Elon Musk's 'Daddy's Home' Insane Work Schedule

0:00So do you want to know about the Elon Musk daddy's home insane work schedule? Go for it. Okay. So Elon Musk, obviously he's been involved with politics in the last 12 months. He got involved with Doge. He spent a lot of his money helping campaign, right, the current president campaign. And so this guy tweets this. He says, Elon is back. This is literally what it means to be a wartime CEO. So keep in mind, when he was involved with politics, that means he was very distracted from his businesses like Tesla and SpaceX, for example, right? So Elon tweets this. He says, Daddy is very much home. and burning the midnight oil with Optimus Engineering on Friday night.

0:35Then I red-eye overnight to Austin arriving at 5 a.m. I wake up to have lunch with my kids and then spend all day Saturday afternoon in deep technical reviews for the Tesla A15 chip design. Then I fly to Colossus 2, which is their data center, on Monday to walk through the whole data center floor, review transformers and power production. Excellent progress. Depart midnight. Then up to 12 hours of back-to-back meetings across all Tesla departments but particularly focus on AI slash autopilot, often as production plans and vehicle production delivery. This is what it means to be a wartime CEO. And that's what he means by daddy is very much home.

1:13When you told me this title and I saw it on the sheet, you know, before, cause you highlighted it before we started. I thought you meant that this was his schedule when he's home. Oh, did you think, okay. Like related to his family and kids. Cause like daddy's home as a title. Daddy's home to take care of his kids with his company. That's how he's looking at it. But his kids aren't included in here, but you can see the vast majority of his stuff has to do with work. And I'm actually listening to this pod right now on the Founders podcast, talking about how Elon works. And one of his ex-wives said that he's not built for a life of domestic tranquility.

1:49All he thinks about is work and he cannot get his mind off of work. And now that he's back and he's focused, this is why he has that$8 trillion, or sorry, he has a$1 trillion pay package if they hit 8 trillion in market value, right? But I love how he made time for lunch with his children. No, I really do. I get he's a workaholic. I think a lot of us are. He's a different level of a workaholic. But even at his level, it's awesome to see that he schedules in making sure that he's having lunch with his kids and getting that family time in when he can. Yeah, but it just goes to show you that people think it's easy to manage even one company or two companies, three companies.

2:27Some people don't think about these things, right? But you can see how much work and effort he has to put into this. And the other interesting thing, I don't know if you know this. This is just a little side point here. But remember, he was fired. Basically, he was ousted from PayPal back in the day. Yeah. Okay. So Peter Thiel, like the PayPal mafia, all these people, they ousted him. But he actually, instead of saying, screw you guys, you ousted me, he actually kept good relations with these people. And that led to - I think in the long run, in the short run, there was some issues. Maybe, but Peter Thiel ended up saving SpaceX by putting$20 million in from Founders Fund eight years later.

2:59So if he didn't maintain somehow hold on that relationship, it would have been screwed. And also he made a relationship with Chrysler to get an investment into Tesla, and that saved Tesla. So the Daimler-Chrysler investment into Tesla, you know, right before then, he had a deal to sell to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I didn't know that. And I think it was somewhere around$10 billion. Don't quote me on the number. And what ended up happening was, is the Daimler Chrysler deal came in. So he decided not to sell to Google. Yeah. I mean, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And his wife said this back in the day, he would wake up in the middle of the night vomiting.

3:36He'll be talking to himself in his sleep, right? But this just goes to show you that the amount of work it takes to build something really big and the consistency it takes. Yeah, I got the number wrong. And yes, in 2013, I just Google this, Google AI overview says, yes, in 2013, when Tesla was struggling financially, Elon Musk offered to sell the company to Google for$11 billion. And the deal included$6 billion for the acquisition and$5 billion for factory expansion. However, the deal was called off as Tesla sales improved and the company recovered, meaning Musk no longer needed a savior. And I believe also the Daimler Chrysler deal came in sometime around there.

4:14But I don't know if he still does, but my guess is he still does. He has a great relationship with the Google founders. He used to stay at their house when he was traveling to Northern California. And he's just like, yo, I want to sell my company money. Okay, sounds good. I really think it was like the Allison deal. Yeah. When he was raising money for X. Yeah, yeah. He's like, sure. Like how's a billion? He's like, maybe a little more. It's like, okay, sounds good. I'm in. Yeah, he was like a billion or whatever you think I should put in, right? And then he's like, all right. But that's really how it is.

4:45You've raised money before, right? not a ton of times but you raise money have you ever raised money from friends yeah and when you raise money from friends you do it's easy hoopla speech or you just text no it's just you text yeah or a phone call right how much do you need yeah yeah yeah um same for you too if you need it uh-huh i've always had when i've raised money from friends and family it's and i haven't done a long time but when i did it in the past it was more so like text or call like hey dude just look into this i'm in this all right sounds good yep yeah so anyway that that's i mean it's it's good that he's focused again.

5:18It's good for everyone to see that this takes a lot of crazy work to get things done. But that is the Elon Musk daddy's home schedule. One more thing I want to leave off with for everyone here. Elon's algorithm, if I were to simplify for everyone, this is how he thinks about operating at SpaceX or Tesla. Think of it as DESSA, D-E-S-S-A. Let me explain what this is real quick. D stands for delete. So whenever you look at something, you want to delete. His whole thing is deleting as much as you can from stupid processes and things like that. So delete. Okay, that's D. E is the edit. Okay, you want to delete and then you want to edit.

5:52And then you want to simplify whatever it is that you're working on. Then you want to speed it up. And then you want to automate it, right? But at the very top of that, you're questioning everything. And if he runs that across everything, and he just keeps running that over and over, he won't take no for an answer. And he works all the time and it inspires his team. So I'm not saying that's for everyone. That's just his style. but I think there's a lot we can learn. We can take pieces from what we like about what he does. I'm not saying, oh, he's a good or bad person or whatever, but I think there's a lot to learn based on what he's built.

6:21With the D is delete, delete what part? So anything from a process. His whole thing is you need to question every single process and then you need to delete. And then you need to delete to the point where sometimes you want to add 10 % back. Most people don't delete enough. He thinks that's how a lot of companies become too bloated. So example of this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here with the delete side, is this example like with the Tesla seat they try to make the manufacturing easy and they're like why do seats have 100 or 200 parts so he simplified the Tesla seat to have a lot less parts all right yeah that works um and here's another thing I mean it used to be so when they're launching one of their first rockets um they had two cracks usually when you have cracks you need to delay the launch right he's like why don't we just cut off where there's cracks and just shave it off and NASA expected them to delay by weeks or even months or so and they ended up launching the next day.

7:12And did it work out? It worked. That was a one hour decision. That's cool. What happens if you could just put super glue in? I don't know about that. You and I aren't physicists, so I wouldn't know. No, no, no. I'm messing around when I say super glue. Yeah. But no, that's true. Why not just cut off where the cracks are if it's not that important and needed and then you're okay. Yep. Cool. Actually kind of similar to this. You're phrasing for this This is pusher. So up top here. So we got pushers, drivers, and barrels. And Elon's a very good example of a pusher, driver, and barrel. So first, why don't you define what a pusher is in your definition?

7:46I'm going to define what a barrel and a driver is. How about you start with the beginning, define the driver, the barrels, and I'll define the pusher. So a driver, here, let's start with barrels first. So barrels, this comes from Keith Raboy, okay? And he talks about in a company, you have a lot of ammunition and you have a lot of barrels, okay? You can have all the ammunition in the world, But if you don't have barrels, like the guns to push them through, the bullets through, you're not going to make things happen. So if you only have five barrels in a company, like five bullets or five cannons, you're only going to be able to do those five initiatives at once.

8:17And so you need as many as barrels as possible because they just make things happen. They move very quickly. What's a barrel in a company? Is it human capital? Human capital. Yeah. Okay. So you need enough humans to actually go and execute them what you want. And it's no different. I mean, this is kind of similar to like a driver. A driver will just make sure they respond very quickly. They'll push. like Elon, for example, he'll message his one of his engineers at 2 a.m. saying, hey, I want to build. Hey, what's it going to take to build tunnels under the street? Right. And then they get on the phone.

8:42He's like, OK, I'm going to I'm going to message you in three hours. OK, I want to know what the costs are and all this stuff. Three hours later, he calls them 5 a.m. Right. OK, what are all the costs? Five million is going to cost for these machines. OK, buy two of those machines. I want to talk to you about it on Monday. Right. That's an example of a driver, a barrel. These people are just people that make things happen. Ultimately, I thought that was a pusher. They're the same thing. They're all the same thing. So you're saying a company needs drivers, barrels, pushers. Barrels I get, human capital, but you're saying pushers are very similar to driver where you're just pushing.

9:10To me, they're all kind of the same thing. Yeah, because to me, a pusher is someone who's just pushing people. Like I messaged one of our engineers, Saloon, when we were working on a visibility product early on and I was just like, how much will it cost per prompt? And he's like, I'm at a party. he's in Brazil. So call, I was messaging him like six, 7 PM my time. So call it close to midnight, his time, uh, somewhere around there. 10 PM, four hours ahead. No Brazil changes depending where you are. I believe four to six. Oh, six. I thought it was four to five. Depends on the time and the season.

9:47Yeah. Right. So let's just call it midnight. Let's just use the easy number. And he's like, I'm coming home from a party. Uh, drunk. No, he wasn't drunk. And he's just like, uh, uh, can I get it to you in an hour? I could have said you can get a turn the next day, but I was like, sounds good. And then he got it to me an hour and then we were discussing back and forth on the pricing. And then we were discussing, because that involves cost, right? APIs. And then I was like, okay, what can we give the maximum that we can give away for free without really breaking the company? And then we figured it out, almost figured it out that night.

10:19I would say a few days later, they finalized it, but I had enough where I was comfortable. And then I told the team to go and run. The thing with these drivers, barrels, and pushers, these people are your A players, and they can't stand having to work with B and C players, right? And if they work with a B and C player and they can't get what they want, here's you as an example. If you don't get what you want, guess what? You're moving on to the next person. And guess what? That person's kind of dead to you, whoever you couldn't get it from, right? It's sad, but they end up eventually being fired.

10:44Yeah. So it's not - Assuming that they really aren't good. If other people find tons of value in them, it's different. But usually if the founder of a company is working with someone and they can't get stuff done, they tend to lay them off. 95 plus percent of the time, that's what happens. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I would say. So my point of saying all this, we're talking about Elon in the very beginning, this whole daddy's home thing. This daddy's home, when daddy's home, daddy is driving things. Okay. Daddy is a barrel, right? Daddy's a pusher. Maybe it sounds weird that I'm saying it this way, but it is a reality.

11:20When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started. The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. or if you need help with content creation, Shopify has got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos.

11:54Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school. Shopify.com slash marketing school. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in and it totally changes the game.

12:30Framer is the design first no code website builder that lets anyone ship a production ready site in minutes. I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours, animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code. It was easy to use and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together.

13:00No issues with versions or miscommunication, whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates. Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you. Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com, promo code MS, framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. Dude, and it really is hard to find a balance. I'm not at the level of the Elon Musk or anywhere we're near there and I never will be, or even the peer to theels or even people below that, I love them, nowhere near close to any of them.

13:43But what I found in my life when it comes to pushing, I used to push really hard and I still do, but I don't push myself as hard. And a great example of this is, I have a speech on the 28th of next month, so October 28th, to a fortune 10 company. All right. From there, I could fly to Malaysia on the right after my speech and then speak. And I think I can make it back home on the 30th because of time change. 31st, I'll be there for Halloween. And then the next day I fly out to Milan. From Milan, I go from after I'm there for a few days of meetings and speeches. Then from there, I go to Spain for meetings.

14:29Then I go to London for more meetings. Then I'm back home for a day. Then I go to Toronto for a day. And then I go to Dallas the next day after. And then I'm back the day after that. So you're talking about like a week and a half to two weeks of traveling, right? And I could have done the Malaysia one. And I was debating it with my CEO this morning over text. And I'll read you what I typed to him. I'm like, you think I should go to speak, go to Malaysia and speak on the 3rd of October? Speaking at the 28th, I'm not going to mention the company name. And then my Milan speech is exactly on the 2nd, but I'll leave before then because of meetings.

15:12And normally I would just say, yes, APAC wants me. But I know the kids will be bummed for me missing Halloween. I could then fly from Malaysia to Milan. Worst case, I could still make that trip. and he eventually called me and he's just like, dude, we bought a company in Malaysia. There's a ton of people in there. Have someone who doesn't have a kid speak. And for them, they wouldn't miss Halloween because it's in their own city. And I was like, oh, that's a good point. And he's like, it may not be as effective, but it'll be good enough. And I was like, yeah, I'm okay losing some potential revenue by me not being the one speak just to see my kids on Halloween.

15:51And keep in mind, how many Halloweens do you get with your kids? maybe like six or seven. More, yeah, and then it's over. Look, but they're not going to start to do it in their, you start doing it at age three or four or whatever. They're not going to do it in their teens, right? Because they're going to start to become too cool for you, right? So you'll get so many. I would say the Halloween is actually more valuable than the Malaysia one in different terms. One more thing, and then we can move on to one of your topics, but I think this is all related because here's a question for you. I want to posit that true leadership actually comes from near-death experiences.

16:20And so you becoming a pusher in your early career, were you a pusher? How aggressive were you? I was actually pretty aggressive from day one. Really? Yeah. Okay. I got more aggressive and less. I don't know if empathetic is the right word or more political. No, you definitely don't have. I don't have empathy. I don't think you have empathy. On the personality test, we both have more empathy.

16:48No, no. try to also be empathetic at the same time and try to understand why they wouldn't move as fast and like try to help them out and be okay with it. You couldn't understand. I couldn't ever understand. It's just not my personality. I wish I could understand. I just can't. But I don't think I did push a lot. I did not push as hard as I do now. And what I mean by that is before when I pushed, I would care what people thought about me. So I would be careful in how I phrased it or found the right time to push, but I still wanted to. And I did overall. Now I just push whenever I want and I don't care what people think.

17:27But I think this is important. So where I'm going with this is that I think leaders really become leaders. Once you go through a couple of near death experiences, which we've been through, you've been through so much. We're just like, dude, enough. Like I've seen this movie before. I know exactly what I want and I'm going to ask for what I want and I'm not going to wait. I don't care what you think and as much. I think humans still care a little bit all the time, right? But I think you have to go through a couple of near-death experiences to really evolve your leadership style into what it needs to be.

17:54You're spot on because earlier on when I was more sympathetic and I was trying to figure out how to push in a polite way, which doesn't really work out in my opinion. And a lot of those companies had near-death experiences and some of them actually did die. And in today's world, the reason I push harder and I don't care is because I know the consequences from not pushing and not pushing when you should push instead of just be like, oh, let me wait a week or a month. Maybe they'll figure it out and then I'll push then. No, it doesn't work. You just lose a lot of time and money and it just crushes the business.

18:31And this is fascinating because I've always known you to be a pusher, but you've seen me evolve over the years yes and yeah the near-death experiences like they they shape you yeah eric if can i share how you were before yeah so eric used to have this philosophy it was really admirable i mean no one's here he can even validate this because no yeah eric used to have this philosophy when i started working with him and even over i would say over the last five plus years ago you had this philosophy where he would want his team to try to figure it out and he wouldn't have the attitude of they should just figure it out on their own he would actually try to help them books knowledge videos conferences coaching like paying for their coaching uh-huh so he would try to help them improve and i remember you quoting me an ibm quote one time it was something on like someone made a big mistake at ibm that cost like 100 million dollars and the ceo said why would i fire him We just went through some training or learning.

19:30Screw that fire though. Yeah. And I'm not saying I'm right. I've never created a company the size of IBM. But Eric would quote that to me. And he mentioned on how his team was learning a lot and they're improving. And it is actually true. Your team did improve over time and learn. I had a very different philosophy than Eric. And my philosophy, I would say, has been very similar from day one of being entrepreneur. And I'm not saying my way is the only way that works because I know entrepreneurs who tell their teams don't work all the time, don't work on weekends, have a work life balance. And some of these companies are much larger than mine.

20:09Many of them are. And my philosophy has always been screw it. If someone needs to get something done, like I need a marketing campaign or add up, I expect it up on Saturday. If I have the idea on Saturday, if they can't do it, I go and find someone that Saturday. No joke, we hired a Facebook ad contractor for less than 30 days. And my team's like, why? Because I had ID on Saturday and I wanted it up that Saturday within a few hours. And I knew my team wouldn't get it up. So I found someone who'd get it up that weekend for me. You know what's funny? We have a mutual friend that does exactly that.

20:45So he's, you know, they do a couple hundred million a year, right? And he can't take it anymore. He has an army of contractors under him. And I'm just like, why do you have so many contractors? He's like, because I just can't take it anymore. I just need to get things done and eventually we end up finding people within our organization who will get stuff done for us on the weekends but the point I'm making here is and Noah could attest Eric was a really chill boss would you agree? He's nodding his head yes so do you think it was I'm asking Noah right now so do you think it was how chill was it on a scale of 1 to 10 guys I don't think I was that chill but 1 through 10 in the beginning and versus now what do you think the demeanor, the difference is?

21:21yeah I would say like 6 on the chill scale now you're like Nine. Meaning that I'm tougher now. Yeah. So if any of you couldn't hear Noah, he doesn't have a microphone in front of him. Noah worked for Eric as his full-time videographer. He used to follow you around. Yeah. So Noah would know me the best over the years. And he knew Eric on a personal level as well. He said Eric was a tough to chill factor, chill being really chill, being like a one and really tough being a 10. Eric was a six. And now he's saying that Eric is a nine. I would agree with that. And I think you've always been a nine plus since knowing you over these 14, 15 years.

22:00Yes. I think I've gone chill, but more chill on the personal side. Yeah. Business I've maintained. The kids took the edge off. The kids took the edge off. I also am not a pusher. What I found over the years is as your organization scales and you start adding like hundreds of employees, thousands of employees, there's people who are workaholics in your organization who just work 24 seven and can't stop, those people actually push to have some sort of a balance. And I know they can't, but I try to push them to have something like, it's Sunday, your kid wants to go to a park, you should probably take them to the park.

22:40Because they're so good and you want to keep them. I do watch these people. I'm just like, dude, you really need to take a break right now. It's okay. The work's always going to be there. but that's only a few and far between. Few and far between, but most of my leadership is like that. So I have to push them to take breaks. What I found is if they keep working too much like that, it creates issues with their spouse and their family, which then creates a whirlwind of issues and creates issues at work. So I try to solve it before that happens. Like, dude, before this call, remember I told you someone called me and said, should I get a divorce?

23:17Oh, that was someone on your team. Close. Someone is close. I'm not going to go full in details there. But I already know if they don't figure this out, they're going to have work problems and personal problems, and they're just going to be screwed up. And I asked them on the phone the first thing. And I can't give someone advice if they should get a divorce or not. That's not my place line. But I asked them, and this person is a male. I said, do you love your kids? they're like yes i love my kids i'm like do you love your wife and i'm like and they're like i don't know i'm like what do you mean by that do you not enjoy the time with your wife i love the time with my wife she's like my best friend i say okay um do you still get intimate yes you know we enjoy that part without going into details okay so then i was like what's the issue oh we both complain about small stuff all right and then i was trying to figure out what the issues were with the small stuff.