by Alex Banayan
“I thought we were golden…I thought this was a done deal…What did I do wrong?”
“Alex, you have to understand, this is Warren Buffett we’re talking about. He gets hundreds of requests a day. You shouldn’t see this as a negative. The fact he sent you a handwritten response means he likes you. I know Mr. Buffett. I know he doesn’t write responses to just anyone.”
I asked what I should do next.
“You just have to be persistent,” Dan said. “Colonel Sanders got rejected a thousand and nine times when he started KFC. This is just your first no. Mr. Buffett is testing you. He wants to see how bad you want it.”
As soon as I got off the phone, I printed out ten quotes and plastered them across the storage closet walls.
“Persistence—it’s a cliché, but it happens to work. The person who makes it is the person who keeps on going after everyone else has quit. This is more important than intelligence, pedigree, even connections. Be dogged! Keep hitting that door until you bust it down!”
—JERRY WEINTRAUB
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
“The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
—THOMAS EDISON
“You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.”
—BABE RUTH
“My success is based on persistence, not luck.”
—ESTÉE LAUDER
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
“We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.”
—HELEN KELLER
“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”
—CALVIN COOLIDGE
Dan helped me write a second letter to Buffett and I sent it off. A week passed and there was no response. I emailed Buffett’s assistant to see if it made it to his desk.
From: Assistant to Warren Buffett
To: Alex Banayan
Subject: RE: Letter to Mr. Buffett
Mr. Buffett got your second letter. However, his first response remains. I am sorry he can’t help you…
POW.
When I’d interviewed Tim Ferriss, I also felt like I was getting punched, but compared to this, that was a third-grade playground scuffle.
Looking back, I can see that Buffett wasn’t doing anything wrong. He didn’t owe me anything. But I wasn’t thinking clearly then. And on top of that, Dan kept reminding me: persistence.
My alarm blared the next morning at 5:00 a.m. I laced up my running shoes, stepped out onto the dark street, and blasted “Eye of the Tiger” through my headphones. I sprinted down the sidewalk, imagining Buffett at the end of each block. It was me versus him, I told myself, and I wanted to meet him more than he didn’t want to meet me.
If this were a movie, this is where they’d show a montage of months passing as I’m running on the pavement, trees turning from green to orange, leaves falling, then snow piling. I read more books about Buffett, watched more interviews on YouTube, and listened to more audiobooks. There had to be something I was missing. Buffett found his answer on footnote fourteen. I was on footnote one thousand and fourteen.
Before I knew it, January arrived and USC’s spring semester was about to start. Without hesitating, I took another semester off.
I researched Buffett even more, woke up even earlier, and ran even faster. As hard as it is to admit, I wasn’t doing it just for Buffett anymore. I was doing it to prove to myself that they were all wrong—every girl who’d said she saw me as just a friend, every popular kid who’d made me feel invisible, every fraternity that’d turned me away.
I sent Buffett a third letter.
No response.
BOOM—jab to the jaw.
A fourth.
BAM—hook to the eye.
Sugar Ray had warned me about this. “You’ve got to stay in the fight. It’s going to get tough. You’re going to hear no. But you’ve got to keep pushing.”
I called Buffett’s assistant every Wednesday morning to ask if Buffett had a change of heart. The answer was always no.
I sent a fifth letter.
SNAP—a crack in my nose.
A sixth.
POP—I spat out a tooth.
I wrote a more detailed letter in February, hoping Buffett would see how much I wanted this.
From: Assistant to Warren Buffett
To: Alex Banayan
Subject: your letter to Warren Buffett
Alex,
Mr. Buffett read your February 5 letter. We are sorry but he just cannot do the interview. Requests have increased since our earlier reply and his schedule is more than full.
BAM BAM BAM. I was doubled over, coughing up blood.
By this point, I felt like the only person in my corner was Dan. His friendship was single-handedly keeping my hope alive.
“Why can’t you just call Buffett yourself?” I asked him.
“Alex, do you trust me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then you have to trust that it’s better that I teach you to fish, than if I get you the fish. Calling Mr. Buffett is easy. Learning how to get the yes on your own is what matters. You just need to get more creative in your next letter.”
Dan told me about a friend of his who had wanted to meet Bill Clinton. After Clinton’s staff said no, this friend purchased the domain AskBillClinton.com, wrote the former president a letter offering the domain as a gift, and Clinton’s office arranged for a time for them to meet. Dan suggested I do the same for Buffett. So I bought AskWarrenBuffett.com, and then Corwin and I filmed a YouTube video that we put on the landing page. I wrote a letter to Buffett explaining he could use the website as a way to teach students all around the world.
From: Assistant to Warren Buffett
To: Alex Banayan
Subject: RE: your letter to Warren Buffett
Alex, sorry for the delay…Attached is a handwritten reply from Mr. Buffett.
I knew it. I knew it! Persistence! Buffett hadn’t sent me a handwritten response since that original letter. I knew Dan’s advice would work. I opened the attachment:
Alex—my friends & I have discussed this basic idea for many years, in the end most advise—& I agree—not to do it & stick with the written word.
Warren E Buffett
I didn’t know what to do.
“You know what you’ve been missing?” Dan told me. “You haven’t spent enough time warming up the gatekeeper. You should send flowers to Mr. Buffett’s assistant.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?” I asked.
“I’ve known her for years. She’ll love it.”
I felt uneasy, but ordered the flowers anyway, and attached a note thanking her for taking my calls and passing along my letters.
From: Assistant to Warren Buffett
To: Alex Banayan
Subject: thank you for the flowers
Alex,
Thanks for the beautiful flowers and your nice notes. I’m sorry I haven’t kept in touch but unfortunately I’m up to my ears in annual meeting-related duties…But the flowers really brightened my day and I wanted you to know how much I appreciate it.
I called Dan.
“You see? We’re on the right track!” he said. “You know what you need next? You need to meet Mr. Buffett’s assistant in person. She said she’s busy, right? So write her a letter offering to come to her office and be her errand boy. You can stuff envelopes for her, fetch coffee, whatever she needs. Then once she gets to know you, you’ll have the interview in no time. Oh, and attach the letter to a single shoe. Put the shoe in a nice package,
and on the box write, ‘Just trying to get my foot in the door!’ ”
“You’re…kidding, right?”
“Not at all. Make sure you write the ‘just trying to get my foot in the door’ in big letters so she understands the joke.”
“I…I really think the shoe is a bit much.”
“No, the shoe is the best part. Trust me.”
An uneasy feeling sank into me, but I felt I couldn’t argue. Dan was my only lifeline. So I went to a Salvation Army store, bought a black leather shoe, wrote the note the way Dan said, and sent it.
From: Assistant to Warren Buffett
To: Alex Banayan
Subject: (no subject)
Hi Alex,
You are sweet to offer but there isn’t a need or even room for another person here. And while Mr. Buffett admires your persistence, his schedule is overbooked as it is and he just will not be able to meet with you. You are not the first (and won’t be the last) to try but he never does it. I hope you will accept this no as I really can’t respond to any more notes from you. The best way to help me for the next few months is to let me concentrate on my job and not be distracted. I hope you will understand.
* * *
“Dan, please, you’ve got to help me. Can you please call Buffett yourself?”
“I can,” Dan said, “but that wouldn’t be being a good mentor to you, Alex. This is just your ninth no. You’re not at the end of your rope yet.”
I tried to think of more options and that’s when it hit me: just as Elliott jumped on a plane to the Hamptons and trusted that serendipity would give him what he needed, what if I flew to Omaha and did the same? What if I bumped into Buffett in a grocery store or at his favorite restaurant?
Dan thought the idea was great. I began searching for a plane ticket and thought about how proud Elliott would be. This was everything he’d taught me. I called him, and after telling him my plan, there was silence.
“You’re blowing it,” Elliott said.
“What are you talking about? I’m working 24/7 on Buffett. I can’t work any harder.”
“That’s my point. You need to understand that business is not target practice. It’s not about obsessing over a bull’s-eye. It’s about putting as many balls in the air as possible and seeing which one hits. When was the last time you worked on getting Bill Gates?”
“Well, not for a few months.”
“When was the last time you worked on Lady Gaga?”
“Not for a few months.”
“When was the last time you worked on Buffett?”
“I’ve been working on Buffett every day!”
“That’s my point! You need to start working on building a pipeline and getting other balls in the air. Business is not target practice.”
Elliott hung up.
I understood what he was saying, but it didn’t sound right to me. Dan had taught me about the Avoidance List: “Success is a result of prioritizing your desires.” Every business book I’d read said to persist; and Dan, who knew Buffett personally, said to go for it.
Just because Elliott was my mentor didn’t mean he was always right.
I booked my ticket.
TWO DAYS LATER, OMAHA AIRPORT
The terminal was dead. It was past midnight and my duffel bag weighed heavily on my shoulder. Inside was my Kindle, as well as ten hardcover books on Buffett. If bringing the books would somehow make landing the interview even 1 percent more likely, it was worth it.
I trudged through the empty corridor, the silence broken only by the echo of my footsteps. A poster in front of me advertised the University of Nebraska. It had a giant version of Buffett’s undergrad yearbook picture with “1951” captioned beneath. He was twenty-one at the time. As I looked at that picture of him, it looked like any other yearbook photo. He was just a human being. Why had I been killing myself the past six months, getting punched at every turn, just to ask a human being a few questions?
I exited the airport and a gust of wind shot through my coat. Snow fell from the sky. As I walked to the taxi line, every breath shot an icy pain through my lungs. A cab pulled to the curb. Its front bumper was missing. The interior smelled of three-month-old Big Macs.
“Is it always this cold?” I asked the driver as I climbed in.
“First time in Omaha, huh?”
“How’d you know?”
He laughed. “You’re a dummmmmmmb kid.”
He grabbed a newspaper off the passenger seat, tossed it back, and it hit me in the face. The headline said tonight would be one of the worst snowstorms to hit Omaha in thirty years.
We curved along a desolate highway. Then the car began to shake. It sounded like semiautomatic guns were shooting from above. The snow had turned to hail, and twenty loud minutes later, we pulled into the driveway of a Motel 6. The lights in the lobby flickered.
After checking in, I headed to the elevator, where two women were leaning against a wall, their clothes barely covering their bodies. They both had three-inch-long nails and hair that was so long it brushed against their exposed waistlines. They stared at me, raising their eyebrows. My body tensed and I rapidly hit the elevator button.
The elevator opened and a smell struck me that was so strong, so vile, it could only have come from someone who hadn’t bathed in weeks. There was a man in there with a pale face and bloodshot eyes. He staggered forward, one hand scratching his neck, the other extending toward me.
I got to my room and locked the deadbolt. It felt just as cold in the room as it did outside. The heater was broken. When I called the front desk to ask which restaurants and grocery stores were open, I was told everything was closed for the storm. I walked to the vending machine down the hall: also broken. I gave up, pouring myself a cup of tap water from the bathroom sink and eating a bag of airplane peanuts for dinner.
As I unpacked the Buffett books from my bag, it dawned on me…How am I going to bump into Buffett during the biggest storm in years? What was I even doing here? I’d thought flying to Omaha would invigorate me, but as I looked around the empty room, it felt like every rejection Buffett had sent me was nailed to the walls. In that moment, I felt more alone than at any other point in my life.
I took out my phone and scrolled through Facebook. There was a picture of my friends Kevin and Andre laughing together, hanging out at a party that night; a photo of my sisters Talia and Briana, smiling, having dinner at my favorite restaurant; an entire album with more than a hundred pictures, uploaded by the girl I’d had a crush on since the first day of college. I scrolled through the photos. She was studying abroad in Australia. Seeing her smiling on the beach, under the warm sun, reminded me of how cold and miserable I was.
The worst part was I did this to myself. I chose this. I could’ve stayed in school. I could’ve been studying abroad and enjoying life. I left all that—for this?
I hurled my phone at the pillows and fell on the bed. The sheets were frigid. I rolled off and lay on the carpet, tucking my knees into my chest. I cradled on the floor, shivering, thinking about every rejection from the past six months.
As the thoughts swirled, I saw a cockroach crawl across the carpet, coming inches from my nose. It grew blurry as it moved toward a crack in the wall, and I felt a tear trickle down my cheek.
Sugar Ray had told me about the Hidden Reservoir, but I was no Sugar Ray. I had no Hidden Reservoir.
I was out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Frog Kissing
I left Omaha days later, empty-handed. For the next week, I didn’t set foot in the storage closet. I didn’t touch a book. I didn’t send a single email. I just sat around, brewing in nothingness.
I was slumped on the couch and surfing through channels on the TV when I got a call from Stefan Weitz, the Inside Man who’d connected me to Qi Lu.
“You’re not going to believe
this,” Stefan said, “but I just got you an interview with Dean Kamen.”
“Dean…who…?”
I continued flipping through the channels.
“Dean Kamen is my hero,” Stefan said. “Do me a favor. Look him up and then give me a call when you’ve finished.”
It wasn’t until a few days later that I finally Googled “Dean Kamen.” A picture popped up of him on a Segway. The caption said he’d invented it. I then read that he also created the Slingshot water purifier, drug infusion pump, insulin pump, surgical irrigation pump, and iBot electric wheelchair. I watched a TED Talk that had more than a million views in which Dean Kamen unveiled the bionic arm he invented. He had been awarded the National Medal of Technology, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and had more than 400 patents to his name.
Then I came across two words that made me sit up in my chair: “frog kissing.” It’s a term Kamen coined to motivate his engineers, spun from the fairy tale of the princess and the frog. Think of a pond full of frogs. Each frog represents a different way to solve your problem. Kamen tells his engineers that if they keep kissing frogs, eventually one will turn into a prince. So even when you’ve kissed dozens of frogs—and all you have as a result is a nasty taste in your mouth—Kamen says to keep kissing them, and eventually, you’ll find the prince.
But what if you’ve kissed all the frogs and there’s still no prince?
Then I thought, Well, if there’s anyone who can tell me whether I should keep trying to get to Buffett, or whether I should call it quits, maybe it’s Dean Kamen.
TWO WEEKS LATER, MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Large paintings of Albert Einstein covered the office. Tall oak shelves were packed with thick books. As I settled into a chair, Kamen sat across from me and sipped a dark cup of tea. He wore a denim shirt tucked into blue jeans. Although it was only three in the afternoon, his face looked like he’d been working for the past twenty hours.
