A (1:51)

Yeah, I think everyone looks and just assumes tactics, raw tactics. But if there's something bigger driving that Teal says about Elon, he seems to know something about risk that the rest of us do not. What do you think that thing is?

B (2:06)

Yeah, I mean, I think Elon is risk on, like, he takes risks that he shouldn't take. He's inherently biased towards risk. But the number of times that that pays off, I think reveals and puts in Teal's context, like Thiel is a risk manager and Elon is a risk taker. And when you combine that with purpose, the fact that Elon is on these missions, he's trying to accomplish something and he almost doesn't care how much risk it takes. He'll just keep taking chances and keep taking chances until he breaks through. And he's got this amazing quote, failure is irrelevant unless it's catastrophic. And I think that's a really good way to sort of explain that attitude towards risk of like, I just don't care how low my chances are, I don't care how long the odds are. I'm just going to keep going until I die. Because this is important enough to keep working on.

A (2:54)

And that explains why the purpose piece is crucial, because that's what would keep you pushing through.

B (2:59)

Yes. There's so many times that he has done things that seem insane from like a financial motivation point of view or I'm trying to build a business or. And it's because he's driven by these massive purposes and he has this risk tolerance. And the combination of those things, I think, is what pushes him. These two opportunities, Tesla and SpaceX being the biggest, were on nobody's radar. He looked absurd when he undertook them and he put hundreds of millions of dollars on the line to achieve these things because he was purpose driven, even though the odds were long and the risk was high.

A (3:32)

Is he that singular of an individual? Obviously SpaceX. Impressive. Tesla, impressive. Doge. Kind of cool being on stage. Trump campaign Twitter X Rah rah. You know, how. Just how impressive is he or how singular is he as an individual?

B (3:50)

I think he's pretty singular. Like, do you not?

A (3:52)

Yeah, I do. But a lot of people that are detractors have found a way to say, actually it's more to do with leverage and ridiculous risk tolerance and just sort of blowing through the boundaries that other people wouldn't. It's to do with lack of scruples and being able to push through ethics that other people might find squirrely. Where do you see the big competitive advantages for him coming from?

B (4:21)

I think he's the greatest living entrepreneur hard stop and maybe the greatest of all time. The fact that he did Tesla and SpaceX, which are both would both be singular accomplishments and put him like top 10, if not Mount Rushmore. The fact that he did them both at the same time is unbelievable. It's after PayPal and after Zip2 as a young guy and then just like sort of on the side. Xai boring company. Neuralink like Doge, if you want to include that as like a project, absolutely singular. I mean, and lots of game left right. Like he's only 55, not quite like he might have 20 more years. Like, where does this go in 20 more years? It's unbelievable. I mean, the combination of traits that I think he has and this is not to like. I know that I will be accused through this book and this episode and everything of like lionizing and overlooking the bad traits that you listed. And there are plenty. Like, there's dark sides to every advantage. But he's got like the intensity of David Goggins. Like just raw.

A (5:31)

If not the physique.

B (5:32)

Yeah, not quite the physique or the skin tone. There are many differences between Elon Musk and David Goggins. He's got the intensity of David Goggins, the sort of unconventional but natural physical brilliance of Richard Feynman and then the I like Napoleon for strategic brilliance and bias to action and just will to win. And when you combine those things, absolutely singular. It would be like if Zuckerberg had also started Google. Like, I feel like that's kind of the order of magnitude thing and like started Google and Facebook in parallel. I mean, SpaceX, I think when it goes public, this will be more obvious to people. But he'll. He will have almost founded, but certainly funded, led and driven two of the top 10 companies in the world, if not two of the most important companies in the world in parallel at the same time while doing a bunch of other shit and having 14 kids.

A (6:24)

How singular?

B (6:25)

What is.

A (6:26)

Okay, that's. That is. That is pretty singular. After a few million words of looking through his life, what it is that he's said and done, what are the component parts of his success, what are the biggest drivers for how he's been so productive?

B (6:40)

I think there's a few. And I think the thing that people miss is the combination of those factors. So I think people talk a lot about and it's correct to talk about the bias towards or the intense urgency towards the limiting factor. Right. He's always looking for the bottleneck and attacking the bottleneck. He works with maniacal urgency. Those are the words he and instills in people all around him. There is also this ability to sort of think from first principles has become this keyword that he talks about and that he has a bunch of great examples for. But when you combine all of those things, it's not a 10% or a 50% improvement. It is like a two order of magnitude improvement. If you are working on the right thing with the right vision at the right time, immediately, all the time, you're not twice as productive, you're 1,000 times more productive. And then you do that for 30 years, 40 years. And the way that sort of head start accrues and compounds and the way the leverage builds on itself and the way the allies show up and the way the capital piles in behind you and the way that wins turn into additional wins. And then he has this sort of mystique now that people rightly criticize as a mystique. Like it feels unreal and it feels like people don't critique it, but he hasn't lost and that becomes self perpetuating.

A (8:02)

That was when he put the Tesla bonus structure in place for himself. The trillion dollar compensation package. That there's a lot of criticism that was thrown around like, this is ridiculous. What an insane amount of money. No one person is supposed to do that. But, but his pushback was, well, look at what I need to do in order to be able to achieve that. Can you just explain why that was so ridiculous and what it constituted?

B (8:30)

Yeah, I mean, this is the second time he's done it actually. So he had an insane all or nothing like, I will make $0 unless I 10x Tesla. I don't remember the exact number, but he had some number of years to turn Tesla into a massive, unprecedented success. And everybody said it was absurd. The shareholders were all kind of like, all right, we'll vote for it. What do we have to lose? Like if he doesn't do it, we don't pay him and he achieved this impossible bar and then these. And then the whole Delaware court thing happened where people were like suing him because trying to retract that money. And it's a whole, that's a whole mess that like I'm not qualified to tell the story of in great detail. But it worked. And he did the impossible. And he has been doing the impossible over and over again. And so when he comes and says, I think I can take Tesla from a $1 trillion company to a $10 trillion company and you don't have to pay me anything unless I do. But if I do maybe throw me a trillion dollars, who is that hurting? It's helping all the shareholders who own it. They agreed to it. It's supposed to be impossible, right? It's all upside. But he's made all these impossible leaps before, not always right. But the way he says, he's like, I've lost many battles, but I've never lost a war. He's never lost a company. He's never missed a huge target. He misses deadlines all the time, but

A (9:49)

almost by design because he's pushing the limit so quickly.

B (9:53)

Yeah, he just articulated this really well, of course, after I finished writing the book, because he's always dropping new stuff. But he says he chooses deadlines that he thinks he has a 50% chance of making. And he's like, I don't want to be making 100% of my deadlines. That means they're way too conservative. That means things will get moved, things will get missed. So I set a deadline that I think we have a 50, 50 chance of making. And sometimes we'll be wrong, sometimes we'll miss it, but a lot of the time we will make a deadline that we didn't think was possible because we chose to be really, really aggressive with schedules.

A (10:23)

You had 69 core Musk methods, so let's go through some of them.

B (10:27)

Funny how that works out.

A (10:29)

If we don't make stuff, there is no stuff.

B (10:32)

He said this on the Joe Rogan podcast. It was one of a few things that hit me so hard. I was like, this book has to happen, actually. And it was in this era where everybody was going, just print money, just send it out. Just like, help us, help us. Looking to sort of the government as Big Brother to just take care of us no matter what. Even though nobody was doing any work during COVID And he's like, that's not how this works. If we are not making stuff, if we're not building stuff, if we're not providing services, the whole economy collapses. That is what holds up the money. And he's a great example, I think, of the bias to build and serve and improve things. You know, the example, like, Tesla is the only car company trying to drive prices down. Have you seen another car company lower their prices in the last 40 years?

A (11:20)

Tesla's prices have gone down.

B (11:21)

Yeah, they're actively lowering the price on the models. As they add volume, they lower the price. And as they simplify the car, they lower the price. But I looked this up. Ford F150. If you just follow inflation, it used to be like five or six grand. And if you just follow inflation, it should be like 15,000 today. But they're like 40 or 50 grand and feel like, yes, there's more features and more safety, but like three, four times more. And I feel like every car company on Earth is just trying to figure out how to charge more. And as Jeff Bezos said, like, there's two kinds of companies. There's companies that try to charge, work hard to charge more, and there's companies that work hard to charge less. And Amazon is a, like, we're driving costs down business. And Tesla is the same. He says, like, if we can't figure out if we charge something, it's because we can't figure out how to charge less. Because he's like, the mission, the purpose. I want as many people as possible driving an electric car. I want as many people as possible driving an autonomous car. That is what solves the climate change problem. That's what makes our cities quieter and cleaner and better. Why not lower the price as we increase the volume and make it accessible to more people?

A (12:19)

Fear of failure is the biggest cause of failure. Yeah.

B (12:23)

Isn't that a good one?

A (12:25)

It's fucking pithy. Is fear of failure the biggest cause of failure? Not a lack of skill or understanding or foresight?

B (12:35)

The way I hear that quote is it's because it kills something in the crib. Like, fear of failure is why people don't even set out.

A (12:44)

Yeah. Far more people have not attempted anything than have attempted something and failed at it.

B (12:50)

Yeah. You can't fail due to skill or fail due to stamina if you never

A (12:54)

even try or start it.

B (12:55)

Yeah. And if you just think of how many things any of us have dreamed of doing but never tried, like, it's 99 to 1.

A (13:02)

Well, lots of things that you dream of, you probably shouldn't try. So fear of. I guess the interesting small print here is it's not necessarily fear of failure. It's fear of. That is not worth my time. I shouldn't be spending my time on that thing. Not that I could do it and it wouldn't work, but if I did it, it wouldn't be worth it.

B (13:24)

I think that's a very optimistic and enlightened maybe view of why people rationalize not doing things that they do deeply want to do or do want to.

A (13:33)

Elon must have lots of dreams that he hasn't pursued, presumably. Unless he's also able to fucking program his own dreams. It's like, oh, that would be cool. That would be cool.

B (13:43)

I mean, he's like the most leveraged man on Earth. And I feel like he does indulge these random ways. I mean, the boring company was kind of like sitting in traffic being like, fuck this. And he just picked the phone and picked up the phone, called one of his Engineers is like, start making a hole. Start researching drilling machines. I'm going to call you back in two hours. By the way, that was at 2:00am okay, bye.

A (14:02)

Like, that was when he did it.

B (14:04)

Yeah.

A (14:04)

At 2am yes. Rang 1 of his engineers and said,

B (14:08)

it's the guy who's still running the boring company today. He's like, do it. I'll call you back. And then the guy comes back and says, like, all right, I found this and this about the drilling machines. I think they could be improved in this, in this way. And then he goes with Tesla headquarters and is like, we're gonna start digging a hole in the parking lot. And they're like, cool. We think we can get permits and do it in two weeks. And he's like, nope, move all the cars. Start right now. I want to see a hole in the parking lot at midnight. It's 6:00pm Go. And like, it is that level of bias to action. Like, I think maniacal urgency. The words don't really sink in until you hear story after story after story of him doing something that most people take two weeks to do in four hours.

A (14:45)

What are the most maniacal urgency stories about Elon?

B (14:48)

I mean, a small one that I think drills it home is like he was interviewing for his head of machining at a SpaceX, at a SpaceX site. And it was like a 20 minute interview. Just like, tell me about your work. Tell me about your background. All right, you're qualified. Come to an agreement. Somebody standing behind him is like, here's a job offer. Fill in the blanks. Sign it, Sign it. Go to work like 6pm on Saturday. Like, time just doesn't exist. It's irrelevant. It is like the whatever is the most important thing to get done in this hour. Get it done immediately and keep going. Like, there is no work life separation. There is no, like, do it later. There is like, if it is the most important thing to do, do it immediately, even if it's irrelevant. Like, there's so there's stories in the, the Isaacson biography of him ordering you call them like surges, even when they don't need to be done. He just, he loves urgency for urgency's sake. What, like one of these pushes of like stack the starship or build that part. And someone's like, we don't. This part is not the bottleneck. He's like, I don't care. I don't feel enough urgency for you. Like, I'm giving you a deadline. I don't care that it's arbitrary. Like, I Want you to feel the kind of urgency that I feel. Hard stop. Like, that's how we work.

A (16:00)

It's basically speed training like you'd give to an athlete. But being done out of season.

B (16:04)

Yeah. And all the time. And this is not always. There are times when this has saved, you know, months or years or weeks or millions of dollars. But there's also times when it's like burn people out and piss them off and cause good people to quit.

A (16:18)

I have to imagine that the blast radius of this work rate is pretty huge. That the churn of people working for him is pretty insane.

B (16:26)

For sure, there are some people who are very long tenured, but I think that's part of the strategy. Churning through relatively young, brilliant engineers. No work life balance. This is your time in the wild of you are going to be here all the time here at the drop of a hat. But he's been doing this forever. He did this PayPal, he decided would when it was before they merged. But he was going to launch X.com on Thanksgiving weekend. Like, and people were like, that doesn't make any sense. Nobody's been paying attention. Everybody's with their families. Like, don't care. We're launching on Sunday on Thanksgiving. I want everybody in here all the time. People like, can I go see my family? Nope. You're not dedicated. If you're not in here working 20 hours a day trying to make this deadline. It is, it is urgency, for urgency's sake, all the time on everything. And the people this goes back to purpose is like, only. You only get that out of people. If you have this incredible mission that people feel like they're on, that they're like, yes, I want to show up. I want you to put the pedal down. I want to be used for all I'm worth. I want to see what I'm capable of. I want to work as hard as I can with other brilliant people on this incredibly powerful mission. And I can't do it for 40 years, but I can do it for two or four or 10.

A (17:43)

Does Elon do any kind of self care, morning routine, meditation therapy?

B (17:50)

Not that there's much evidence of, which I think is interesting. Like, the most productive man on earth barely sleeps. Like, lives on his private jet. Works maniacally all the time. No discernible good habits from what I can tell. Like, not abstaining. Like, it eats donuts. Like, not a lot of meditation, not a lot of introspection. Just like, gets up, grabs his phone, draws a knife, and like, goes to war every single Day like, that is just.

A (18:22)

Just shiv someone.

B (18:23)

Like that is the. I've had a. My friend Brent be sure describes, like, operating business as a knife fight, and it's like an operator who's in it. Like, you wake up, you have a knife off the bed stand, and, like, you go to work. And that's actually probably how it feels. With Elon, you ask him his daily routine, he's like, I wake up, I check my phone, I look for an emergency. There's always an emergency. And sometimes if there's not, he creates one.

A (18:44)

How so?

B (18:46)

This is also from the Isaacson book. He's like, there was a lot of times when there's not objectively an emergency, but there is sufficient cause to be. Like, we can increase the pace. We can increase the pace. Let's figure out how to create a situation that maybe gets things moving faster, maybe doesn't. But it is a bias to urgency all the time.

A (19:06)

Mm.

B (19:07)

But this, and I'm not advocating this, like, I don't live this way, even like you, you can see the recipe and not want to cook the dish. But the. The takeaway that I think that is useful and generalizable for everybody is very David Goggins. It's like you're capable of a lot more than you think. And the people who are, like, massively orders of magnitude more productive are working at a pace and an intensity that is, like, very foreign to most people. And I think you're a good example of this. I don't think people appreciate how hard you work to do the things that you do and cover the amount of ground that you have to do. 800 episodes in five years, you're an intense motherfucker. You cover a lot of ground. You work really hard to do it, but everybody is capable of 10% more, 50% more. Just give the throttle a push and see what breaks. Might not be anything.

A (20:02)

So given the lack of self care, does he care about subjective experience? Happiness, fulfillment, joy things?

B (20:14)

I don't think that's what he's optimizing for. Like, I don't think he's a particularly happy person. I don't think he. He even doesn't really seem to take joy or pride in his past accomplishments. He's just always looking forward to. And it's. I mean, I feel like it's a great gift to us and a burden to him. Right. Like, I. The people around him talk about, like, wishing that he would celebrate his accomplishments, wishing he would take a break, wishing he would be happier, but he's Just on to the next, onto the next. And like, I think when you have a glimpse into his childhood, that makes a little more sense.

A (20:47)

How so?

B (20:50)

I mean his, as David Senner says, like the story of the father is embedded in the story of the son. Um, his dad was certainly abusive. Like there's verbally abusive. Imagine like standing there as an 8 year old boy for hours while your dad like screams in your face, drill sergeant style. Calls you worthless, calls you useless, calls you stupid. When Elon was young, he got absolute shit kicked out of him. Like gang stomped. Not like lost a fight with one guy hospitalized for a while. His brother said he was like so swollen he was unrecognizable. And his dad sided with the bullies and like called him stupid for picking a fight that he would lose. Like, what does that do? Like, that creates this furnace in you that like will never stop. And so I think there's, there's a lot of. He's not comfortable with peace. Like he likes. He is, he is always at war and he's looking for the next war. And that just like drives him always. And you know, that is one part, like, you know, always the debate between clean fuel and dirty fuel. Like, which is better, you know, if you're, if you're like mean to yourself internally. You're like, I'm such a piece of shit. I gotta, I gotta get more done. I can do more, I can accomplish more, I can be better versus like, I'm building this great thing and I can do it and this is gonna be awesome and people are gonna love it or I'm really proud of what I've done. I'm achieving this powerful mission. And Elon does both. Like he burns clean fuel and dirty fuel. It seems he's achieving these, these missions that are important to humanity that so many people dream of, that everybody thought was impossible. And he's got this incredible string of successes, but he also has this internal angst, I think, that seems to drive him.

A (22:32)

Definitely a tolerance for pain. It almost seems like he deliberately creates suffering for himself. He did the tiny home thing. He sold all of his stuff at one point. Thinks may still have no possessions, basically. And sleeps on the factory floor.

B (22:47)

Yes. Which, I mean, the possessions thing was part like, he's like, I'm not like a bad billionaire. Like I'm a billionaire because I built valuable companies. Like, I'll sell all my stuff, I don't care. I don't need fancy things. Cause people were like dragging me. Like, I want you to understand that, like I'm in it for the right reasons. But I'm glad you asked about sleep.

A (23:08)

Okay.

B (23:09)

Because I'm a huge personal fan of eight Sleep. If you struggle to sleep well or just want to further optimize your sleep, eight Sleep can help. I got one as a surprise for my wife when we had our first baby and she wept with joy when it arrived on our porch. It goes on your mattress just like a fitted sheet and will automatically learn your preferences to cool or warm your side of the bed up to 20 degrees. It's got integrated sensors that track your sleep time, sleep phases, hr, snoring and heart rate.

A (23:43)

No, it off my heart, dude. Don't fucking tell me. My own ad read. All right.

B (23:47)

With 99% accuracy, eight sleep starts to warm or cool your bed before you even get into it. That's why eight Sleep has been clinically proven to increase total sleep up to one hour per night. Best of all, they have a 30 day sleep trial. You can try it for 29 days and if you don't like it, they'll give you all your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Go to the link in the description or 8sleep.com modernwisdom and use modern wisdom at checkout. That's E I g h t sleep.com ModernWisdom and ModernWisdom at checkout.

A (24:20)

That was really great.

B (24:21)

I really am a huge fan of eight Sleep.

A (24:23)

I am too. There's no one that's used it that doesn't get completely fucking insane about it. Did Matteo put you up to that? Because they've just Got listed for 1.5 bill on the stock exchange.

B (24:31)

No, I don't know them at all. I just actually love eight Sleep and I wanted it to like. I thought it would be really funny to make you.

A (24:37)

Well, he's saved us from having to do the ad read, eh? Is that nice? That's one fewer ad read that I need to do this week.

B (24:42)

I feel like you've been working really hard. I just wanted to pick up a little bit of the slack. I feel like the guests just show up and you have to do everything.

A (24:48)

That's true. You need to pay for yourself now. That's it. Or this isn't cheap to put on. You know, I know you need to pay for yourself and I have an

B (24:54)

authentic loving relationship with my eight Sleep and Elon needs one because he doesn't have any possessions.

A (25:01)

It's going to be hard.

B (25:01)

Oh, that is. That is true.

A (25:02)

I wonder if they could fit it to the factory floor. Just fucking Lay an eight, sleep on the ground, be like, ah. Sort of works, I guess.

B (25:10)

Yeah.

A (25:12)

What's that story? It's from the Isaacson book, but I think it's pretty telling. What's that story about when he needed to do an investor meeting and the COO came in and found him, like, catatonic under his desk and basically had to, like, force him to get up.

B (25:28)

Yeah. He was supposed to do an earnings call. And I think this is, like, 2018. This is, like, the end of a really long stretch of just, like, miserable stuff. And I think he was in a really tough spot psychologically, and he was just, like, lying on the floor and. Yeah, this guy, to his credit, like, he's like, has experience with psychological illnesses in his family and challenges, and so he kind of knew what to do. And he, like, went in and laid on the floor next to him and was like, how you doing, buddy?

A (25:58)

Just went under the desk.

B (26:00)

Yeah. Like, laid down next to him, was like, how you doing? Like, I know it's hard. I'm gonna take a couple more minutes and we gotta get up and we gotta do this, do our best. And it's hard. Like, I think. I think he puts himself through a lot. Like, Elon burns the boats and challenges himself and.

A (26:18)

But he does have limits.

B (26:20)

Yeah. I mean.

A (26:21)

I mean, if you're lying under your desk catatonic, that's a limit.

B (26:24)

Yeah. In the 2008 crisis, Tallulah Riley talks about him having night terrors. He's sitting up all night, he's throwing up, he's having screaming nightmares. But that goes back to. I don't want to live that experience. But it gives you a sense of how far people can push themselves and how far.

A (26:48)

Look, the way that I see Elon is not too dissimilar to the way that I see Brian Johnson and also David Goggins, which is. There are people who will go to the 99.999 percentile of anything and everything. And it's useful to have them around because they teach you all of the lessons that you learn by going to the absolute edge. But that doesn't mean that you should try and follow what it is that they're doing. It doesn't mean that it's a good strategy for anybody else to do. But if you're going to try and say that Brian Johnson going. And basically being like a scout in a. He's essentially the same thing as a scout in an army. He goes up to this crazy high ridge and it's treacherous, and maybe he's going to fall and oh my God. And then he finds out some shit about what's over there and then comes back and tells us all. I'm like, I don't want to be a scout and I don't want an army filled with scouts. But it's fucking useful to have a few.

B (27:41)

Yeah, well, in particular, like, this scout who is like, building so many things that benefit so many people. And I think, I mean, all this comes back to, like, Elon is being authentically himself. Like, who he is is this, like, insanely driven technical genius boy who is infused with sci fi and military history, like, dreaming of making an impact on the world in part because of this, like, traumatic childhood he had and in part because of, like, it's this grand dream and grand adventure. And I don't think it's an insult to say is a little bit of a hero complex of, like, I can do this, I can make a difference. I can make this huge impact on the world. And thank God he did. Right? Like this type of person in the past would just become like a conqueror. But thanks to the miracle of modern capitalism and technology, he's building shit that benefit all of us. And we're going to have this huge evolutionary leap, hopefully, as we go to another planet and we get to live through it. How fucking awesome is that?

A (28:39)

Do not separate yourself from the pain of your decisions.

B (28:43)

Yeah, this one is. Comes from like the manufacturing process and the structure of the organization, but I think it's a very generalizable rule. This version is like, you want the designers and the engineers and the manufacturers, like, they all work in the plant so they can see the downstream effects of the decisions that they make in the design process. It's a very. It's very easy to try to break your feedback loop and not sense when you're doing something harmful or even not missing an opportunity to do something great that could benefit you.

A (29:17)

I think that the idea of not insulating yourself from the outcomes of your decisions is probably a good. I mean, there has to be some times where he just gets other people to do stuff on his behalf. But I know what's that. You have to locate, physically move yourself to wherever the problem is immediately.

B (29:34)

Yes.

A (29:35)

Basically the same rule.

B (29:36)

Yeah. On the production line, it's like walk to the red. There's like green or red everywhere on the production line. And it's like if something is red, there's a problem. Go there immediately. There's. There's a couple of versions. Physically move yourself immediately where the product he's you should see his. Like, if you track his private jet, it's like, all over the world, constantly on the move. And so it's not just like, locally, move yourself to wherever the problem is, immediately call the people, get them in the room, go there. Like, it's an underrated thing to be physically where the problem is and whatever the most important. This goes back to the kind of like, the original multiplying things of, like, whatever. The most important thing to do is whatever the limiting factor is, attack it immediately in the most effective way possible, which is usually going physically to where the problem is and seeing it for yourself directly, or pulling in all the people that have a hand in it.

A (30:25)

Do things in parallel.

B (30:27)

Yeah. George and I were talking about this this morning because I think there's, like, conventionally good wisdom that is focus. And this was one of the things I was surprised by. Warren Buffett's. The perfect quote to explain this concept at a high level, which is like, you can't get a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

A (30:46)

Elon's tried.

B (30:50)

So there are some things that there's an incompressible amount of time, and if you put those in sequence now, all of a sudden, your timeline is this long. But if you can plant all the seeds at the same time and they're growing in parallel, all of a sudden, your timeline is shrunk by a third. And I was at the grandest scale. It's kind of like most normal people would start an electric car company, grow it, make it successful, and then start their space company. And he was like, nah, they can do both at once. We just give it a try. Because we might be able to move the total timeline of success up dramatically. And it's harder and it's riskier, but it also generates returns sooner. And I think there's only some problems that are like, this is the right approach for. And he Talked about in PayPal is like, we were developing the product and trying to do all these integrations and trying to get, like, regulatory coverage. And it was like, we did all of them all at once. And it was fucking chaos. But we launched in a year instead of the three years that would have been conventional wisdom of, like, it doesn't make sense to invest in the product until we have the permission and we don't have the integrations until we have the product. He was like, nope, do it all at once. Launch immediately.

A (31:59)

Wild. Wild. We should not be afraid of doing something important simply because some amount of tragedy is likely to occur. This is more of that bias for action, this sort of disregard of fear.

B (32:11)

And even further than that, I think this comes from his study of history. In a lot of ways. He says, I think the extended version of that quote is like, if we did, if you never take a risk, the United States wouldn't exist. Every great adventure involves risk and people will die. And we have to accept that the pendulum has swung too far towards like, oh my God, nobody can ever be harmed in any way. Nobody is allowed to risk their life. Nobody's allowed to take experimental treatments. It's like, we can't make progress like this. Colonizing Mars is a grand adventure. It involves risk. Like, not everything is going to go right, but especially if people choose to take those risks or risk their life to accomplish this great feat for humankind. There's something inherent about humans sort of feeling fulfilled, sacrificing themselves to further humanity as a whole. And I think to me that quote is like, yeah, damn the torpedoes, let's do it.

A (33:11)

What do you think is the most misleading narrative about Elon's success?

B (33:16)

It depends which camp you're kind of coming from. I think there are die hard fanboys that have just like total blindfold to the the negatives. And I think there's a lot of people, especially after his sort of political chapter, that have just a whole bunch of ideas that are factually incorrect that they believe as deep truths. I mean, like anybody who is one of the most famous people on Earth, right. Like, and past a certain level of fame, I think there's like a derangement syndrome about everybody. So I think it's actually kind of hard to find a neutral or a well rounded set of opinions on him.

A (33:51)

That's a good point. I was thinking about Elon in comparison with Mark Zuckerberg. And sure, there's some people that don't like Mark. People of Kauai aren't massive fans of him. Buying up a ton of land. And there's other bits and pieces, but I don't think people have insane fervor against him or insane fervor for him. Yeah, but Elon seems to be much more barbelly. Right? If you were to draw a graph, it's just a pair of boobs. Whereas, you know, most, most people are kind of a bell curve. Whereas Elon's managed to completely clear the middle.

B (34:25)

Yeah, I don't think that used to be true. Like, is that, do you think that's a byproduct of him having a political chapter?

A (34:31)

Yeah, I guess so. And then that Creates the foundation. And on top of that is wealthy, huge amounts of wealth. This potential IPO thing.

B (34:41)

Yeah, he's spiky. I mean, he's. He is like, is an unrefined sense of humor that he, like, puts out there.

A (34:49)

What do you. If he's so concerned about the bias to action, working on the biggest problem, the bottlenecks, etc. Why have such a public presence? Like, why tweet a lot? Yeah, you on the platform or whatever. But podcasts and interviews and stuff like that. If you're the. I compare him with someone like James Dyson, right. Who kind of from some areas of a skill set is not massively different. Senra told me about when he sat down with James Tyson. James Tyson's done thousands, maybe tens of thousands of prototypes. He said he was looking at James Dyson's hands. So James Dyson's hands were like Alex Honnold's hands. These gnarled, the sinewy, tough, thick things. These fucking chodes on the end of his. The end of his arms. And I don't know, that element, for instance, what's the role that that level of exposure is playing, I think is an interesting one.

B (35:46)

Yeah, he's had sort of a taste for that for a long time. I think he's like dated actresses and kind of living in la. But there's an element to which, like having that personal presence and talking about what you're doing, like, he needs to rally support. Like, you need a great team, you need investors, you need popular support. Like, think about how hard it was to convince people that electric cars were not just not stupid, but fucking awesome. Like, that took a lot of repetition.

A (36:18)

It is mad, I think, when you roll back the clock that the Prius was like the eminent, preeminent fucking electric car.

B (36:25)

It was just a hybrid. Like, the real electric cars were even worse. Yeah, it was really. I think it's difficult now to understand how stupid and insane it seemed when he started Tesla. And the same thing with the rocket. Like, there were no space startups. Like a space economy was not a thing. And NASA had been on this, like, slow decline for like 50 years. We were paying Russia to take our astronauts up to the space station. Like, these were by no means not just not obvious, but like very consensus insane things to do.

A (36:58)

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B (38:04)

I mean, SpaceX, I think most people don't realize, started as a pure philanthropy project. He was looking at the NASA website saying, when are we going to go to Mars? We went to the moon 50 years ago, why haven't we been back? And when are we going to go to Mars? Surely there's a plan? And there was no plan. And he was coming off of his first exit with PayPal, so he had $200 million or something in the bank. And he's like, I'll just spend 100 million to see if I can increase NASA's budget. It was pure philanthropy. He's like, I'm going to buy a rocket, I'm going to make a little greenhouse, I'm going to ship it to Mars and I'm going to get a photo of a little baby plant on the red planet. It'll be the first life on another planet. And that'll catalyze this movement and inspire people.

A (38:45)

This podcast that was the origin story,

B (38:47)

yeah, it was called Mars Oasis. That was the thing. And to do this, he went around to buy a rocket. He's like, why are these rockets so fucking expensive? He went to Russia and tried to buy an InterContinental ICBM and they laughed at him and spit on him and fucked him around. And he got pissed. And so he's like, maybe the problem is that space launch costs are so high. Why are rockets so expensive? Can't they be Done better. And so he gathered a bunch of rocket engineers who had experience at his house. And I think this is an interesting part of the story. He's like did a series of Saturday sessions of first principles. Let's look at all the historical things, but let's also say how good could good be with all the modern technology, modern design, Is there a design that we can come up with that would be a massive improvement in space launch costs such that this would be possible? And he realized the market for space launch, that was the bottleneck. That was the real problem, that you couldn't get stuff off the planet cheap enough because all we had was space shuttle, which is this massive bloated government program that's not particularly capital efficient. They weren't iterating, they weren't doing volum. They were way overspending on basic parts because they were all like aerospace grade or whatever. And so as soon as the PayPal thing sold, he's like, all right, I'm going to go, I'm a hire some rocket engineers and like, let's see if we can do this.

A (40:05)

Wasn't the original like the Apollo 11 blueprints available just free online? Wasn't that part of it that you were able to get rocket blueprints? You could just download them, I think. Or maybe he made his available for free.

B (40:19)

Maybe. I mean he's like, when you, he's not a rocket scientist, so he's like, how did you learn how to do this? And he's like, I just read books and I talk to people. I read all the textbooks on rocket science that I could find. I borrowed them and I started talking to experts. And his, his rocket propulsion engineer was a guy who was like the, the foremost like rocket hobbyist. He had built the single largest like rocket engine as just a dude in his garage. Tom Mueller. And that was his propulsion engineer.

A (40:43)

You're hired. Yeah, you're fucking hired. Okay. And then what about now? Like what? Obviously the cost has come down by some insane factor.

B (40:52)

I know that orders of magnitude has driven Starlink and is going to drive even more. And now he's talking about building a Dyson sphere, which is like solar but in space, so he can capture more energy than even hits the earth from the sun.

A (41:09)

And hasn't he been talking about putting compute in space as well?

B (41:13)

Yeah, these big flat sheets that are like solar panels with compute and then like network together with lasers. Yeah.

A (41:19)

Oh, okay. I didn't realize that the Dyson sphere would power the compute.

B (41:24)

Yeah, it's just like a Bunch of solar panels with computer chips on the back that can communicate with each other floating all around in space, which is insane and wild. But that's not the mission. That is the cargo that makes starship economic to build hundreds or thousands of them. But the actual mission is to make life multi planetary. And this goes back to Zoomed all the way out. His altruistic, philanthropic things is like, look, we should all agree that we do not want the only form of life that we know in the universe to die. We are the only conscious beings we know. Earth is the only planet with life that we know of. Can we all agree that it would be great to have life move just next door, just get some on Mars, just get a couple, maybe a million people, get some plants. If a comet hits Earth or we blow ourselves up or there's a catastrophic pandemic, we've got another horse in the race. Whether you're an environmentalist or a humanist or anything, this is a thing that we should universally agree is good and why not go for it? This is the window that is for the first time in not just human history, but Earth's history, we have the ability to make life redundant to get it to another planet. And isn't that one of the grandest missions that we can conceive of? And he puts it on this evolutionary timescale, right? So there was suddenly single celled life and then multi celled life and then there was fish and then the fish came on land and then they split into plants and animals, different forms of life. And going from Earth to our first new planet is this massive step function in basically how successful life is and its resilience to whatever comes next.

A (43:21)

How successful do you think SpaceX is going to be long term?

B (43:24)

Unbelievably, they have essentially a monopoly on the toll booth off the planet. And like there's 90.

A (43:34)

If not, do not pass go, do not go to the moon. Give me $200.

B (43:38)

They could have been one of the greatest companies on Earth. Even if they never built starship, even if they just cash flowed off of Falcon 9 and they were the only reusable rocket company, they would have been an unbelievably successful company. But they are reinvesting into starship. They're trying to build compute and energy in space. They're trying to build a. I think he's been talking now about a mass driver on the moon that'll build these Von Neumann probes and all kinds of other crazy stuff. But the historical analogy that he talks about is this is when the New World was discovered. Like, we all existed around the Mediterranean for, like most of Western human history. And then all of a sudden, Columbus discovered the New World. And it's like, all right, we need new shipping technology. We have a taste for all of the fineries of this New World. So many people want to pay for passage and it's like this economic bonanza and just zoom all the way out again. And like, where are most of the raw materials in the solar system, let alone the galaxy? Like, not on Earth. We have this bias to the only raw materials that matter are like, wood and farmland. But there are raw materials, atomic raw materials on every other world and in the asteroid belt. And just like floating around in space and getting the technology, the starship to go access them is going to be an unbelievable boon for humanity. But it does take that leap of imagination to get there.

A (44:58)

What about Tesla?

B (45:00)

Tesla is, I think, going through these startups are stacked S curves. And so electric cars was one very fundamental innovation. Autonomy is a whole nother one. And so a big question mark is this leap to autonomy. And then he's already looking around this corner to do humanoid robots.

A (45:19)

That's going under Tesla.

B (45:20)

Yeah, humanoid robots are in Tesla. He's just shut down the Model X and the Model S production lines and switch them over to building humanoid robots. So that is coming quickly. He's going from starting to build robo taxis that are fully autonomous, no steering wheel. So thinking that the autonomy kind of curve is there. And he talks about this being one of the biggest markets of all time and that Optimus is even bigger. He's also now, I think this is underrated because it's not a consumer product, but they are building an unbelievable amount of batteries, which is powering the kind of solar to battery grid conversion, which is going to speed up energy that drives all the compute for the AI revolution. And then there's a whole nother kind of. They are backwards, vertically, integral, like they're producing. They just built a new lithium refinery. And so they're like, we are supply constrained in many cases. And so they're like working backwards further and further into their supply.

A (46:22)

I mean, literally to the point where they're looking to go to new planets so that they can get more raw materials.

B (46:26)

Yeah, he did say he thinks Tesla's going to have a factory on the moon, which, like, I don't know. I don't know if these companies all end up kind of smashed together eventually or what, but he did. X is now owned by Xai, which is now owned by SpaceX. So there's some sort of congealing, but I don't know if Tesla and SpaceX will merge at some point.

A (46:43)

What about these humanoid robots?

B (46:46)

I mean, I don't know. It's either going to be one of the biggest markets of all time that totally breaks the economy and ushers in this crazy era of abundance, but I think it'll be slow adoption just because people are slow to adopt things that are in particular when they're like in the uncanny valley. So commercial uses, I think there'll be like a ton of them in factories and stuff like that. But also some of the robotics engineers come in and say like humanoid is sure it's generalizable but like there's almost always a better, more specific form function robot to use for a use case, right?

A (47:21)

Yeah. Why would we constrain this general purpose robot to have R like dimensions when you could get one that cracks eggs and one that cleans the dishes and one that, et cetera.

B (47:32)

Yeah, you might just need like two arms on a rail in your kitchen and that's your kitchen robot. You might just need like two arms on your washer and that's your laundry robot. And like you might not actually want one that can like walk around your house and feel like a person.

A (47:43)

Have you seen what was the super widely publicized one that kind of had a knitted jumper and a knitted face?

B (47:50)

I think that was Optimus.

A (47:51)

No it wasn't. No, it wasn't. It's already shipped, it's already out and floating around. There was an advert, there was a billboard on like East 6th street for it and I thought it was just such a funny place to put it. Anyway, there was this video that someone had put of it trying to load dishes into the dishwasher and it's got this weird position, it's sort of leaning like this and somebody had captioned it as me every time that it's 6am at a ketamine after party and it literally looks like it's done too much ketamine and it's all contorted, it's like in a really fucking weird position. But yeah, I don't know, you're right to say as soon as you step outside of the existing bucket of what people use things for. Going from driving a F150 to a Prius to a Tesla. Ah, you know, I can kind of see how it works a little bit. People were nervous about full self driving, but after a while. Okay, there we go. There we go. No one's looking at the fact. Oh, well, I already have a dishwasher and this robot is basically an on its feet, multipurpose dishwasher. It's not quite the same thing. Yeah, here it is. Look at this. It's trying to close the door.

B (49:23)

If you're standing there watching that, this would be very painful. Yeah, but you just go away and the dishes are done. Cool.

A (49:29)

Yeah. I mean, are they done? No, no. Fucking go back, dude. Yeah, it's. There's work to be done.

B (49:38)

I think it's a, it's a, it is a really interesting question of like, where, where and how are humanoid robots going to show up over the next 10 years? I think it's like one of the big questions and like, I would probably go to a laundromat staffed by humanoid robots. Great. Makes total sense. Like a coffee shop maybe, maybe not. Maybe washing dishes, but not like at the counter or making a lot of money. Just because. Yeah, just because you partly go there for the human interaction. I don't know, I think it'll be really interesting to like see how it all plays out.

A (50:07)

His plan is, what is this one in every home within the space of basically no time at all.

B (50:11)

Yeah, I mean like tons of demand. Especially if it is smart and helpful. It's kind of like Rosie from the Jetsons, right? Like, do all the stuff I don't want to do, go get the trash cans, take out the trash.

A (50:22)

Presumably powered by Xai in some regards. So that is going to have to start to cross over the Tesla to Xai thing. So that would suggest a natural sort of convergence.

B (50:33)

Well, Tesla has its own amazing AI team, they're building their own chips. But he does say, like Tesla, because of all of the real world AI stuff that Tesla's done to create self driving, that's actually very analogous to making really smart humanoid robots. And he talks about having this crazy training center full of humanoid robots basically doing stuff like that, looking like idiots, trying to figure out the training data

A (50:53)

and then getting rewards. Oh, you did it. Well, you closed it without looking like you're on ketamine. Congratulations. Who was I speaking to?

B (50:59)

Fuck.

A (51:00)

I was talking to someone. I was talking to someone at dinner the other night and they were saying that basically they think a lot of people. I go, oh, it was my friend Austin. People are going to have to wear little cameras that show them going about their daily business to train robots 100%. This is a thing. Yeah, I mean, dude, I've only just. This is fucking blown my mind because obviously that's how Tesla's full stop driving was trained. Right? They took the top 1%, 10% of drivers on Tesla and used their driving style to reverse engineer what humans do so that the robots that drive your Tesla can drive in the manner that you would. And it means that you've got more aggressive driving, you've got the ability to overtake and undertake, which if you ever get into a fucking Waymo, it does not have the capacity to do that. It's the most tentative grandma of all time because that's being created from first principles as opposed to the flow of traffic is other humans. I, as a human am able to detect that and then adjust appropriately. Therefore, if I. If you become me robot, then you can also be kind of a human.

B (52:04)

Yeah. And it is cool. In a Tesla, you can have it set like, you can set like, I want a chill drive or like, I'm fucking late. Like, let's go. Okay, this is fun.

A (52:13)

But, yeah, people are going to wear fucking cameras that just. They're going to crack eggs and iron clothes and.

B (52:21)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, training data has already been a huge, like, part of the economy. It's mostly like digital training data and companies are making a ton of money, like selling training data to models digitally. But yeah, the ability to collect massive, massive, massive amounts of data and train AI. And now in the real world, train AI to do all these.

A (52:37)

I mean, if someone's wearing one of those, you know, chest harness things with a DJI on it, yeah, they're going about. They're already working at Starbucks or doing whatever, they're a mechanic. And you go, well, do you want to earn an additional however many dollars per hour to submit your life to our training data? And you need to, you know, it's basically like being an Uber driver but for your own life and then sending that digitally up to whoever needs to be trained.

B (53:05)

Did you see the thing about the meta glasses recently? This is like, I'm not sure if this is in the press or I've just read this on a tweet, but it's like those are always recording, even if they're like, not.

A (53:16)

Oh, and some, some like African fucking AI labelers were able to see the faces weren't blurred out or something.

B (53:24)

Yeah, I mean, somebody just like puts the glasses on the nightstand and then like, you know, the spouse comes in and starts changing and there's like Nigerians like sitting there tagging data of like, yep, that's your wife changing clothes. Because this thing doesn't stop recording. Like, you know, I'd rather wear it, you know, on my chest where I know.

A (53:42)

Put it in.

B (53:42)

Put it in a lockbox when I'm not on my.

A (53:45)

Yeah, yeah. We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, tell me if this sounds familiar. You train regularly, you eat reasonably well, maybe you even supplement. You feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes. Most people have absolutely no idea what's going on inside of their body. Which is why I partnered with Function. Function gives you access to more than 160 advanced lab tests spanning hormones, heart, health, metabolic markers, inflammation, thyroid nutrients, liver and kidney function. It even detects early signals linked to more than 50 types of cancer. To put that in perspective, your typical annual physical might test about 20 markers and function runs over 160. And this isn't just numbers dumped into your inbox. Every result is reviewed by clinicians, abnormal markers get flagged, and you get clear explanations and a personalized protocol with actionable next steps so you can actually do something about what you learned. Best of all, you test twice a year, and everything lives in a simple dashboard. You can just track trends over time, make sure that you're moving in the right direction. Normally, this level of testing would cost thousands through private clinics. With function, it is $365 a year. That's $1 a day to know what's actually happening inside of your body. And right now you can get $25 off bringing it down to 340. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that additional $25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.commodernwisdom and using the code ModernWisdom a checkout that's functionhealth.com ModernWisdom and ModernWisdom at checkout. What's underappreciated about Elon's skill sets, do you think? What are the things that people don't realize?

B (55:19)

I think the breadth of his skillset is quite interesting. I think if you try to emulate just one or two of these traits without appreciating how they interconnect, you could either make some mistakes or be an asshole, depending on how you went about it. But I think he's not a micromanager, but he's in the technical details because he has technical expertise and a strong intuition around the physics of things. He has a deep fluency across not just the physics and the engineering, but also the finance and the economics. He double majored in economics and physics. In college. And so from the very beginning he's been like, he has a great line, like to truly control the product, you have to control the company. And he does not share power. Well, but there's been many times where he's made a risky or a technical decision based on his sort of economic and opportunity cost view of the future of the business. And so Even early in SpaceX, he was driving maniacal urgency because he's like, the future of this business is $10 million in revenue a day. And every day we fuck around, like every time you burn a day, every time you burn 12 hours, you burn half of our future $10 million a day run rate. So let's go, let's go, let's go. So that mix of really big picture and deep in the details, understanding the limiting factor attacking it, which is a mix of that's technical skill, that's economic fluency, that's a sense of project management actually and the ability to know how and when to push people. If really, really smart rocket scientists are telling you that's impossible, no. And he's like, do it anyway. It is possible. I'm telling you it's possible. Go do it anyway. And you're seven out of 10 times even, five out of even, one out of 10 times. Because every time that you're right about that, you've gained a jewel that will pay off for the whole rest of your company. And the nine times that you were wrong, like, oh, I guess you were right, impossible did mean impossible in that sense. Or maybe we'll revisit it next year or what made it impossible. Maybe we can, we can break that down further. And so it's this, the George Bernard Shaw quote, like, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. Like he's unreasonable.

A (57:38)

The unreasonable man. What about memory? It seems like he's got a pretty good memory.

B (57:42)

Yeah, that was one of the things he, he picked up really early in life. He like read one of those memory trick books with the guys who like memorize a whole DEC cards. And so he's been using memory tricks. Which one of the things of, like how the hell does he do what he does? Like five companies, many projects in, all of them taking technical reviews. It'd be hard to remember all these people's names, let alone what they're doing week over week and where the bottlenecks are and all this stuff. And he's got, he practiced those as a kid and so I think he still uses memory palaces and some of these tricks which are one of those things that seems superhuman if you don't know how it works. And there's a lot of stories of him. One of the ways he builds loyalty with his team actually, is people are like, holy shit. When he knows a specific technical detail of somebody's project that is. Has a direct report. Who has a direct report, and he's like, you're the bottleneck. What's going on? And they're like, this, this, and this. And he's like, try this. They're going to like, holy shit. That worked. Like, how. How did you know that you haven't, like, spent time in here? And it's this mix.

A (58:49)

I live with this every single day. And you just came in and. And had it.

B (58:52)

Yeah, yeah. Like, that's a mix of memory and intuition and incredible, like, recall and depth and feeling for that. Like, the physics of the thing.

A (59:05)

Presumably risk and pain tolerance have to be too.

B (59:09)

Yeah. Big skills, immersed in it. Like, absolutely immersed in it. And like, I think this is a place where the kind of the Asperger's is. Can be an advantage. Like, just lives in it over and over and over. Lives in what the details of these products and these people and where the bottlenecks are.

A (59:25)

Like, that wouldn't suggest why pain and risk are more palatable. Maybe it would. I don't know. Maybe people who are a little spectrumy don't have the same detection of risk. They certainly don't have the same detection of other stuff.

B (59:39)

Well, I think it really helps to set aside social risk, which I think we blend a lot of. Right. Like, I'm gonna look like a failure. People are gonna think I'm wrong. It's gonna ruin these relationships. Like, he doesn't have any of that. And he says, like, it is a huge weakness to want to be liked. And I do not have.

A (59:52)

Is a huge weakness to want to be liked. And I do not have it. He tries to like weakness to want to be liked. You don't think that he wants to be liked?

B (59:59)

I do think he wants to be liked in a general sense.

A (60:01)

It's a huge weakness to think that you want to be liked to.

B (60:04)

Yeah. The willingness to enter into dislike maybe is the thing. I think he drives a coach's managers within the company versus outside the company. Are you willing to be misunderstood by the general public? And that's an interesting question. If you had the chance. Pick your divisive opinion. Are you pro choice or pro life? Are you open borders or closed borders, whatever? If you had the chance to flip the switch and make that decision, but the catch is, everybody knew it was you. Are you willing to make 100 million enemies who will do, like, lie, cheat, steal, fabricate, twist your words, attack your family, do anything because they hate the decision that you made? Are you willing to do that? I think most people are not. And agree with or disagree with any particular decision. Respect the commitment and the courage that it takes to go do that.

A (61:05)

What do you think you learned about Elon that most biographies miss? What did doing this kind of a book teach you that biographies don't get at?

B (61:16)

I think I got way deeper in the tactics. My North Star for these books is usefulness to the reader. Like, I try to collect all the most useful things that person has ever said. And I want to simulate the feeling of being at dinner with Elon Musk. Like, it's written as a dialogue. I keep it all in exactly his words as tightly as I can. I edit out anything that doesn't feel like you would be curious about it. From a sense of, like, how do I improve my own life? And how did this happen?

A (61:42)

Didn't the navalmanak? Isn't that, per word, the most highlighted book in Kindle history or something? Is that a stat that I made up?

B (61:50)

Maybe I was trying to make it that I don't. I don't think Kindle will, like, give me that. Readwise said it's like, in their top whatever. Yeah, yeah.

A (61:57)

But that would be also including distribution. Probably not per word. Like, what you want is for people who read this book.

B (62:03)

Yes.

A (62:04)

How much of the book is highlighted on Kindle.

B (62:06)

Yes. And I want to see, like, I love when people show me, like, beat to shit copies of their book. Like, it's been in and out of a sauna, their backpack, everything. It's so satisfying. Yeah, Just ring it out.

A (62:16)

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that, like, biography miss the tactic.

B (62:24)

I just go deeper into how, like, how does that person accomplish what they do? What is their secret sauce? I feel like biographers kind of come at this from, like, how comprehensive and correct can I be about their whole history? Not what's the most useful thing that you would pull out of the biography. I think that's why David Sunray's episodes are amazing, because he takes the biography and distills it and kind of boils it down. And that is my approach, is take a million words and turn it into 50,000 of the most useful ones. And to pull out the things that he would teach you if you were sitting across from him is actually a really interesting kind of test for material to go through, and how timeless can it be and how universally can it be applied? Like, I think anybody on Earth can take something useful out of this, and I, over and over again, kind of sift it through that filter.

A (63:17)

It's like almost like a version of writing fiction, because in fiction you're trying to bring a character to life, and in this, you're trying to be that person briefly, to try and condense down what would they want to say of their own words that they've already said. What would their top 50,000 be out of this million and a half if

B (63:35)

they were trying to be as helpful as possible, like their best selves?

A (63:39)

Right.

B (63:39)

So that's the other. The other difference is, like, I'm not trying to build a comprehensive view of the person. I'm not trying to put them in historical context. I'm trying to be as useful as possible. And I don't dwell on any of the personal stuff, any of the political stuff. We don't talk about his family. It's just like, what would he teach if he set out to teach all of the ideas that he had the most conviction in?

A (63:59)

Yeah, it's an interesting challenge with somebody who is as widely regarded and hated as Elon, because almost everything that everybody wants to talk about is not to do with the tactics and the principles and the purpose. It's to do with the intention. It's to do with the drive. It's to do with the ethics and the scruples.

B (64:21)

And almost every conversation I hear people have casually about Elon is them projecting their own opinion. They're using Elon as a foil to be like, I think it's great that we're going to Mars and doing these things. Or I think it's terrible that he made this decision about, you know, the US aid. And that's fine. You can agree or disagree with anything that this person does, but you're using that to project your values. You're not asking, what can I learn from this person? And to pick somebody as an exemplar is not to say that everything they do is correct. I very much believe in model traits, not people. And so my aspiration is to collect the most useful traits of some of the most accomplished people and make them accessible and useful.

A (65:05)

One of the most interesting ideas is the Idiot Index. What's that?

B (65:09)

The Idiot Index. It's kind of an outcropping. It's downstream of the first principles, thinking. And so the Idiot Index applies to a particular part or a particular product, and it's the difference between the raw material cost and the price. And so an example, he absolutely roasted an engineer in a meeting who didn't know what the stupidest parts in his product were in his composite, because that shows you where you're massively overpaying. So there's a part they were paying $13,000 for. That was one piece of steel. And if you just weighed it, the weight of that steel was worth $200. So he's like, you multiply the price of the raw material or divide that out of the total price, and I don't know what that is. A big number. That's fucking stupid. We're overpaying by 50x for that thing. So how cheaply can you get the steel and then get it into that shape? And you get those insane idiot indexes, especially in aerospace, because people outsource and then outsource and then outsource. And so there's, like, layers of delegation and profit.

A (66:16)

Everyone is arbitraging their profit off the top of this final thing that ends up coming down. There's Rolls Royce that make the engine, but before that, the turbine is milled in this place. And before that, the raw mater is a mind out of.

B (66:28)

Yeah, there's like, five subcontractors. Before you get, like, one guy who's, like, welding a thing together, and you're like, oh, just bring that guy over here. And then the part is, like, 400 bucks. Great. We just saved $12,000.

A (66:40)

I guess, asking the question, why is this so expensive?

B (66:43)

100% becomes quite a powerful question. And then power ranking the things, like, what is most expensive? Like, we're attacking that one. What's the second most expensive? We're attacking that one. And this is how. I mean, this is how he's able to make these huge cost breakthroughs that then make things more and more and more available.

A (66:58)

What have been the biggest cost breakthroughs? What have been the ones that have completely unlocked SpaceX?

B (67:02)

Tesla, I think it's a million little ones all stacked up, right? So that One example, like, $13,000 to 200, is, like more than two orders of magnitude 500X or something. There's a story about a latch that was supposed to be $1,000 or something. And a guy just looked at it and was like, kind of looks like a bathroom stall latch. And so he, like, went to Home Depot, bought a bathroom stall latch and was like, did a little. Did a little magic on it. It's like, okay, did it. 50 bucks. Boom. Just that scrappiness over every single part. Every single part. Every single part. And, you know, it's just this simple things done over and over and over again with like ruthless intensity. And really goes back to the kind of the quote that you brought up about feeling the pain of your decisions. If there's a company making money by selling a part that they bought from a subcontractor for $100 and then selling it to 500, who cares? And if the ultimate buyer is the government, who can just have a black box budget, fine, doesn't matter. But if Elon comes in and says, I need to drop the cost of space launch by two orders of magnitude in order to accomplish this thing, and then two more orders of magnitude because we need to get to fucking Mars now, the goal, the bar is so much higher and you start asking questions like, how cheap can it get? How cheap can it get? Can't we do this cheaper? Do we need that part at all? Like simplifying, eliminating, reducing costs. And that's, you know, when, when it's SpaceX, it feels more abstract because, like, none of us are consuming rockets. But if we're buying a Tesla, we care a lot whether it's $20,000 or $30,000, that's massive. And that changes by a huge number. The number of people who can access a nice car that's safe, that doesn't pollute. Right. And so if in five or 10 more years, we keep doing these things, we keep eliminating parts, we keep increasing scale, we keep lowering the idiot index of every part, then now the car's $10,000 and it's like an absolute no brainer. And the world is quieter and calmer and cleaner.

A (69:08)

As you move forward, allies will assemble around you. Yeah.

B (69:12)

I mean, there's no better example than

A (69:14)

Chris Williamson because of all of my allies.

B (69:18)

Yeah. I mean, think this, like, this started with you and a microphone, right? Like what, seven years ago?

A (69:23)

Eight.

B (69:23)

Eight years ago. Like a thousand episodes later, there's, there's like an army at your back. You got an incredible team here. You've got millions of listeners, you got people all around the world who are like excited to see you tour. But you didn't wait for a million people to like, demand for you to create a podcast. You started and you had one fan, and then two, and then four, and then eight and 1,000 episodes later, here you are. You just have to start carrying that flag.

A (69:49)

Do you think? Because when people think about Elon, when they talk about him, a lot of the time it is this, it's quite cantankerous, it's adversarial There is this super aggression, the bias for action and the urgency. All of this would make you think, difficult to work for hiring and firing. Maybe there is a Runway for each individual member of staff. I reckon I can get on average. I would love to know what the average tenure is. And I get nine months out of people, but I get nine months of 100 hours a week or something like that. Let's say you go, okay, well that. And that is just the cost of doing business. In order to push people at the pace that I want to, I need to have a bigger staff base in order to do that. Have you got any idea about how he hires, about what his hiring process is like? He must have just the most insane HR department that is constantly trying to put out fires. People. Yeah, Permanent, permanently people just like exiting the business. Because I can't like, you know, it's like Leonardo DiCaprio dating someone who's 25. You're like, day that she. Yeah, exactly. Like 26. You're out, like, you know.

B (70:51)

Yeah. But Elon talks about his like phony and rich of like, people have a certain level of success. And then he's like, you, you on soft. Like, I'm not getting. We're not getting enough out of you anymore. You're not dedicated enough. And people exit. His hiring process is at least he speaks about it very simply. He's like, I'm looking for evidence of exceptional ability. And he wants to hire young, brilliant engineers, even if they're not necessarily super trained, but they have the capability to solve problems in this really quick way. And the culture, I think is such. He's done an amazing job of building that intensity and the decision making process into the culture, such that people who come in are kind of brought along and swept up in it and carried through. Like you do go through that machine. But those allies assembling around you, like people have to choose to come work for you. And it's because he chose these giant purposes. But, you know, it's easy to forget that these started really small and really crazy and he had to paint these big pictures to get people to be excited and show up and give their all for it.

A (71:49)

The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize something that should not exist.

B (71:53)

Yeah, this is. He likens this to like. Like school teaches us to solve the problem in front of us. You can't reject a question on a test.

A (72:03)

But actually, oh, this is a stupid question. I don't want to answer it.

B (72:05)

Yeah, dumb. Don't like it. Take it back. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Congratulations. Here's your a. It doesn't happen. So the piece that he. The first step of the algorithm, this is his five step engineering process, is to question the requirements, and then the second is to try very, very hard to delete the part or process. You know, the best part is no part. The best process is no process. So if something can be deleted, the product gets simpler. And simplicity, as he says, delivers both reliability and low cost. And so I think it is this. We spend so much time doing things or optimizing things that truly don't need to exist. And if you look at the complexity of plenty of products around us, it's like, did nobody we try to put these parts together? But when you're trying to build a car out of 10,000 different parts, you're like, all right, every time I can combine these two things, it's one less thing to attach to another and then it's four less parts because I don't need these two screws to connect these two parts together. And it's less tolerance. It's less things that can space to show up in the thing. There's less things that can fall apart if they're one unit instead of two. So it is part of the process to just revisit and revisit and revisit.

A (73:18)

If you don't eat the glass, you're not going to be successful.

B (73:21)

Oh, yeah. I think this is originally a Bill Lee quote who's a friend of his. And entrepreneurship is like eating glass and staring into the abyss. And the follow up is like, eventually you start to like the taste of your own blood.

A (73:33)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it is a sad lesson for people who are on the outside of business that like the idea of running a business that at some point all of the problems will go away, but you are the person in charge of the problems. Your job is to find the biggest problem and to always be at the vanguard of trying to fix that problem. And at no point throughout your entire career will there be no problems. And given that you are ultimately the problem solver, that the buck stops with, guess what? It's gonna be on you. And it's gonna be on you for the rest of time. And if the business is in decline, that is a problem. And if the business is in ascendancy, you will have new, bigger problems. You push new frontiers.

B (74:15)

Yes, you better fall in love with solving problems. It's a very interesting. He didn't originally set out as CEO of Tesla, and he says he didn't want to become CEO of Tesla, and he just felt compelled to do it at a certain point because if he didn't, he felt like the company would have failed. And the sense of internalizing responsibility, of the outcome of the mission is more important than my desire for comfort or my desire to avoid problems. As CEO, you are dealing with a. A distillation of the worst problems in the company. And that's the chewing glass piece. If you're not going to the hard part, if you're not tackling the hardest thing, then that denial or that lack of urgency or that willful blindness is going to catch up with you and the company is going to suffer.

A (75:00)

Yeah. Because ultimately that is the biggest bottleneck.

B (75:03)

Right.

A (75:03)

That is the thing that is holding everything else up.

B (75:05)

And if you're the leader, where you direct that attention is where the organization sort of chooses to focus.

A (75:10)

What's that thing that Formula one drivers talk about? Don't look at the wall. Like, the car goes where you.

B (75:14)

The car goes where you look. Yeah.

A (75:16)

And the company will go where you look. And presumably all of the staff that work for you as well.

B (75:19)

Yep. Yeah. Which I think is another part of, like, his. This comes from the military history of, like, being a battlefield general, always being at the front. Your troops fight harder when you're there. This is why he sleeps in the factory. This is why he physically goes to wherever the problem is immediately. Like that leading from the front is a part of how he gets so much out of the people that he works with.

A (75:41)

I'm doing it. I'm in the trenches. I'm sleeping on the factory floor. You can do it.

B (75:45)

We are suffering together, like, for a good cause. It's worth it. We can do it.

A (75:49)

But also that's the way that he's constructed. Right. That's the way that he's built.

B (75:52)

I do think that's authentic to him. Yes. And he leans into it and he says, I'm wired for war. I find comfort in those kind of challenges.

A (76:04)

So much so that you construct wars that don't even exist. You create chaos and discomfort when you don't need to.

B (76:10)

Yeah. But I think he would rather err on the side of like, over. Over dosing on anxiety, overdosing on effort, making sure that nothing slips, making sure that he's always making as much progress as they possibly can.

A (76:26)

What do you think the inside of his mind's like to exist in there?

B (76:29)

He calls it a. A storm or a non stop explosion. Those are like the two ways he's described It. And somebody was like, is it a happy storm? I was like, no. I don't know that he's been formally diagnosed, but I think he has talked about either tendencies towards not just Asperger's, but also some bipolar tendencies. And that's a hard hand, especially with a traumatic childhood and the stresses that he deals with publicly and privately and. And carries a heavy load.

A (77:03)

Do you think he's actually a genius or is he just someone who's consistently applying a handful of sort of brutal principles over and over again?

B (77:10)

I think it's both. I think there's sufficient evidence that he is certainly above average, if not way up there in iq. He was precocious. He was head of his class as a kid and coding video games when he was 12 and his name on a patent when he was 20. So I think people who go around being like, elon's an idiot, everybody else does all the work is like, that is just not an informed opinion at all. But I don't think he's a thousand times smarter than any other human who's ever lived. And so the difference between like, all right, he's smart, he's probably certainly smarter than me, but that does not explain the difference in order of magnitudes of the outcome.

A (77:55)

It seems like level of smart, tolerance for risk, bias for action and work rate. At least from what we've been talking about, those seem to be four of

B (78:09)

the big drivers and grand quests. I think. I think that is a key piece of actually what makes him special. I think if he applied massive work ethic and first principles and ingenuity to reinventing insurance, it just like wouldn't have the same zest and zeal and it wouldn't have the same like, level of outlier results.

A (78:33)

What is the purpose piece? How does that sort of factor in?

B (78:37)

I think it's an interesting. I think he cares very deeply about humanity as a whole. I think it's an interesting paradox where he's like people who criticize him for like, being cruel or whatever to people he works with, like coming down hard on them or having really high expectations or being mean or firing people capriciously or whatever. But as he explains, it's like, I am, yes, I push people really hard. I sometimes step on toes, but I do that in service of this mission that serves all of us, which is making life multi planetary or electrifying transport advancing clean energy. If it's neuralink, it's like helping paraplegics or quadriplegics, like control computers or eventually walk Again, that also has some AI alignment components to it. There's a chapter in the book of my companies are philanthropy. Everything that he starts, all the technologies that he tries to advance come from this inherent love of humanity and the desire to solve problems that make collectively our lives better or preserve consciousness itself.

A (79:42)

So your first book is on my list of 100 books to read. And there's a top five at the top which are the ones that everybody should start with. And it's in that, that one of the other ones that's in there is the Precipice by Toby Ord. And that's all about existential risk. How humanity could go extinct. From super volcanoes to supernova explosions to nanotechnology and engineered pandemics and natural pandemics and AI and all the rest of it. But you did a section on X Risk as well.

B (80:09)

Yeah.

A (80:11)

Why is that important?

B (80:14)

Early stages of this book. I didn't have it in there and it wasn't until the purpose piece kind of clarified itself that I was like, oh, this is actually like the frame through which he is so motivated as what? I'm sure that that book goes into great detail about it. But like there's been many extinction events in human history, or not in human history, but in Earth's history. Like many species, most species were wiped out multiple times, entire continents destroyed. Like asteroids have hit Earth in the past. We don't know if things have evolved and then been killed. But. But his big motivation is like make life multi planetary, preserve the only form of consciousness that we're aware of that exists in the world, in the universe, which is ourselves. And we're going to feel pretty stupid if we destroy ourselves before we, before we back ourselves up, like back up the hard drive. And his point is like we've been around, Earth has been around a really long time. Humanity has not been around so long. Civilization is very young. Like we're only 10,000 years into what could be a million year civilization. But we've got to take this first step off the planet and into the solar system. And if we fuck this up before we get off the planet, like Big

A (81:31)

L. Yeah, well, I think what's fascinating to me is I wonder about people who are very singular in the modern world and what that person would have done in ancient times. I think this is so funny, assuming that you weren't born a slave and you couldn't have raised out of anything. If there's some sort of egalitarian meritocracy and you can just like toss them into the Roman Empire or toss them into the middle of the War of the Roses or something. Just watch what happens.

B (81:58)

Yeah,

A (82:01)

I don't know, man. It certainly seems like it's the time to have somebody that's like that, regardless of what is going on. Personally, what you think about ethics and all the rest of it. I remember he gave this interview, it was probably about three or four years ago, and he said something to the effect of what I care about is doing good, not the appearance of it.

B (82:20)

Yeah.

A (82:21)

And there are a lot of people around who are doing bad while trying to appear good. They have no interest in that. And it's kind of the move fast, break things, I didn't give a fuck what you think of me type approach. Even if that's untrue in some part, like an ability to be disliked, a preparedness to not care so much about optics in the way that other people do. It's a fucking big unlock.

B (82:52)

Peter Thiel has a very interesting observation of how high a percent of the successful founders, especially in tech, seem to be somewhere on the spectrum. And he's like, what does it say about our society that the people who have a biological advantage in de emphasizing the opinions of others are the ones who more reliably seem to achieve an outlier success?

A (83:17)

Have you heard Jonathan B's approach? He says there's only three types of founders that are going to be successful. Number one is megalomaniac. Number two is autist. And number three is revenge fantasy and megalomaniac. Adam Newman from WeWork. Autist, Elon Musk and revenge fantasy. Palmer Lucky. Although I think Palmer actually kind of has a bit of all three. And I think Elon probably has a bit of all three as well. Like trying to alchemize some slights that occurred earlier on. But look, I think in order to do different things, in order to make changes and to push the limits in ways that people haven't seen before. Obviously, obviously you're going to need. But by design, you're going to have to get comfortable with people doubting you and making judgments about it. The disregard for the way things are done is completely crucial.

B (84:12)

Yeah. And I think so many of us forget that we. It's almost like we're in the Matrix unless we make the willful effort to break out of it. And we have this bias to defend the status quo no matter what it is, without even really ever thinking critically about it. And so most of us, when we hear something, something like somebody's disrupting and radically innovating something new we're just kind of like, ah, do we really need that? Isn't it fine the way it is? Especially as we get older or as we get comfortable with that thing, you know, there's a great, like, Douglas Adams line of like, everything invented before you're 30 is like a new miracle and to be appreciated. And everything invented after you're 30 is like a crime against humanity and a sin and should be, not be created.

A (84:52)

This is where there's a line about driving. Everybody driving slower than you is an idiot and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac. Yeah, every. There's one about women as well. Every girl who's got smaller titties than me is flat chested. And every girl who's got bigger titties than me is a fatty.

B (85:13)

That was in your episode about female intersexual competition.

A (85:17)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Small titties, big titties. It all comes down to titties. So look, dude, this coming to the book process, which I think is fascinating, obviously you write the navalmanak and then that kind of springboards you into this, pretty much the forefront of the self published, like, pioneer space. What is this book like? What are these books? Is it a new kind of biography? Is it a compendium? It's a very strange type of book to read, even though it's obviously been super popular. So is it a new genre?

B (85:50)

I. I truly don't know what to call it. It's kind of weird. I even feel weird saying I write this book because I feel like I build it. It feels like doing a jigsaw puzzle to me.

A (85:59)

And it's much more about removal.

B (86:01)

Yes. Right.

A (86:02)

Once you've got everything, this is everything that this person has ever said. Now, how much of this block of marble do I need to remove before David's left?

B (86:10)

Yeah. And just organizing and finding the thread so that it feels like each question is sort of a natural byproduct of the. The previous idea. And it's just like a clean.

A (86:19)

Yeah. And then weaving. The weaving as well, I suppose. Maybe more akin to clay than it is to marble.

B (86:25)

Yeah. There's just. It is a weird thing and it came out of loving. I mean, I'm a big fan of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett and like, they never wrote books, but a lot of people built books out of their talks, their lectures, their letters. And I never knew what to call those either. But I just found myself asking, like, who do I wish had written books? And then realizing that the raw material is out there and I'VE been lucky to get permission from Naval and Balaji and Elon to like build these things and I don't know what to call them and I don't know how to talk about it, but I like it.

A (86:57)

It's fucking awesome is what you can call it. Dude. I think it's really, really good. What have you learned about the scale of the Internet since obviously the Naval Minak was a huge, rip roaring success and really sort of catapulted you. You weren't already that small before, but that really sort of put you at the forefront. What's it taught you about leverage online and that experience?

B (87:18)

Yeah, it's easy. I feel like anybody's into podcasting, YouTube, social media knows intellectually that like the Internet is vast and the niches are bigger than you think, but it sometimes takes a like, palpable human experience to be like, oh, no, really, like, they are much bigger than you think. And I was really, I'm just surprised and delighted to like, see that book take on a life of its own and see how many people recommended it and see how many people resonated. Like, I thought I was writing a book is like building a lighthouse where you're like, it has this ability to kind of like attract your people. And a podcast, I'm sure is the same where like, you kind of put your values out there and people who resonate with it are like, man, I really like that. I was like, then we probably get along great. That's super cool and fun and it's a great, it's a great life on the other side of that, creating something like that and the relationships that come out of it. Right. The thing, the scale still blows me away. Like, I can't believe that we're know it sells so well in China and India and all around the world and across so many different demographics. India, India makes a little more sense. That's fair. But yeah, I just, I didn't. It was not on my like, vision board that like yoga instructors in Bali were going to be like reading the Almanac of Naval and that like, you know, it was going to be so popular among like high school and college students.

A (88:35)

We've been talking about that. Me and George have been talking about this a lot and obviously we spoke about it last night. The. The tam for the Book of Elon is way bigger than it is for naval, but the potential hurdle of ideological disagreement is also greater. So again, it's the boobies on the popularity graph. Lots of people that go, ah, I've got to and then lots of people who go, never. As opposed. I don't know how many people have a fervent dislike of naval. Most people probably didn't know. And it's like, you should really read this. No one's gonna go, yeah, exactly. No one's gonna go, you should really read this. And someone say who is the book about.

B (89:12)

Yeah, yeah, so I'm prepared. I did spend a lot of time answering the question who is naval? But I think once it's, it was just such a weird book. Like it's a weird title. It's a weird book. It was like crafted for a niche and just like broke out. But Elon is one of the most famous people on earth, right? Like, and I think he's, he's not a polished presenter the way Steve Jobs is. I don't think people necessarily think of him as a font of wisdom or deep introspection. But he has fucking incredible ideas when you can really access them. His life story is just so many ups and downs, so many hard lessons and he is a really good communicator actually. He's got a gift for distilling things and bringing people along and finding a key metric, honing a team, organizing people around a mission. And some of these ideas in this book about being multi planetary he's been talking about for 20 years. But there's still so much to learn from them. They're battle tested ideas. I think in a lot of cases.

A (90:18)

What are the tactical principles? What are the ways that you've changed your life? Having gone through the process of writing

B (90:27)

this book, I think the first would be my focus on hydration. Hydration makes a massive difference in how you perform and hydration is more than just drinking water. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing that you don't. Each grab and go stick pack contains a science packed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no

A (90:50)

coloring, no artificial ingredients or any other BS.

B (90:54)

Free shipping in the US for a sample pack by going to drinklmnt.com modernwisdom if you don't like it for any reason, they will return your money and you can keep the box. That's drinklmnt.com Modern oh my God, he did it again.

A (91:10)

Is he doing all four? Is he doing all of them? Okay. Yep. There you go. Oh wow. Showing the product as well. Holy shit. Thank you, dude. That's a wonderful, that's a wonderful gift. That's the best gift that you could have given me is a free Ad read because now I don't need to do it. How fucking fantastic.

B (91:28)

I am also a deep personal fan of Element. I drink it after every workout and every session.

A (91:33)

It's fucking great.

B (91:34)

I don't know who the other sponsors are. You're off the hook. That was the rough.

A (91:36)

Thank fuck for that. Beyond. I feel I'm getting jump scared by my own ad reads. What have you applied to your life beyond eight Sleep and Element? What have you applied to your life after learning about Elon, I think it

B (91:51)

is the most meta. Is this sense that I'm capable of more than I think it has encouraged me to do more things in parallel. Back to that parallel gestation thing. I'm trying to run Scribe Media, which is a publishing company and write a book, actually work on three at the same time and podcast and invest. So it gave me some fuel in the fire to be like, no, this is doable and sane. And if these things are all sort of like stacking and compounding, it is sane to do them all in parallel over a long period of time. The bias to urgency. I'm not working 100 hour weeks and running around the world on my private jet, but I do have a much stronger discipline around where is the bottleneck? What's the most important problem to solve? What is the most effective way to solve it? How can I physically go to the problem? How can I pull in the right people? I think the idea of a war room is kind of underrated of what's the bottleneck? Gather the people, attack it, the rest will kind of take care of itself. Is not how a lot of companies are run. Frankly. A lot of them are like weekly meeting, do this, do that.

A (92:57)

Standard schedule, procedural as opposed to tactical. What is the issue? Let's go after that, let's go through it. You know, when I think about this, it makes me think about the difference between watching a UFC and boxing. When you watch boxing, it's this weird. It's almost ceremonial, this sort of monarch, like weird vestige of people dotting their caps. We must remember that today is a grand entry for the 45th anniversary. And you're like, what the fuck? Whereas it's just at the ufc, it's rock music and the guy's in the middle of the octagon, they start hitting each other. And it kind of feels a little bit like that, that when you have why do we have an agenda? Why do we always have the same agenda for each of these meetings? Why can't it just be what is the problem? Given that the rate limit is constrained by the slowest moving part or person or department or whatever it might be. And if you continue to open those up, the total capacity of the pipeline increases.

B (93:55)

Yeah, I think most leaders are by default delegating the pace of the entire organization to someone or something, but they don't exactly know who.

A (94:07)

But also by doing that, by delegating, by it not being them, even if they're not purposefully delegating it or whatever, they're off the hook. I don't need to be moving that fast. I don't. You know, and it's a really good point to say if you've worked super hard for a good while, like, that's the point at which you get to kick back and Matthew McConaughey with your feet upon the table. That's the point. The point of working that hard was to get to escape velocity, which is

B (94:33)

perfectly fine, depending on what you're optimizing for. Again, like, this is not a blueprint that everybody should follow. It is a like, like explanation of how one person who is unique and special happens to operate and take whatever works for you and leave the rest.

A (94:48)

Fuck, yeah. Eric Jorgensen, ladies and gentlemen. Where should people go to check out everything you've got going on?

B (94:52)

Ejorgensen.com is my personal site. Elon Muskbook.org has everything for this book. You can read it for free or listen to it for free if you want to. If you want to buy it on Amazon. Rock on. Check out the naval book and the naval episode. We did 800 episodes five years ago.

A (95:10)

Wow, that is a good one. I saw that you just released on smart friends the four hour conversation on your YouTube.

B (95:16)

Yeah, we just updated naval and I updated the audiobook, so I got to like spend a day, deep conversation and kind of be like, all right, which of these ideas hold. Which are refined? Which have you changed? It was a really cool, like, full circle kind of experience.

A (95:29)

Unreal. Uh, what are you doing next? Can you say?

B (95:32)

Um, I. The one I can say is I'm doing a book with David Senra for distilling some of the maxims and the key stories from the, like, founders archive

A (95:40)

that will fucking rip.

B (95:42)

Which I think will be. Is so fun to work on and I think will be amazing. Um, the other one, I don't have like a thumbs up yet, so I don't want to say that one publicly.

A (95:49)

Well, I'm looking forward to getting you in Senna in here and we can have a chat.

B (95:52)

That would be amazing.

A (95:53)

Fuck yeah. Appreciate you man.

B (95:54)

Thank you.

A (95:57)

If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading list. It is 100 books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life changing and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.