Foot in the door

A door ajar.
(Photo: Dima Pechurin/Unsplash | Text: David/ArtisanEnglish.jp)

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Phrase: Foot in the Door

Success, what is it all about?

Well, if I could tell you that, then I’d probably be writing this post from my private jet 30,000 feet in the air flying somewhere warm for vacation.

As I’m sitting at a computer in a small, tatami-floored home office in the depths of winter in Wakayama, Japan, I can only tell you what I’ve read and what has had limited results for me.

The first step to being successful at anything is you have to get your foot in the door.


That means you begin with a small initial success and then build on that.


If you do that correctly, you have a good chance of being more successful in the future.

So, there you are, go out there and get your foot in the door.

I suggest you be very careful, though.

Many people in the US carry guns.

If you put your foot in the wrong door, they may shoot first and ask questions later.

Instead of a small initial success, you’ll die of lead poisoning.

Joking aside, though (you should never joke when you’re at the wrong end of a gun), every successful person, no matter what industry they are in, had to begin by getting their foot in the door.

You’ve heard the stories of successful journalists who started as mail boys or someone like Jeff Bezos, who got his foot in the door of online retail first by selling books from his garage.

There are thousands of stories like that.

The road to success begins with all doors locked in front of you.

Get your foot in one of those doors, and the world is your oyster.

Is that cheesy?

Does it sound cheesy to you, because it sounds cheesy to me?


This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 81.

The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.