--- title: "Open the Doors You Found Closed | Robert Nikic" description: "The fifth of Robert Nikic's principles, and the one the others lead to. Short, blunt and meant to be acted on." canonical: "https://robertnikic.com/blog/open-the-doors-you-found-closed" author: "Robert Nikic" advisory_role_profile: "https://reseated.com/robert-nikic" type: "Article" published: "2026-11-14T12:00:00.000Z" updated: "2026-11-14T22:07:12.277000" --- # Open the Doors You Found Closed The fifth of Robert Nikic's principles, and the one the others lead to. Short, blunt and meant to be acted on. **In short:** The fifth of Robert Nikic's principles, and the one the others lead to. Short, blunt and meant to be acted on. This is the last of my five principles. It's the one the other four lead to. If you made it through, hold the door. ### Remember the doors Every one of us who built something found doors closed along the way. The bank that said no. The investor who never called back. The customer who wouldn't take a meeting with an unknown company. The job you didn't get because of where you came from, how you sounded or what was missing on paper. The rule nobody explained until it cost you. Don't forget those. They're the map. ### Open the same ones The most useful doors you can open are the exact ones that were closed to you. If credit was your wall, help a small founder get financed. Introduce them to the lender who said yes to you. Pay your own suppliers on time so they can show a clean record. If you couldn't get hired, hire the person who looks like you did back then. The newcomer. The career changer. The kid with no connections. If nobody explained the rules, explain them. Write it down. Answer the email from the stranger. If you were never in the room, bring someone in with you. ### Do it on purpose Opening doors doesn't happen by accident. It gets crowded out by everything else. So make it a habit. One hour a month for someone who's where you used to be. One introduction a month that you can vouch for. One small supplier given a real chance. One entry-level role built properly. It's small. It adds up. ### Do it without keeping score You won't always get anything back. That's not the point. The people who opened doors for my family never got anything from us. Most of them never knew how much it mattered. They did it anyway. That's the standard. ### Don't hold the door for yourself It's easy to say you're opening doors when you're really building your own network. Be honest about the difference. If the person you're helping can help you more than you can help them, that's fine. It's just not this. ### Hold the door open long enough A door opened once isn't much. A first meeting, a first job, a first order, then nothing. Stay with it a little. Check in after the introduction. Give the new hire a real path, not just a start date. Send the small supplier a second order, and a third. Most people don't fail because they never got the first chance. They fail because the first chance was the only one. ### Push on the big doors too One person at a time matters. But some doors are rules: who gets credit, how hard it is to start a business, what it costs to get paid, whether the internet reaches a town. When those change, millions of doors open at once. That's why I work on SDG 8 and 9. If you're in a position to push on a rule, push. ### What it adds up to A company that opens doors gets loyal people, reliable partners and a reputation money can't buy. An industry that opens doors gets better, because talent comes in from everywhere instead of the same few places. An economy that opens doors grows, because it stops wasting the people it was ignoring. ### The whole job That's the principle. Everything else on my list, building without a safety net, sharing the upside, saying the true thing, giving and earning second chances, is how you get to the point where you can do it. Once you're there, do it. Open the doors you found closed ([robertnikic.com](https://robertnikic.com/)). ### Related reading - [The five principles Robert Nikic builds by](/blog/principles) - [What Robert Nikic means by opening doors](/blog/what-opening-doors-means) - [Second chances, given and earned](/blog/second-chances-given-and-earned) Robert Nikic is an entrepreneur, TEDx speaker and Advisory Council Chair at Reseated Councils (United Nations SDG 8 & 9). He writes about what he has seen build and break companies, and about the rules that decide whether small businesses get a fair shot. Read his writing on [Medium](https://medium.com/@robertnikic), the Open Doors newsletter on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertnikic) and daily posts on [X](https://x.com/robertnikic).