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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Powerful business lessons you can count on. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. And today's episode is a must read episode on our Must Read Episodes. I share with you a book that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must read is Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. In all honesty, I have delayed the release of this episode for some time. First of all, it took me a while to read this book. It's over 600 pages. But it took me just as much time to form an opinion, to really think about what I consumed, what I learned, and how I feel about this larger than life character, Elon Musk. So much is said about him as the wealthiest man in the world, as a business person, as an innovator. But this book goes far deeper. And I can bet you're going to be surprised about what you learn about Elon Musk in today's episode. He's as inspiring as he is a cautionary tale. More about that in a bit, but I want to talk about Walter Isaacson, the author of this book, the person who wrote this biography. He's one of the best biographers of our time. He he wrote biographies on Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and more. And when he writes these biographies, he goes very, very deep. We'll talk about what kind of research he did, how he got to know Elon and all that Kind of stuff so that he can actually write a compelling biography in today's episode. I'm not only going to share with you takeaways and insights that I grabbed from this book, but how my opinion of Elon Musk changed over the course of reading this book. But also share things that you can apply to your own business, your own career as an entrepreneur, entrepreneur that worked for Elon and some of the things you want to stay away from. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to say before I read this book, I was a fan of Elon Musk. I was very inspired by what he has created as an entrepreneur, as an innovator. No person is perfect, he is flawed. And I'm of the opinion that you can be inspired. You can look up to somebody, you can see them as a leader, but at the same time understand they have drawbacks, right? They're not perfect. You don't have to throw the baby out of the bathwater, right? You can take the good, leave the bad. I mean, if we all looked at our lives closely enough, we're going to find flaws as well. And there's plenty of that in this book. Walter Isaacson, the author of this book, does a tremendous job when it comes to the research and putting together this volume of work, this incredible journey of a man's life up to this point. Walter Isaacson shadowed Elon Musk for two straight years. I'm talking about in his meetings, in his parties, a fly on the wall, almost literally. He interviewed his friends, he interviewed his family members, he even interviewed his enemies. This biography is more than objective. It was brutally honest. I was actually quite shocked how honest this book was. It's almost like cringe inducing. So if you think this book is just glorifying this billionaire guy, it's not. That's not what this book is about. This book gives you the raw truth, the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. The book goes through Elon's life story from childhood. A bit about his parents, his grandparents, his life growing up in South Africa, all kinds of stuff. And goes through the journey of him starting his companies to the recent day in 2023, around the time he bought Twitter. But in order for this episode to make any sense, I need to give you some context, some background on Elon Musk. Elon Musk was really bullied physically and mentally as a child growing up in South Africa. He didn't have an easy childhood. Now, I know many of us didn't have an easy childhood either. But there is this fake narrative that goes around that these billionaires grew up with a silver spoon. He definitely was not poor, but he didn't have a loving, caring group of people around him all the time when he was growing up. The institutions he was a part of, school was not really great for him. He was bullied a lot. His father is the person he fears the most in the world, is what you learn in the book. In fact, Elon has cut ties with his father and refuses to speak to him. On several occasions, he refers to his father as the character Jekyll and Hyde and that he lives a false narrative in his head about his life in addition to his struggles growing up. Elon wasn't actually diagnosed, but he believes, he suspects he is autistic or on the spectrum of autism. Many around him believe that he suffers from bipolar tendencies and depression. Let's just say Elon is not a happy camper. He's not living his best life, so to speak, right? He has 10 children. And of course, in 2021, he became the richest man in the world when his net wealth reached $190 billion, surpassing the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. Today, his net wealth is nearly a quarter of a $trillion at $225.4 billion. I don't share this as some fun data point about how much money he has and how rich he is. This is the point that changes one's mindset and changes his mindset in a big degree in regards to what he can and cannot do in this world. One thing becomes very apparent throughout his story. Money matters in a big way. And as I will describe in today's episode, you'll also see how it doesn't matter. I want to get straight to my key takeaways, my key points that I've learned. And I'm going to go right to the one that really hit me the hardest, and that is you don't want to be Elon Musk. You don't want to experience his life. His life is actually not that fun. He's actually a tortured soul in a lot of ways. He's unhappy in a lot of ways. He's stressed out. He doesn't have a lot of trust in a lot of people. He has a lot of mental challenges and emotional challenges. He works at times 120 hours a week. His life is his work. He does nothing else. And the best way to look at this is if you look at anybody who is the best at anything in the world, the best swimmer in the world. The best pianist, or in this case, the richest man in the world. You have to be totally dedicated to what you do at all costs. Let me repeat that again. At all costs. Everything else doesn't matter. Elon's trying to solve a lot of problems in the world. Whether it's space travel or reusable rockets or the energy crisis or, you know, electrifying cars with Tesla. He's trying to solve these big problems and everything else doesn't matter. His own happiness, his own health, physical well being, his relationships, how he treats other people, his ability to enjoy his success. None of that matters. So from the outside looking in, you might think, wow, this guy is so rich he could do anything and yet he doesn't. He does one thing, or in his case, several things in terms of business. But the point here is that he's focused on those successes. That's it. So that's an important point to look at. Because if you want to have a fun, fulfilling lifestyle with your loved ones, enjoy, you know, vacations on the beach and exotic travel, enjoying your successes, that's not Elon Musk, right? That is not what his life is like. He actually doesn't even own a home. He sold all his major possessions at one point a few years ago. He's known as the richest couch surfer in the world. So I wanted to drive this point home first because as I read this book, I admired him less and pitied him more. I really do. I really feel sorry for him because he is really suffering from a personal level. He's achieving a lot of great things and he's advancing the world in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways he's misunderstood. The other way he's misunderstood is that a lot of people think that Elon is some rich businessman. When you go through this biography from the angle of entrepreneurship, you realize actually he's not the best business person or business mind in the classical sense. He has a brilliant mind. He has the capability of learning something deeply and quickly. He's a great innovator, he's a great problem solver, but he's horrible with people. He is absolutely horrendous. He's not easy to work with. He's flat out rude to people. He's not the best marketer, he's not the best salesperson. His soft skills are pretty much non existent. He's also not super obsessed with the numbers. He tries to lower costs when he can so his business can stay afloat. But he's more focused on the product and Creating something superior. In a lot of ways, I see him mostly as an innovator and a problem solver. And because of that, he solves some of the biggest problems in the world. I mentioned he's not so great with people. Well, a lot of that has to do with he believes he has Asperger's, he believes that he's on the spectrum. But also he has no self control over his emotions. He just says what he wants to say, he blurts things out. He doesn't think about his actions before he takes action. Whether it's, you know, smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan podcast or, you know, blasting out a tweet that can really hurt his company and hurt him personally. And the author, Walter Isaacson believes after spending all this time with him that he's actually addicted to drama. And he attracts drama to his life because he likes to solve problems and because he's such a great problem solver. He has this incredible fearlessness about him. He is absolutely fearless. He doesn't believe he can lose, right. He actually really has this incredible self belief that he can accomplish anything. And he proves people wrong time and time again. So many times in big ways and small ways, he's proven that they're wrong. And he's accomplished incredible things. No one would ever think it would be possible to reuse rockets, land them. But despite a few failures at the start, he proved the world he could do it.