Today in health, it 10 things I learned from the Elon Musk. Biography. Part two. Friday, ramblings. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator this week health instead of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection at a time. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.

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So a last show of the year. Yesterday. We talked about the first five things we learned from the Elon Musk biography. And I started off with, if you have chief in your title, your job is chief problem solver. Then it's not enough to rely on experts. Sometimes you have to be the expert. And that is delve into areas so that you are not just somebody who's in the room listening, but that you are someone in the room who is engaged. At the content with the content at a deeper level, number three vision.

See clearly say creatively number four. Reality distortion field has worked. With engineers, but be aware it does come with a cost and number five liberal arts makes for great problem solving. And we talked about the fact that the Elon Musk took a child's toy and applied that to the to the body of, I think the model three car and I was able to drive tons of complexity out of the car. And decrease its cost by $10,000 per car going out the door.

And so a solution to problems come from a lot of different places in a lot of different angles. All right, let's get to the next five. And a number six on my list is that courage is inspiring. One of the things about Elan is he has put all of his money and all of his chips back out onto the table multiple times. There's the story that's been told over and over again of the fact that the first two. Space X rockets crashed.

And if the third one did not get into orbit, That he would have lost everything. He has done that multiple times over the course of his career in the various companies. He he is. If you read the book, you will get the impression. And I think it's actually true given his his Asperger's and other things.

He's not really. Interested or worried about personal wealth. This is a guy they had to convince to get a house. He really is about accomplishing these things and he puts all of his chips back out on the table multiple times because he knows he can do it again. And to be honest with you. The people I've talked to who have worked for him. It is inspiring the problems that they're trying to solve and the things they're trying to do and to be around him is to be around a whirling dervish.

He's just a. His days are just filled. With stuff that would bring any other person. To their knees in terms of just the problems that are coming at him. And he's the CEO of multiple billion dollar companies. And any one of those would be enough for a single person.

And I think he's got five of them under his belt. So anyway, courage is inspiring. People will gather around you, if you show courage, by the way, the lack of courage is also uninspiring and people will flee. If they see that you lack courage. So that's number six, number seven. Seven. Grace in defeat.

I know you're going to think this one's crazy. But there's a story that's tucked in there. That's really interesting to me. And that's his exit from PayPal. And so he was trying to, he had a vision for what PayPal could be. And he was trying to orchestrate this little coup over here and he was doing everything he could now he was early on in his career and was really outmatched to be honest with you, but he was trying to do this little thing and he got caught in it. And they essentially. Asked him to leave. And he recognized that what he did was really a. Kind of jerkish and by the way, he's apologized multiple times.

He's done things on Twitter and whatnot, and he goes back and goes, that was stupid. I shouldn't have done that. That kind of stuff. So he recognizes his mistakes. Now he may not recognize things that you think he's making a mistake and then sometimes he takes a strong stance. We'll get to that in a minute. But in this story, he actually goes back to the guys at a PayPal. And he apologizes and he falls on his sword and he does leave by the way he doesn't stay.

But he mends fences with those people. Before he goes off to do the next thing and they all are investors in his various ventures today. And I think there's something to be learned there. It just, in terms of recognizing when you've done something that is egregious and asking for forgiveness, that's a that's a good sign.

That's a that's a quality sign of a leader. It's a quality sign in a person. And we should have grace in defeat and understand that There, there is value in recognizing your mistakes and making amends with people that you may have wronged in the process. So number seven, Grayson defeat number eight. Pick goals worth giving your life to, because in the end you are giving your life to it. Think about it today. You are going to spend time doing something or you have spent time doing something. By definition, you have traded hours of your life. For whatever you accomplished. So we are going to do that.

We are going to make that trade every day of the week, we are going to trade. Hours of our life for accomplishing something. Elan Musk has chosen. A set of goals. That is truly inspirational. That is truly that gets people excited. It's one of the, it's one of the things the first time you hear him speak, it's not that he's eloquent.

It's not like he floors you with his. With his delivery and he just doesn't have the words to just pull you over. But it is the depth at which he thinks about these prompts. First time I saw him speak, he was talking about. The problem we have on the earth and it's, essentially we are tearing the world apart.

We're tearing the earth apart. Through global warming and the things that we're doing to the earth, and if that's not enough, we're starting a wars and that kind of stuff. And, we have the ability to blow this world up and that kind of stuff. And then he goes on to say, I just believe that we should be an interplanetary species, because if we're not, we might be staked.

We might be an extinct species. And so he talks about solving that problem. He talks about the problem of the environment and any he gets behind something and he changes the way we think about electric cars. Again, you have to go back. To early models of the electric car, actually, you don't even have to go back that far.

Just look at the Prius. And you might own a Prius and the Prius is, it is a engineering Marvel, and it's really interesting. But at the end of the day, it was not an inspiring car. Along comes to Elon Musk with this car that goes zero to 60 in four seconds. And you're like, that's an electric car. And it goes 200 and something miles or 300 something miles. Now all of a sudden it becomes part of your psyche.

And then I was talking to somebody who just bought their first one a couple of weeks ago. And they said, I sat down in it and it felt like I just I'd sat down in the future. And that's what he does. He's able to do that kind of thing. He's able to inspire. But I think the start of that is to pick goals, worth giving your life to. All the time I hear people say I got into healthcare because it's this and I'm helping people and that kind of stuff.

I would ask you to be more specific about your goals. More specific. Why are you in healthcare? What do you want to see happen in healthcare? It's not enough that, Hey, I'm a part of this thing. What do you want to see happen? Get it to the point where it's a Y where it's a, something that gets you out of bed in the morning and says, I want to solve this problem in healthcare. And when you're around that kind of thing, it does inspire people. That's number eight.

So pick your goals, book, pick goals, worth giving your life to because you are actually just, you're actually doing just that. Number nine. Those with no balance can be successful, but it comes at a cost. We keep talking, you have at a cost. And so you Elon Musk's life is like a cautionary tale. It's, he's the CEO of multiple billion dollar businesses. And you say, how can he do that?

He has no life. He has that. And then he has he has Polly Topia. He plays video games and he has kids and he has a wife and he has a anyway, he has a very complicated family dynamic. Going on, but for the most part that's that does not that's his escape. And, but it's not who he is.

It is the company and the video games. He goes for long periods of time where he does nothing. But solve problem after problem and confront issue after issue. And get out in front of the hardest things that his company has, companies have to deal with. He has no balance in his life and it has proven that you can be successful like this. But there is a cost and the cost is there is very little life outside of that.

What you see publicly about Elon Musk is 90% of who he is. And I will say what you see publicly about me is about 60% of who I am. So Very different. It's but again, People can be successful with no balance. I don't want to paint a picture of that. If you don't have work-life balance, you won't be successful.

That's just not true. You can be successful with no balance. However you will be successful in a very narrow. Slice of your life, and that might be your choice and that might work for you, but there is a cost associated with it. Number 10 and this is probably the most controversial thing I took out of the book. But pick your fights. And fight to win this.

This is something I've picked up from the book. And it is, there are fights worth fighting. There are injustices worth writing. There are people were sustaining up against. There are issues worth getting involved in pick your fights. And then the other thing you learned from Elon Musk is fight to win. And this goes back to his school yard bullying days being bullied and that kind of stuff.

At the end of the day, this guy learned. That you, you either fight to win or you die. Is essentially his mindset. And so pick your fights and fight to win if it's worth. Picking a fight. Look I'm of the opinion pick as few fights as you possibly can, but pick the ones that are worth fighting.

And if you're going to pick a fight, actually pick a fight, fight to win. Because if you're going to actually take the energy to pick a fight, don't go through all the anguish and the pain of it without the hope of actually winning it. And by the way, this is why it's the most controversial thing I'm going to say. Those who think he's going to shrink from this Twitter thing, urine sane. Like she just read the book.

He is not going to, he's not going to shrink from it. He is. With every arrow that comes his way with every Bob Iger, with every, whatever that just, that just. Essentially gets him more and more ready for the fight and more engaged in the fight. And I'll tell you what if he goes up against Bob Iger?

Bob Iger will not be the CEO of Disney. That is my prediction. Like Bob Iger will not survive before you see Elon Musk even take a dent. Quite frankly, and he will. He'll spend every nickel. He has to make sure that those people who are coming at him and cornering him in the school yard. He will make sure that he does influx as much damage on them as possible, because if he believes in it, if he has picked a fight, He is fighting to win. And so when he gets up on stage and says, F everyone's oh my gosh, this guy's insane. no. They started the fight.

They essentially started the fight by saying F you and he's just returning the favor, except he doesn't have the trappings. He doesn't have the. I think it's somewhat because of the, Augsburger some pump somewhat because of who he is and his upbringing. He doesn't have the ability for the nuance of the whole thing.

He's just Hey, I want the world to know we're fighting right now. There's no mistaking this isn't like we're not going to do this Polish thing. You stepped into my. You stepped into this school yard. You're picking a fight with me. I want everyone to know we're in a fight. And now it's public. And now, all right, gloves are off.

Let's go do this. And that's what happening with Twitter. TwItter may go out of business. But I doubt it. I think more and more. It will be his platform of resistance. Against what he feels are forces. That are taking the world in a bad direction. And he believes that the free flow of information is important to making sure that no ruling class is able to take advantage of a population. And he is willing to. He's willing to wait into that.

And he, in the book, he will readily admit it was much more complex than he had originally thought. He is delving into areas that he quite frankly, may not have been equipped for when he started out. But he will become more and more equipped. As time goes and he will figure it out. So that's what I've learned from the Elon Musk book. Just to recap.

The last five courage is inspiring. Grace in defeat, pick goals, worth giving your life to because you actually are giving your life to it. Number nine. Those with no balance can be successful. But it comes at a cost. And then finally pick your fights and fight to win. I actually learned a lot from this book.

I look, there's a fair amount. You do not want to try to replicate because you can't replicate. For whatever reason, maybe you don't have his background, his upbringing, maybe you don't have his intellect. Maybe you don't have. There's the things I'm going to take away from this book. And then there's things I'm going to run away from as far as I possibly can, because I don't want them to infiltrate. My management style, my approach and those kinds of things.

If I were a CIO today, I have some interesting things up here on my whiteboard that we're going to talk about. All right. Let's see. Hey. Again, thanks for sharing this podcast with your friends or colleagues. I really appreciate it. We want to thank our channel sponsors. Once again, we're investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders.

They are short test artist, site parlance, certified health, notable and 📍 service now. Great companies. Check them out this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.