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

So 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, you know, campaign, right, the, the current president campaign. Um, 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 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. Then I red-eye overnight to Austin, arriving at 5:00 AM. 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 focused on AI/Autopilot, Optimus 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.

When you told me this title and I saw it on the sheet, you know, before, because you highlighted it before we started, I thought you meant That this was his schedule when he's home.

Oh, did you think—

Like related to his family and kids?

Oh, oh, no.

'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.

Yeah.

But his kids are 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. All 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, Yeah. 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 like people think it's easy to manage even one company or 2 companies, 3 companies. Some people don't, 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 that 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 8 years later. So if he didn't maintain, somehow hold on that relationship, it would've been screwed. And also he made a relationship with Chrysler to get an investment into Tesla, and that saved Tesla. So all these things.

Yeah, so the Daimler-Chrysler investment into Tesla, you know, right before then, He had a deal to sell to Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Hmm. I didn't know that.

And I think it was somewhere around $10 billion. Don't quote me on the number.

Yep.

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. He'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 Googled 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 by Tesla, 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. But 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, I need money. Okay, sounds good. I really think it was like the Ellison deal when he was raising money for X.

Yeah, yeah.

He's like, I actually—

How much do you need? Like, how's a billion? He's like, maybe a little more. He's like, okay, sounds good, I'm in.

Or 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. You've raised money before, right? Not a ton of times, but you've raised money. Have you ever raised money from friends?

Yeah.

And when you raise money from friends, you do a big hoopla speech or you just text?

No, it's just, you text. Yeah. It's like, how much do you need? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same for you too, if you need it.

I've always had, when I've raised money from friends and family, it's, and I haven't done it in a long time, but when I did it in the past, it was more so like texts or calls. Like, hey dude, just looking at 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. It's, it's, it's good for everyone to see that this, this takes a lot of the, a lot of crazy work to get things done. But that is the Elon Musk daddy's home schedule. Here, one more thing I wanna leave off with for, for everyone here. Um, I, Elon's algorithm, if I were to simplify it for everyone, this is how he, he, 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 and 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 it just, 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.

With the D is delete, delete what part?

So anything from a process, he, his whole thing is you, 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 wanna 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 an 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.

Yep.

All right. Yep.

That works. Um, and here's another thing. I mean, it used to be, so when they were launching one of their first rockets, um, they had 2 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 it by weeks or even months or so, and they ended up launching the next day.

And did it work out?

It worked. That was a 1-hour decision.

That's cool. What happens if you could just put super glue in and hold it together?

I don't know about that. See, you and I aren't physicists, so I wouldn't know.

No, no, no. I'm messing around when I say super glue it.

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. All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. Cool. Actually kind of similar to this, you, you, you, your, your phrasing for 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? I'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. Okay.

So a drive— here, let's start with barrels first. So barrels, this comes from Keith Rabois, 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 5 barrels in company, like 5 bullets or 5 cannons, you're only going to be able to do those 5 initiatives at once. And so you need as many 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 on 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 one of his engineers at 2:00 AM 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. He's like, okay, I'm going to message you in 3 hours. Okay. I wanna know what the costs are and all this stuff. 3 hours later, he calls him 5:00 AM, right? Okay. What, what are all the costs? $5 million. It's gonna cost us for these machines. Okay. Buy 2 of those machines. I wanna 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, 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. Yes.

To me, they're all kind of the same thing. Yeah.

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 it, I was messaging him like 6, 7 PM my time. So call it close to midnight his time, somewhere around there.

10:00 PM, 4 hours ahead.

No. Brazil changes depending where you are.

I believe from 4 to 6. Oh, I thought it was always 4 to 5.

No, no, it depends on the time and the season.

Yeah.

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.

Probably drunk.

No, he wasn't drunk. And he's just like, can I get it to you in an hour? I could have said you can get it from me 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, cuz 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. I 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, they're these, these people are your, your, 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 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.

Yeah.

So it's, 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+ 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 the reality, so.

Dude, and it really is hard to find a balance. I used to, I'm not at the level of the Elon Musk or anywhere near there and I never will be, or even the Peter Thiels or even people below that level. I'm nowhere near close to any of them. But 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. Then 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 2 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. And normally I would just say, yes, APAC wants me, but I know the kids would 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 yeah, 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 to speak just to see my kids during Halloween.

And keep in mind, how many Halloweens do you get with your kids? Maybe like 6 or 7?

More.

Yeah.

And then it's over.

Look, but they're not going to start to do it there. You start doing it at age 3 or 4 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.

Yeah, you only get so many.

Yeah, I would say the Halloween is actually more valuable than the Malaysia one in different, different terms. Um, one more thing and then we can move over to one of your topics, but I think this is all related because here's, here's a question for you. I, I, I, I want to posit that true leadership actually comes from near-death experiences. And so you becoming a pusher in your early career, were you a pusher? How aggressive were you?

Uh, 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 1.

No, no, no. What I meant by that is like earlier on I would push, but I would 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.

Yeah, but 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 where it's just like, dude, enough. Like, I, I've seen this movie before. I, I know exactly what I want and I'm gonna ask for what I want and I'm not gonna 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 near-death experiences to really evolve your leadership style into what it needs to be.

You'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. 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 being like, oh, let me wait a week or a month. Maybe they'll figure it out.

Yeah.

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.

And 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 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 couldn't do it.

Noah's here. He can even validate this because Noah, yeah, it was a lot of work.

Eric used to have this philosophy when I started working with him and even over, I would say over the last 5+ 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 you said.

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 and CEO said, why would I fire him? We just went through some training or learning.

Screw that fire though.

Yeah. But, and I'm not saying I'm right. I've never created a company the size of IBM, but Eric, you know, 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 an entrepreneur. And I'm not saying my way's 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. Many 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 ad 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 idea 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. So 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? 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? 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 Yeah, I'd say like 6 on the chill scale. Okay.

Now you're like 9. Yes.

Meaning that I'm, I'm, I'm tougher now.

Yes. Yeah.

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.

Yes.

Yeah.

And he knew Eric on a personal level as well. He said Eric was on a tough to chill factor, chill being really chill being like a 1 and really tough being a 10. Eric was a 6 and now he's saying that Eric is a 9. I would agree with that.

Yeah. And I think you've always been a 9+ since knowing you over these 14, 15 years.

Yes. I think I've gone chill, but more chill on the personal side. 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 24/7 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.

Because they're so good and you want to keep them. And you, this, I do, 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 few and far between.

Few and far between, but most of my leadership is like that. So I have to, you 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?

Oh, that was someone on your team.

Uh, someone who's close. I'm not gonna go full in details there, but I already know if they don't figure this out, they're gonna have work problems and personal problems, and they're just gonna be screwed up. And I asked them on the phone the first thing, and I'm— I can't give someone advice if they should get a divorce or not. That's not my place in life. But I asked him, and this person's 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 was like, okay. 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. It's related to food, being prepared. Sometimes they don't have enough time for each other because of the kids and getting them ready. They don't work in an office. The kids are home more. They take care of other people within their family, like helping them out. So their time is stretched and he doesn't have enough time because he's working all the time. I was like, And his wife doesn't want them to have a cook or a nanny or any of that all the time. And I was like, I'm going to tell you to do something. And he's like, what? I was like, go get a nanny for the weekends because weekdays are pretty covered and nighttime. And I'm like, just do it. Your wife already knows you have issues. It's okay. And I'm not saying, by the way, this person works for me or anything like that.

Yeah.

And I was like, you should just go. And hire this person. Your wife will forgive you. Tell her how you want to spend more time with her. Go to lunches. And she's like, yeah, dude, when we do vacations and we have help, like we all have amazing time. I'm like, and the examples he gave me without going into detail, it's caused by not having enough help and being stretched thin. I'm like—

Why don't you just do more of what works?

Yes. So I was like, before you decide to do anything and tarnish your life, Because divorce is going to be hard on everyone. I was like, why don't you go and you just hire a person to help out? And he's like, you know what? I'm going to try that out because the days we have help or the hours we have help, it's great for both my wife and I. And I was like, all right, you do really well financially. Money's not an issue. He's like, no, I have a lot of cash in my bank account, home, everything's nice.

Yeah.

I'm like, all right. Try this out. But that's a problem. If you have people in your organization who are workaholics, which is fine, if they don't create a balance, it screws up everything in their life, including work. So you got to solve that problem beforehand.

Remember also, before we move on to the next topic, you picked the next one, but we also talked about the concept of burnout. Vacations don't necessarily solve burnout. Burnout comes from not making progress or not feeling like you have momentum. And I can actually see that with my org, right? Versus like, you look at 5+ years ago, whenever Everything was crumbling, right? It's not a matter of going on vacations. It's a matter of like, hey, are we winning or not? And are we having little milestones as we're winning? People just want to feel like they're winning.

That's true. But the problem is, and this isn't a problem for you because you're single, or I think you're single, you don't have to— when you look at your goals for your growth and your revenue, your world revolves around business. And your family being your dad, right? You don't have siblings from my understanding. I've known you for years.

Never.

No, no.

Right.

You have close cousins and friends. You still talk and hang out with them. You just showed me a video that one of your close friends sent you.

Yeah.

But the point I'm getting at is you're able to focus 100+ percent of your time on work. If you have another person and kids, you now have to worry about, are the other people in your nucleus accomplishing their goals and feeling satisfied?

I'm not. Yeah. Everyone has their own goals, right? I think in this case, I'm just talking about business in itself.

Yeah.

But yes, the personal thing is a factor for sure. Anyway, that is it for today, guys.

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