00:00:00
this is Elon Musk in case you're not
00:00:02
familiar with him here's a quick
00:00:03
refresher at age 24 he started his first
00:00:05
company zip2 and sold it a few years
00:00:07
later for 307 million dollars at age 28
00:00:10
he started PayPal which was then
00:00:12
acquired for 1.5 billion dollars two
00:00:14
years later since then he started SpaceX
00:00:16
with the goal of sending humans to Mars
00:00:18
near a link to integrate the human brain
00:00:20
with artificial intelligence Tesla to
00:00:22
accelerate clean energy to the world and
00:00:24
he most recently bought Twitter for 44
00:00:26
billion dollars I've always wondered how
00:00:28
someone else with the same 24 hours in a
00:00:30
day is seemingly able to accomplish so
00:00:32
much and have such a big impact he
00:00:34
hasn't personally talked too much about
00:00:35
his routine or his approach to work but
00:00:38
recently like literally less than a week
00:00:40
ago his biography was just published
00:00:42
this is a never before seen inside look
00:00:44
to elon's life mind and philosophy the
00:00:47
author personally followed Elon Musk
00:00:49
around for two years and he had complete
00:00:50
transparency into his life which
00:00:51
included interviews with his friends
00:00:53
families ex-girlfriends disgruntled
00:00:56
employees so naturally I've been curious
00:00:58
and I bought this book to study what we
00:00:59
can learn from him and what I found
00:01:01
really surprised me so here are the
00:01:03
eight key takeaways behind why Elon Musk
00:01:04
is so successful and how you can
00:01:06
implement the same strategies into your
00:01:07
life today principle one think in first
00:01:10
principles through most of our life we
00:01:13
get through life by reasoning by analogy
00:01:14
which essentially means copying what
00:01:16
other people do with slight very the
00:01:19
reason why Elon Musk is able to disrupt
00:01:20
so many different Industries is because
00:01:22
He follows a form of thinking called
00:01:23
first principles thinking it was
00:01:25
originally adapted from the philosopher
00:01:27
Aristotle but the idea is basically that
00:01:29
rather than trying to figure things out
00:01:31
based on assumptions that you think are
00:01:32
true you start from the most basic
00:01:34
elements and then you build your way up
00:01:36
so let me give you an example think
00:01:37
about the difference between a cook and
00:01:39
a professional chef a professional chef
00:01:41
is able to create brand new Innovative
00:01:42
dishes because he has a deep
00:01:43
understanding of how raw ingredients
00:01:45
work with each other but for a cook he
00:01:48
simply follows a given recipe and
00:01:50
although he might make some variations
00:01:52
here or there with different ingredients
00:01:54
he's still working off of an existing
00:01:55
recipe and just making minor changes on
00:01:58
top of that it's like the difference
00:01:59
between inventing the concept of a pizza
00:02:02
and making a different flavor of a pizza
00:02:04
this is the difference between Elon and
00:02:06
everyone else whenever he had an idea
00:02:08
for something whether it was something
00:02:09
that nobody had thought of before or
00:02:10
just a slight Improvement on something
00:02:12
that already existed he always Started
00:02:14
From First principles when he started
00:02:15
neuralink and he wanted to create a
00:02:16
brain interface for humans and
00:02:19
artificial intelligence a lot of people
00:02:21
told him that it was too expensive and
00:02:22
practical and we just didn't have the
00:02:24
technology but in response to this he
00:02:26
pretty much just said if it wasn't
00:02:27
against the laws of physics it could be
00:02:29
done and it was his duty to try and do
00:02:31
it the core first principles thinking is
00:02:33
just to question everything and try to
00:02:34
figure out the most basic truths before
00:02:37
making any assumptions oftentimes
00:02:39
challenging conventional wisdom is how
00:02:40
you will stand out and succeed in any
00:02:42
Endeavor whether that's in school at the
00:02:44
workplace or even in your own projects
00:02:46
principle two take massive risk in the
00:02:49
book The biographer interviews one of
00:02:51
Elon musk's first girlfriend in college
00:02:52
and she said Elon always assumed that he
00:02:54
would either be wealthy or broke but
00:02:56
nothing in between which says a lot
00:02:58
about his philosophy behind his projects
00:03:00
high risk High reward there was another
00:03:02
colleague of Elon Peter deal who is a
00:03:04
billionaire investor and he said that
00:03:06
Elon wants risk for his own sake he
00:03:08
seems to enjoy it indeed at times be
00:03:11
addicted to it there are so many times
00:03:12
in Elon musl life that he could have
00:03:14
just walked away from everything and
00:03:15
rode off into the sunset before he
00:03:17
turned 30 he had already saw always
00:03:18
company for 300 million dollars and he
00:03:21
even bought a one million dollar car in
00:03:24
cash but almost like somebody who's
00:03:25
addicted to winning at a casino he just
00:03:27
didn't want to give up and he wanted to
00:03:29
put all his chips back to the table
00:03:30
which is why he was able to continually
00:03:33
succeed this was especially evident when
00:03:35
he was in the early days of Tesla even
00:03:37
though the company was running out of
00:03:38
money he didn't want to stop hiring and
00:03:40
stop growing so he continually just
00:03:42
raised money from investors at one point
00:03:44
there were so many supply chain problems
00:03:46
that the estimated cost of the car that
00:03:48
they were producing was more than what
00:03:51
they had already charged people for and
00:03:52
so his company was literally on the
00:03:54
brink of bankruptcy during this time he
00:03:56
was also running SpaceX where he crashed
00:03:58
three rockets in a row and on top of
00:04:00
that he had personally ran out of money
00:04:01
his team was actually concerned for him
00:04:02
because they thought that everything
00:04:03
might fall apart but he told them there
00:04:06
should be absolutely zero question that
00:04:08
SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit I
00:04:11
will never give up and I mean never and
00:04:13
it just meant that he was ready to go
00:04:15
broke completely and just start from
00:04:16
scratch all over again it got so so bad
00:04:18
that he had to plead his family and
00:04:19
friends to give him money just so he
00:04:21
could pay the Tesla employees he asked
00:04:23
his brother to sell all of his
00:04:24
Investments and put into Tesla which he
00:04:25
did at one point his girlfriend's
00:04:27
parents almost even remortgaged their
00:04:29
home just so they could pull more cash
00:04:30
and put into Tesla it was that close to
00:04:32
bankruptcy and he was still 100 all in
00:04:35
and that's really the mentality that has
00:04:36
gotten so far because if you're not 100
00:04:38
all in then how can you expect to ever
00:04:41
achieve your goals the book also
00:04:43
mentioned this but it was clear that he
00:04:44
saw risk as some type of fuel to keep
00:04:47
him going and the high reward is almost
00:04:49
like a side effect of just taking on so
00:04:51
much risk so what I learned is that risk
00:04:54
pushes you in ways that safety cannot
00:04:56
and risk basically just means that
00:04:58
whatever he set out to accomplish there
00:04:59
should be some consequences if you don't
00:05:01
succeed and that is what will push you
00:05:03
principle three be a gamer the book
00:05:05
highlights a specific time that he was
00:05:07
addicted to the game Elder ring which
00:05:09
apparently takes hundreds of hours to
00:05:10
finish but he stayed up all night
00:05:12
playing the game and at the end of it at
00:05:15
7 00 am he sent out a tweet saying I
00:05:17
made an offer which was his offered to
00:05:19
buy Twitter outright for 44 billion
00:05:22
dollars his lifelong addiction to video
00:05:24
games is one of the key reasons why he's
00:05:25
so successful there are specific aspects
00:05:27
of a gamer mindset that also brings
00:05:29
about success in business Innovation and
00:05:32
his relationship to games growing up and
00:05:35
even right now in adulthood is something
00:05:37
that is continually referenced and
00:05:38
brought up throughout the book and I
00:05:40
think one of the key things is that in
00:05:41
video games you always have a mission
00:05:43
you always have a goal or checkpoint
00:05:44
that you're moving towards and once you
00:05:46
get there you just have another one and
00:05:47
you can really see that he has a mission
00:05:48
in his life that is so clear that drives
00:05:51
him and pushes him to continue to work
00:05:52
without burning out it's almost like
00:05:54
he's addicted to work and similar to how
00:05:57
you'll see some Gamers play for 15 hours
00:05:59
and even lose sleep just so they can
00:06:01
keep playing he pretty much has the same
00:06:02
mentality when it comes to work and
00:06:04
achieving his goals and he also operates
00:06:06
his companies and innovation in a
00:06:08
similar way as a gamer would in games
00:06:10
you often try the same thing over and
00:06:11
over tweaking just one little thing to
00:06:14
try to get to the next level or get a
00:06:15
higher score and he's pretty much done
00:06:16
the same thing with building Rockets at
00:06:18
SpaceX rockets and engines were
00:06:20
prototyped as fast as possible and they
00:06:22
were tested blown up improved and built
00:06:24
again until they worked and at the time
00:06:27
this was completely unlike any other
00:06:28
rocket company that had existed and
00:06:30
because of that they were able to
00:06:31
innovate faster than any other rocket
00:06:32
company there's one specific game that
00:06:34
the book references multiple times and
00:06:36
it's called polytopio the book mentions
00:06:38
this game over 20 times by my account it
00:06:40
talks about how there were times where
00:06:41
he was so addicted to this game that he
00:06:43
would delay meetings with his managers
00:06:44
when he showed this game to his brother
00:06:46
he said that this game teaches you how
00:06:48
to be a better CEO and he called it
00:06:50
politopia life lessons I haven't played
00:06:52
it before but I believe it's
00:06:54
civilization type of game where you try
00:06:56
to dominate as much land as possible and
00:06:57
try to get control but in these games
00:06:59
you typically don't hoard resources you
00:07:02
use the resources you've gained to build
00:07:04
more things and dominate more players
00:07:05
which you can see is pretty much what
00:07:07
he's done with his companies yeah I
00:07:08
think I'll try playing the game out
00:07:09
principle 4 maintain a maniacal sense of
00:07:12
urgency we are not shooting for the moon
00:07:14
we are shooting for Mars a maniacal
00:07:17
sense of urgency is our operating
00:07:18
principle he would often set deadlines
00:07:20
for his Engineers that were pretty much
00:07:22
impossible or even ridiculous most of
00:07:25
the time they wouldn't even be able to
00:07:26
hit the deadline but the benefit is that
00:07:27
it pushed them harder than they would
00:07:29
have been if they didn't have such an
00:07:31
urgent deadline he does this thing
00:07:33
sometimes where he'll hold a press
00:07:34
conference and announce what the
00:07:35
engineers are working on and sometimes
00:07:37
they even announce dates of when things
00:07:39
will be available before they're even
00:07:40
closer ready and this pretty much just
00:07:43
creates this insane sense of urgency
00:07:44
where everyone's working as hard as
00:07:46
possible to meet this deadline this
00:07:47
maniacal sense of urgency is what has
00:07:49
pushed this company to innovate at such
00:07:51
a high pace and this is something that
00:07:52
you can even incorporate into your own
00:07:53
life like any goal that you have you can
00:07:55
think about when is the deadline that
00:07:57
you want to set for this and why can't
00:07:58
you achieve it 10 times faster like what
00:08:00
is the bottleneck that is stopping you
00:08:01
from achieving this at a faster date for
00:08:03
Elon it seems like whenever his
00:08:05
companies are even going at a good Pace
00:08:07
that's actually a red alert for him
00:08:09
there's a story in the book about how
00:08:10
one night he was in the SpaceX Factory
00:08:12
and there wasn't really anything going
00:08:14
on they didn't have any urgent deadlines
00:08:15
or anything coming up and it was
00:08:17
literally 10 p.m on a Friday night but
00:08:19
almost in a panic mode he started almost
00:08:21
yelling at this engineer and he called a
00:08:23
emergency meeting of 100 Engineers where
00:08:25
people had to fly in and work for 24
00:08:27
hours just so they could finish this
00:08:28
next thing and he didn't have to do that
00:08:30
he could have waited until Monday
00:08:31
morning but his approach is that if it
00:08:33
could have been done that night then it
00:08:35
should have and by pushing everyone to
00:08:37
do it as fast as they can it pushes the
00:08:39
company forward for growth principle 5
00:08:40
activate demon mode
00:08:44
apparently Elon has a model in Latin
00:08:46
radatan feroceter which means
00:08:48
step-by-step ferociously it's really his
00:08:50
natural instinct to continually push
00:08:52
people towards insane deadlines
00:08:54
regardless of risk and to ferociously
00:08:56
tackle their goals the book has several
00:08:57
mentions to a particular state that Elon
00:08:59
enters Whenever there are hard times and
00:09:01
he literally calls it demon mode here's
00:09:03
a quote from the author himself Cloud
00:09:05
comes over and he gets into a trance and
00:09:08
he can just be tough coldly brutal to
00:09:11
people to me demon mode almost feels
00:09:13
like a video game setting that he
00:09:14
switches on when he needs a crazy level
00:09:16
of focus and dedication it's not
00:09:17
something that he has all the time but
00:09:19
only during specific periods where he
00:09:21
has to focus and cut out all
00:09:23
distractions what this looked like was
00:09:24
almost like a psychopathic approach to
00:09:26
work he'd basically worked as hard as
00:09:27
possible to the point of burning out and
00:09:29
then just continue working beyond that
00:09:30
and during these periods he would make
00:09:32
decisions with zero emotional judgment
00:09:34
just pure rational thought on what is
00:09:35
the right thing to do after he bought
00:09:37
Twitter it became clear to him that the
00:09:39
best thing for Twitter was to let go 75
00:09:41
of the staff because the company was too
00:09:42
bloated and he really had to enter demon
00:09:44
mode to fire this many people the book
00:09:46
details the entire Twitter takeover
00:09:48
which is super interesting but the whole
00:09:50
process was just so brutal and ruthless
00:09:52
he was just constantly pushing to make
00:09:53
Twitter better leaner faster and this
00:09:56
demon-like approach for sure bleeds
00:09:58
around to everyone around him he made it
00:09:59
a point during Twitter's takeover to
00:10:00
occupy one of the conference rooms and
00:10:02
just sleep there and he didn't have to
00:10:04
do that he could have slept in a hotel
00:10:05
he could have slept at home and because
00:10:06
he did that he showed his employees that
00:10:07
he was incredibly committed and was
00:10:08
willing to do whatever it takes to make
00:10:10
Twitter as good as possible while I was
00:10:12
unfortunate for people that lost their
00:10:13
jobs it was clear that this was the
00:10:15
right thing to do to push Twitter to be
00:10:16
the best version that it could be you
00:10:18
can also follow me on Twitter at Ray
00:10:19
suing although the book paints Dima mode
00:10:22
to be almost problematic for people
00:10:24
around him I do think that there is
00:10:25
something there that we can take away
00:10:26
and Implement maybe it's just a phase
00:10:28
where you cut out social media you work
00:10:29
out every single day to get super fit or
00:10:31
even just reading for two hours a day
00:10:33
for a month I've definitely done
00:10:34
challenges and experience like that in
00:10:36
the past and I think it's definitely
00:10:38
been a net positive in terms of growth
00:10:40
and building discipline his girlfriend
00:10:41
Grimes said you don't want to be around
00:10:43
Elon Musk during demo mode it's
00:10:45
frightening but demon mode is what gets
00:10:47
done principle six read a lot when he
00:10:50
was a kid he found it hard to make
00:10:51
friends and talk to people so almost
00:10:54
like a coping mechanism he just spent
00:10:55
most of the time reading books which
00:10:57
isn't that surprising but I would have
00:10:58
thought that he spent most of his time
00:10:59
reading technical books like engineering
00:11:01
or business related books but they were
00:11:03
actually mostly science fiction books
00:11:05
this habit continued as he got older by
00:11:08
the time he was in college he was
00:11:09
reading academic papers about batteries
00:11:11
that was actually what inspired him to
00:11:13
later create a electric car company
00:11:15
there was one conversation where they
00:11:17
had failed doing something and somebody
00:11:18
told them that you can learn a lot from
00:11:20
failure and he responded by saying he
00:11:22
preferred to learn from success which is
00:11:24
something that reading books gives you
00:11:25
reading biographies like even this one
00:11:28
gives you the perspective of how someone
00:11:29
reached the level that they did and it
00:11:31
feels as though somebody is directly
00:11:32
teaching you their greatest lessons from
00:11:34
their greatest successes but the biggest
00:11:36
benefit reading isn't just the actual
00:11:38
knowledge that you gain from the books
00:11:39
it's also the perspective and
00:11:40
inspiration that it can give you
00:11:41
tangentially there's one book that Elon
00:11:43
read when he was a child that dream
00:11:44
repeatedly comes up in this biography
00:11:46
and it's called The Hitchhiker's Guide
00:11:47
to the Galaxy it's a science fiction
00:11:49
novel where humans are a multi-planetary
00:11:51
species and it seems as though many of
00:11:53
the Innovations and ideas that Elon has
00:11:55
for his companies actually came from
00:11:57
this series of books so you never know
00:12:00
how a book you read today can have
00:12:01
tremendous impact on your life or
00:12:03
perspective multiple years down the line
00:12:04
principle seven surround yourself with
00:12:07
only these type of people one of the
00:12:08
biggest factors of where you will end up
00:12:10
is who you spend your time with and
00:12:12
there are basically two types of people
00:12:13
that Elon surrounds himself with the
00:12:15
first are extremely ambitious and
00:12:17
intelligent peers and employees these
00:12:19
are basically people at his level or
00:12:20
below one example from his life that
00:12:22
illustrates the power of this is called
00:12:24
the PayPal Mafia if you've never heard
00:12:26
of the PayPal Mafia it basically refers
00:12:28
to all the early employees and founders
00:12:30
of PayPal which Elon was a part of and
00:12:32
they're called the PayPal Mafia because
00:12:33
almost every single one of them went on
00:12:35
to found billion dollar companies which
00:12:37
included the future founders of YouTube
00:12:39
Yelp LinkedIn which really just shows
00:12:42
the power of surrounding yourself with
00:12:43
people who are just as willing to take
00:12:46
action and are ambitious to achieve big
00:12:47
goals as you are and with his employees
00:12:49
too he commands this level of Excellence
00:12:51
at SpaceX he personally interviewed
00:12:53
almost every single engineer and when he
00:12:55
took over Twitter he asked all the
00:12:57
engineers to submit their best piece of
00:12:58
code and he used that to make a decision
00:13:00
of who to lay off it's really a hardcore
00:13:02
mentality to only keeping the best
00:13:04
people in his life the second type of
00:13:06
people that he surrounds himself with
00:13:07
are mentors even at elon's level he has
00:13:09
personal mentors that he goes to for
00:13:11
advice one of his mentors is Larry
00:13:12
Ellison the founder of Oracle and he
00:13:15
went to him when he was thinking about
00:13:16
buying Twitter and also during many dark
00:13:18
periods of Tesla the benefit of mentors
00:13:19
is that they have probably been in your
00:13:21
shoes before and unlike watching a video
00:13:24
or reading a book they can give you
00:13:26
extremely personalized advice of what
00:13:28
you should do in this situation you
00:13:29
might think that it's hard to find a
00:13:31
mentor or you don't know how to find one
00:13:33
but there's a story in the book of how
00:13:35
Elon was able to find a mentor when he
00:13:36
didn't have any connections and didn't
00:13:38
know anybody when Elon and his brother
00:13:40
first moved to Canada they developed a
00:13:42
routine where they would read the
00:13:43
newspaper every year week and reach out
00:13:46
to the person that they thought was the
00:13:47
most interesting or most successful they
00:13:50
would pretty much just cold call these
00:13:51
successful entrepreneurs and try to have
00:13:53
lunch with them which actually led to
00:13:54
many different opportunities and
00:13:55
connections one of his mentors that he
00:13:57
met when he was doing this actually gave
00:13:58
him the idea that sparked the idea for
00:14:00
PayPal which she later on then built and
00:14:02
sold for 1.5 billion dollars principle
00:14:05
eight be overly optimistic Elon often
00:14:09
gets a lot of flack for his overly
00:14:10
optimistic timeline like for example he
00:14:12
has said multiple times on stage for
00:14:13
many years that full self-driving is
00:14:15
just around the corner and should be
00:14:17
available by the end of the year but he
00:14:18
always just ends up delaying it by
00:14:19
another year one time an audience member
00:14:21
actually went up to the microphone and
00:14:22
challenged him saying that his previous
00:14:24
promises had not come true and musk
00:14:26
replied to him yeah I'm sometimes a
00:14:28
little too optimistic but would I be
00:14:30
doing this if I wasn't optimistic and I
00:14:32
realized that this over optimism is
00:14:33
actually another driver of his success
00:14:34
although he's known to over promise and
00:14:37
be overly optimistic about his timelines
00:14:38
you kind of have to be overly optimistic
00:14:40
in order to make anything happen you are
00:14:42
more likely to reach a goal if you're
00:14:43
overly optimistic then you pessimistic
00:14:45
that simple belief that you can achieve
00:14:46
a certain goal by a certain date will
00:14:48
drive you more than if you didn't
00:14:49
believe that it was possible at the
00:14:50
beginning if you enjoyed this video then
00:14:52
you probably want to check out this
00:14:53
other video where I broke down another
00:14:54
100 million dollar CEO's routine and
00:14:57
philosophy I'll see you over there peace
00:15:03
foreign
