Episode 43: How to find your 3rd door

I recently learned about the concept of a “3rd door”. The idea is that every path you want to follow has a very obvious way to get there (1st door) and a less obvious way to get there (2nd door), but it is still known. Almost every path has these two. But there is a 3rd.

For example, you want to get into a new sushi restaurant in your city. 1st door: find a reservation on their system online. 2nd door: find someone you know who has a reservation.

But there is always a 3rd option. One that seems impossible but would be very effective were it to happen. In the restaurant example, you make friends with the head chef, and s/he snags you a private Omakase experience with them next weekend.

My personal 3rd door:

In college, I was an average student. I worked ~20-25 hours a week and had a full schedule with average grades. I didn’t have offers and wasn’t sure how to get into the right rooms to differentiate myself.

The advice I was given was to create the room for myself. LinkedIn became my room and my new mantra became one connection a day. I would find one person I wanted to connect with and reach out to make a meaningful connection. Connections turned into coffee chats. Eventually, I was introduced to a CEO in Hong Kong who had great tech skills and wanted to transition from founder-led sales to sales-led. Long story short, after 3 conversations, I secured a job as their first salesperson.

My next role came from a VC I secured as a conference speaker. Through our conversations I mentioned I was looking for my next role and he shared one of his portfolio companies was hiring for SDRs, and I was introduced to the SVP of Sales. That became my 2nd role.

Each role I have gotten came from connections not job postings. Often I was interviewing for roles before they were even posted to the website because I was able to get an introduction directly to the VP or CMO.

My professional 3rd door:

I started my career as an SDR (sales) and decided to pivot into product marketing.

I didn’t have the experience, so I felt like I had no options until my first break. I got experience at the time by taking on extra side projects with the product marketing team. When we run into a competitor that the product marketing team hasn’t covered yet, I do the competitive analysis and get feedback from the team.

It took ~3 months, but I had built an entire portfolio of work blessed by a seasoned product marketing team—more than that, I started to learn where product marketers often struggle: sales. One consistent theme in product marketing discussions is whether sales are adopting their work.

When I started interviewing for product marketing roles, I solely focused on teams that were hiring to revamp their sales enablement. I only knew how to do one thing and that was the one thing teams I talked to needed. I was able to differentiate myself from seasoned product marketers and landed my first offer.

If you’re currently looking for a role, you can keep applying online waiting to hear back or asking friends for referrals. Or, you can find a way to differentiate yourself. Find the unique aspect of your background and turn it into a superpower for yourself.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋 !

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