How to Think Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (#56)

In my 20’s I got excited about drinking and now I’m approaching 30 I get excited about thinking.

Cheers Tim

Ramit Sethi’s emails/blog posts are by far the most inspirational in my life currently. The way he breaks things down into simple steps and numbers and shows you how things truly are possible just gets me excited to go bigger and better.

Can you please have your podcasts transcribed? Not only will it help hearing impaired people follow your great podcasts, but it will also open it to others who want to save time by reading through the transcripts. You’re all about time management. 😉

Taking your advice from the Ramit podcast and being in the first 100 comments…I’m an engineer here at SpaceX (been here a while) and would love to have you stop by for a tour (if you haven’t already). Pretty inspiring stuff to see!

Cheers,

Nick

Interesting. As always. Tim, the best book for me, so far is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I read it when I was in college and it was the best eye opener.

I learned about the rich and the poor and how to think and act like the latter.

Hello Tim–

loved the book, first time commenter. I am an engineering student pursuing my master’s and I have applied many of your techniques to my own personal life. The best book I have read is “The 33 Strategies of War” by Robert Greene. Simply an amazing book for personal and business reasons. I highly suggest a read!

-Joaquin

This is awesome. I have been waiting for this episode with Dr. Peter. Thanks Tim! You are the best.

A fascinating interview Tim. Inspiring and motivational

That is one amazing interview, more like this ;). I love the art of thinking big, 10X! And I agree Tim that you can do so much more then books & investing (although I’d love to read your new books every 2-3 years). It seem that you can succeed anything you set your mind to and that seems to be a very rare quality. What’s next for you?

Think and Grow Rich is the book that change the trajectory of my life. I think many agree. I would love you to interview some of those who are well known you started off with reading Hill’s book.

I’m curious as to what your own experience was with the book?

I’m looking forward to a Seth Godin interview someday Tim!

You are very inspiring, I just watched your video on daily activities you do definitely give me some ideas, I am about to read one of your books for for the first time, I’ve heard of your books I am really excited to get started! Oh and also I have the same gun…..!

Thank you

Namaste 🙂

This by far my most favorite podcast from Tim. Tim is getting a bit better at interviewing his guests on his show.

[Moderator: link removed]

Elon musk is a true legend. The fundamental difference i see in him as compared to other tech leaders is that he is determined on changing the norms and changing the system.

His outlook on life is to truly revolutionize systems and products for better more sustainable living and that is a mindset my friends which must be developed.

What does exponential actually mean?

We are fundamentally local and linear thinkers we evolved in a world that was local and linear, everything that affected you was in a days walk. It was a very local existence. If something happened on the other side of the planet you knew nothing about it.

And things were linear in that your family over the ages, nothing changed over the generations and millennium to millennium it was pretty constant. Today the world is anything but that, today the world is global and exponential and what I mean by that is fundamentally and simple doubling. If we look at exponential it would be 1,2,4,8, 16, 32, when your progress is able to double year on year on year…

An example. If I asked you to take 30 linear steps most people would go… 1,2,3,4,5…..30 steps then you’re off the street 30 meters away. If I asked you where you would be if you took 30 exponential steps, unless you had it memorised, few people would realise you would be a billions meters away.

The difference is huge!

When we talk about exponential it’s often paired to different technologies…robotics, synthetic biology, AI….

All of this is underpinned by the increase of computational power, typically know as Moore’s Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel)

Gordon Moore says in a paper that they have been noticing that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit had been roughly doubling for the same cost every 18 months and this is likely to continue.

That became known as Moore’s Law and has been that way for the last 50 years as a constant so overtime you go to Best Buy every 18 months or so the computer you buy has more processing power than it did for $1000 18 months earlier.

This is extraordinary! Look at a computer that you had in 2010/2011 that computer was calculating at 100 billion calculations per second…in 2023 the total computational power of your 1000$ computer is calculating at a 10th of a 16th cycles per second. That is the rate at which our brains are doing pattern recognition!!! But it doesn’t stop there because 25 years later the average 1000$ computer is thinking at the rate of the human race!

How can someone who is not a technologist change their thinking without knowing much about technology…

The single most important attribute that you need to tap in to these technologies is passion and curiosity.

Remember – we are in a hyper connected world, and in are a lot of really smart geeks, who are the worlds expert in machine learning, intelligence and robotics and some of them absolutely wish they had your skills – writers, marketers, great at making money, that they have business ideas, all kinds of things.

So I write about [in Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World] is how to crowd source. You can ask the crowd to make your idea happen and someone with the skills can make it happen.

Technology could mean – learning to ask better questions of yourself. What are some questions that you ask that many other people do not ask?

One of the questions is – Is there a grand challenge or a billion person problem that you can focus on?

I’m asking entrepreneurs to stop focusing on bringing out another photo app and ask them – what are you most passionate about? and can you go and solve one of the grand challenges? If you want to become a billionaire focus on helping a billion people.

In this hyper connected world we are going to have another 3-5 billion new people come online so one of the questions is – What do they need?

Look at the projects Zuckerberg has, Google has, that Elonz has… there are at least 3 separate competing concepts for deploying drones, balloons, satellites that will give a megabit connection to every human on the planet.

3 – 5 billion new consumers – what do they need? The represents tens of trillions dollars coming into the global economy and they also represent an amazing resource of innovation.

The other question I ask is – How will you disrupt yourself?

Every entrepreneur, business, company will be disrupted, and the rate of disruption is increasing.

Companies on the SMP 500 that started in the 20’s had an average lifespan of 67 years, today the average lifespan is 15 years!!

Find the smartest 20 somethings in your company and give them permission to figure out – how would they take down your company?

What are some of the strategies of the people we’ve spoke about have in common?

(Elon, Richard Branson, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos)

There’s a number of critical key attributes:

– The level of “moon shots”, their willingness to dream really big, go 10 times bigger than anyone else, not 10% bigger.

Larry Page said “I have a simple measure right now for people – are you working on something that can change the world – yes or no” he says “99.999% of people of the planet – the answer is no”.

When you are going for the moonshot you are not going 10 % bigger – that’s what everyone else is doing – but when you’re going 10 times bigger, you’re out there by yourself.

When you are trying to go 10 times bigger you need to start with a clean sheet of paper. There’s no use dragging a legacy of the past into the future.

It’s typically not 100 times harder to go 10 times bigger but the reward is 100 times bigger.

– Experimentation

Jeff Bezos said “Our success at Amazon is a function of the number of experiments we do per year, month, per week, per day. And when you do experiments you fail, and if you don’t have a thick skin you’re not going to be able to succeed”.

The day before anything is a breakthrough – it’s crazy idea and if it’s not a crazy idea its not a breakthrough, it’s an improvement. So where inside of your companies are you trying crazy ideas?

How do people like (Elon, Richard Branson, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos) compensate or cover their weakness while still going for the “moonshots”?

I think we get to know them after their successful, and there’s a lot of people like them that are successful that we don’t know about. When you reach that level of success, the public sort of ignores your flaws to a large degree.

They also build amazing teams that make up for it and they are extraordinarily smart, these guys are brilliant.

Who do you rely on to correct you or point out flaws in your thinking?

I will say there’s not a shortage of people who will do that. LOL I think it’s my business partners. The challenge is if you listen to people it’s tough to be revolutionary because the majority of people will take you back to the mean and that’s not the place to be.

Scott Belski said “When 99% of the people doubt your ideas you’re either gravely wrong, or about to make history”

Mark Twain “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority it’s time to pause and reflect”

What do you think is the future of crowd funding and incentive competitions?

Crowd Funding http://www.crowdfunding.com

– projected in 2015 there will be 15 billion dollars of crowd funding.

– 100 billions dollars by 2020.

– it’s something that every single entrepreneur should be experimenting with

– it allows you to get the money in advance and get the vote of the world if they even want your product or service

– you get to find out what colour, size, shape – the most honest vote

– not all things should be crowd funded,but if it can be, it should be.

– You build a community using crowd funding

– Prove to yourself if you can execute a business

What morning routines do you or have you had that you use consistently

– stretching (in shower) lower body, breathing exercise – affirmation mantra – accelerated deep breathing

– (From Date with Destiny) I repeat my purpose in life and the mindset I want to have for the day in the shower

– scan emails

– play with my kids

– improving VO2 max?

What do you look for in friends?

– passion

– curiosity

– purpose

The quality of life is function of who you go through life with. You’re the average of the 5 people you hang out with most.

I’m looking for people who are going to up my game, who I love spending time with, who make me feel great/happy, who are not yes men or women, who I can dream with.

Have you had to break up with certain friends or associates?

It’s not been dramatic, just drifted away from.

Then there’s people who are self defeatists, negative in their mindset. So I will give them the skills to think differently with.

– Landmark forum

– Tony Robbins

Are great resources to change your thinking.

Incentive competitions – what does it mean? http://www.innovationinthecrowd.com/incentive-prize-competition/

I teach in “Bold” How do you give birth to a big bold idea above the line of super credibility?

We are launching incentive prizes for the worlds biggest problems. What’s a problem that should be solved that hasn’t been?

We think about that and we launch 2 or 3 prizes a year and I fundamentally believe there is no problem we cannot solve and that the technologies that allow us to do things are technologies that were only resident with government and large corporations 20 years ago.

We have access to 10’s of billions of crowd funding, it’s an amazing time to be an entrepreneur and the number of people solving problems is also exploding so that gives me the greatest hope for the future so we are constantly sourcing prize ideas.

One of my mantras is “Stop complaining about problems – go solve them”

How do you suggest people think about climate change and addressing the problems of that?

– We see the problem before it hits us, we are good at that. By the time the problem hits us there’s a lot of tools and ways for us to address it.

– We are working on 2 X prizes now

1. Battery X prize – increase the energy density by 300%

2. Carbon Capture X prize – can you capture 80% of the carbon coming out of a natural gas coal smoke stack and turn it in to a useable product that is worth more than the cost of capturing it that it becomes a profit centre.

– Lets say we are too late – we have hit a critical turning point – we do have the technology to launch into space something that blocks energy coming towards us.

“The person who says we are screwed and there’s nothing we can do and the person who says we are fine are the same because nothing will get done either way”

Super credibility – what does that refer to?

Every entrepreneur should learn this.

Each person in ur own minds has this line of credibility and if I announce something to you below the line of credibility you would dismiss it out of hand – if I said this teenager next door is going to build a spaceship and fly to mars you’d think he’s a nut forget it!

And if you announce a project above the line of credibility it’s then ‘maybe they’ll do it’ and if maybe I announced I’m planning to build a spaceship and go to mars maybe they’ll think – ‘interesting let’s watch and see what Peter does’ and depending on my actions they’ll either dismiss it in a few days, months, year later or they’ll increase in credibility and then there’s this line of SUPER CREDIBILITY in our minds, that if you announce something above the line of super credibility ‘oh my god that’s amazing when is it going to happen’

How did you convince the head of NASA to be on the stage for your big idea?

The pitch was – listen wouldn’t you want entrepreneurs around the world to be working on new technologies so that this is off your balance sheet.

You build credibility by getting one name at a time – safety in numbers – step by step.

Stone soup – children’s story – super credibility must read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup

Have you had a point in your life where you were pessimistic for more than a short period of time?

For sure! We all hit brick walls.

I was on a major project that got shut down.

I went into a depression for a day or two.

Then came out of it and re-focused.

For me my passion my guiding star is opening up the space frontier and today that guiding star is also solving grand challenges. So whenever I get bummed or pissed off I refocus on that guiding star and it reenergises me. If you’ve got your passion and it is a bottomless pit of enthusiasm and energy.

The self talk is

– Why do I believe this is important?

– Look how far I’ve taken it so far

– Reminding yourself what my purpose in life is (and if you don’t know it – find it)

To find it:

1. What is it that you wanted to do when you were a child, before anyone told you what you were supposed to do.

2. If one of us gave you a billion dollars, how would you spend it? If I said to you, use it to go and improve the world, to go solve a problem – what would you do with it?

If you could give your 20 yr old self a piece of advice what would it be?

– Really believe in my dream.

– By Google & Amazon stock LOL

TODAY YOU CAN DO MORE THAN EVER BEFORE.

Take the shackles off your dreaming abilities – create a world of abundance.

[Moderator: link removed]

I really wish these were transcribed. I’m a reader and it saves gobs of time for me to read through podcast. Just a suggestion Tim..

Tim, I know this may break your heart but Shackleton may never have written this ad you enjoy so much…

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shackleton-probably-never-took-out-an-ad-seeking-men-for-a-hazardous-journey-5552379/

I doing what he said, thank you Tim. You change my life again. Big positive

This guy’s a bad-ass! I love the X Prize Foundation idea and the fact this guy is giving such great incentive for some of the smartest people to fix the world’s toughest problems. Very fascinating listen!