elonology.com

Category: Strategy

  • Elon’s Sleep Routine and Daily Rituals

    Elon’s Sleep Routine and Daily Rituals

    Caffeine, Showers, and Steak: Inside Elon’s Sleep and Daily Rituals

    In an interview with AutoBild and more recently (Dec 2025 / Katie Miller Podcast) Elon shed some light on what his morning routine and sleep habits are like.

    When asked what time he goes to be and wakes up Elon replied:

    “I wake up at about 7am.  But I go to bed late.  I usually go to bed around 1am or so.”

    For breakfast Elon said “I think it’s probably true that having a good breakfast is a good idea but usually I don’t have time for that so sometimes it’s made for me but probably half the time I don’t have breakfast.  I just have like coffee or something like that…

    I’m trying to cut down on sweet stuff and I think I probably should have an omelette and a coffee or something like that.  That seems like probably the right thing and sometimes I do have that.”

    These days (2025) he claims to have Steak and Eggs he said near the end of the Katie Miller podcast.

    In another interview Elon was asked how much sleep he gets and he said:

    “Sometimes not enough (sleep).  Sleep is really great because I find if I don’t get enough sleep then I’m quite grumpy. I think most people are that way…

    I found that I could get less sleep and sustain it but I would get less done because mental acuity would suffer.  So I found generally the right number for me is around six to six and a half hours on average per night.”

    Clearly Elon’s sleep schedule and morning habits align with his fierce work ethic.  He has slept on the factory floor at Tesla on a number of occasions, with iron filings in the air.  In another video he shared where he would sleep on the floor occasionally in a board room as the couch was too thin.

    There is power and productivity potential to be produced optimizing your sleep.

    To Paraphrase Ben Franklin: “Being early to bed and early to rise will help make you healthy, wealthy and wise.”

    Fewer hours lost to sleeping means more hours for productive work, and with more working hours you can accomplish far more than if you were less diligent about your sleep.

    Elon caught some flack for sharing the fact he sometimes takes Ambien to get to sleep but try to imagine how much he has on his mind.

    Elon on Joe Rogan described his brain like a never ending explosion of ideas so I don’t blame him for taking some medication when needed so he can optimize his sleep.

    Daily Rituals

    On a reddit AMA (Ask me Anything) the most upvoted question was: “What daily habit do you believe has the largest positive impact on your life?”

    Elon replied with a one word answer: “Showering.”

    Pretty simple answer but when you think about it the advice is strong.  A shower not only gets you feeling and smelling fresh for the day it also wakes you up and makes you ready for action.  

    Also, showering before bed can help you sleep.

    Clearly daily rituals are working well for Elon so if you are running lean on sleep like he does try showering first thing to wake your body up, alert your mind, and start your day off right.

    Elon values his time highly and manages it well.  “Time is the ultimate currency.” is one of my favorite Elon tweets. 

    When you put in twice as many working hours as someone else, you will have the opportunity to gain more momentum and a competitive advantage.  

    With more momentum you can get twice as much done as someone else, or even much more.

  • Implement a Friction Free Sales Strategy

    Implement a Friction Free Sales Strategy

    How Tesla Revolutionizes The Car Buying Process

    As someone who has sold new cars for a living in the past, I have felt the friction of a customer who feels tense about making a purchase…

    And undoubtedly part of the reason is because I earned commissions so there was an incentive for me to be assertive about making the sale.

    Elon explains how Tesla has a better way: 

    “Our sales people are not on commission and will never pressure you to buy a car. 

    Their goal and the sole metric of theory success is to have you enjoy the experience of visiting so much that you look forward to returning again.“

    This approach removes the tension from the sales process and helps add an element of trust knowing the sales people are simply there to help any way they can.

    When I went for a test drive I was given a gift of Perrier from the front trunk of a car and a granola bar.  It made for a very friendly experience and I do intend to go back to the dealership again to test drive the Cybertruck and FSD.

  • Have Fun With Your Business

    Have Fun With Your Business

    The “Joy” Engine: Powering Your Startup with Play

    Flame throwers, Teslaquila, Short shorts.

    These are three of the many fun products Elon and his companies have created.

    Elon is not afraid to have fun with the products he sells, and how he promotes them.

    Elon often has fun with his Twitter bio, for example.  His Twitter bio has said “Meme necromancer” and “Former CEO of Dogecoin” before.

    He’s also co-hosted a Meme review show on YouTube and often posts savage memes on Twitter.

    One video of Elon has him standing on top of a giant SpaceX ball of liquid oxygen saying: “Here we are on top of a giant ball of liquid oxygen.  They say SpaceX has big balls and it’s true.”

    Elon has a great sense of humor and is great at integrating fun into the products his companies sell.

    With Tesla a couple examples include the customizable horn, which can choose between a standard horn sound, or you can choose: Farts, goat, snake, applause, and more.  The more option enables you to upload whatever sound you want to use for the horn.

    Other fun Tesla options include: Romance Mode, which will display a video of wood logs on a fire and plays romantic music.

    Build fun into your products and you can’t go wrong.

    Party/Camper mode is also coming soon.

    Elon said in a tweet: “We’re adding a “party & camper mode” soon to S/3/X, so your car can maintain air flow, temp, selective lights, music & power devices for 48 hours or more while parked. Big batteries rock…”

    Wikipedia: An Easter egg is a term used to describe a message, image, or feature hidden in a video game, film, or other, usually in electronics, medium.

    Tesla has a number of fun Easter eggs integrated into their products.

    To be specific Wikipedia currently has a page dedicated to them and lists 17 unique and fun easter eggs.

    Some of these Easter eggs get the car to play music and do a light show, featuring the Falcon wing doors on the Model X.

    Others take inspiration from Back to The Future, Rick and Morty, Mario Kart, James Bond, or Monty Python.

    One of the latest features enables Tesla owners to choose from a variety of horn sounds, and includes the ability to add a custom horn sound if you wish.

    All of these features have one awesome thing in common: Fun.

    Make your business fun and more people will talk about it.

    There are many ways to make your business more fun so feel free to be creative with what you do.

    My Dad, Peter, built a Plinko style game his HVAC business uses at trade shows to give prizes to customers.  This works well as an ice breaker and helps the sales team to generate new leads.

    At the xAi Christmas party in 2025 they had robots in a cage match boxing each other.

    Having fun and being part of a fun promotion is a great way to get people interested in your company and promoting it with word of mouth marketing for free.

    Fun and Tesla Games

    Tesla vehicles come with a number of games built into their infotainment system.

    With full self-driving autonomy on the verge of widespread adoption Elon says entertainment will become increasingly important once more cars become fully self-driving.

    This will keep passengers entertained during long trips when the mental task of driving the vehicle is no longer required.

    Elon has described a Tesla as “A computer with wheels” and as time goes on they are looking more and more like a gaming computer on wheels, which is good news for all of the gamers out there.

    • The Mobile Arcade: Tesla’s infotainment system is already a gamer’s paradise, but this is just the beginning.
    • The FSD Shift: As autonomy frees us from the steering wheel, Elon predicts entertainment will become the primary cabin experience.
    • Engineering Joy: From custom horn sounds to hidden Easter eggs, Teslas are designed to prioritize “Fun” as a core metric.
    • The Bottom Line: Expect the future of Tesla to look less like a vehicle and more like a rolling entertainment suite.

    Elon even joked about being “The king of car farts” since the horn on a Tesla can be customized for any sound you want, like a whoopie cushion.

    Tesla’s are engineered to be super fun machines so in the future expect many fun Tesla innovations to come.

  • Build a Fantastic Future

    Build a Fantastic Future

    The New Frontier: Why We Must Dream Big to Save Humanity

    If you look at each of Elon’s businesses they solve huge problems in emerging markets where there is little competition.

    When Elon helped build PayPal they were the only email money transferring solution in the world.

    SpaceX is the first private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the ISS, and the first company to create reusable rockets.

    Tesla is the world’s leading and first highly successful electric car company.  And as of 2020 Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world.

    In his USC commencement speech Elon recommends “Don’t just follow the trend” and his actions have certainly followed this advice.

    To reap the greatest rewards, focus on innovation.  Be fuelled by competition but focus on innovation.

    Strive to innovate to such a degree that there are no competitors.  

    Elon’s Billionaire business associate Peter Thiel writes on this topic in his book Zero to One.

    If you want to create and capture lasting value, seek to innovate and create a monopoly.

    Monopolies by definition transcend competition and are how the greatest business profits can be achieved.

  • Relentlessly Improve Your Products

    Relentlessly Improve Your Products

    elon-musk-in-factory-grok

    Incremental Gains, Monumental Success.

    In a 2020 video interview with the Wall Street Journal Elon shares advice geared towards other CEO’s: 

    Elon recommends CEO’s “Spend less time with finance and in conference rooms and on powerpoint and spend more time trying to make your product as amazing as possible.” 

    “Make your product better.  That is what really matters.”

    Step 1: “Have You Tried?  Like really tried.”

    Step 2: “Try Harder”

    This reminds me of one of my favorite Elon quotes of all time, which he shared with a bunch of high schoolers who he did a Hack Club ask me anything video chat with.  Elon said: 

    “You’ve got to try.  Believe in yourself and try.  People can do way more than they think.”

    Be an absolute perfectionist about the product you produce or the service you provide.

    As I write this I just put down my phone and stopped a doom scroll on Christmas to shift my attention to Elonology.  Because I’m taking Elon’s advice to Try Harder and do what is necessary to make this book great.

    The company that invests the most effort and produces the most beneficial innovations is likely to win long term.

  • Rise Above Fear

    Rise Above Fear

    Fear is a Choice: Mastering the Psychology of Risk

    Fearlessness is not the answer.

    If it was, fear would not exist.

    Instead of shrinking from fearful situations, feel the fear and do it anyway.

    Conquering your fears is powerful.

    In an interview with Y Combinator about How to Build the Future Elon discusses fear and the importance of not letting it stop you on your mission:

    “I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it’s not as though I have the absence of fear, I feel it quite strongly…

    But there are times when something is important enough and you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of fear…

    Like people shouldn’t think ‘Well I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn’t do it.’  It’s normal to feel fear.  There’d have to be something mentally wrong if you didn’t feel fear.”

    The powerful difference Elon has realized is in his ability to not listen to the naysayers and instead to work hard and boldly create positive solutions, in spite of fear.

    Elon also shared “Something that can be quite helpful is fatalism, to some degree.  If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.”

    Don’t Fear Failure

    In an interview Musk has stated that he originally thought Tesla would fail.

    When asked why he would start a company that he didn’t think would be successful his answer was:

    “If something is important enough you should try even if the probable outcome is failure.”

    Elon wanted to get rid of the perception that electric cars are ugly and slow.

    Although entirely changing the way the public perceives a product class is no easy task Elon and the Tesla team made it happen.

    The Tesla Model S sedan topped Consumer Reports’ annual customer satisfaction ratings two years in a row.

    8 years later the Plaid version of the Model S became the fastest car in the world and the first production car ever to go 0-60 in under two seconds.

  • Elon’s Edge: The Power of Radical Obsession

    Elon’s Edge: The Power of Radical Obsession

    The Musk Mindset: Why Average Is Not an Option

    Elon has been known to spend so much time working he will actually sleep in the Tesla and SpaceX factories.

    And it’s not as if he has a plush bedroom in a factory loft or something.  In one Interview Elon showed the plain couch in a Tesla conference room he slept on, and said it was so uncomfortable he ended up sleeping on the floor.

    Sleeping in his factories and at his business locations is something Elon does to this day, even as one of the richest humans alive.

    In a recent interview (Dec 2020) when Elon was accepting the Axel Springer award in Germany the interviewer asked Elon where he was spending the night.

    Elon replied: In the German Tesla factory.  The interviewer asked where in the factory?  Elon replied in the conference room.

    That’s right, the world’s second wealthiest man chooses to spend the night in the conference room of a factory rather than a fancy hotel.

    When asked about this on a Clubhouse audio chat he admitted that not only has he slept in the conference room, he has also slept outside of it, in a sleeping bag on the concrete factory floor.

    That’s the level of obsession that is required for Elon’s kind of success.

  • Create a Viral Growth Engine

    Create a Viral Growth Engine

    The Lean Startup’s Secret Weapon: The Viral Engine of Growth

    Both at PayPal and at Tesla Elon has leveraged referrals and bonuses to create viral growth.

    PayPal was able to achieve 100,000 users in their first month through the success of their referral program.  They offered $20 credit to both referring parties.  

    Elon: Well, we started off first by offering people $20 if they opened an account. And $20 if they referred anyone. And then we dropped it to $10. And we dropped it to $5. As the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer.

    At the TESLIVE 2013 Tesla Motors Club event Elon discussed PayPal’s referral program at greater length.

    Elon: From my PayPal days we spent a lot of time thinking about how to create a viral growth engine. The keys to that are of course reducing the friction of buying and reducing the friction of referral – so making it really easy to buy and refer – and then creating an incentive both for the person doing the referral as well as the buyer.  And that way if by referring someone both parties actually benefit then it works well.

    Referrals have also been a great source of growth for Tesla.

    In 2015 they launched a $2,000 referral program for the Model S lineup of cars and it was a success.  Both parties would benefit from this.  The referring agent would get a prize and the buyer would get a discount.

    Additionally there was a contest for referrals where free cars could be won and in 2016 YouTuber Bjorn Nyland actually won two Teslas during this time.

    In 2017 the first person to refer 20 Tesla’s per region would get a free P100D Model S or Model X once their 20 friends have taken delivery of their car.

    In July of 2017 the next gen Roadster was announced as part of the referral program secret level.  How it works is after five referrals you entered the program and each Model S or X referral thereafter gave you 2% off the price of a founders series roadster.  So people who achieved 55 referrals will be getting the $250,000 roadster free.

    YouTuber Ben Sullins crunched the numbers on this in a video where he determined the ROI for Tesla on their referral program was 550X, assuming a 20% profit margin on the car.

    That is compared with a 45X ROI that GM earns from their 3.24 Billion dollar ad spend during the same year.

    Despite the awesome success of Tesla’s referral program in 2017, Elon and Tesla decided to scale it back, likely due to the fact that their demand is significantly outpacing their supply.

    The reason Elon explained on Twitter is because it was adding too much to the cost of the cars.

    At the time of writing the referral program has been brought back, but not to the generous extent of 2017 when free new roadsters were possible.

    There are the details of the new program in 2021:

    You and anyone using your referral link can each earn 1,500 kilometers of free Supercharging with the purchase of a new Tesla car — designed to be some of the safest cars on the road. Each car referral also gives you a chance to win a Model Y monthly or Roadster supercar quarterly. Owners who already have free Supercharging get two chances to win.

    So clearly this is quite scaled back from before but nonetheless it is very cool that Tesla still has a referral program and does give away some free cars.

    In the past few years Tesla has used creative referral rewards as well such as: 

    Launching your photo into deep space orbit, Tesla unveiling invitations, and amazing adventures.

    The amazing adventures they offered included: 

    • Drive an Electric Boring Machine
    • Watch a SpaceX Rocket Launch
    • Race the Tesla Semi Truck around the test track

    Clearly referrals done right can work wonders for your business, and they don’t have to cost an arm and a leg.  

    Take Elon’s advice and make it as easy and frictionless as possible for people to sign up as an affiliate and promote.

    For best results offer referral rewards for your most profitable products and services.

  • Think Long Term

    Think Long Term

    The ability to delay gratification is one of the most accurate predictors of future success.

    Business is more like a marathon than a sprint.

    Because long term potential often trumps the short term.

    “You do want to have a significant financial reward. And you want to have a possible effect on the world.”

    Think about the best case probabilities and how you can get them done over time.

    And realize: “The first step is to establish something is possible; then probability will occur.”

    think-long-term

    Prioritize the actions which are most important to get your company to cash flow positive.

    Then once you have brainstormed the probabilities of different actions create a plan of action and energetically pursue your best action path.

  • Use Music for Marketing

    Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe: Elon Musk’s Foray into Music Marketing

    Elon Musk has not shied away from using music for marketing.  He released a song called “Don’t doubt your vibe” and released it on his own label called “Emo G Records.”

    There are other songs about him and Tesla also.

    I just discovered The Elon Musk Song [OFFICIAL], which has 811K views currently and the animation which went into it is impressive.

    DDG has an Elon Musk song also with over 20M views when combined with the lyrics version of the song.

    There are other songs also and of course Elon’s musician partner Grimes helps his overall aura of awesome grow as well.

    Elon put out his own song called “Don’t Doubt ur Vibe” and it has an image of a Cybertruck floating in air in front of an image of Mars.

    Music is a great vertical and Elon is doing a great job utilizing it to grow his personal brand via his music label “Emo G Records.”