Why truly successful people don’t wait their turn | Alex Banayan

What's the difference between making it and faking it? Getting it done. Author Alex Banayan walks us through what actually separates the pros from the rest of the world: it's less about networking and more about finding your way in. Knowing people helps, but it takes a certain mindset to walk into an industry uninvited.
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One of the best pieces of advice I got on this journey was the difference between a linear life and an exponential life.
A linear life is: you get an internship; you get a job; you get a promotion; you save up for a vacation, and you just go step by step slowly and predictively your whole way through.
And again, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to be clear with yourself about what you want.
An exponential life is about deciding that you’re not going to wait around, you’re not going to hope someone just hands you what you’re hoping for, it’s about grabbing onto it for what you want.
So over the course of this seven year journey, whether it was tracking down Bill Gates, which took two years, or Lady Gaga, which took three years, in every industry possible—Maya Angelo for poetry, Jane Goodall for science, Pitbull, Quincy Jones, Tim Ferriss, Larry King—they all couldn’t have been more different on the outside. But as I heard their stories and started to dissect how they launched their careers, I realized there was this common melody to everyone’s story.
And the analogy that came to me—because I was 21 at the time—was that it’s sort of like getting into a nightclub.
So there’s always three ways in: there’s the first door, the main entrance where the line curves around the block, where 99 percent of people wait in line hoping to get in.
And then there’s the second door, the VIP entrance where the billionaires or celebrities go through.
And school has this way of making us feel like those are the only two ways in: you’re either born into it or you wait your turn like everybody else. What I’ve learned is that there is always, always the third door, and it’s the door where you jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door 100 times, crack open the window, go through the kitchen, there’s always a way in.
And it doesn’t matter if that’s how Gates sold his first piece of the software or how Lady Gaga got her first record deal, they all took the third door.
So The Third Door isn’t a prescription or a recipe, it’s really a mindset.
So if you look at Steven Spielberg, the way he did it was: he was rejected from film school, so instead of giving up on his dream he decided he would take his education into his own hands.
So the way the story goes, according to Spielberg, is that one day when he was around 19 years old he jumped onto a tour bus at Universal Studios, rides around the lot on this tour, jumps off the bus, hides in the bathroom, waits for the bus to drive away and starts walking around the lot.
And as he’s walking around he bumps into this man named Chuck Silvers who works at Universal Television. And Chuck Silvers sees this kid and says, “What are you doing here?” And Spielberg tells him his dream. And they end up talking for a while and Silver goes, “Do you want to come back on the lot?” And Spielberg goes, “That would be a dream.”