In this episode of The Real Entrepreneur, host Mike Michalowicz reviews a clip that outlines five productivity habits attributed to Elon Musk and offers his own entrepreneurial perspective on each. He begins with a brief, self‑referential intro and then walks through the five hacks: (1) avoiding a rigid business plan and focusing on a clear vision; (2) ending pointless conversations immediately; (3) leaving meetings that aren’t directly relevant; (4) preferring rapid decision‑making over prolonged deliberation; and (5) being willing to publicly contradict or reverse prior decisions. For each habit, Mike shares agreement, disagreement, or nuance, drawing on his experience running multi‑million‑dollar businesses, referencing his Profit First methodology, and questioning the applicability of Musk’s tactics to smaller enterprises. He emphasizes the importance of listening, the cost of useless meetings, the value of action‑oriented decisions, and the courage to admit past mistakes. The episode concludes with a call to subscribe, a reminder to visit his website for questions, and an invitation for viewers to form their own perspectives.
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The Real Entrepreneur. Maybe you are. I'm not saying I am. I'm saying this is. Does that make sense? You're watching The Real Entrepreneur. I review movies, video clips, TV shows. I give you entrepreneurial insights within. My name is Mike Michalowicz. And before we kick off a little discussion about a clip with Elon Musk, I want to invite you to push that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. All right. I assume you did it because it will serve you. All right. Let's see what Elon Musk has to say. I love the last name, Musk. It's better than Michalowicz.
It's a real name. Elon Musk is the polarizing entrepreneur behind PayPal, SpaceX—
right there, polarizing is a good thing because that means inevitably you're being true to yourself. Well, at least in most cases, that's the goal. If you're authentic, if you're true, if you lean into your natural self, you will have people that oppose you. That's polarizing. It's good because you're being authentic.
The Boring Company and Tesla. Whether you consider him a genius, you must admit that he's a productivity whiz. Here are 5 things Elon Musk does that have helped him be more productive. 1, don't bother with a business plan. Last year at South by Southwest.
All right. I'll give that a check. I agree. Business plans, we'll see what he says, but, or what they convey that he says, but business plans are so hard to predict the future. Meaning this, if you could predict what a small business, your business is gonna do in the next few years, you can predict the stock market for a day. Invest in the stock market, you'll be a billionaire overnight. It's that predictability is that not— that's not there. But I think the good thing about a business plan is the vision. So record the vision. Where is the X on the map you want to head? But the route to get there is unpredictable.
When asked about his business plan, Musk explained, I don't really have a business plan. These things are just always wrong. Musk is not a big fan of starting up with a firm business plan.
Oh, so it's interesting there. He says, I don't believe in starting up with a firm business plan. What I heard there is there's probably a vision and you've got to document it. I'm not saying that they're conveying that here, but that is something I believe in. Set the X on the map and then tack your way, zigzag your way there, considering what's the immediate needs your business has, what's the challenge you're facing, what's the opportunities that present themselves. How do you grasp those? Move forward for a quarter, 90 days, realign, move forward 90 days, and move ahead in increments.
What does that have to do with productivity? It frees up his time and mental energy to work on a visionary level and leaves the operational details to others. 2, immediately end any pointless conversation. When Musk thinks people are wasting his time, he cuts them off.
I disagree. Now, let's put this into perspective. He has multi-billion dollar corporations. I have multi-million dollar corporations. I think, um, he has more financial success and growth in the industry. And that style of cutting off conversations does not work for me. I believe there's so much to discover in conversations that I don't know. I know the biggest risk I run is trusting myself. And when there is conversations happening, especially that are contrary to my belief, I need to listen. And it is hard. It's easy to cut it off because I want to just comply with what I believe to be true. But sometimes those endless conversations are people trying to tactfully get their point across. So often I have to listen more acutely. So I, I quasi disagree with that.
To his way of thinking, what's truly rude is forcing him to listen to conversations that are neither interesting nor—
let me add to that. I think it's, it is rude for for me to speak endlessly with the simple intent of hearing my own voice. If I'm not being of service to the person I'm communicating with, if I'm not being of service to you, I should shut up. Hopefully I'm being of service to you.
3. Walk out on useless meetings. If a meeting wanders or is on a subject that's not immediately relevant, Musk simply gets up and leaves.
Okay, I agree with this. It sounds like the similar context meetings with one-on-one conversations. If it's useless, are we listening well? But the other point is a meeting usually engages more than just one other person. I've seen meetings where 5, 10— now with virtual meetings, 50 people are sitting there and 2 people are having a conversation. We're killing 50 people's or 52 people's time. So yeah, a useless meeting is damaging.
He also gives his staff and employees permission to do the same. 4. Decide rather than deliberate. It's obvious from the pace of his decision-making that he prefers to decide to take action rather than talking a decision to death. A perfect example of this was when he fired all the Tesla contractors who couldn't find a Tesla employee to vouch for them.
Yeah, okay, so there it is. Action over further consideration. Yes, I'll give that one a check. I mean, I agree with that. I think it was Colin Powell who said every war plan goes out the window the second the first bullet flies. No matter how much you envision where your business wants to go, how much you plan for it, even though I'm not a big fan for business plans, no matter how much you envision and plan and prepare, there's so many variables. When that first bullet flies, there's so many variables going on with the dynamically adjust. So, um, I think taking action where there isn't potentially catastrophic consequences is better. Meaning take action that has a consequence, you can measure it, but give yourself the position to rewind if necessary. But indecision, inaction, that can be very costly. I wonder if Tesla kept on those partnerships with— were, you know, charging them through their teeth. Is that— it makes metaphors, but just charging them an arm and a leg. And if Tesla would be around today. So yeah, deliberate action that's rewindable, I think, is a good move.
5. Don't be afraid to contradict yourself. Musk isn't afraid to walk back a decision.
All right. So yeah, don't be afraid to contradict yourself. Everything I just shared, by the way, totally not right. I rewind everything and just concur with Elon Musk's assessment. Now, yeah, of course, contradict yourself, but with tact, meaning When you have a new revelation, it's okay to say, I've had a new revelation and what I believed to be true in the past was wrong. That's how Profit First came about. When I wrote Profit First, I said, I believe that profit should be the bottom line in the year end. It should be the last consideration, but didn't work for me. I had a revelation that was wrong. And maybe I'll, I'm sure I will have more revelations of things I'm doing now. And actually just recently had one that maybe aren't right. Or at least not optimal. And I have to contradict what I said in the past. It's this belief that A-players really exist, and it's 10% of the population. I bought into that hook, line, and stinker, and now I'm like, oh my gosh, I think I was totally wrong. So I'm going to contradict what I said and share a new thing. And what is— what I believe is everyone has A-player potential. Think about that. I'll talk about that in the book.
For example, frequently touted the Model 3 factory as almost entirely automated He didn't hesitate to publicly announce it when he swapped out some automation in favor of human labor, saying, 'We had this crazy complex network of conveyor belts and it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.' Rather than defiantly sticking to his guns, Musk prefers to bite the bullet and then move on.
That's perhaps the biggest argument or value right there, is when something we commit to is not working, to have the courage to say, oops, that was wrong, I want to erase that or leave that or abandon that and move forward. There is this, um, effect— I can't remember the term— but so basically, uh, the momentum effect. Like, once we do something, even if it's not working out, we stick with it because we're so close to the finish line. We keep extending and extending. It's common in software. Maybe happens in automation too, but if you don't have the courage to say no, that was wrong, and take a new course that serves the company, it could be an endless spend that brings you nowhere and destroys your company. All right, there's my tips in this episode of The Real Entrepreneur. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got some value and have your own perspectives too. I invite you to push that subscribe button, hit the notification bell, and please, if any questions, go to mikemccallowitz.com/question. I'll see you on the next TRE.
