Elon Musk: Making Impossible Possible

How the World's Richest Man Manages and Operates

This deep dive is not going to be about the founding story of Elon, how he learned to build reusable rockets, or how he became the richest person in the world. Because the reality is, there are already countless articles and videos on these. So instead, this piece is going to be centered around how Elon Musk operates and manages “Multiple” billion-dollar companies.

And let’s accept the fact that what Elon has accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary. He has (co)founded multiple billion-dollar companies. And where for most founders and leaders, managing or running more than “One” company feels daunting and exhausting, the guy runs and manages not one, not two, not three, but “Six” multi-billion dollar companies simultaneously.

How in the world does he do it all? We’ll dig.

The guy is really hard-working, but it also pays off though: Tesla, his electric car manufacturing company, market cap hovers around $940 billion. SpaceX, his aerospace company, is valued at $350 billion. Neuralink, his neurotechnology company, is valued at $8 billion. The Boring Company, his tunnel construction company, is valued at $15 billion. X (Formerly Twitter), his social media company, which according to Bloomberg, is seeking new funding at the valuation of $44 billion (wow!) And xAI, his AI company, which is part of X, is valued at $75 billion. And this is why he is the #1 richest person in the world with a total net worth of $359.5 billion.

On top of that, he no longer is just a businessman or entrepreneur anymore, he is a politician too. Since the US Presidential election, and after Trump winning the election, he is heavily involved in politics. He created what he calls DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and through it, he is literally shaking America—cutting jobs, making new rules, regulations, laws.

It’s truly impossible for an ordinary founder or leader to do all of these simultaneously. And that’s why I firmly believe Elon is different and extraordinary. His secret? He uses unique frameworks and approaches for building and managing his companies. And in this deep dive, I’m going to take you through the five most important frameworks and approaches Elon uses to run and manage multiple billion-dollar companies that also allow him to get time for DOGE.

Get your popcorn ready, and let’s dive in!

1. Start With the Mission

None of Musk’s companies were founded solely because of the opportunity to make money or seeing a gap in the market. Instead, all of his companies were started with a mission to solve big problems that could be potential threats to humanity.

He founded SpaceX in 2002 because, in simple words, he believes that, one day the Earth will die, and if we want humans to live and survive for as many billion years as possible, we have to make mankind a multi-planetary species. And this is what SpaceX has been focusing on for the last 22 years—to get to Mars and colonize space to expand human civilization.

Tesla, his electric manufacturing car company, says its mission is “To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.” Said differently, the goal of Tesla isn’t just to make the world’s most powerful, high-speed, luxurious electric cars, but also to reduce carbon emissions and move the world towards self-sustainable energy. And this is why Tesla doesn’t just build electric cars but also installs Solar Panels, Solar Roofs, PowerWalls, and Megapacks.

In 2022, Elon bought X (formerly Twitter) for $44 billion because he believed that “Free Speech” matters and is essential to democracy. This was the time when the Cancel Culture and False Narratives by legacy media was at its peak. So he imagined a “Free Speech” platform where anyone regardless of their name, gender, age, and nationality can freely speak and tell the truth on the platform, resulting in him buying Twitter. Now of course this does benefit Elon massively as he now has over 200 million followers on X where he promotes all of his companies through his tweets and posts.

And then there comes his next company, The Boring Company. Elon was once stuck in traffic in Los Angeles, he got so frustrated with it that he decided to build a tunnel construction company that would dig tunnels and build safe transportation infrastructures for speed driving and reduce traffic. He publicly tweeted about this in 2016:

Link to Tweet

And now, how can we miss him in the AI space? The guy has been predicting Generative Artificial Intelligence's (AGI) power and potential for many years. That’s why he co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and poured money into it for AI research and development. Because in simple words, he believes that if not done right, AI will be a huge threat to humanity and will do more harm than benefit. But long story short, when he recently saw how OpenAI was turning from a non-profit organization to a profit organization, he lost trust in it, and founded his own AI company, xAI to build safe AI models, which is now valued at $75 billion—directly competing with OpenAI.

For Elon, there is no project without a clear, strong mission. It’s the same thing again and again. Even look at his involvement in the American government. He created DOGE (Department Of Government Efficiency) to change how the government does things and to make new laws and regulations. I mean literally, the guy couldn’t be more serious, look at this video of him talking about how the government can find a trillion in savings because if it didn’t, the country would go bankrupt, I mean that’s what he said though.

This visual from the Generalist explains it well too:

Link to Image

How does it help him run and manage his companies? Starting with a clear, strong mission is one of the core principles Elon uses for anything and everything he does. Mission helps him stay on track and avoid things that are not important enough. And that’s why you also see, all the successful companies in the world have a clear, powerful mission. Because mission empowers employees and team, mission drives results, and mission helps the company stay on track.

2. It’s all About Efficiency

When Elon bought Twitter in 2022, did you know what was the first thing he did?

He reduced the workforce by 80%, with nearly 6000 Twitter employees losing their jobs overnight. There are two reasons why he did this, first Twitter was losing $4 million daily, so they had to save money. Second, Elon wanted to increase efficiency by only letting talented, hard-working people build Twitter 2.0. This was the email he sent to Twitter employees before firing them:

Elon is extremely hard-working. Reports claim that Elon works 80-100 hours per week including Saturdays and Sundays. This intense work ethic inspires his team, employees, and leaders to do the same. And that's also why you may have heard about Tesla or SpaceX's toxic work culture—employees often working long hours at night. Although this is good for Elon, but not very good for employees and his teams. This chat of Elon with the former CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal is also a perfect example of how he thinks about being efficient:

Moreover, it’s the same thing again with DOGE. He believes that most of the government employees are just taking advantage of government “Free” money while contributing nothing to the country. And this is why Elon and Trump are planning to reduce the government officials, agencies, teams, and reduce the large number of workforce to increase efficiency. He tweeted about this on February 23rd, resulting in more than 30,000 employees already losing their jobs!

Link to Tweet

How does it help him run and manage his companies? When you’re running multiple billion-dollar companies, the more hard-working people you have in your organization and company, the more efficient you become because the less you have to manage them. Elon understands this. The first step is to hire and bring in the most talented and hard-working people and let them do their job without intensely managing them.

3. One Day Rule

As a founder and leader, let me ask you: How many companies do you run? Chances are that you’d say, just one. Because the reality is, the biggest challenge for a founder and leader when it comes to running multiple million or billion-dollar companies is time. We all have only so many hours in a day, week, and month, which makes it hard to do multiple things simultaneously.

So how does Elon Musk do it and allocate time to run multiple billion-dollar companies at the same time? Let’s be clear, the guy has more things on this plate than he ever needed—Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, The Boring Company, Neuralink, xAI, Doge—that’s truly a lot. But he gets things done because he has this approach called the “One Day Rule.”

Rather than time-blocking “ Separate Hours” in a day for each of his companies, he works at one company on a given day. For example, one day he’d work at Tesla, second day he would work at SpaceX, third day he’d work at Neuralink, and so on and so forth. This helps him focus on the most important tasks on the given day. However, since he has bought Twitter, he tries to allocate time for it at night because it’s a software company that doesn’t need to fix physical things, which means he just can sit around code or talk to employees and the team.

And if you’re wondering whether Elon uses the 5-Minute Rule (because a while ago you read it on the internet) for your clarity, he doesn’t. He used to but not anymore. Watch him explain how he manages his time and allocates days for each of his companies:

4. The Founder Mode

The conventional method of running and managing a company is Manager Mode. Most founders rely on their managers and leaders for company updates and decisions. But as I’ve previously written about it, I got to know that some of the best, world-class founders in the world, like Mark Zuckerberg, Tobi Lutke, Patrick Collison, and of course, Elon Musk “Work” following the Founder Mode.

What actually is Founder Mode? It’s a pretty simple idea: When something is important enough to get done, you don’t ask your managers or leaders about it, you get involved in the work or decision and make the thing happen in real time. You talk to the employees who are “Actually” doing the thing, you talk to the person who knows about the thing in the team, and you together solve the problem or make the decision regardless of whether the leader or manager is involved or not.

And this is what Elon Musk does. Once he figures out one big problem the company has to solve on a given week, as he only has one day allocated for each company per week, so instead of asking about the problem or project to his managers and leaders, he directly gets involved and solves the problem in real-time—doesn’t really matter where and what the problem is—manufacturing, inventory, design, engineering, or whatever. Now of course, he doesn't do it all the time for all of the work. But when something is “Really” important and it’s holding his companies back from making progress, this is what he does.

In the following video, Marc Andreessen confirms this, watch the video:

How does it help Elon manage and run his companies? Since each week he has limited time, he has to prioritize things, so he chooses the biggest bottleneck (problem) to solve that would move the company forward. Because once the problem is solved, the company and team can work on other problems that don't necessarily require Elon’s presence.

5. The 80/20 Rule

You might have heard about the Pareto Principle that says: “80% of the results come from doing 20% of the work.” It’s also called the 80/20 Rule. For Elon, the 80/20 Rule is more like a philosophy to drive the most results at his companies.

Founder Mode helps Elon get into the technical details and know the actual problems his companies are having. The 80/20 Rule helps him prioritize things. It helps him find the biggest, most important bottleneck that’ll increase the overall value of his company.

This is the reason he spends the majority of his time, in his companies, solving engineering and design problems, which helps make excellent, exceptional products. He spends less time on meetings, checking the numbers and finances, and more time, solving engineering and product problems that enhance the overall quality of the products.

That’s also why his leadership style is known as the engineering-driven leadership style, where he often encourages “Product people” to focus on details and solve technical problems. Elon is also inspired by Steve Jobs when it comes to designing and building products—just like Apple’s products are known for their simplicity and minimalist design, Tesla and SpaceX’s products are also known for their simplicity and design. Watch this short video of him talking about how important building a great product is than marketing or looking at finances:

Elon’s companies are popular for not running advertisements or barely focusing on marketing at all as it’s not the thing they prioritize. Because Elon believes that if the product is good enough, it’ll do the marketing itself. But interestingly, very recently Kevin Paffrath, also known as Meet Kevin changed his mind during the Tesla 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting when he confronted Elon about online advertising, and since then Tesla has been focusing on online marketing.

But the central idea is, Elon and his companies don’t “Very much” focus on things that don't move the needle, and instead spend and dedicate time building world-class products solving engineering problems, coming up with great design ideas, or simplifying and accelerating the manufacturing line. And this is the exact reason why famous celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Jay-Z share online pictures of them owning Tesla products, which works as $0 budget marketing for Elon.

Link to Tweet

Now of course, what works for Elon may not work for you, and that’s okay. But I think there are many things founders and leaders can learn from him, especially given that he has built multiple billion-dollar successful companies and still has the time to manage all of them.

However, what I also have found is that the guy is very controversial too. On one hand, he is highly ambitious, works really hard, and does things most people just dream of. On the other hand, he spreads misinformation, lies many times, and sometimes does things most people couldn’t fathom.

Does this mean you should completely ignore Elon?

Of course not. People have written books about him, he is the central figure in the tech and business community, and for millions, he is an inspiration and hero. There is a reason why. And as the saying goes: “A wise man can learn more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” So even if you hate Elon and don't like him as a person, you as a founder and leader should still learn from him. Learn the good things about him and ignore all the bad things—what he is not very good at, including his public speaking skills.

Thanks for reading, catch you on the next one.