolm Gladwell might call Buffett a “maven,” which, in The Tipping Point, he defines as an “information specialist,” that is, a person always on the lookout for detailed, overlooked information—particularly financial information—that helps them see trends, opportunities, and potential threats that others miss. Gladwell notes that mavens often aren’t looking for information solely for their own purposes, but rather, they like to distribute their information to help others. Buffett, with his informational stockholder meetings and well-regarded shareholder letters, fits this aspect of the maven profile as well.)

Let Your Values Guide You

Banayan heard from several of his interviewees how important it was to know your values and to design your life’s choices around them.

Steve Wozniak: Follow Your Own Values

When Banayan met with Steve Wozniak, the co-founder, along with Steve Jobs, of Apple, he found someone who didn’t fit the mold of an extremely successful businessperson: Wozniak defined success not by typical hallmarks like power, fame, or wealth, but by how his actions aligned with his values and how that led to personal happiness.

Wozniak said that society expects people to pursue power and money, but he decided early in his career that those goals wouldn't make him happy. Instead, he had two goals: to create something—through engineering—that would benefit the world, and to live his life “on his own terms”: In other words, to do things he wanted to do rather than what society expected him to do.

To accomplish those goals, he lived according to his personal values. As such, he turned down executive positions at Apple, choosing instead to remain an engineer—a role that made him happier.

It also meant being honest and treating people well. One incident that showed this in action was when he discovered that Jobs had denied stock options to some of Apple’s earliest workers before the company’s public offering. Wozniak righted this wrong by gifting them some of his own shares. These shares, which he could have kept for himself, went on to make millions.

(Shortform note: Wozniak’s instinct to choose two overriding goals for his life aligns with advice from Brené Brown, who notes, in Dare to Lead, that when identifying which values you’ll focus on, you should choose just two overriding values. If you have more than this, they’ll become meaningless. These two broad values will then inform all your other values. Wozniak’s goals spoke to his values of prioritizing engineering and having freedom of thought and action, and they, in turn, allowed him to live according to his other values, such as treating people well even if it meant sacrificing some of his own wealth.)

Jessica Alba: Focus on What Ultimately Matters Most—Life

Jessica Alba found success both as a leading actress in Hollywood and as the founder of a billion-dollar startup, The Honest Company. She told Banayan that what drove her, particularly with regard to her business, was her sense of mortality: her awareness of life, death, and health.

She came to appreciate the importance of life and health after she became a mother. This was especially true because she’d witnessed numerous family members go through cancer and Alzheimer’s, and after the birth of her child, she developed a strong desire to stay alive and healthy for the sake of her growing family.

When her son was young, Alba couldn’t find baby products without allergens and harmful chemicals. Inspired by this difficulty, she set out to create a company that would fill that gap in the market. She saw it as a way to give people more control over their health—she noted that a person’s health is affected by a combination of many things, but at the very least, we can control what we put in our bodies and what we bring into our homes. Because many other people also share these same values—fears of death and illness and desire for control over health—her company struck a chord with customers and launched her to success.

(Shortform note: The Honest Company’s mission aligns with advice from many thought leaders: In your approach to life, focus on what you can control and ignore the rest; in this case, while we can’t ultimately control what happens to our health or when we die, we can control our choices, and in doing so, we can improve the odds of having good health and a long life. Alba’s company was successful because she tapped into not only the human instinct to value life, health, and control, but also the instinct to protect and care for our loved ones—which many experts, such as Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind, attribute to our evolutionary need to work as a group to improve our chances of survival.)

Tony Hsieh: Be Honest With Yourself About Your Motivations

Tony Hsieh, founder of online clothing store Zappos and author of the best-selling Delivering Happiness, had insights on values that surprised Banayan: He said it’s important to acknowledge your true motivations for completing a project, even if those motivations include things like vanity or money—egotistical values most people dismiss as superficial and not worth pursuing.

He argues that while ego can be unhealthy, it’s OK to let ego be part of your motivation as long as it’s not the only thing driving you. Wanting the recognition or prestige that comes with success is a natural human desire, and instead of denying that such things are important to you, you should accept that such values can coexist with other, more worthwhile, values like wanting to help people.

When he published Delivering Happiness, Hsieh was honest with himself that he wanted the book to hit the bestseller list because it appealed to his ego. Acknowledging that aspect of his motivations helped him choose the right tactics to launch the book successfully and allowed him to then succeed with his other motivations, which included making a difference in people’s lives—a deeper, more altruistic motivation that coexisted with his egotistical motivations.

Honestly Follow Your Ego—Up to a Point

In his best-selling book Delivering Happiness, Hsieh elaborates on his theories of values, he encourages readers to question their motivations by asking “why” until they’ve arrived at the underlying motivation driving all the others. For example, if your goal is to spend more time with your family, asking yourself “why” might prompt you to say, “so I can create more memories,” and asking “why” again will inspire you to dig deeper and deeper until you arrive at your most important value.

In Delivering Happiness, Hsieh maintains that the ultimate motivation underlying most goals is usually happiness, and to that end, the egotistical desires he speaks to Banayan about might be seen as ways to achieve happiness. Hsieh’s recommendations align with what he told Banayan in The Third Door: Be honest with yourself about your motivations.

However, while Hsieh argues egotistical desires can be legitimate sources of motivation, he’s not arguing that you let your ego completely drive you. His caution aligns with that of other experts, like Ryan Holiday, who explains, in Ego Is the Enemy, that ego can prevent you from achieving your dreams when it leads you to believe that you’re better than other people or more deserving of success—beliefs that will cause you to behave badly and make poor decisions.

Holiday does acknowledge, though, like Hsieh, that ego can be healthy. He defines healthy ego as a type of self-esteem that’s based on actual accomplishments instead of false beliefs of superiority. Hsieh doesn’t specifically define ego in this way, but his focus on the egotistical feelings that accompany achievement implies a similar outlook.

Work Hard Today for Payoff Tomorrow

Several of Banayan’s interviewees emphasized the importance of working extra hard early in your career, arguing that the long-term gains you’ll earn are worth the effort and the sacrifice of short-term comfort. Two interviewees in particular who made that attitude a cornerstone of their careers were Grammy Award-winning rapper Pitbull and Microsoft executive Qi Lu.

Pitbull: Always Be Learning

Armando Perez, better known as Pitbull, who has produced award-winning music in multiple genres and started his own charter school, told Banayan that his secret to success is his willingness to approach any new venture with the mindset of an intern: be willing to work a low-wage, low-level job to learn about an industry from the bottom up.

Pitbull argues that when you do menial tasks and function as an assistant to others, you can get a foot in the door and gain access to insights and wisdom from experienced people. Even if you’re already successful in a different field, you should be ready to start at the bottom in any new field you approach. By constantly learning in this way, you’ll ultimately be a better executive because you’ve learned how the business works at every level.

(Shortform note: Pitbull’s advice is aimed both at people starting their first career and at people successful in one career and choosing to enter a second. As such, he emphasizes the importance of being open to learning new skills, but some experts note that when starting a new venture, you can use skills you’ve already mastered to give you a leg up. In Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker encourages you to apply skills you’re already good at in new ways—for example, if you’re a corporate account manager, you can easily pivot to managing rental properties on the side. Drucker focuses on those starting second careers, but his advice can help those starting from scratch—think about what you know in other areas and apply it to your new work.)

Qi Lu: Be Disciplined

Banayan asked engineer Qi Lu, who grew up in extreme poverty in rural China but rose to hold executive positions at Yahoo, Microsoft, and other tech firms, how he was able to achieve exponential social mobility. Lu explained that he was extremely disciplined and that he sacrificed immediate comfort for long-term success.

He maintained a rigorous routine, running five miles every morning, eating small meals of fruits and vegetables throughout the day, and working 18 hours a day, six days a week. He also trained himself to sleep just four hours a night, giving him, over the course of a year, an extra two months of time (compared to people who sleep eight hours a night) with which he could learn new skills and work on projects.

He said that his discipline allowed him to get more out of his day than others, and therefore he was more prepared to jump on opportunities when they presented themselves. For example, when he was a student, a professor asked him if he’d done any research on a particular topic, and Lu was able to respond that he’d already written five papers on it. The professor was so impressed that he helped Lu apply to Carnegie Mellon, which allowed him to fulfill his goal of moving to the US and starting his career.

(Shortform note: It’s not easy to adopt challenging, strict habits like the ones Qi Lu lived by, but in Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that if you view your habits as extensions of your identity, you’re far more likely to stick with them. Clear writes that to successfully adopt new routines, you should envision the version of yourself you want to become, as this will encourage you to behave as that ideal version likely behaves. This advice aligns with how Lu approached his life: His goals reflected his desire to escape poverty, which gave him the motivation to adopt and stick to difficult habits. His image of himself as an accomplished person helped him stick to habits that set him apart from other students and put him on his path to success.)

Don’t Let Setbacks Derail You

Many of the people Banayan interviewed overcame difficult challenges in their lives and their careers. Lady Gaga and Quincy Jones both gave him insights on how to bounce back from setbacks so that you don’t derail your progress.

Lady Gaga: See Your Mistakes as Strengths

Banayan wasn’t able to sit down with Lady Gaga for an official interview, but he did meet her briefly and, through a mutual acquaintance, became involved in planning her media response to the criticism of her recently released album. The lesson he learned from how she handled that criticism was that if you have a strong sense of your values, you can spin your failures as successes as long as they align with those values.

The phenomenal success of her first two albums made Gaga a worldwide star, but critics panned her third album, ARTPOP, and sales were low. For several months after the album’s release, Gaga struggled to respond to this criticism, and the negative reviews were hard on her. However, she ultimately realized that the unusual character of her album—which is what prompted the negative reviews—was consistent with her brand of always defying expectations. Since her previous albums had been so well-received, it was fitting that she then release an album that appealed more to a fringe audience.

By embracing the message that the low sales and bad ratings of the album actually reflected its underlying strengths, Gaga was able to emerge from the experience with a sense that she was in control of the narrative. She even ramped up the strangeness of the album by making all-the-more bizarre performances, including having someone vomit on her on stage. She publicly compared this strangeness to Andy Warhol’s art, thus positioning her album alongside recognized great art.

When to Acknowledge Wrongs Instead of Framing Them as Positives

There were a number of reasons Gaga’s 2013 album ARTPOP was poorly received by critics and the public. Some people called it pretentious and objected to Gaga’s unusual artistic choices, like the vomit performance Banayan mentions. But another focus of criticism, that Banayan doesn’t discuss, was that the album seemed to trivialize and profit off of sexual assault.

One song in particular, “Do What U Want,” featured a duet with R. Kelly, who was widely recognized as a sexual predator. Gaga also created a music video with Kelly—never officially released, but leaked—that many interpreted as a glamorization of rape.

It can be argued that Gaga’s response to the pushback against the sexual assault themes was a way to position weaknesses as strengths: She told Howard Stern the songs about rape and demoralization allowed her to release the pain she felt.

However, she did ultimately acknowledge, without spinning it as a strength, the weakness of her collaboration with R. Kelly—after the full extent of his sexual assault history became publicized in 2019, she issued an apology saying she regretted working with him and that doing so had shown poor judgment.

Though Gaga’s apology came after the publication of The Third Door, Banayan might argue that Gaga was still letting her values guide her decisions and move her past her setbacks—in this case, not so much to justify her setbacks or frame them as wins, but instead, to acknowledge them honestly and show growth.

Jane Goodall: Women Face Different Pressures

When Banayan sat down with primatologist Jane Goodall, he was confronted with a challenge that his male interviewees hadn’t had to face: sexual harassment. His lesson from this encounter was less about how to recover from these kinds of challenges, and more about his own recognition that they happen—before his conversation with Goodall, he didn’t consciously realize that women face unique disadvantages in the workplace.

Early in her career, Goodall landed a job as an assistant to Louis Leakey, a renowned paleoanthropologist with valuable knowledge and connections. Leakey was in a position to greatly further Goodall’s career, but he made sexual advances to her, putting her in a difficult position: If she rejected his advances, would he block her career progression?

Fortunately, Leakey stopped making advances when Goodall made it clear she wasn’t interested. He went on to fund her studies, which allowed her to live in the jungle and make the discoveries that changed science’s understanding of primates.

Banayan had a difficult time understanding Goodall’s attitude toward the experience. She brushed it off as just “something that happens,” which clued him in to the different dynamics women face in the workplace, and the fact that they must successfully navigate obstacles that men don’t.

The Subtle Sexism of Banayan’s Goodall Interview

Goodall’s experiences of navigating unwanted sexual advances from men were by no means unusual, especially in the 1960s when she started her career. But was Banayan’s almost-exclusive focus on that aspect of her work a different type of sexism? It might be argued that his emphasis on those experiences is an example of subtle sexism—the well-intentioned but still-harmful attitude that frames women in positive terms but by their gender first and capabilities second.

An example of subtle sexism is if a male coworker tells a woman he’s happy to have her on the team because he needs a “mom” to keep him organized—this kind of comment diminishes a woman’s achievements while purportedly complimenting them, and frames her as a “female” team member instead of just a “team member,” thereby excluding her from the “norm.”

Banayan doesn’t go into detail about any challenges Goodall faced other than the sexual harassment, nor does he seek insights about her success, accomplishments, or worldview that led her to her groundbreaking discoveries, as he does with his other interviewees. Instead, his talk with Goodall ends up being a tool for him to come to a deeper understanding of himself and his male-centered outlook on the world.

Goodall’s career was, of course, significantly impacted by the fact that she was female in a male-dominated, science-oriented field, and she herself has discussed the benefits that this brought her along with the challenges. But Banayan’s focus on how her struggles made him feel may have ironically continued the gender-based diminishment of her achievements.

Quincy Jones: Focus on the Journey, Not the Destination

Banayan’s interview with legendary music, film, and television producer Quincy Jones taught him a healthy way to recover mentally and emotionally from mistakes and setbacks: Jones argued that the important aspect of your pursuit of success is the journey itself, not the end result, and that if you approach your career with that attitude, you’ll see mistakes as a step along the way instead of an ending point. In this way, you should focus on growth and effort, not outcomes.

Jones said that when you accept mistakes as part of the process, you’ll stop being afraid to make them, which can help keep you motivated to get through difficult times. If you’re afraid to make a mistake, you won’t challenge yourself, which will limit how much you achieve.

Banayan realized that this lesson applied to his journey in writing his book. He’d endured many failures and had made many mistakes (for example, asking the wrong interview questions, not listening properly, and being too aggressive and thus putting people off). But those mistakes had taught him more than anyone’s wisdom had taught him.

How Focusing on Effort Helps You Accept Mistakes

Jones isn’t the only person to advise focusing on growth and effort instead of outcomes and results. Jones’s advice pertained to finding success in business, but the approach can influence how you work toward any goal—for example, it mirrors the approach, discussed earlier, that Jessica Alba took to improving health: Focus on what you can control.

The ancient Stoics recommended this approach as a way to find happiness in general, as William Irvine explains in A Guide to the Good Life. They recommended focusing on your own effort, which you can control—you can choose how much time and resources to devote to a project—because if your project involves other people, you can’t fully control the outcome since other people may do things differently than you’d like.

When you adopt this mindset, you can reduce your fear of mistakes because you can see them as part of your effort—part of your journey—and you can recognize that your journey doesn't have to end because you’ve made an error. You’ll see that when you make a mistake, it will teach you what to do better so that you can then stay more in control of your effort and process.

In Principles, Ray Dalio takes this idea further by defining mistakes as nature’s way of telling us to keep learning. He sums up the relationship between mistakes and achievement with the equation: Pain + Reflection = Progress. This idea again focuses on progress instead of outcomes, and it also incorporates reflection, which is, ultimately, the lesson Banayan took away from the experience of writing his book: Mistakes afford opportunities for reflection that lead to learning.