How to Hack Your Way Into Success at Anything | Alex Banayan on Impact Theory

if anyone out there is dealing with and insecurity that they want help you know growing through the first step is getting rid of the shame that surrounds it because the shame is what traps that insecurity and the thing about shame is that shame can only live in secrecy the second you speak something out loud it doesn't have power over you our goal with this showing company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest is the youngest business author ever signed to penguin Random House in their 80 year history he was also widely touted as the youngest VC when he began working for Alsop Louie at the age of 19 not bad for a college dropout who instead of graduating studied how to hack the prices right and use the prize money to fund his dream project a book called the third door that would end up gaining him nationwide attention he is a self-proclaimed missionary who has poured himself into the wild quest to uncover how the world's most successful people launch their careers he convinced an unimaginable group of the world's most extraordinary thinkers to participate in this book all by the way from absolutely scratch from Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg to Maya Angelou and Lady gaga he got them all to agree to contribute their wisdom and the stories of the grit and tenacity that it took to track these impossible to reach people down believe your jaw on the floor he's contributed to the Washington Post entrepreneur Fast Company and many other prestigious publications as well as being named to business insiders 30 under 30 list and being featured virtually by every major media outlet there is his enthusiasm and collected insights have also turned him into one of the most sought-after speakers around and he's already presented to Dell MTV IBM Harvard and many others nike said that his ideas pushed their team's leadership and Apple said that he represents the voice of entrepreneurship so please help me in welcoming the man who chase Larry King through a grocery store and blacklisted by Warren Buffett Alex benaiah and the kindness intro man I appreciate dude easy to do what you did to write this book is insanity and it's so instructive and so I don't normally start at the beginning but with this we're gonna have to what is the third door mentality so after going on this seven-year journey I realized on the surface you know Bill Gates and Maya Angelou couldn't be more different at their core they treat like the exact same way 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 are on the block where 99% of people wait around hoping to get in and then there's the second or the VIP entrance or the billionaires and the celebrities go through and for some reason school and society have this way of making you feel like there's only two ways that you're they're born into it or you wait your turn but what I've learned is that there's always always the third door and at the entrance we have to jump out of line run down the alley banged on the door hundred times crack over the window go through the kitchen there's always a way in and it doesn't matter if that's how gates all his first piece of software or how steel were became the youngest director in Hollywood history they all took the third door yeah when I heard that analogy whoa okay that actually really makes a lot of sense now for me that is quite possibly the most terrifying thing like going up to people and doing some of the stuff like chasing Larry King down through the grocery store and into the parking lot screaming his name like whoa I like to think I'm pretty hardcore I don't know if I would have had the gumption to do that so you talk about the difference between fearlessness and courage what is that and how did you employ it you know one of the biggest and most surprising lessons I learned on this journey was that I just had this assumption that all these people I looked up to were fearless you know a long mosque or Bill Gates we just assumed they'd you know have no fear and it's how they achieve what they've done but what I've learned is that not a single one of them were fearless they actually were filled with tremendous amount of fear so while they weren't fearless they did have tremendous amounts of courage in the difference between fearlessness and courage is that fearlessness is jumping off of the cliff without thinking courage is acknowledging your fear analyzing the consequences and deciding you still care so much about it you're gonna take one step forward anyway mm-hmm what what was it that was driving you in all of this you know when I first started it to understand like why I was going through this crisis in the beginning that led me on this journey was you have to know that I'm the son of Jewish immigrants which pretty much means I came out of the womb my mom cradled me in her arms and then she stamped m.d on my ass and just sent me on my way you know like in third grade I wore scrubs to school for Halloween you know I was that kid and by the time I got to college I remember really quickly you know I was the pre-med of pre-meds but I remember lying on my dorm room bed staring up at the ceiling and looking at this stack of biology books feeling like they were sucking the life out of me you know at first I just wondered maybe I'm being lazy but and then I began to question maybe I'm not on my path maybe I'm on a path somebody place him out and I'm just rolling down so not only am I going through this what I do with my life crisis that's when the question started to evolve to you know how did Bill Gates when nobody knew his name saw softer out of his dorm room or how did Lady Gaga without a single hint under her belt get her first record deal these are the things they don't only teach you in school so I just did what I thought was normal I just went to the library or went on Amazon and just ripped through books you know business books self-help books biographies but eventually I was left empty-handed and that's when my very you know naive HNO thinking kicked in and I thought well no one's gonna write the book I'm dreaming of reading why not write it myself and I thought it'd be super simple just call it bill gates interview him interview everyone else I thought I'd be done in a few months to my surprise Bill Gates doesn't eighteen-year-old college students that I assumed would be the hard part or I actually I thought that would be the easy part the hard part would be more about how to fund it because I was buried in student loan debt I was all out of Bar Mitzvah cash so there had to be a way to make some quick money so two nights before final exams freshman year I'm in the library doing what everyone does in the library right before finals I'm on Facebook so someone was offering free tickets to the prices right and I swear I know this is very preposterous but the first thought was what if I go on the show and win some money to fund this dream not my brightest moment but I had a problem you know not only did my finals in two days I never seen a full episode of the show before mmm and I remember you know telling myself was a dumb idea and to not think about it but I don't know if you've ever had one of those moments where like an idea just keeps clawing itself into mine so to prove to myself was a bad idea I remember I was sitting at this little round table in the corner of the library and I took out my spiral notebook and made the best and worst case scenarios and I remember like very vividly writing you know worst-case scenarios fail finals get kicked out of premed whose financial aid mom stops talking to me no mom hates me you know looked at on TV there were like 20 cons and the only pro was maybe maybe win enough money to fund this dream and it felt almost as if somebody had tied a rope around my gut and was slowly 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 stayed how to hack the prices right I went on the show the next day and did this ridiculous strategy and ended up winning the whole showcase showdown winning a sailboat selling the sailboat and that's how I funded the book I want to go back to that list which I'm the pro and con list so really pretty interesting and your whole story about where your grandfather comes from and you know that he was almost killed in I during the revolution and he ends up escaping with the family and coming to America he was very successful in Iran he has to start all over here and all of that sort of feeds into your ethos at least once he tells you the story so when you're making that list and you're the weight of your family everybody wanting you to be a doctor how was it like in in your whole story the thing that I think had to be one of the hardest things was mom not talking to me anymore mom hates me I drop out of med school or pre-med Wow what was it like for you to to buck that and say oh I'm just gonna do my thing it feels like you were like with my family during this time because that really was the hardest part and it's something my friends couldn't really understand because you know I remember this moment when I was I might have been about like five or six years old and I had this nightmare and you know I jumped out of bed it was the middle of the night and I went down the hallway to go to my parents room and I remember this blue light creeping out from under my parents room so I like cracked open the door and stuck my head in and I remember seeing my mom hunched over her you know little desk with her old computer you know working away in the middle of the night this is around 3 or 4 a.m. and the next night I woke up jumped out of bed because I was curious and I saw her doing it again and again and it wasn't until you know 10 or so years later that I learned that at that time my dad's used car lot have gone bankrupt and really our entire family was being kept afloat by my mom working you know these 20-hour days mm-hmm Wow by the way while being a full-time mom right and you know being class mom and being part of our school and only then can I realize in hindsight why it was so hard for me because when I was setting off on this journey you know everyone talks about you know taking the leap and going for your dream and no one talks about the emotional baggage in pain that comes from turning your back on the sacrifices others have made for you dude that's what I want to talk about what story were you telling yourself like you you talked about turning the volume up on your dream I want to know what that really means like what are you saying in your head it's a brilliant metaphor the notion that okay you've got all this noise I'm gonna turn up the volume on my dream it's gonna drown it out but like that the reality of that is what so this is the thing I believe fully that every single person is going out to chase their dreams has those voices in their head I think it's part of the human experience whether it's fear or anxiety whatever it may be that's part of what it means to be a human being so you know for me it was my parents coming to this country sacrificing for you it might be completely different what I've learned in hindsight is that not just with my story with all these people who I studied the key of taking that first step the really daunting because the first one's always the hardest as you know it's not about trying to logically argue with those voices in our head you will never win against the voices in your head if you try to argue with them what I've learned is that if you instead of focusing on the voices in the fears you focus on the desires and I think no matter what your dream is if you're able to find a larger purpose a larger impact that lives beyond you all of a sudden all of your [ __ ] that's holding you down becomes a lot less relevant now tell me what what is the mechanism of turning the volume up is it just the amount of time thinking about or is there something more to it I'll tell you what works for me for me I've learned that my the way my brain works and it's worked with other friends too is that writing things down and very specifically like you know it's not just wondering you know how do I turn up the volume in a theory I would literally write down so for this book you know I would write down on a sheet of paper my dream is to inspire a generation to believe in what's possible and the act of writing it down and I had that you know it's funny to think about in hindsight but I had that you know taped above my desk I had that tape of my bathroom sink I that like folded up in my wallet I had it on the inside of my spiral notebook in college the act of writing it down and physically seeing it every single day made it tangible and it made it feel like a less of a crazy idea and more of a real possibility now that's really cool and that specificity I just agree with that so violently I guess is the right word also it came to help you because you had the actual list of people that you wanted so when you would meet them like Blake mikowski was one of the stories the founder of TOMS shoes tell us that story because it the way that you ran into him ran into him is pretty great with Blake I knew he was speaking at this conference in downtown LA he was accepting this like humanitarian award and I get there and of course you know I'm wearing my Tom shoes and I'm wearing my blazer I'm like 19 years old I end up going to the event and this is a crazy thing this is not the only time this happened so it's very very bizarre but I was in the bathroom I remember I was in a stall and I look out from you know under the little door and I see these like really like brand-new red toms like out of the box brand new and I'm like I wonder it has to be say like you know finish I opened the door and there is Blake Mycoskie you know washing his hands fixing his hair right before he goes onstage and it's one of those things where you don't even have a chance to think about what you're gonna say and I just go like hi I'm I'm Alex I'm 19 and I literally just start and I asked him I'm like do you mind if I you know talk with you for 30 seconds again of course as long as you walk with me and I started just pouring my heart out to him and I think one of the keys is that I actually didn't have an elevator pitch I just shared with him what the mission was and when he heard it on the spot he's like absolutely a minute and whether it was Blake or whether it was with Tim Ferriss is also another bathroom encounter where though with all of these people it was only when they heard the mission because they can ask to be in books all the time sure I didn't know that at the time so the book was interesting to them but this larger mission was actually what pulled at their heartstrings to say yes what makes this book so interesting man is is your story of trying to put it together which is at least as powerful as the story is in the book if not in some cases more powerful so how did you deal with rejection oh my god horribly you know because pretty much the whole book at some point feels like this long string of me getting my ass beat you know and dealing with that rejection I realize is not only a part of the entrepreneurial journey it is the entrepreneurial journey so how you deal with it is a lot more interesting than how you got your win because everybody will get their win in a different way but how you deal with the rejection in many ways as a universal act and what I've learned is that I do two things one when I'm getting beat and doors are just being slammed in my face over and over and over again and I have nothing left the only thing that keeps me because I've thought about quitting you know I'm I'm a human being I've thought about you know is this worth it the only thing that would keep me going was that larger belief that we talked about in the beginning it's not about me there'll be points on my journey where I would be you know up at 4 a.m. sleeping at midnight just pounding the pavement and after you know getting rejected over and over over again with that kind of lifestyle you lose your spirit of what started it and it was my best friends that would save me and they would be like dude tomorrow like I'm taking your [ __ ] phone we're going you know on an adventure we're go you know whatever it was and in many ways that was like my emotional reset which saved me over and over and over again your friends are kind of like a third character in this book which is really interesting what I want to know is what do you look for in friends like how did you end up with friends like that you know yeah I'm relatively young so I'm not that wealthy or financially but I do and I think about this all the time I feel like a [ __ ] billionaire with friendship and it's one of the things I'm most proud of my friends like they'll go toe-to-toe with anyone as like Ryder dies the funniest people the most supportive you know there's this yeah I'll go there with you like there's this one story where to me defines who my friends are this was about a year and a half ago my dad just passed away from pancreatic cancer and the way a Jewish funeral works is there's these I believe it's like six pallbearers that have to the son isn't allowed to touch the casket so the pallbearers carry it out and you know they took it to the to the hearse and we drive up from the chapel to the gravesite and when we got to the gravesite I remember for some reason the pallbearers that carry the casket earlier weren't there and I just I got sort of nervous of what are we going to do it was a really chaotic day of course and before I could try to figure it out this rabbi came over started talking to us and I don't know what happened next but I remembered the door to the hearse opening and hearing the casket being taken out and the next thing I knew I was stepping out onto the grass on the processional and I look I'll never forget this I looked up and I saw my best friend's you know the boys who I grew up with carrying my dad's casket and dude I just started sobbing and everyone I remember looking around and seeing that everyone thought that I was sobbing out of sadness it's the biggest miracle in my life and you know I don't wish losing a dad on anybody but it's very hard for me to be mad at God when I look out and see my best friends can't my dad's casket and what I learned that day is you know you have your you have your friends and then you have your best friends and then you have the best friends who carry your dad's casket and you know nothing's more powerful than that and this this every everything in this journey is a testament to the to the love and the friendship and the support of other people yeah I just love them and thank you for asking about them because they're the thing that I'm I'm proud of most and I love the most no man I totally get that and it comes across so beautifully in the book and it comes across in the talks that you give and stuff and it just there's something about the way that you approach life that I think is utterly fascinating it's obviously captivated a lot of people like even hearing the guys that Alsop Louie talking about why they chose you when you were like this nineteen year old kid and nobody knew you and like what do you know about VC and they're just like yeah you can tell that they liked being around you what does it take to be a good friend to me it's really easy to be that friend who's you know cheering for you and like pumping your fist and you know your bachelor party in Vegas or whatever right that that's the easy part of friendship being there and cheering and celebrating to me the testament of any relationship whether it's a friendship it's a romantic partner or a business partner is how you handle the hard times and to me the way you handle the hard times is with really uncomfortable conversations so I am a firm believer that the quality of a relationship is directly correlated to your ability to have uncomfortable conversations with each other and something that most people don't know about me and my best friends is that we say like once every few months sit together and we go around the circle this is like funny to talk about but this is what we do we go around and we share with each other like something that the other person is doing really well that we love and we want to see more of and something that they can improve on dude that's like that's good in any relationship I mean that's really brilliant for friends I don't know that I've ever heard of people in a group of friends doing that I think that is super wise Thanks yeah I mean that that will continue to play out incredibly well so that notion of these hard conversations I think is something that I want to make myself feel better by making you extraordinary and say that oh you're just really good at that you cover pretty extensively that that is just as hard for you as anybody else so how like what advice do you have for people in terms of facing those fears having those conversations getting outside of your comfort zone you got a quote and I'm gonna I'll get close it was like part of the reason that people don't take the leap is because you're stepping outside of your zone of certainty but no one ever got no one ever made their dreams come true in their field of certainty you have the best memory remarkable dude I was really into the book and just everything so that makes it easy to remember that stuff but like how how do you train to do that like how do you get better at that so something that I've learned from and you know over the course of the journey there's the people who I spoke to for the book but there's also people I got incredible advice from along the way and one was Drew Houston the founder and CEO of Dropbox I think I was like 20 years old and you know there's a pretty cool brunch to be having I'm sitting there with him and I'm asking similar questions and he told me something that was amazing he said the problem people have with dealing with uncertainty which is uncertainty is entrepreneurship that's the difference between being an employee and being an entrepreneur is the entrepreneur takes on the uncertainty right true said the key that people misunderstand about uncertainty is that you're not born with it it's a muscle and people just assume that because they don't have it it's not for them he said if you think of uncertainty as a muscle and you train it like a muscle things start changing let's say you haven't worked out your biceps you don't go to the gym and just start lifting the 60 pound dumbbell you know you start with two and then you just go five and you go ten and then you take you know a couple days off you have to you know have rest days if you think of it the way you train a muscle all of a sudden uncertainty becomes this manageable thing where you start small and you work your way up and something that drew said that I loved he said when you feel the pain that means you're working up a weight class that's cool and then he said when you pull a muscle like psychologically if you've taken on so much uncertainty that you're having a panic attack you're way too high in your weight class tone it down a little it doesn't mean it's not for you but you know if you're live done it you know you're lifting weights and you you know pull something all right you're gonna go down maybe ten or twenty pounds the next time you go into the gym and then you work your way slowly back up hmm talk to me about the flinch what what specifically did you do to deal with the flinch so there's this great unbelievable passage from the book when things fall apart by Pema Chodron which I'd recommend to anybody going through any hard time in life and she's this Buddhist nun and there's this part in the book where she goes you know she's a Buddhist nun and she's admitting that she still deals with a lot of fear in many ways the flinch is then boddyhm in a fear and Pema Chodron goes to the school rule and there's ghosts a man goes how how do you deal with fear what is your relationship with your fear and the Guru goes I agree with it I agree with my fear and when I read that I remember sitting back in my chair because in many ways my whole life has been this struggle of arguing with my fear you know I would go with Steven Spielberg he's standing 10 feet away from me and I literally cannot move my feet you know I spent months trying to get into the room but the second I was in there I would completely freeze and what would happen to me is in those moments where I would freeze the voice in my head would be yelling at me arguing with my fear saying in really negative things like when you're gonna [ __ ] this up come on like just really aggressive mean self-talk that line from Pema Chodron you know I agree with my fear in many ways as almost this jujitsu move where instead of fighting your fear you agree with it you tell yourself and I do this every day because with this book launch there's a lot of things I'm still scared of truthfully and what I tell myself when I'm scared my instinct is still to fight it but I tell myself huh that is scary a normal person would be afraid of that and the weirdest thing happens the fear just releases its grip it doesn't disappear but it releases its grip and you can sort of go all right you're gonna sit here well I'm gonna go do my thing and we'll be right back and it's it's weird I don't use the word magic a lot but just that thought is like magic that's really incredible what are some of the most impressive third door moments that you heard from other people researching the book my favoritest field works because in many ways Spielberg's third door story embodies so much of the third door in general and the reason I love it so much is because it starts he was rejected from film school which is bonkers you know it's like Bill Gates being turned down from a computer science class you know Spielberg was rejected from USC film school multiple times and he what I love about it is that instead of doing what most people would do is think you know maybe I'm not cut out for this he decided he was gonna take his education into his own hands so what he did is he registered for Cal State Long Beach which isn't which isn't too far away and he arranged his classes so he would only be there you know Tuesdays and Thursdays and he decided he would find a way to break into Hollywood so what he did is and we've been to Universal Studios theme park so you know that tram ride like it takes on the backlot so Spielberg when he was 19 goes to Universal Studios goes on the tram ride goes around the back lot jumps off the tram hides in a bathroom waits for the tram to ride away and starts wandering around a lot and you know he's popping his head here and there and this older gentleman his name is Chuck silver stops in' and chuck silvers worked from the universal television library and you know this 19 year olds kid just starts mumbling saying like you know my biggest dream is to be a director and they end up actually talking for about an hour and tuck silvers goes you want to come back on the lot and it's be over so that would be my biggest dream so Chuck Silver's writes in this three day pass and hands a check and Spielberg you know comes on day one day two day three but on day four he comes back onto the lot wearing a suit holding his dad's briefcase walks up to the security entrance puts the hand in the air and goes hey Scotty and Scotty just waves back and he walks right in and for months we over would walk back onto the lot and sneak into soundstages go into editing rooms asking actors and actresses and producers out to lunch soaking up as much knowledge as he could and again what I love about is this is a kid who's rejected from film school and in many ways he created his own film school and you know he's going around and after a while Chuck Silver's who became a mentor to him said one of the best piece of advice he could have given he said Stephen there needs to be a point where you stop snoozing and you come back with something of quality to show people hmm and Spielberg you know took that hard you know we were talking out hard piece of advice he took that hard piece of advice to heart and he stopped coming to the lot and started creating this short film called Amblin and he spent months editing and even the way he produced and got the money for the film is like a third door story in and of itself but he makes this little short film comes back to the lot shows it to Chuck Silver's and it's so good that a single tear comes down Chuck's over his face and Silver's reaches for the phone and calls up Sid Sheinberg the vice president of universal television and go sit I have something you have to see you know this guy's the VP of television universally it's like look there's a lot of things that I need to see and he goes no no no no you need to see this right now and he goes you think it's that god that important he goes yes it's that goddamn important if you don't watch this tonight somebody else will and the best part of the story is since Sid Sheinberg still was sort of like lukewarm so Chuck Silver's call this is back when had projectionists Chuck Silver's called the projectionists for Sid Sheinberg office it was like look Sid doesn't want to watch this but when he gets to the you know the projection room tonight put this first he pretty much put his entire reputation on the line for this young 19 year old Steven Spielberg and as soon as Sid Sheinberg watched the movie he said he wanted to meet Spielberg immediately it's people ran over got to the big office and on the spot he got offered a seven-year contract and that's how he became the youngest director in Hollywood history and when I reflect back on this story you know there's a million things that worked well but you know Spielberg had incredible talent but so do a lot of aspiring directors what made the difference and to me it was really like this people game that he played you know jumping off the law and meeting different people but a people game sort of sounds like you know networking at a career fair to me it was like this Spielberg game you know jump off the bus find your inside man and use him or her as your way in and really the key is that Inside Man because if you think about it without Chuck Silver's one writing that pass to which I think is one of the most important giving Spielberg that advice that only someone inside of the studio would know to tell him and then three which is the ultimate one putting his reputation on the line so Spielberg could get his foot in the door none of this would have happened and to me I've realized every single person doesn't matter if it's Bill Gates Lady Gaga Maya Angelou Steve Wozniak we've all had an inside man or woman who's believed in them enough to put their reputation on the line to open that door what I love about that is that Inside Man comes from they've gotten good at something right like even Spielberg in his story knowing how early he started and how he's making these movies like when he's a little kid and so even by the time he's 19 he's been doing it for years and years and years one story that I found really interesting in the book I think his name is Chi Chi Lou yeah so tell that story man like that's an incredible story and then his his quote about what luck really is that was just breathtaking I my personal belief is that Chi Lou is the most wild story in Silicon Valley history that no one talks about I'd never heard of a horse yeah and there's a reason - it's by design because Qi Liu believes that every hour he talks to a journalist is an hour he's not giving back to the world you know talk about a guy who's like committed to his impact right so it's crazy because the thing about Chi Lou is I didn't I didn't know who he was so it was a mentor of mine who insisted I interview him and I soon found out why Qi Liu grew up in a rural village outside of Shanghai China with no running water and no electricity you know people walk around with deformities from malnutrition like that's how bad it was and we think our education systems bad in America for every 300 schoolchildren there was one teacher Wow I remember him even telling me that they had me you know once a year on you know the New Year as a delicacy and you know but she was very smart and very hard-working and by age 27 was making the most money he's ever made before $7 a month fast-forward 20 years later and he's a president and Microsoft and it is just mind-blowing and the story is equally as crazy so if you pull back the layers this is what happened so his original goal was to be like a ship builder because that paid really well but he was too scrawny and too short so he had to go focus on his studies and around college he had this realization that changed his life you know his biggest dream was to go to America and study in an American University but to put it in perspective it would cost I think about $60 just to take the entrance exam to take the test to apply to an American University and this guy you know at the most she's making seven dollars a month so it's impossible for him to even take that exam but he decides that he's not gonna focus on the obstacles he's gonna focus on what he can control and what he can control is he can't control his money he can't control him circumstance but one thing in his opinion that God is fair to everyone on earth is the amount of time they have in a day so he said okay that's something I can hold on to because whether you're the president out of states or a rice farmer you get 24 hours every day so Qi Liu went to the library and started studying famous people in history who hacked their sleep because Qi Liu was normal sleeping about eight hours a night like everyone else so you know Leonardo da Vinci there's all these people who have hacked their sleep Thomas Edison so Qi Liu starts experimenting and over the course of months he goes from eight hours seven hours six five four three two one hour and night he goes okay one hour isn't working he goes back up to three still not working for and at four he finally perfected for his body because everybody's different for his body he was able to work at the same speed an awareness that he was able to do at eight and he has this various different systems that he uses and what's crazy is that if you do the math from eight hours of sleep a night to four and if you're using those four productively that's adding two whole months of productivity per year so if you're crushing it he's crushing it 14 months for every 12 months you're doing and it all paid off you know he didn't know where we were to go but it all paid off one night he was in graduate school at the time and it was a Sunday and normally on Sundays he rides his bike back to his village to visit his parents but you know randomly that's Sunday it was raining he couldn't ride his bike so he stayed in his dorm room and that night a friend came knocking on his door and said hey you know there's a professor downstairs from Carnegie Mellon University who's giving a guest lecture but it's raining nobody's here can you come down and like fill the seats so it's not embarrassing for us and she's a very nice guy and he's like of course yeah he'll do anything for anyone he's just the nicest person so he goes downstairs to fill the seats and the professor's talking about this very crazy computer science stuff and she raises hand and asked a few you know very smart questions and at the end of the lecture the professor from Carnegie Mellon goes hey you how did you know so much about this where did you get those questions from and she's very modest he's like oh you know I've just done a little research on the topic and the guy's like have you done any research papers on it she had done five research papers on the topic and that's the power of she time he was the most prepared person in that room not by an inch but by a [ __ ] mile so the professor says can you show me research papers Sochi Sprint's to his dorm room grabs the papers runs back down shows it to this professor the professor is reading them on the spot and goes do you want to go to the United States at all to study and she tells him you know it's the biggest dream but he can't afford to take the entrance exams so on the spot the professors like I'll cover your fees she takes the tests and a few months later he gets an envelope in the mail Carnegie Mellon offered him a full ride to get his ph.d well and you know there's so you can't study success without asking yourself what role lock place whether it's Bill Gates or Buffett there's all these moments you wonder you know Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book outliers on the whole question of luck and random coincidences so I asked Qi Liu because of anyone in many ways had this lucky break it was him on a Sunday if he wasn't if it wasn't raining he wouldn't have been there but on the other hand there was nothing nothing lucky about him writing those five research papers so I turned the question on Tucci and I said you know what what have you learned about luck and he's like very wise he like sits back in his chair and he's like luck is essential to success but no one understands the way it works and I was like huh and what he told me is that people think luck is completely random Chi's belief is that luck isn't random it's almost like a bus that keeps showing up at the same bus stop over and over and over again so if you miss one opportunity don't fret there'll be a next one at another point but if you don't have the right fare informs of your preparation you will never be able to get onto that bus no matter how many times it comes to the stop and what he said is you know luck is like a bus if you're not prepared you won't be able to jump on dude when I heard that I was like alright this that's powerful I will remember that for a very long time it so resonates with me as being true yeah so that that I read the man he's unbelievable I was really impressed with that one of the things you said is driving you is that being the you're in a big family and you said literally amongst all your cousins you were like dead in the middle and one thing that always bothered you was feeling invisible and I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to how have you dealt with that is it something that's helped you is this something that's hurt you but how does it impact your life so it's so funny because with these like childhood emotions to me they're like so visceral there I can see them if I close my eyes like I remember sitting by my grandma's house she has this like big dining-room table like a big round one and you know we have like 25 people my mom you know all these cousins and stuff I remember sitting there as a kid because like you said I'm dead in the center I have like you know 10 older cousins 10 younger cousins and I remember sitting at that table and feeling like you know I could start having a seizure and nobody would know but I it's weird when you're a kid these feelings are very visceral and that feeling of being invisible followed me through a lot of my life where I remember in high school there would be some days I would be like walking in the hallways feeling like people were looking like right through me like I was this ghost and I didn't know this at the time that no self-awareness but that became this story that I told myself and that story turned into an insecurity and in many ways I've gotten myself in hindsight in a lot of trouble in social situations and career situations where that insecurity was calling the shots when you don't know the story that you're telling yourself is when they're the most dangerous so I thought I was invisible so I would do things to try to stand out and that gets you into a lot of trouble you know there's this great moment from Tony Hsieh in the book where he's sort of like snaps me into getting more cell phone I've learned that insecurities will never leave you just like with fear they're a natural part of the human condition so your goal shouldn't be to rid yourself of insecurities it should be to become so aware of them that they could be yammering away and you go oh that's just the insecurities because when they're calling the shots when they're determining determining your actions whether it's your insecurities and I'm not enough I'm worthless I'm invisible I'm unlovable people are gonna abandon me when you're not aware that that's driving your actions that's when you get yourself into the biggest biggest disasters of your life if anyone out there is dealing with and insecurity that they want help you know growing through the first step is getting rid of the shame that surrounds it because the shame is what traps that insecurity think of the insecurity like a bug and the shame is like the the glass on top of the bug you can't deal with that bug if there's this guardrail and the thing about shame is that shame can only live in secrecy the second you speak something out loud it doesn't have power over you anymore and even in the writing of this book that was some of the hardest stuff when I was a kid I would get bullied and they would call me like fatty banana they first of all it's still weird to even speak those words out loud but the fat the act of writing it even the act of saying it the next time it's going to be easier and as soon as it doesn't become this secret anymore you can start dealing with it so anyone is dealing with an insecurity whether it's being invisible or not being enough speak it out loud whether it's in therapy whether it's and friends with friends or if it's just writing it in your journal because only then can you start to deal with it it's incredible man incredible before I asked my last question tell these guys where they can find you online so social is very easy all my all the accounts are Facebook Twitter snapchat Instagram it's all at Al expand ion so ba na Y an and the book website is very easy to its third door book com so th IR D third or book comm and of course it's on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and audible and all those places alright my last question what's the impact that you want to have on the world he goes back to that line that I wrote on that sheet of paper when I was 18 and starting this mission I want to inspire people to believe in what's possible and there's this one story that it came across during my research that really stuck with me it's a story of this teacher who is teaching and Teach for America in Baltimore you know really really tough school and young teacher you know full of hope and she's dealing with these elementary school kids I think maybe second grade third grade and she realizes just how hard of a situation they're all in so one day she decides all right we're not gonna do the math class today we're gonna instead draw pictures of our biggest dreams and she passed out sheets of paper to these kids and crayons and all that could start you know drawing pictures of what they want to be when they grew up and there's this one young boy sitting in the corner of the class whose face is blank and you know 30 minutes goes by and he hasn't even picked up a crayon and then finally his eyes light up and he starts drawing and at the end of class you know the kids passing the papers and the teachers reviewing them once they leave and she sees that that young boy drew a picture of a pizza delivery man and the teacher was very concerned so she called the mother of the boy and she said what happened and the mother wasn't surprised at all the mother explained to the teacher that the only man in his life is his uncle who's not on drugs are not in jail and delivers pizza and what that story showed me is that young people will always look up and reach for the highest branch they see as possible and it's not their fault what branches they see because they'll always reach for the highest branch whether it's up to parents whether it's up to schools or society at large and that's a reason I love impact Theory so much because in many ways where you're doing is you're illuminating branches for people you're changing what they believe is possible and what I've learned is that and when you change what someone believes is possible you change what becomes possible and that's the impact I'd like to have was amazing thank you guys alright just right now run out and get the book I'm telling you I'll just be Ober shameless because it is that damn good go get this saying you know I don't normally do this I think I've held up a book maybe three times in the existence of this show it's amazing what you're going to love about it for sure you're gonna love each and every one of the people the famous people that you know that you've heard of and hearing how that they broke through will be incredibly fun and many times enlightening but the transformation that he goes through as a person in the creation of this book is absolutely astonishing it you need to think of this video as a compendium to the book and the way that the two go together and to hear the stories that he tells about himself and that that kind of transformation is there for anybody that wants to avail themselves of that to work that hard to strive that hard to fall in love with their mistakes to understand that that's where the value lies that the way that he so openly talks about the things that went wrong like this was basically an hour of all the things that were difficult or went wrong and they're so beautiful that somebody can share something like that that I know you guys will be able to see yourselves in I saw myself in each and every one of them and to know that there's a way to get past that to leverage it to use it to grow to become more powerful to do what you want to do is just absolutely astonishing I'm telling you this is somebody to watch get on that train right now because wherever this guy goes it's gonna be incredibly impressive and useful to you and that is the highest compliment that I can pay if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be at legendary take care everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 422,829

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, How to Hack Your Way Into Success at Anything, alex banayan, alex banayan larry king, third door, the thrid door, third door alex banayan, secret to success

Id: nXoU5ItqlkM

Length: 51min 38sec (3098 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018