Author Alex Banayan spends a year helping people navigate the COVID-19 pandemic

For more than a year, hundreds of strangers from around the world have “flooded” into best-selling author Alex Banayan’s Zoom sessions seeking advice on how to rekindle their passions amid the COVID pandemic. -19.

They came from all walks of life – from the single mother in Denver to the farmer in Nebraska calling from a tractor to the employees of Fortune 500 companies,

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Each, Banayan told Fox News, had a “vehement desire to grow.”

They turned to him because of his book, “The Third Gate” in which Banayan – a college dropout – recounts his seven-year quest to discover how the world’s most successful people have grown their careers – often by taking unconventional paths.

Banayan had just completed an international book tour when the world came to a screeching halt due to the coronavirus pandemic. Suddenly he was hit with an avalanche of messages from his readers, many of whom were losing their jobs or seeing loved ones fall ill from COVID-19, he said.

They looked to the author for answers on how to navigate this tumultuous time, but Banayan struggled to help them.

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The messages, thought to be heartfelt and vulnerable, seemed “almost unanswered”, he said.

“It’s hard to describe the feeling of hopelessness when you really want to help and you feel like there’s nothing you can do…all these people are looking to you for an answer you don’t have,” he said. -he declares.

His mentor, New York Times bestselling author Cal Fussman, had a solution.

“Why don’t you just put a Zoom link on the internet and help them all out?” Banayan recalled Fussman saying. “Even if you’re helping a person through this process, it’s not wasted time.”

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In May 2020, Banayan began hosting third gate mentoring sessions. These were free, hour-long Zoom calls meant to help people navigate their paths during the pandemic, overcome obstacles and rediscover what makes them “come alive,” according to Banayan’s Instagram post.

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For the first 15 minutes of each session, Banayan or one of his guests, such as Fussman or Summit Group co-founder Elliott Bisnow, would discuss a topic ranging from finding your way to racism in corporate America. to the management of rejection. The rest of the hour was reserved for questions.

Every day, hundreds of people from Romania, Nigeria, France, India, Australia and the United States continued to join the call. After a while, the participants not only became friends, but also started helping each other.

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At the end of each call, they “started self-organizing and doing like their own versions of little TED talks,” Banayan said.

The sessions reminded him why he dropped out of the University of Southern California at 18 to try to interview dozens of household names, from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.

“I dreamed that if all these people came together…to share their best wisdom with the next generation, people could do so much more,” he said.

After the book’s publication in 2018, Banayan spent several years sharing the lessons he honed while giving keynote speeches to help the leadership teams of American companies – from Apple, Google, Nike, IBM, Snapchat to Mastercard and Disney – to cultivate more growth.

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He went on to earn several accolades, including becoming the youngest commercially successful author in American history and being named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

However, the Third Gate mentoring sessions were “one of the most fulfilling things” of his life, Banayan said.

“What’s amazing about the mentoring sessions is that the tools didn’t solve their problems,” he said. “The tools and the lessons just created a space for them to believe they can solve their problems. And that’s what The Third Door is about, too.”