CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Avoidance List
ONE DAY LATER, EDEN, UTAH
Fields of yellow grass and old wooden shacks flicked by the window of my rental car. Elliott lived in a town called Eden: population, six hundred. If I accepted his offer, this would be my new home, an hour north of Salt Lake City off a one-lane road.
I’m not a wooden shack kind of guy…
But I’d be crazy to say no to him. Working with him would change everything…
It was Friday and Elliott wanted an answer by the end of the weekend.
Driving farther, I turned a corner, pulled into a long driveway, and that’s when I saw it—a massive, mansion-sized log cabin. It sat beside a glistening lake, backdropped by thick evergreen trees and a towering mountain range. The front lawn was the size of a football field. This was Elliott’s house.
We’d taken separate flights from New York that morning. I walked into his home and found Elliott in the vast living room.
“This house is unreal,” I said.
Elliott grinned. “Just wait until you see what we build on the mountain.”
He explained this was just a temporary home where he and his dozen employees lived and held Summit events. This weekend, he was hosting a hundred attendees who were housed in smaller cabins a few miles away. Elliott was still in the process of buying Powder Mountain, which was ten miles to the north. On its backside he was building his entrepreneurial utopia.
“Grab some food and make yourself at home,” Elliott said, and before I responded he was already gone, greeting another guest.
I made my way to the kitchen and was overcome by aromas so tantalizing they made me never want to set foot again in my college dining hall. Three private chefs were setting out overflowing trays of scrambled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs, sizzling bacon, stacks of fluffy blueberry pancakes, rows of caramel French toast; giant bowls of chia pudding, berry parfait, and smashed avocado drizzled with olive oil and Himalayan salt; there was a long counter covered in mounds of bagels and breads and frosted homemade cinnamon rolls; a whole other counter had freshly cut fruits and vegetables that were grown on the farm next door. Hello, Eden. I filled my plate to the brim and took a seat next to a man eating alone.
He had long hair and tattoos running up his arms. Within minutes, we were talking as if we’d known each other for years. The man told me stories about surfing in shark-infested waters and we spoke for the rest of the hour. We exchanged info and agreed to meet again in LA. I later found out he was the lead singer of Incubus, the multiplatinum rock band.
Another person joined our table, a former host of MTV’s TRL. Then another pulled up a seat, one of Barack Obama’s economic advisers. This was me just trying to eat some breakfast.
I spotted Elliott looking down at us from a railing on the cabin’s second floor. He pointed at me and yelled, “There’s my favorite college dropout!”
I cringed—my grandma’s voice echoed in my head. Jooneh man.
My mood later bounced back when I stepped outside and spotted a chalkboard listing the day’s activities. There was yoga, hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, volleyball, Ultimate Frisbee, meditation, ATVing, and skydiving. I could attend a survival course with a wilderness expert or a writing workshop with a National Poetry Slam champion. I dashed over to the volleyball game and one of the players on my team was the neuroscientist whose TED Talk I’d watched in biology class a year earlier. Then I hopped on a trampoline and the woman who joined me was Miss USA 2009. I went over to the meditation circle and sitting to my left was a former NFL player, to my right a Native American shaman. I kept running around all afternoon feeling like Harry Potter on his first day at Hogwarts.
Whenever Elliott saw I wasn’t talking to someone, he’d put his arm around me and introduce me to someone else. I was in a pinball machine of inspiration, bouncing off the bumpers, scoring a thousand points a minute.
Everything about this place just seemed to be more. The people’s energy was more vibrant, their laughs more contagious, their careers more interesting, their stories more exhilarating. Even the sky seemed bluer here. When I’d been lying on my dorm room bed, I felt I was suffocating. Here, I could breathe.
As the sun slowly set, we went inside for dinner where the living room had been transformed into a five-star dining room. This wasn’t typical luxury—it was more like if the Ritz-Carlton was run by Paul Bunyan. Sparkling wineglasses were placed beside rustic mason jars. Hundreds of shimmering candles lined long picnic tables. Above my head hung a magnificent chandelier that lit up the moose head and black bear hide on the wall. I took a seat across from a woman who seemed to jump between three conversations at once. Her enthusiasm was so electric I didn’t realize I was staring.
“Hey, you,” she said. “Miki Agrawal.”
She gave me a fist pound and then pointed to the men seated beside us. “This is my boy Jesse, this is my boy Ben, and this is my boyfriend Andrew.” I introduced myself and Miki sped on.
“Alex, want to hear something crazy? I met Jesse playing pickup soccer in Central Park ten years ago. He was selling textbooks over the phone at the time, twenty-five cents a pop. I said he’s smarter than that and yelled at him to get his shit together. We hung out for a bit, but I literally haven’t seen Jesse since. Today I found out…he’s now an executive at Nike.”
Miki gleamed as if she’d done it herself.
“Ben, you have to tell Alex your story!” In the time it took Ben to put down his wineglass, Miki was already saying it herself. “It’s crazy—Ben and his boys were in college, felt like they were in a slump, so they made a list of a hundred things they want to do before they die. They bought a van, traveled the country, and crossed things off the list—and every time they did, they also helped a stranger reach one of their dreams too. Ben, come on! Tell Alex some of the things you did!”
Ben told stories about playing basketball with President Obama, streaking at a professional soccer game, helping deliver a baby, and going to Las Vegas and betting $250,000 on black. These adventures went on for years and became the MTV reality show The Buried Life, which then led to a bestselling book. The more Ben went on about how fulfilling it was to chase his dreams, the more I thought about how Elliott was asking me to give up my own.
“I was pretty much the opposite of Ben out of college,” Miki said. “I worked on Wall Street and hated it.”
“What changed?” I asked.
“September eleventh,” she said.
Miki had a breakfast meeting scheduled at the World Trade Center courtyard at the time the North Tower was hit. “In my entire life,” she said, “that was the only morning I slept through my alarm and missed a meeting.”
Among the thousands who were tragically killed that day were two of Miki’s coworkers.
“It hit me that you never know when your life will be over,” she said. “And I felt I would be an idiot to waste my days living out someone else’s life rather than living my own.”
I felt like my body was the rope of a tug-of-war. Elliott’s offer was yanking on one side, Miki and Ben the other.
Miki said that after that realization she quit her job and chased every interest she had. She worked her way onto a professional soccer team, wrote a movie script, and then opened an organic, gluten-free pizzeria in New York’s West Village. She was now starting a women’s underwear line called THINX and writing a book called Do Cool Shit.
“Alex! Your turn!” Miki said. “Story! Go, go, go!”
As I told them the Price Is Right story, they laughed and cheered and threw me high fives. Miki asked what I had to do next for the mission and I said I was searching for a literary agent, so I could land a book deal and get to Bill Gates.
“So far,” I said, “every agent I’ve reached out to has said no.”
“Dude, I’ll introduce you to my agent,” Ben said.
“Talk to mine too!” Miki said. “She’ll love you!”
“Are you kidding? That would be amaz—”
The ding of a fork against a glass cut through the air.
Elliott was at the front of the room, making a toast.
“Here at Summit,” he said, “we have a little tradition. We like to take a moment during dinner to give thanks—for our chefs, for the food, and most of all, for each and every one of you. Welcome to Eden!”
We clinked glasses and the room erupted in cheers. Elliott continued and said he wanted to thank one person in particular at dinner: Tim Ferriss.
Elliott pointed his glass toward Ferriss, who I realized was sitting a few tables behind me, and said that Tim was the first person to teach him that he didn’t have to sit behind a desk all day to succeed. He could work while traveling, adventuring, and expanding his mind. “Tim,” Elliott said, “showed me how to reimagine my life.”
A hundred pairs of eyes turned to Ferriss, bathing him in a collective spotlight.
“To Tim!” Elliott shouted.
“To Tim!” we roared back.
“And just as Tim mentored me and holds a special place in my heart,” Elliott continued, “there is someone else here who is beginning to hold a similar spot. Just as I’d cold-emailed Tim when I was starting out, this someone cold-emailed me.”
I began to feel heat rising in my face. Elliott told the Price Is Right story better than I ever could. Then he pointed his glass at me.
“That’s the kind of creativity we embrace here at Summit. That’s the kind of energy we empower here. That’s why I’ve taken Alex Banayan under my wing, and that’s why I’m proud to welcome him as the newest member of our community. To Alex!”
If on Friday I felt like a pinball, on Saturday I was a magnet.
“Are you the kid Elliott was talking about last night?”
“Are you the one who hacked The Price Is Right?”
“How long have you known Elliott?”
“Are you two related?”
“What’s the project you’re working on?”
“What can I do to help?”
Elliott not only brought me into a new world, he kicked down the doors.
This is what I’ve always wanted, I thought. If I work with Elliott, I’ll never have to leave. All these people are coming to me, gushing to help with the mission…
But if I accept his offer, there will be no mission…
On Sunday morning, I sat alone at the breakfast table, too conflicted to eat. Elliott’s words from New York replayed in my mind. If you don’t take this, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.
The more I reflected on his offer, the more I felt the threat underneath it. Something about his tone and the sharp look he had in his eyes told me: “If you say no, we’re over.”
No more Eden. No more mentor.
In a few hours, I had to leave to catch my flight home. And I still didn’t know what I would tell him.
“Rough morning?” An attendee pulled up a chair beside me, cradling a cup of coffee.
“Uh, sort of,” I said.
The man was tall and had a gentle face. For reasons that will become clear later, I’ll use a pseudonym for him and call him Dan Babcock.
I must’ve been desperate to get the thoughts off my chest, because I soon found myself confiding in Dan about my internal tug-of-war.
“What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t think anyone can tell you what you should do,” Dan said. “It’s a hard decision. The only person who knows the right answer is you. But maybe I can share something that might help.”
Dan reached for his notebook, ripped out two sheets of paper, and handed them to me.
“I worked for Warren Buffett for seven years,” he said, “and out of everything he’s taught me, this was his greatest piece of advice.”
I pulled a pen out of my pocket.
“On the first sheet of paper,” Dan said, “write a list of twenty-five things you want to accomplish in the next twelve months.”
I wrote things related to my family, health, working with Elliott, working on the mission, places I wanted to travel, and books I wanted to read.
“If you could only do five of those things in the next three months,” Dan said, “which would you choose?”
I circled them. Dan told me to copy those five things onto the second sheet of paper, and then cross them off the first.
“You now have two lists,” he said. “On top of the list of five, write: ‘The Priority List.’ ”
I scribbled it across.
“All right,” he said. “Now over the list of twenty, write: ‘The Avoidance List.’ ”
“Huh?”
“That’s Mr. Buffett’s secret,” Dan said. “The key to accomplishing your top five priorities is to avoid the other twenty.”
I looked at my list of five. Then at my list of twenty.
“I see your point,” I said. “But there are things on that Avoidance List that I really want to do.”
“You have a choice,” Dan said. “You can be good at those twenty-five things or you can be world-class at the five. Most people have so many things they want to do that they never do a single thing well. If I’ve learned one thing from Mr. Buffett, it’s that the Avoidance List is the secret to being world-class.
“Success,” he added, “is a result of prioritizing your desires.”
Each shirt I packed in my duffel bag reminded me of a day in Barcelona; every pair of pants, a night in New York. I got in my rental car, headed back to Elliott’s cabin, and found him by the front door, chatting with one of his guests. Elliott finished his conversation and came over.
“Enjoy the weekend?” he asked.
“It was incredible,” I said. “I can’t thank you enough. And…and I think I have my answer.”
A wide smile spread across his face.
“I love Summit,” I said. “And I’ve never had a mentor like you in my entire life. But at the same time, I don’t think I can live with myself doing two things half-assed. I need to do one thing right. And it has to be the mission.”
Elliott’s jaw clenched. He slowly lowered his head, as if trying to suppress his anger.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” he said.
But then he stopped himself before saying anything else. He took a heavy breath and let his shoulders deflate.
“If that’s what you have to do,” he said, “then that’s your decision—and I respect you even more for making it.”
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“And just know,” he added, “you always have a home here. I love you, man.”