The biography of Elon Musk that was written by Walter Isaacson came out a few years ago.

It's 615 pages long. And so I read the book for the first time when it came out. And I didn't think I can make a great episode about it. And I think I've now finally figured out what I really want to talk to you about. It's going to sound crazy because Elon is the richest person on the planet and the most famous entrepreneur alive. But I think that all of the other stuff, the politics, the tweets, the constant appearance in the news or there's like new controversies all the time, it just really distracts and takes away from the fact that Elon has a set of timeless and brilliant and insanely valuable principles on how to build companies, how to invent new

technology, and how to make an impact on the world around you. And so this is what I did. I have spent

at least, at least 60 hours reading and rereading this book. This book is written in

chronological order. So I would say it's more akin to reading a

series of news reports over a few decades than the typical way a biography is written. And so as it

turns out, that's going to be a major asset for you and I, because what you'll see and what I

exclusively want to focus on is the enduring set of company building principles Elon has used over three decades

and across at least seven companies. So it may be apocryphal, but there is a quote from Michael Angelo

when he was asked, like how he created the statue of David. And he replied, I just chipped away

everything that was not David. So what I've done is edited down my 40 pages of notes and highlights in the book into just

the way that Elon works.

I want to focus on the ideas that he used to build his companies and to build what I think

is a truly singular career.

I don't think there's anyone else like him living or dead.

And so I'm going to go through his ideas in chronological order so you can

see how they appear, reappear, and how they are edited and iterated on over time. And so at the end of the

episode, or by the end of episode, I should say, it will be impossible for you not to understand how

Elon works. And then what I think we both should do is we should sit with these ideas, write them down, and then think deeply about how we can apply some of them to our work. I think one of the superpowers of this project that has been going on for almost a decade, where you and I get together every week and we talk about another one of history's greatest founders, is that we see that somehow people that didn't know each other were alive at different points

in history, worked in different industries, lived in different parts of the world, all arrived

at very similar conclusions on how to build themselves and their company into something great.

So I want to start when Elon's in college right before he starts his first company Zip 2.

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