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Elon Musk Shares Words That Will Send Shivers Down Your Spine · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I've had a long career in multiple industries. If you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: list my sins, I sound like the worst person on earth.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: But if you put those against the things I've done right,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: it makes much more sense.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The value of getting.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to be I'm not trying to be anyone savior. That
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: is not the I'm just trying to think about the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: future and not be sad. For me, it's simply this,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: This is something that is important to get done, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: we should just keep doing it or die trying.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: And I don't need a source of.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Strength, so quitting is not even like it's.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Not of my nature.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And I don't care about optimism or pessimism that we're
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: going to get it done. Tells that was under the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: most relentless short cellar attack in the history of the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: stock market.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Tell them was the most shortened stock in the history
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: of stock markets.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So you know this was affecting our ability to hire people,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It was affecting our ability to sell cars. Yeah, it
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: was terrible. They want to test it a diet so
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: bad they could taste it well, most of them that
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: paid the price.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, where are they now? Just work like hell?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, you just have to put in, you know,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: eighty hour eighty one hundred hour weeks every week.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: But all those things improve the odds of success.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: So my people will say it, tell me, like, what
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: can you do to encourage entrepreneurs to start companies? I'm like,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: if you need encouragement, don't start a company. We basically
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: messed up almost every aspect of the Model three production line,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: from cells to packs, to motors, bodyline, the paint shop,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: final assembly, everything, Everything was messed up. I lived in
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the Fremont and and Nevada factories for three years fixing
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: that production line, running around like a maniac through every
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: part of that factory, living with the team.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I slept on the floor.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: So that the team who was going through a hard
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: time could see me on the floor, that they knew
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that I was not in some ivory tower. Whatever pain
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: they experienced was, I had it more. I mean, there
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't any other way to make it work. Though three
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: years of hell twenty seventeen, eighteen and nineteen were three
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: years there's longest period of excruciating pain in my life.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: There wasn't any other way, and we barely made it.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And we're on the ragged edge of bankruptcy the entire time.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Do you feel that this challenge of figuring out the
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: new way of manufacturing have an edge now that it's
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: different that you figured out how to do this?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: than anyone currently alive on Earth. I can tell you,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I can tell you how every damn partner car is made.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I'm not afraid of dying. I think it will come
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: as a relief.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: So all you may not be able to see the
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: vision of SpaceX come true in.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Your life, well, I'd like to live long enough to
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: see that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: Being at a network of two hundred and thirty billion,
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: roughly being perceived as the richest person. Do you know
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: John Law?
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Know?
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: John Law used to be the richest person on Earth
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: three hundred years ago. He was a poker player, gambler,
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: he was the biggest art collect on so a lot
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: of superlatives. In the end, he went bankrupt. What it's
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: a pretty far to all. Did you ever thought about
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: that option, that something could go wrong and that you
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: could one day lose everything?
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's been many times where I expected to
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: lose everything, not you know, I mean, who starts a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: car company and a rocket company expecting them to succeed
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: certainly not me. I thought they both had less than
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a champion chance of success. I got bankraft, fine or whatever.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I o'kay. So many people from so many young people
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: actually from across the globe.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: If you have an advice to them.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Young people globally who want to be like El Mosque, what's.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Their advice of it?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I think that probably they shouldn't want to be you.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I think it sounds better than it is. Okay, Yeah,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: it's not as much fun being me as you'd think.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: There's definitely it could be worse for sure.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I mean it's really hard starting a company. I mean
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you have to basically hear to work constantly, you know,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: from when you wake up to when you when you
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: go to sleep. You have to be willing to deal
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: with a lot of difficult problems and thorny problems.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: You have to be.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Willing to deal with an enormous not of stress, and
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: you just got to push yourself super super hard. I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend it for most people. Try to be useful.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You do things that are useful to your fellow human beings,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to the world. It's very hard to be useful very hard.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: You know, are you contributing more than you consume?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: You know, like.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Try to have a positive net contribusion to society. I
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: think that's the thing to aim for, you know, not
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: not to try to be sort of a leader for
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: just for the sake of being a leader or whatever.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: A lot of times the people you want as leaders
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: are the people who don't want to be leaders. So
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: if you live a useful life, that is a good life,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a life worth having lived.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Would would encourage people to use.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: The mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Boring Company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is love
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of humanity, they are philanthropy there. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: This is a love of full entropy. SpaceX is trying
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to ensure the long term survival of humanity with multiplied species.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: This is love of humanity. You know.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Neuralink is to help solve brain injuries and existential risk
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: with ai love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: solve traffic, which is health for most people, and that
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: also is like humunity. I encourage people to read a
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: lot of books, just really basically try to ingest as
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: much information as you can and try to also just
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: develop a good general knowledge so you at least have
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: like a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Like try to learn.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: A little bit about a lot of things, because.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: You might not know what you're really interested How would
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: you know what you're really interested in if you at
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: least aren't like doing it.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Peripheral exploration of broadly of the knowledge landscape, and.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: You talk to people from different walks of life and
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: different industries and professions and skills and occupations, like, just
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: try learn as much as possible.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Man search for meaning? Isn't the whole thing? A search
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: for meaning? Yeah, what's the meaning of life? And all?
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: But just generally, like I said, I I would encourage
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: people to read broadly in many different subjects area is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and then try to find something where there's an overlap
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: of your talents and what you're interested in. So people
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: may may be good at something, but they may have
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: skill at a particular thing, but they don't like doing it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: So you want to try to find a thing where.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: You have you're that's a good a good combination of
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of your of the things that you're inherently good at,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: but you also like doing. When you had that third
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: failure in a row, did you think I need to
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: pack this in?
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Why not? I don't ever give up.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I mean I'd have to be dead or completely inffascinated. Essentially,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: like the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you will make cumulatively, which if you sum up those
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: mistakes will sound like I'm.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: The worst predictor ever.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I said, I
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: think we're doing fifty percent.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: We've done eighty percent, but they don't mention that one.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So I mean, I'm not sure what my exact track
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: record is on predictions. They're more optimistic than pessimistic, but
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded, probably
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: more are later, but they.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Do come true. It's very rare that they do not
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: come true.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't aim to disrupt for the sake
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of disrupting, you know, it's more like this, thinking about
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: what set of actions, what set of actions are most
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: likely to lead to a better future, and so, you know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: in order one of the things, obviously, in order.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: For humanity to have a compelling.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Future, for civilization is that we must have a clear
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: path to a sustainable energy future.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: That's one of the things that I think everyone I
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: think would agree with.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: AM not someone who would tend to sort of demonize
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: oil and gas. To be clear, this is necessary right
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: now hours or civilization could not function. So I do
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: think we actually need and actually at this time, I
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: think we actually need more oil and gas, not less,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: but but simultaneously moving as fast as we can to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: a sustainable energy economy. But I was living in the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in the in the factory in Fremont and the one
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: in Nevada for.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Three years straight. That was my primary residence. Not kidding, literally,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: did you keep the couch?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I actually stept slept on a couch at one point
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: on a in a tent on the roof and then
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: but for a while there I was just sleeping under
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: my desk, which is out in the open in the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: factory and for an important reason, And it was damn
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable sleeping on that floor, and always when I woke.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Up, i'd smell like metal dust.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but actually I stopped using the couch in the
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: in because there's a little compas troom and a couch there
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I stopped using the couch.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I just lept on the floor under my desk.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So so during shift change the entire team could see me.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And that's important because, like you know, the the team
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: like if they think that the sort of their leader
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: is off somewhere having a good time, you know, drinking
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: my ties on a tropical island. The thing is that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: since the team could see me sleeping on the floor
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: during shift change was just with nothing. They knew I
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: was there and that made a huge difference, and then
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: they gave it their role. What kind of characteristics does
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: an entrepreneur need or have to be someone like you? Well?
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I think it certainly you need to be very driven
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: and have a high pain threshold.
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: Elan you are reported by Forbes and everyone else as
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: now in other world's richest person.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: That's not a sovereign, you know.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that if somebody is
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: like the king or the facto king of a country,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: they're wealthier than I am.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: So, but it's just harder to measure.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: But what people do so three hundred billion dollars, I mean,
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: your your net worth on any given day is rising
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: or falling by several billion dollars.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: How is that? I mean, does that? How do you
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: handle that? Psychologically?
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: There aren't many people in the world who have to
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: even think about that.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: I actually don't think about that too much.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: But the the thing that is actually more more difficult
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and and that does make sleeping difficult is that, you know,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that I really try to work as as much as possible, uh,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you know, to the edge of sanity, basically because the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: tess us getting to the point where H probably will
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: get to the point data this year where every good,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to impact on Tesla. One of the biggest mistakes people
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: generally make, and I'm guilty of it too, is wishful thinking.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: You know, like you want something to be true even
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: if it.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Isn't true, and so you ignore the things that you
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: ignore the real truth because of what you want to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: and like I said, it's certainly one that I find
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: myself in having problems with. But if you just take
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that approach of your always to some degree wrong and
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: your goal is to be less wrong. So a challenge
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: for entrepreneurs is to say, well, what's the difference between
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: really believing in your ideals and sticking sticking to them
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And it's it's that is that is a really difficult
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: thing to tell. You can you tell the difference between
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: those two things? So you need to be sort of
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: very rigorous in your self self analysis. You guys are
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the magicians of the twenty first century. You know, don't
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit, and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: go out there and create some magic.
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: What Elon has to say about how he takes risks.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I literally just try to use a scientific method, frankly, and.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: You know, consider the.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: You know what, what is the importance of the outcome
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and what what what is one risking in order to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: achieve that outcome? And but like I said, if the
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: outcome is important enough, even if the poverty of success
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: is low, one must I think still still do it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: You you know, some things are very important and in
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: order to have a good future, and if we don't
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: do them, well, they're in big trouble. And so and
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: then then how much of a risk really is it,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: because if we don't take those actions, we won't have
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: a good future. And I think the risk ist thing
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: would be no action, put a lot of stock and
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: in an honest day's work to do useful things, and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: just generally to have like a not a zero sum
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: mindset or like, have have more of a grow the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: pie mindset, like the.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: If you sort of say, like.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: When when we see people like perhaps some inclining, some
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: very smart people kind of taking an attitude of like
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: like like doing things that seem like morally questionable, it's
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: often because they have at a base sort of axiomatic level,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a zero sum mindset, and and they without realizing it,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: they don't realize they have a zero s mindset, or
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: at least that they don't realize it consciously. And so
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: if you have zero s some mindset, then the only
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: way to get ahead is by taking things from others.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: If it's like if if the if the pie is fixed,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: then the only way to have more pie is to
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: take someone else's pie. But but this is false, like
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: obviously the pie has grown dramatically over time the economic pie.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So the real in reality you can have the overuse
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: this analogy. You can have a lot of you can
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of pie. Pie is not fixed, so
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: you really want to make sure you're not You're not
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: operating without realizing it from a zero sum mindset where
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the only way to get ahead is to take things
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: from others. Then that's going to result in you trying
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to take things from others, which is not good. It's
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: much better to work on adding to the economic pie.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: So when I interview somebody, that mine of your question
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: is always the same. I said, tell me the story
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: of your life and the decisions that you.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Made along the way and why.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: You made them, and then and then, and also tell
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: me about some of the most difficult problems you worked
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: on and how you solved them. And that that question
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I think is very important because the people that really
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: they know the little details, and the people that pretended
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: to solve the problem, they can maybe go one level
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and then they get stuck.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: Are you happy at the moment?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I think those degrees of love, but I certainly for
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: when to be.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Feel fully happy, I think you have to be happy
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and work and happy in love.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: I suppose I'm medium happy. They have degrees of happiness.
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: Can love projects for work compensate love among people?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I think, with the love of work and my experience,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: could it best make one halfway happy?
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: What was your biggest challenge in life.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest challenges, I think is making sure
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: you have corrective feedback loop and then maintaining that corrective
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: feedback loop over time, even when people want to tell
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you exactly what you want to hear.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's a very difficult