Super U Podcast | Elon Musk
Our new episode of the Super U Podcast is live! The Super U Podcast delivers curated tips from top performers and thought leaders to help unlock and unleash your inner superpower. This week’s episode features tips from Elon Musk, founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company. Click here to subscribe to the Super U Podcast. Need a sneak peek? Below are the main takeaways from the episode.
Elon Musk | Super U Podcast:
[02:03] Great People Create Great Products
The ability to attract and motivate great people is critical to the success of a company because a company is just that’s it’s a group of people that are assembled to create a product or service. That’s the purpose of a company of your service. Forget this elementary truth. And so if you know if you’re able to get great people to join the company work together towards a common goal and, and sort of have a relentless sense of perfection about that goal, then you will end up with a great product.
[03:41] Failure Must Be An Option
When trying different things, you have some acceptance of failure… failure must be an option. If failure is not an option, there are extremely conservative choices. And you may get something even worse than lack of innovation, things may go backward. So, what you really want is risk, reward, and punishment to be proportionate to the actions that you see. So if what you’re seeking is innovation, then reward success and innovation. And not only that, there should be minor consequences or a lack of consequences for trying and failing.
[05:13] It’s Important For People To Believe In Your Mission As Quickly As Possible
In the beginning, there will be a few people who believe in you or what you’re doing. And then over time as you make progress, the evidence will build, and more and more people will believe in what you’re doing. So I think it’s a good idea when creating a company to create a type of demonstration or if it’s a product to have a good mockup, or if it’s a software to have a good demo or to be able to sketch something so people can really envision what it’s about. Try to get to that point as soon as possible and then iterate to make it as real as possible, as fast as possible.
[06:46] Invest In Making A Difference
I’ve been trying to optimize on a risk-adjusted return basis. So I would not say that I went to the rocket business, the car business, or the solar business thinking that it’s a great opportunity. I just thought that something needed to be done in these industries in order to make a difference. And that’s why I did it. In general, I do think it’s worth thinking about, like whether what you’re doing is going to result in a disruptive change or not. If it’s just incremental, it’s unlikely to be something major. It’s got to be something that’s substantially better than what’s gone on before.
[08:21] Don’t Just Follow Trends
Don’t just follow the trend. So you may have heard me say that it’s good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles, which is rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine. And you reason up from there. And this is a good way to figure out if something really makes sense, or if it’s just what everybody else is doing. It’s hard to think that we can’t think that way about everything takes a lot of effort. But if you’re trying to do something new, it’s the best way to think. And that framework was developed by physicists to figure out counterintuitive things like quantum mechanics. So it’s really a powerful, powerful method.
[10:22] Let Your Drive Override Your Fear
I wouldn’t say I’m fearless. In fact, I think I feel fear quite strongly. If I feel what we’re doing is important enough, then I just overwrite the fear. But it’s not that I don’t feel fear. If I feel it more strongly than I would like, it really depends on the stakes. If the stakes are high, if it’s really important, then we’ll overcome the fear and just do it anyway. Essentially, I mean, drive overrides fear, but I feel a fear. It’s kind of annoying. I wish I felt it less.
[12:08] If It Feels Too Easy, It Probably Is.
Wishful thinking for sure is a source of many problems. In many walks of life. business or personal business, or personal wishful thinking, causes a lot of love travel, you really have to ask, Well, you know whether something is true or not. That doesn’t make sense if it ever feels too easy, it probably is.
Connect with Elon
Twitter: @elonmusk
Instagram: @elonmusk
Website: https://www.tesla.com/elon-musk
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The Super U Podcast is hosted by #1 bestselling author and Motivational Speaker Erik Qualman.
