About the Author
The day before his freshman year final exams, Alex Banayan hacked The Price Is Right, won a sailboat, sold it, and used the money to fund his quest to learn from the world's most successful people. Since then, Banayan has been named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list and Business Insiders Most Powerful people under 30. He has contributed to Fast Company, The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, and Tech Crunch and has been featured in major media, including Fortune, Forbes, Businessweek, Bloomberg TV, Fox News and CBS News. An acclaimed keynote speaker, Banayan has presented The Third Door framework to business conferences and corporate leadership teams around the world, including Apple, Nike, IBM, Dell, MTV and Harvard.
A little bit about the book
This book is an autobiographical account of an 18 years old's motivation to find purpose in this rigid and structured society. Growing up in California and the son of education focussed parents, who are immigrants from Persia who have had to fight for the security they experience today. They wrote his destiny before he even knew how to make a choice for himself. He was destined to graduate the University of Southern California with a degree in medicine and to go on to become a doctor - because no matter what, this career would provide security because you are never short of demand for doctors. This is true, but Alex didn't feel like it was his destiny to become a doctor and thus, started to read about industry leaders and inspirational people in order to search for his purpose. It was motivated by an idea that young people have to follow this rigid structure of school and should be learning more from the greatest minds in all industries. He had the idea to interview the people who are the top in their industry in order to learn and to spread their wisdom - but this turned out harder than he originally thought, and a task he wanted to only take 1 year actually took several to complete and the final product is the book, the third door.
The book is a mix of wisdom from greats like Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Jessica Alba, Quincy Jones and more... But on top of this, it is about the journey, the difficulties and the structures in society that helped him or made it very difficult to reach these mentors.
This is how the term and the title of the book came about: Alex explains that The Third Door is an analogy of getting things done in business and in life. It is used in the context of a nightclub, there are always three ways in:
The main entrance, where 99% of people wait in line to get in.
The VIP entrance, where the billionaires and celebrities slip through.
The entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, climb over the dumpster, crack open the window and sneak through the kitchen.
He argues that the visionary leaders of our time always took the third door, and it's by taking this way that we learn the most and have the most memorable experiences.
It is a great book, with lots to take from it and what is nice is that it is relatively easy to read! Highly recommend!
Prosoché, Prokopé & Phila
Adam x
The Bookclub
Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday
The Wisdom Of Insecurity, Alan Watts
Tools of Titans, Tim Ferris
Homo-Deus, Yuval Noah Harari
Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach
Born a crime, Trevor Noah
How brands grow, Byron Sharp
Tales of modern Russia, Peter Pomerantsev
Stone Soup, Marcia Brown
How to get filthy rich in rising Asia, Mohsin Hamid
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Why Bob Dylan Matters, Richard F. Thomas
On the Shortness of Life, Seneca
Not Fade Away - A short life well lived, Peter Barton
Blockchain Revolution, Alex and Don Tapscott
What I know for sure, Oprah Winfrey
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl
Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley
What Makes Sammy Run? , Budd Schulberg
How to Develop Self-Confidence in Public Speaking, Dale Carnegie
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
As a Man Thinketh, James Allen
The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
The Magic of Thinking Big, David J. Schwartz
The Great Philosophers, Edited by Ray Monk & Frederic Raphael
The Outsiders, William N. Thorndike
Invested, Danielle & Phil Town
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Thom Hartmann
The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Paul Reps
The Prince, Niccolo Maciavelli
Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
Unshakeable, Tony Robbins
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
Leonardo Da Vinci, Walter Issacson
Onwards, Howard Schultz
The Long and Short of It, John Kay
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall
Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Steve Jobs, Walter Issacson
Thus spoke Zarathustra, Freidrich Nietzche
The Everything Store, Brad Stone
Zero to One, Peter Thiel
Zen and the Art of Happiness. Chris Prentiss
The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant
Living with a Seal, Jesse Itzler
The Innovators Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Red Notice, How I became Putin's No.1 Enemy, Bill Browder
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
The Alchemist, Paul Coelho