There's Always A Third Door | Rich Roll Podcast

it's great to see you thanks for uh thanks for coming out to do this man I'm really excited for you this has been a long time coming I think I said to you like six or seven years you see like the very beginning of the podcast I was like well let me know when the books done and you know 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 how's it going Alex was I that tired no that doesn't came off to me because inside for me I was I was drowning you know this has 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 Oregon who we can talk about because he deserves to be recognizable 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 he's like hey I'm working on this book with this young guy he's really cool I think he'd really like him like I want to I want to connect you guys like he 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 real food 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 on 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 yeah so I was like I wonder if it maybe he's never gonna finish this book like I you know it's gonna happen here you know so here we are it's coming out in James God I'm proud of you I feel very emotionally invested you can visit journey everyone so it's really cool though and thank you for all the encouragement along the way yeah it's great I mean we so Rick Corrigan was your editor on this and just so people understand like when I first pitched finding ultra like when you when you write a book you write a proposal I'm sure you did you did this as well right and then and then my book agent sent it out to a couple 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 gonna 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 it over the phone I've never done anything like that before I was 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 oh yeah and the service was not very good and I had I like hid behind a bush like do this 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 gonna bring this around to you don't worry I remember saying to my book agent yeah but this guy Rick Corrigan like he's not actually gonna be my editor right like they're gonna assign me some kind of a junior person because this guy Rick Corrigan 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 was the rise when he books you know his book yeah I'm like this guy's way too senior and important to be interested in what I'm doing you know I was like no no he's gonna 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 full Sophie 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 and and he really helped the book become the book that it became and 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 eighteen year old kid I'm gonna go interview all these people who I admire figure out how they launched their careers in each chapters a different person you know chapter one is Bill Gates chapter two is Warren Buffett and that was my thinking about 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 gonna 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 the other saying this is a year into me room working with Barry so we're clear up it's a very strange question again and he's like what's the what's the goal is it to change people's lives or to inform them and I'm like that's clearly a leading question yeah oh I want to try to change lives and he goes well the book you're writing isn't gonna do that and I'm like we've been working together for a year how are you bringing this up just now 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 QA you know there might be great information in there but it's never changed a life mmm-hmm but if you look at all this and we have you talked about this in our first lunch I don't know if you remember but the stories that changed lives of 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 mm-hmm 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 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 to drive its just informational you're never gonna have that connection so people aren't gonna be I was engaged with the materials they could be they need to see it through your eyes in your experience so to the extent that you can invest yourself right 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 math I mean that's ultimately thank you in this book right and 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 gonna follow Rick's advice or not cuz I had spent years saying I was not gonna 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 textbook essentially and he helped me realize look it's not about you literally you're a conduit for the reader mm-hmm and that's how the book is now right you have to be a cipher you have to be a stand-in for a audience exactly yeah cool so let's uh let's talk about how it all came together I mean your story's so crazy like how old were you when I first met you you know anything like that I had just turned 20 when you then I first met you were just you would just turn so I've been working on the book for about two years right all right so backing it up from there well let's go all the way back you grew up in Los Angeles Iranian Jews your grandfather was living in Iran like I love this story about your grandfather because I think that I feel like you're 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 and I was a kid who sort of kept secret from us to fully understand who I am you actually have to go back like you said you know 90 years ago when my grandfather was born and he was born in Persia and 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 woman weren't really allowed to work shows 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 take 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 mm-hmm 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 you know her wedding ring she's selling the voss in the living room she's just making things work barely you know 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 in I think it might've been the classified section he sees a 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 like what a you know an assertion order is so he he like gets out the bid and he just but because he's not 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 because they don't know that he's nine no no we're on the floor you must have 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 and 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 hmm and you run especially when you're a Jew and Iran when the police are saying you have a serious problem they're literally gonna arrest and imprison and it's not even Teresa and it's yeah it's so wild cuz 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 mm-hmm so now my grandpa has to go you know this young little Jewish boy in this you know bizarre and Tehran ends up finding another paint thinner dealer who uses his profits 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 you know nation's capital you know 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 Bavarian genius 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 you know loads of men with like you know masks over the head breaking through the ground floor and surround the building go up all the staircases to the point where he knew like through a telephone system that they were coming and he had like 30 seconds but all the staircases were covered and there's one part of the story that's crazy which is he got his passport and like threw it into an air and 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 you know 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 asked 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 no there yeah yeah so you're just you're counting down until you're the person who's pissed 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 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 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's Briggs he's able to bring his family yeah and so that's how your parents that to my mom 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 you know has rebuilt 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 build himself up and was taken to the darkest place that I can't even understand and was able to come out the other end mm-hmm so that's really what he lost 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 Vee hustler yeah like you know right out of the womb and I see I see aspects of that elements of that in in your in your path I appreciate that thank you and I mean like I think you're you're caring part of your grandfather with you I mean is he still around yeah you know that craziest thing 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 hasn't lost it like there's a connection with holding on to it or continuing to grow something yeah it's probably a little bit more deep then 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 United States all right this is 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 you know 10 mm-hmm and they met here and it's you know 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 in they didn't come here thinking they were refugees they came here thinking they were coming for a two month patient as the riots calm down back at home 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 work you travel down expectations placed on young Alex B'nai on well so had 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 what why won't my mom let me sleep over at a friend's house well I won't my mom like let me go on a field trip like without her physically driving like it was crazy 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 - no I save 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 my own 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 mama said 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 the trauma they went through yeah but she came over at 10:00 does she remember what her dad went through or is that a it's very that she can't it's it's in your blood you know when you're in there's a certain amount of shame to 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 now to ask where he was and they would say to Daanish gob Buddha which means he was at the University mm-hmm it wasn't till I was 18 I found out he is actually right that's Kevin telling you what it actually no so it was almost this like skeleton in my family's closet that my grandpa was held to be it's hard to understand why that would create shame though it certainly wasn't you know by any fault of his you you do have to spend more time with purchasing create shame it's like all the way I poured my water it's very shameful alright so so you come out of the womb though and they're like this kid's gonna be a doctor yeah because again I exact 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 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 mmm-hmm 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 primettes 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 they 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 would be fulfilling for you there's the ocean of happiness and an immigrant family yeah I mean my my you know my rearing is very different than yours but you know I can relate to that like I was you know in a somewhat analogous situation and it took me a lot longer to that kind of dawning epiphany yeah much earlier but I understand on some level you know what that's like and and and you know coming up in this family where Shane was very much a part of the sort of you know family it's not a part of is there anything more Shane provoking than confronting the fact that you may not want to pursue this path that you've been on your whole life and what would that look like you know in terms of communicating that 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 it was almost like I was living this double life where my mom would call me and ask um my pre-med classes were going ah my god it's great then I would like hang up on her and like sneak the 4-hour workweek under my like blanket and read it were you still enrolled in the pre-med classes or had you know yeah yeah of course but you're just you know checked out yeah and it's so funny because a part of me thought I was being a slacker but in hindsight I was like I said I was like sneaking the 4-hour workweek into class and reading it so I was working hard just on these other things 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 so softer out of his dorm room or had it 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 am gonna 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 folks and self-help books but eventually I was left empty-handed and that's when this naive eight-year-old thinking kicked in and I thought well if no one's gonna write the book I'm dreaming of reading why not just write it myself right and you're a tease here are you a freshman in college 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 like have resources in the sense that like I'm in a dorm room with a computer in a lot of free time it's like the perfect combination yeah 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 yeah 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 well 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 at you know someone who's naive sees into a world of possibility and that is incredibly powerful and I can understand how at that time you would think well how hard can it be like I'm just gonna go find all these people that are super awesome and I'm gonna you know interview them and they're gonna be happy to sit down with the elites helps kids all the time you know I won't leave right that was my thinking but the idea was from the very beginning like this is gonna be a book I'm gonna write a book my thinking was you know I was smart enough to know Bill Gates who 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 a 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 yeah pours out correct at its core at that time especially it was less about an age and more about us when someone's starting out it doesn't matter if it's you know 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 meetings how do you find a way to break through because that was my problem and I didn't want to book just focused on business or just focus 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 heck yeah so you know we're all 18 I call them up in 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 eighteen-year-old kid right okay and we created this dream list and I wrote it on a note card and I put in my wallet 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 gonna do this I mean it was the idea that you would stop out of college or you were gonna try it all right well 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 you know 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 as I'm there and I'm on Facebook and I see someone's posting tickets to the prices right and it's filming the next day and the first I 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 I'd never seen a full episode Plus that Finals in two days and I told myself was a horrible idea and not to do it I don't have you've ever had one of those times where like this horrible idea keeps you have a stupid idea of it you can't shake it exactly so I had the stupid idea I can shake it and I remember because they needed to focus on studying I didn't have much time cuz finals were in two days I opened my spiral notebook to make a best in worst case scenario list to prove to myself as a bad idea so I remember like so vividly I'm sitting in the core this corner table in the library and I'm like best and worst case scenarios you know worst case scenarios they all finals mm-hmm get kicked out of pre-med lose financial aid mom hates me no mom stops talking to me you know look fat on TV there are like 20 cons and the only pro was maybe maybe went 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 you know that night I decided to do the logical thing and pull an all-nighter to study but I didn't study for finals a study had a hack The Price is Right all right well first of all why not just no other price is right after final okay I don't know how to get tickets they just write big like fell into my lap I see and how do you have that's your inner parent right now 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 alright so how do you hack the prices right like what secret so they make it look completely random you know Alex come on down as if the I 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 are people who are like it wasn't a blog post it was like 1992 message boards with like the 50th comment like I was your deep I was like on the 23rd oh of Google right 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 I then I served 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 producers selection hmm so while some people might know that you know you have a one-minute interview with a producer no one knows that you're 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 gonna be the best guest to get picked right so I the second I get to the CBS studio a lot the morning of the prices right I just you know I don't know who the undercover producer is I just assumed everyone was undercover producer you know something like dancing with the security guards I'm flirting with old ladies I'm break dancing and I don't know how to break dance 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 assistants 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 mm-hmm and she'll put like put your name you knew that I knew that going so I knew like what I had to accomplished I knew it wasn't just him like 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's like you know he has a rhythm he's like what's your name where you're from what do you do and I go hey I'm Alex um I'm 18 I'm a freshman in college I'm a pre-med and it 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 I don't even get a pity laugh like you're giving me more so I don't even get a pity laugh and I can see his eyes wandering and my quickly and you know I had to do something and in one of those business books I had read and 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 I go to the producer stand I'm like Stan like come over here I want to make a handshake with you and he you know is very hesitated I'm like come on come on and he he comes over I teach him how to pound it and blow it up mm-hm and you know he laughs and he's like oh you're gonna do great good luck and starts walking away you know it doesn't turn around and strike two that doesn't the assistant is writing 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 the whole shoots their head around like are you 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 gonna say so I'm just looking at him he's either gonna get tossed out for being a lunatic but my thinking was you know what are already gone yeah what's the point of staying all 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 in this guy's like you know typical Hollywood like turtleneck turtleneck you know red scarf even though it's 70 degrees he's like and I I just look at him and I'm like your scarf and now I really don't know what I'm gonna say next and you know there it's dead silent like ever there's so much tension right now like let's watch this 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 three hundred sixty two pairs my dorm room and I'm missing that one 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 check board and you know you're in I know man that's so bananas like like it's not like you gave him the secret to the universe or like it's a wisdom that was undeniable that made him you just you just kind of like threw an innie I mean I 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 ten but the one that makes it is like the craziest [ __ ] ever but I think you know behind that is your willingness to throw Hail Marys like you're you have like look you have gumption you app hustle you got you have charisma you have personality I would imagine your grandfather must have seen this in you what did he identify you as some kind of kindred spirit even though you were on this and wish back you know funny enough that's actually why he doubled down so much on me becoming a doctor because he didn't want me to live and suffer the way he had to as an entrepreneur I was almost like he saw too much of himself and you and wanted something different for you that's crazy I never thought of that yeah so alright 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 way the hacking of the show work it was less Einstein and more Forrest Gump and I end 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 twenty thousand dollars which for a broke college student is like a million bucks you know my most expensive expenses like Chipotle with guacamole so you know I'm feeling like a billionaire and I used that money to fund the journey and you know it took two years but I eventually got two gates it took three years to get to Lady gaga and you know it's like you said seven years later on the book is just finally thin right and and you 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 cuz you know I love college and my 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 can 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 a hundred percent against me going and I remembered through the walls hearing my dad like cry my dad never cried know like I'd funeral and just never would cry the first time I had ever heard him cry in the house and 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 how much my parents had given to help make this impossible 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-ho on making this this mission come come together and to me the holy grail of energy is was Bill Gates because when I was 18 I thought you know if anyone had the answers to the universe and had to be Bill Gates so I spent a whole year trying to get in contact with gates his 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 yeah it's and that's an altruistic pitch that's a pitch that's hard to turn down if you're somebody like Bill Gates all right that was that was my home that was my huh to my surprise Bill Gates doesn't do interviews with 18 year old Collins 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 it on the phone with gates his chief of staff and we're on the phone and you know you talked about that was that the Calabasas smart where you're on the phone of crown yeah 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 was I pick up the phone and on the line is Bill Gates his chief of staff who like it's a Melinda bill in this guy right like they run it it's crazy and he's like so you wanna interview bill huh it's very good I'm like yeah it's my biggest year I'm the 19 I'm like it's my biggest dream and he's like look I I love what you're doing yeah I love that you're doing this to help others and I'm like thinking I'm you know 95 percent there and he's like what thing is we don't really do interviews like this he's like especially you know with some 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 was 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 [ __ ] 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 write you like just it's let's just take a step back and like analyze the preposterous nature of that and I'm going to I'm like God hear your biggest business achievement is like hacking prices right and the funny thing is to you know maybe if I had interviews lined up it would be a better thing but I remember my book pros oh it was like interviews that I'm very likely to get honest so so I would imagine you put a proposal to go how did you get it in front I read Corgan 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 I'm and I'm getting like some good interviews I'm interviewing Tim there is some you know there's some 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 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 - I don't know if you want me to go into it but he given me this tool that I then used to email about 30 different New York Times best-selling authors asking for their advice on how to get a book deal mm-hmm and the overwhelming advice I got from all of them they gave me a lot of you know 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 bit 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 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 gonna go to the publishers during Christmastime 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 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 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 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 you want to write this book you know in your part-time fine you're not gonna 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 begu junuh men swear on my life that you'll graduate undergrad and get your masters and only then will I support what you're doing I like how she threw math master's degrees oh my slid that in there too oh my god and it was non-negotiable too cuz she understood that you know in America these days an undergrad doesn't have the guarantees I used to and I was like fine fine I promise and she goes no big ooh Juna man 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 June and man promises 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 Elliott this know and I tell him Elliott this is I don't know what to do how can I choose between my family because 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 I 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 go you know do your research and you'll see what I'm saying and he hangs up I don't 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 his biographies and I finally found out what Ellie was talking about when Zuckerberg had started you know 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 in teal goes to Zuckerberg you're gonna drop out of school right suck works like not a chance teal is like 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 will barely survive you know if we did this full-time let's take one semester off and see what happens then I looked at Bill Gates historian 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 yet no one no one talks about this that bill ever calls the Bill Gates dropped out of college and you know through his middle finger in the sky no he actually went back to school and 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 ask 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 not in college just you know she's gone hysterical and four weeks I'm just going back and forth of 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 the bigger issue here is that dividing line between living your life or somebody else and living living it for yourself with the understanding that you know that this is your TrueNorth you know it's after a year or so into this project I think even 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 know the craziest thing that happened on that day so it's the day to turn in the leave of 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 gonna go drive to campus I'm on my parents house I have the green form I folded 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 they turned the knob and I opened 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 is it now oh I love her she's mean I feel like yeah half the time I run into you at this event or that event you're with like a family member so I figured I feel like it all worked out you have a picture with you know even you cow and my parents at one of the in queue shows always callow not picture too I don't I don't think you guys knew each other yet no you know what's funny and I want to talk about Carroll in a minute but I just ran into cow like a week ago where was it I was down at Dodger Stadium to do the Spartan thing this part yeah so Joe to Senna who you know is the Spartan dude there was a Spartan event at Dodger Stadium 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 like I'm doing this documentary thing I'm trying to he's like I'm taking this god I'm putting this guy through cases 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'm having such a hard time because will you talk to him find out him before you know well first of all I must say who it was he's like will you talk to him like we're doing this it maybe will film you a little bit like we'll have a little interaction I was like yeah whatever you want so we go to the parking lot and with a film camera Jo and like you know there's a cinematographer there and like and we walk up and Joe introduced it was like hey this is this is cows like hi I'm Callan I'm like like Oh Cal fuss man like I Cal doesn't know who I am but I was like yeah I know I know you are like cool nice to meet you and he's wearing the fedora hat with the Spartan like the Spartan bandana on his Dora oh my god and and I'm like you know I hear from jail like you're you're you're resisting you know so we get into this weird conversation and the bizarre thing is that I feel like we are we were like ships in the night like whatever cow was saying whatever I we were just missing each other and I look at Joe and I go you got your hands full with this guy god 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 I told that story no that's like very secret you know he would probably say the same story too because it's so next time you you see Cal I'm gonna call as soon as we're done I'm gonna call the tribe home and tell him that but what's cool wit 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 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 you know track down warren buffett writing him letters and I was just getting rejected at every turn to the point where at the end of eight months I was completely depleted you know just all the life has beat out of me one of my best friends Corwin was you know trying to get my spirits up and he like come on let's go let's grab a bite to eat so we go to this grocery store 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 gonna do this and he's like come on you got a you got a interview you know you gotta have some interviews lined up and I'm like I got nothing and he's like come on you got it you gotta figure something out like dude do you know what even if I had interviews like I would probably [ __ ] him up you know look what happened in the last one and his eyes were complaining about how hard interviewing is this car pulls up right in front of me the door opens an out walks Larry King and I don't know if you want me to go into the whole story not a story I know the story but like it's a great story so I think it really it it it creates the foundation for everything that follows like I think it's I think it's you know an integral part of 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 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 you're you know the solutions that you're looking for you're practicing along the way it's a process of just coming into an understanding of that as you go thank you man that's feels really good to hear so back to the story okay so back to back to me just harassing Larry King so you know his car pulls up he walks out but and it's weird because I know I sound like this extrovert a person who's like down too many Red Bulls but I'm really a very shy and introverted and I I grew up with a tremendous fear of rejection and failure so late as Larry King opens that car door I'm like paralyzed and I I can almost call 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 nudge music dude what the [ __ ] 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 want to bother him he's like dude come on and you know I I'm like look he's already in the grocery story I can't find him he's like dude he's 80 years old how far could he have gone right and and you're I'm planing 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 I walk through the stores in a sliding glass windows and I look around the bakery section no Larry no sorry 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 I start sprinting through this grocery store going down every aisle no Larry no Larry no Larry no Larry no area 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 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 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 stand story I told you about on The Price is Right this feeling like overtakes me I just I'm trying to project but I think all of this you know pent-up anger and energy inside me combusted and I accidentally shout mr. gay in the neck it was an indoor parking lot so 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 are chopped and he turned 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 a car and I'm thinking like [ __ ] I'm too deep in this to to stop now so I like run after 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 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 breakfast with you in his look of confusion my god and you know he's about to say no but he looks around at the sidewalk and sees there's about like ten people watching this go down right so he better behave so he literally just like shrugs in his life okay okay oh my God my God thank you thank you so much um yeah 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 definitely hear me I'm like mr. king what time he like puts the car to drive I'm now standing like in front of the car waving my arms in front of the windshield mr. king one time and he just looks at minis like 9 o clock and just speeds off and the next morning you're like a celebrity's worst nightmare like having a little more death approached I mean Isis a seer desperation look that's what happens and he 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 9 o'clock there he is sitting in the corner booth with his his friends and you know I had a little bit of self awareness at this point where I knew right we're talking about Natan Al's right she's in there is he still go there every morning he he goes if he goes to he has like a schedule where every week there's a there's a every day of the week if you name of the day of the week I can say where he's at right right so right that makes me sound normal ok so I get there and I wasn't been embarrassed by her 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 he wants some time alone with his friends so I sit at the table next to him waiting to be called over and ten minutes passes thirty minutes pass an hour passes and finally he stands up and he's walking towards me I can like feel my cheeks lift and then he walks right past me and heads for the exit uh-huh and I I just like wave wave my hand my Canton 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 in 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 hi he deals with a lot of crazy people anyone of his caliber especially someone as approachable as Larry you have to understand he when he was at CNN he was if not be one of the most recognizable faces on earth he also doesn't hide from the public likely you said he's out you know right like if you want it if you want to find him you can find him like he doesn't ensconced himself in his house like he's out in the public side he's probably getting rolled up on quite a bit right especially by crazy kids I was like urinal next to him anyway 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 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 I puts a finger on my face goes all right kid tomorrow 8:45 see ya yeah and I show up the next morning at 8:45 he calls me over to his table I sit down he asked me like what are you what are you even trying to interview for and I tell him out the book and he's like alright I'm in and over the course of the past few years I've been a 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 all right 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 me hey God and this younger guy who's you know in his late 50s because everyone else at the tables in their 80s it's younger guy in a fedora turns around and there he 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 fuss Minh and he is you know the writer of Esquire magazine's what I've learned Colin 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 you know 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 I 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 even know where the long full analog so we sort of Creed 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 a 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 you know every week at least three times a week for about three hours at a time over my chapters and teaching me how to write that's amazing and that's a 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 harder you don't um I got that I actually asked this guy who I met he's really smart guy he was the used to be a VP at Goldman Sachs and I asked him cuz he was giving me a lot of advice - 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 it's someone mentors you for three reasons one and they're all subconscious reasons one they see some of them self in you - 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't help you be more like them the third one is the most interesting they want to be more like you mm-hmm 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 years from you know Meg James Beard award-winner magazine writer I to a guy who's now like very well known in the digital universe you know he's gone crazy in Faris's podcast like twice I think and three times 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 Elliott 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 it 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 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 not my goddaughter you know I had her bum it's fine like when I've been lit a candle and it's been one of the biggest honors of my life super cool and and what was it that he liked what's the main thing that you learned from him about writing oh wow I can you know I have this fantasy of one day you know after the book launch teaching like a you know a ten-hour course of what Cal taught me over 40 years and because I can give you like I'll give you some three things just off the top of my head that are the biggest things though but I could give a whole it's like my dream to pay it forward because what he gave me was life-changing number one is 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 Isis something even more preposterous he asked me when my plans were out of how to write the book and I said I'm admitting this I said cow I've heard 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 reap ass the first chapter so I'm not too worried and he looked at me like [Laughter] real writer write it is his profession he's an artist so Cal taught me how to do the opposite which is how to write a book where 90 percent 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 there 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 in the middle chapter in the fun 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 looks 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 of 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 there recording it on there and what are they gonna do what's their agenda like how am I going to 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 but that's Cal had a big job teach me that of you know every chapter needs tension so that's number one and actually there's this great thing from I don't know if you've ever seen master class yes online incredible and there are like super high oh it's like HBO for an online course man Claude are you glad I won't but the one that I recommend to any creative writer filmmaker anyone is the Aaron Sorkin one mmm and he in a perfect sentence says what the key is to tension and Cal Tommy this - he says you need a 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 magic or 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 want to 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 wouldn't 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 the Bill Gates chapter for example that was the hardest chapter right by far that took 134 edits and that's before I said round meeting drafts dress that's like insane and that's before I sent it to crown and then once I got to crown I went through probably another like 32 the final one so it's probably about 160 at this point I've been proofreading proud it's probably well 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 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 mine's like is this guy ever gonna like it's this thing so cow not knowing that so cows really so that that 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 gonna 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 I was like great now to my surprise like with Bill Gates it took a hundred and thirty four you know drafts for me to Cal go alright fine move on so some of the thing 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 on 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 impostor and they threatened 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 in to most things don't work out and that created this grip that or some people might call it a frame to almost and there's a sense of confidence that you know someone like Al has over writing that you really have to grab it like a you know slab a clean hole grip it in your hand 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 that year 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 Cal 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 isn't 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 word is the maitre d it invites you in and then the pacing of that sentence needs to depend on what the mood is of the customer is it a straight through a course is it fast-food then you can't have commas in that sentence is it an a course meal like very extravagant then you can use commas in a semicolon maybe an MD and you have this elegance to it and then the final word is dessert and if you 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 obsess to the first word we debated for months and we decided the best word is right ri ght right and those words word of the whole book the whole book the the opening sentence is right this way and that sets off the whole tone of the book it creates the creases and the final sentence oh my god that was weeks of brainstorm 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 Zack so of all the people that you interviewed all the wisdom that you collected the most impactful was the guy who helped you write the book 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 you know changed me forever the greatest and most valuable thing that happened on this journey was both Cal fust Minh and Elliott busines being like family mm-hmm so let's talk about Elliott for a minute I mean this is really fun become your mentor in right in this is my bed 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 but I can see that I mean I love Elliott 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 is like I first became aware of like these summit people many years ago long time ago a friend a gob teacher called up Julie and said hey I'm supposed to go teach this class at this house these Pele I can't do it I gotta go to attend we 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 good as she goes to this house it's like I don't know 15 people malar in Malibu this was many years ago yeah I mean it's had to be 2002 or something a long time ago she comes back from that experience and she's like I don't know who these people were and like it was kind of weird like I'm in the house and it's sort of like a commune and I and I taught yoga to these people and they're 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 happen oh what these people are doing but there's something going on here you know and then I think it was a couple months later where there was like a double-page out in Vanity Fair and they're all like walking down the beach together and she's like those are the people I thought you and that was my first introduction to what some it is and then I started to learn about what they were doing and you know I now been to eat in these people like Elliot you know at at with Elliot at the helm this group bought a mountain you know Utah and they're creating this community and they host these annual events or biannual events were they bring incredible speakers in and Bezos was the one of the best speeches I've ever seen a man and they cultivate this community 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 of these build is incredible it's disheartening when you read press and it they don't get it or it gets missed sort of you know they're portrayed in a way that that is different than I think it what is what then one's 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 it's funny cuz we sort of touched on that moment a little when I was sharing when I was in that CVS parking lot on the phone of Bill Gates a 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 [ __ ] is momentum and I remember going back to my room that night and just like literally my head in my hands like momentum 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 5% of therefore Bill Gates I must be at like negative 20% with you know Bill Clinton or Richard Branson and I'm like wait pillow Clinton Richard Branson didn't someone tell me last summer that Richard Branson was on this I cruise ship or something it's almost like procrastinate I take on my computer and I Google like Bill Clinton Richard and 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 vaynerchuck the routes as the house banned by the pool Blake Mycoskie leading shark tagging Tim Ferriss canoeing like it's just I was like what the [ __ ] is right it sounds like this like you know entrepreneurs dream and I'm reading this article and it's like Elliott busines 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 she's like how is that possible I thought you have to be like this big CEO so I just start COO like Google Elliott there's no 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 a 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 some googling and googling and by the end I'm like if there's one person on earth who can you know 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 set a prayer and then I opened my journal and I at the top rode dream Mentors and I underlined it and on the first line I wrote Elliott busines in a couple 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 Elliott so again I can't focus on finals so I just some like alright let me get out of my head and out of my system so open my computer and start writing this email for Elliot but I end up spending three hours writing what I think is like the perfect email I used 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 it's my accounting final so I say the only thing that I can I'm completely free and and just to kind of put a put a punctuation mark on this your greatest skill might be finding all these people's emails so like 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 his email address than it was to find Elliot's Wow so when you email Bill Gates you are actually emailing billion you weren't like emailing an assistant or some nosy but with people of this caliber they have assistant to readers we 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 yeah all right so somehow you get Elliot's you know through some kind of cyber 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 alright I'm just gonna pick you know ten of the likely things that might be and I just get he's literally ghost it I put them all in the BCC field and one of them was there I got nine bounce backs and one didn't bounce back 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 therefore this conference in Long Beach and before you come like read a chapter of this book and this is like my jury mentor so if he says read a chapter I'm reading the whole book right so I read the whole book I'm sitting for my accounting I look it is unbelievable book it's called when I stop talking you'll know I'm dead by Jerry Weintraub mm-hmm unbelievable book and for anyone who's like an entrepreneur on their hustle like this is one of the greatest empresario z' of the you know 20th century and i go I think all right it's not a big deal Elliot's gonna meet with me for 15 minutes my accounting final isn't until noon it's only the hotel is only an hour away from school I can still make it on time what ends up happening is I show up the morning of you know 8:00 a.m. I get there early Eliot 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 you know everyone I you know Larry Page is sitting five feet away and then over there's Tony Hsieh then over there is Reed Hoffman and I'm 19 and I'm like what what it's literally like The Wizard of Oz right from black and white to color and my for our meeting with Eliot turned into an entire summer traveling the world with him to now him being one of my best friends that's amazing what do you think you said or impressed upon him in that meeting that that clicked with him I 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 gonna go you know 10x so you know he says hey can you read this chapter for me I'm gonna 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 [ __ ] idiot like how do you expect to be travelling around I thought so you know the next morning I opened up like you know I just did everything he advised you know to the 10th degree and what you know my theory is that when someone like yourself or like Elliott who you know has very them at a time if you're gonna 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 Elliott 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 at my dad's bedside when he took his final breath mm-hmm he's very much like family wow that's amazing you know I think it's pretty rare I mean she you have Calvin and and Elliott as like you know on your speed dial as this as this kid I mean you're I think your talent really is your people skills you know 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 hmm so first of all I appreciate that I've thought a lot about you know 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 Elliott or Cal is great you know there are some relationships that I completely [ __ ] up on you know to a point where I might blacklisted from some people's well it might be on Elliot's me down black listen some people just like this crazy guy just won't stop emailing me kind of so with so like Warren Buffett for example I spent like I told 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 6:00 a.m. run down the sidewalk imagining Warren Buffett was at the end as I'm doing my Sprint's 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 handwrite some responses back so is this like very awkward pen pal so thank you Alex thank you Alex go he was much kinder but that was essentially what it said and I just got 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 a 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 I phone 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 ain't much you sent him a shoe oh this is a very embarrassing sorry 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 sure I can go in it's a whole nother it was in this fire 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 out yeah breaking down into that but ultimately you end up bum-rushing his shareholders meeting right correct so I ended it tossed out like oh okay so for that what ended up happening was you know after this eight months Buffett's assistant you know she knew me she I had sent her flowers 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 gonna 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 they 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 and 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 I'm the king of hopes up and you're also the guy who figured this out with The Price is Right fly your prices right tactics - so what's funny is it actually was very similar to the prices 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 you know five childhood best friends you know 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 1 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 you know value investing another one was about how he focuses his time but but like straight up questions he didn't get up and say hey it's Alex no no my thinking was look you know I have let's say 20 questions I wanted 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 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 what if he knew what he was doing but it was a right very create this in my friend eyes he started asking a question that microphone got cut off right so Debbie's like but you sent him this right tell me that you said I haven't said so could you not have sent this to him with a nut 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 in 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 gate guy yeah essentially what my assumption is they're like we know all about Alex we're not doing this right and gates his office sent me an email like very terse please no more contact a Buffett's office Thanks whoa and they're like my buddy you're like they're right we're fright so yeah 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 then 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 gonna pull me out yeah you need I mean that level of you need you need EQ you need emotional intelligence to be able to read those cues and understand where those well exuberance got the best of you without one I think yeah good lesson to learn so in in the in the wake of all of these people you know Lady Gaga's Spielberg my Angelo Wozniak Jessica Alba pitbull that's like I'm too old they like understand that when 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 that unites all of these people that you talk to if you could like condense that down into some wisdom that the person who's listening to this or just going to read this book is gonna take away with them when I had started out on the journey I was very cognizant of I'm not 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 it's I sort of roll my eyes what ended up happening was as they went on the journey you know do these interviews and on that outside you know Bill Gates in Maya Angelou could not be more different right like Maya Angelou grew up in rural stamps Arkansas gates you know a wealthy suburb of Seattle to a rich lawyer and you know I just kept doing these 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 I realize 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 it you know you're 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 yeah they're born into it or you wait your turn like everybody else for 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 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 will this 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 it's another way of saying you have to think creatively and out-of-the-box like there's always there's always a solution that's not immediately self-evident if you're willing to experiment and explore and you know be unconventional in your and grab life by the collar you know roll up your sleeves get messy get dirty there's always always away but I would say this to you young Alex Benari and not everybody is cut out to go through that third door some people are just wired to you know they're they're better off in line waiting to go through the front door what I've learned is that in something that I had to learn along the way is that taking that third door isn't always about you know yelling Stan your scarf you know that that's what worked for me you can look at Chi loo for example he's one of the most fascinating people I'd ever interviewed my life he grew up in as 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 systems mad 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 seven dollars a month fast forward 20 years later and he's a president of 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 gonna do everything you possibly can to make happen first you got to figure out what that is yeah you know that's a struggle you went through you know I can't help but listen to you and 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 your third door which was a door into a room that you know I don't know that there were too many people and you know it's like it's yeah 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 exist 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 the right third door yeah absolutely so how do you think you figured that 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 in 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 wanted 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 and I'll tell you this story that I heard once it it's this woman she's teaching and Baltimore for Teach for America and this really you know tough school and she's teaching you know young kids you know eight years old and you know it's just they're in a really tough neighborhood so she decides one day she's not gonna 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 in 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 mm-hmm 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 not on drugs or in jail as 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 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 queuing days 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 mm-hmm 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 no 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 and 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 capitalists like why did you how did you make that decision to walk away from that so the book is actually what led me to the VC job and when I first joined the VC firm and there are 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 shocker plot twist as much as them saying you know thank you for all you've done it feels like now's a good 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 - mm-hmm so I still love venture and I think it's fascinating and my time with Alsop Lilly 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 which is it 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 - hit on my history of my life as somebody who's like you know been doing this for a little while I'm like I haven't spoken it Apple or IBM or hard like how are you doing this what's going on Alex will you be my mentor you're way too smart for that um it's crazy cuz when 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 uh-huh and you know I had like talked a little before about the book of they're all free things like a startup thing or this entrepreneur thing it's the two year promotional tour for the book which turned 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 gonna 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 gonna be a lot more fun when they can actually hold the book you know starting uh-huh 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 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 track all these crazy stories in the end well baby here's your story you know right right which is your own risk-taking adventure and journey to this right or in my mom's words how I made her life a hell for the past yeah but they're good now right really might yeah all right 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 about your relationship with your dad who passed away this past year and you know I know you're somebody who's very close with your family so I'm interested in you know 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 you know goes without saying the hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life not only the dying process but there's something idea it's 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 I it's weird to almost like couch this into the story of what we're just talking about because I when I was starting out I think it was this like subconscious belief that at the end of life you know if you really succeed if you do really well there's almost this like trophy at the end and if you do very poorly you 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 his diagnosis to when he passed was a 14 month period whereas 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 that much time with death he learned how to live and you find out what matters in the end you know for the final about Wednesday Thursday Friday 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 us 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 loved to go that we 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 this 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 it becomes and although you know that call was coming at some point it's one of those things that once you hear and like everything changes so I called my sister who lived not too far away I like picked her up in the car or we went to go visit my my dad at my parents house let me 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 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 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 you know realizing mmm slipping into a coma and a few minutes later my dad's caregiver said it was like time for him take his pain medication because with pain grant pancreatic cancer was very painful mm-hmm 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 that you know the caregivers trying to give it to him and she's a sing David please open your mouth and he's unresponsive and you know she's asking over and over and over again and I'm I'm really panicked and then my mom stands up can she like kicks off her shoes and grabs the pill in her hand and like kneels down on the floor and I remember like 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 and asked him to open his mouth his mouth opened seamlessly she took the pill and swallowed it very easily and I remember just sobbing in that moment not out of sadness because I wasn't solving my summit the coma I was scared when I saw 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 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 cuz 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 wanted to you know do as best as it possibly can and touch as many lives as I possibly can but I also I saw the end I know what when I'm dying it doesn't matter if I'm the best selling off their it doesn't intrude ly it doesn't even matter how many lies 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 Mother's Day is this month and Father's Day is next month like I probably would have guys I can I got to stay at the office 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 a 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 Mike and he was he had his wits about him enough to know what you were doing and everything yeah yeah why 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 they 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 don't want to see it in the airport next time 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 flying books independent booksellers Amazon all those good places are you doing any talks that are open to the public or book signings or yeah absolutely it's on my book website so it's the third door book calm thi Rd third or book calm yeah the tour stuffs on there are you doing like a full tour or you know in a multi-city kind of thing you're gonna do that yeah yeah cool it's gonna 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 piece

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 24,436

Keywords: rich roll, podcast, inspiration, motivation, wellness, spirituality, mindfulness, meditation, self-help, self-improvement, career, success, entrepreneurship, business, lady gaga, pitbull, warren buffet, bill gates, steve wozniak, the third door, elliot bisnow, summit series, venture capital, writing, millennial, the price is right, cal fussman, larry king, mentor, mentorship, life skills, determination, grit, persistence, perseverance, tony robbins, daniel pink, maya angelou, quincy jones

Id: _RlDBhM2ULI

Length: 127min 13sec (7633 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2018