The Third Door: 7 Unconventional Ways to Succeed in Life

I recently became fascinated with a book  about how wealthy people achieve success through unconventional methods.

The Third Door is a book written by a 19 year old Persian-Jewish boy who dropped out of pre-med school, hacked the game show “The Price is Right” and used the money he won to go on a crazy 7 year adventure running after and interviewing the likes of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Larry King, Maya Angelou and  Lady Gaga.

According to Alex, life, business and success…it’s just like a nightclub. 

There are always three ways to get in. There’s the main entrance with the long queue, the VIP entrance, and the door that no one tells you about…the Third Door. 

Whether it’s how Bill Gates sold his first piece of software or how Steven Spielberg became the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took…the Third Door.

Here are 7 ways to use the “Third Door” theory and succeed in life in unconventional ways:

1. Borrow Credibility

Remember back in highschool  when hanging out with the “cool kids” also meant you were cool and part of the “elite” group?

In the “cool kids” group, not everyone is beautiful, smart or have rich parents, but everyone is “cool by association”,

Turns out, things are not very different when you become an adult. You can also become “cool by association” and use this as leverage in business.

Whether you’re a fresh graduate or starting on a business with no proof of your credibility, the fastest way to get to the path to success is to associate yourself with the successful people in your field.

No one knew who Justin Louise Soriano was until he found a way to become Heart Evangelista’s in-house makeup artist during the pandemic.

And even after falling out with the celebrity, Justin Louise Soriano continues to be in demand among celebrities due to his association with Heart.

Borrowing credibility is a legit strategy that has worked for many in both their personal and  professional lives.

2. Find an Inside Man.

If you want to get in without going through the long line, finding an “inside man” is one of the most important steps in your plan.

An "inside man" is someone inside the organization willing to put his or her reputation on the line to bring you in.

Whether it’s a mentor who submits your name to the management team for award nomination, the guard at your local bank who lets you in a few minutes after closing, the personal assistant who shadows the CEO you want to have a meeting with, or the errand boy who has access to the private offices that you want to do business in. . .

 A real-life Hollywood story is that of Steven Spielberg and his chance encounter with a Universal Studios employee named Chuck Silvers. 

Call it luck or the universe aligning the stars, but  meeting Chuck Silvers was what started it all for Spielberg.

It was Chuck Silvers who prodded Spielberg to create a short film to show to the VP of productions, who then offered Spielberg a 7-year contract on the spot.

3. Hack the game.

Sure, every game show has rules. 

When you’re watching it on TV, it may seem like random luck. But the truth is, there are things you don’t see behind the scenes, a strategy for choosing who gets to play, and a way to win even if you don’t get all the answers right. 

This is exactly how Alex Banayan, author of the book The Third Door, found a way to fund his mission, by hacking and winning the game show The Price is Right.

Alex found out that the majority of the contestants chosen from the audience are often colorfully dressed and have wild personalities that fill the television screen. 

A producer interviews each audience member and picks the wildest ones.  If the producer puts a checkmark by your name, you’re called on stage. It wasn’t random: there was a system.

As an anecdote, I once won a Math competition back in college by “hacking the game”. 

After going over several review materials, I realized that several of the game questions from the current year were the exact same ones from three years ago. 

And believe it or not, the questions on the day of the competition were exactly the same from three years ago. I did not only win but even got the bonus question right. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking. 

What does “hacking the game”  have to do with you and your life?

Plenty.

A lot of systems are at play in our day-to-day lives. 

Whether it’s trying to win a bid for a construction project or trying to get an approval for your proposal from higher management.

There are those who follow the rules of the game, and then there are those who find a way to hack the system.

4. The 4-hour work week: an alternative approach to life.

You may or may not have heard about this concept or  the book with the same title, but the 4-hour work week is not click-bait and is being used in real life applications.

The 4-hour work week strategy outlines two groups of people and two ways to live your life: 

The first group follows the traditional path of working for 30 or 40 years, retiring at 60 or 65 , then enjoying life in their senior years.

The second group, called the “new rich”, are those who adopt a new school approach to life and live the retired lifestyle all throughout their life.

They tend to alternate periods of work, periods of fun and periods of holiday.

The goal of the second group is to free up their time and location which automatically makes their money worth ten times more. 

Naturally, getting a traditional job with a specific schedule and specific office will not fit this model.

Tim Ferris explains, if the goal is freedom and to live like the rich do, we can readily do that by eliminating the need to go to a specifi office and ditching the regular day job.

And so, the “4-hour work week” theory introduces the concept of outsourcing your business, mostly handing over the operations to a remote worker, and thus only needing to work 4 hours a week.

This gave rise to the popularity of virtual assistants.

Nowadays, those who aim to live “the 4-hour work week” will almost always engage in some form of online business or work to achieve location independence.

Now, choosing either the “old school”approach or the “new rich” approach is neither good nor bad. 

But if you want to live the “exponential life”, retire anytime , work anytime and anywhere,  location independence and outsourcing is a good place to start.

5. Good artists copy, great artists steal.

This  popular theory by Pablo Picasso can easily be misinterpreted. 

“Steal” here doesn’t mean “plagiarize;” that doesn’t turn anyone into a great artist.  It explicitly doesn’t mean “copy.” 

“Great artists steal”, at its root, is about finding inspiration in the work of others, then using it as a starting point for making your own original creative output. 

Artists may reword, remix, substitute, or otherwise mashup existing work to create something new. 

So, if you ever feel guilty about copying someone’s successful strategy, just know that adding your own personality to it makes it new and can now be called your own. 

Also, Picasso copied first.

6. Get off the Bus.

I know this sounds vague and random so let me go back to my favorite Spielberg story.

There was once a Jewish boy who wanted to enter film school but was rejected three times by USC.

So, he decided to go on a tour inside Universal Studios and see what he could find there. 

Just like today, there were tours inside the property and he got on one of the tour buses.

Along the way, he got off the bus and hid, made sure the bus was far from sight and then went touring the rest of Universal Studios on his own. 

This is where he meets an employee of Universal Studios who he got talking to and eventually befriended him. The employee took a liking to this boy  who was  passionate about films and gave him a pass to enter the lot several times.

The young boy got to meet producers and would ask actors and actresses out for lunch. 

He was basically getting alternative education away from the conventional classrooms.

20 years later, this young Jewish boy got his first Oscar for the film “Schindler's List”.

Steven Spielberg is now considered one of the best directors of all time.

The moral of the story?

Get off the bus.

7. Sell before you buy the inventory.

What if I told you that you could start a business now with no capital  or inventory?  And, what if you don’t have to loan any money to do it?

The traditional way to do business is to buy inventory, set up a store,  pay for space to hold your inventory and pay for people to tend your store.  

In today’s world where everything can be bought online, we can practically start a business and sell to the entire world without having a physical store and even without having inventory. 

In e-commerce parlance, this practice is called dropshipping and has been around since the 1950s.

With the dropshipping business model, you don’t have to buy the inventory unless you’ve already made the sale and have been paid by your customer. 

This is how many online sellers do business, by connecting with dropshipping suppliers and creating an online store on platforms like Amazon or Shopee.

You can sell goods the traditional way, by buying inventory first, or you can try the unconventional approach  and sell without having any physical inventory on hand.

In conclusion, there is nothing wrong with living a linear life, going to  college, and landing a job.

But if you want to live an exponential life, you can choose a different way of doing things. You can use the "third door".

 Because when you change what you believe is possible, you change what becomes possible.