Liftoff - Early Days of SpaceX

Kindness & Wonder

Overcoming Childhood Adversity and Bullying to Build Resilience

Both endured significant bullying and social isolation as children, which shaped their empathy, drive, and ability to persevere through challenges. Rogers was teased for being chubby, pale, shy, and wealthy, with incidents like being chased home by bullies shouting, "fat Freddy." Musk faced severe physical and emotional bullying in South Africa, including a brutal beating that hospitalized him and required surgery, and loads of verbal abuse from his father over the years.

In business, leaders can channel personal adversity into motivation for long-term success, fostering a culture where failure is seen as a learning opportunity rather than a defeat. For example, Musk's early SpaceX failures (like rocket explosions) mirrored his childhood struggles but fueled iterative innovation, while Rogers turned his pain into a lifelong mission to help children feel accepted, creating a sustainable media empire around emotional support.

Mission-Driven Vision with a Higher Purpose Beyond Profit

Both pursued audacious, society-improving goals rooted in a deep sense of purpose. Rogers dedicated his life to children's emotional development, using TV to promote kindness, wonder, and self-acceptance, believing it could change the world for generations. Musk founded SpaceX to make humanity multi-planetary (settling Mars), driven by the need to ensure species survival, as seen in his relentless push for reusable rockets despite near-bankruptcy.

Multifaceted Skills and High Efficiency in Execution

Both were polymaths who wore many hats, maximizing efficiency to achieve outsized results. Rogers was a composer, writer, puppeteer, producer, performer, and minister, writing scripts longhand and editing episodes while maintaining a deliberate, waste-free pace. Musk acts as chief engineer, CEO, and innovator across companies, personally interviewing hires, designing hardware, and pushing for rapid iteration.

Versatility allows leaders to bootstrap operations, reduce dependencies, and accelerate progress in resource-constrained environments. For instance, Musk's hands-on approach at SpaceX echoed Rogers' self-reliant production style, enabling both to scale modest beginnings into influential enterprises without external bloat.

Innovation by Challenging Industry Norms and Embracing Risk

They disrupted stagnant fields by questioning conventions and taking bold risks. Rogers innovated children's programming with slow, thoughtful content focused on emotions and silence, countering fast-paced, commercial TV norms. Musk challenged the high-cost aerospace industry (dominated by Boeing and Lockheed) by building low-cost, reusable rockets privately, learning from failures like early Falcon 1 tests.

Disruption requires identifying inefficiencies and iterating through experimentation

Childlike Wonder and Optimism as a Driver of Creativity

Despite their serious pursuits, both retained a sense of wonder that fueled creativity. Rogers celebrated everyday miracles (e.g., rainbows or simple recipes) to spark children's imaginations, drawing from his own isolated childhood play with puppets. Musk displays childlike excitement about space (e.g., smiling at the Starship prototype and marveling at its potential to reach other planets), viewing Mars settlement as a grand adventure.

Cultivating wonder encourages out-of-the-box thinking and employee engagement. In business, this can mean creating environments that reward curiosity—e.g., innovation labs or "moonshot" projects—to inspire breakthroughs.

1. Treat Failure as Data, Not Defeat

* Every rocket explosion or malfunction was dissected in painstaking detail. Musk demanded root-cause analyses and wouldn’t allow “unknowns” to remain unexplained.

* Engineers were pushed to find first-principles solutions — stripping problems down to physics and rebuilding answers from there.

2. Act Immediately and Iterate Quickly

* Musk imposed tight turnaround times. If a failure occurred, the team might be given 24–48 hours to propose fixes.

* He believed speed itself was a competitive advantage: “Fail fast, learn fast.”

3. Take Full Ownership of Risk

* After three Falcon 1 failures, investors were wary. Musk personally poured in his remaining fortune from PayPal, risking bankruptcy.

* He believed that showing absolute commitment signaled confidence to employees and potential partners.

4. Frame the Stakes as Existential

* Musk often told the team: “If we fail, the dream of private spaceflight fails.”

* By tying the company’s survival to something larger than themselves, he transformed fear of failure into motivation.

5. Lead by Example in the Trenches

* Musk worked brutal hours and expected the same of his team. After failures, he often joined engineers on the factory floor, sleeping in the office and troubleshooting side by side.

* This visible commitment helped prevent demoralization after crushing setbacks.

6. Refuse to Abandon the Vision

* Advisors suggested shutting down Tesla or SpaceX to save the other. Musk refused, comparing it to being asked which of his children he’d let die.

* Instead, he doubled down on both companies, showing employees he wouldn’t quit even if it meant personal ruin.

7. Celebrate Comebacks Loudly

* After the fourth Falcon 1 launch finally reached orbit in 2008, Musk gathered the team and gave a deeply emotional speech, thanking them for not giving up.

* That win became a cultural anchor point at SpaceX — proof that failure, if endured, could flip into success.

Deeply Driven Podcast

Have a Mission Bigger Than Profit

Elon Musk’s obsession with making humanity multi-planetary gave SpaceX a higher purpose. Everything — from cost decisions to personnel management — was guided by one fundamental question: "Will this get us to Mars sooner?" That singular focus served as a North Star, helping cut through distractions and misalignment

Innovate by Starting from First Principles

Rather than accept the industry norm that rocket launches had to cost hundreds of millions, Musk applied first-principles thinking — questioning every assumption and rebuilding from the ground up. This approach enabled SpaceX to dramatically cut costs and disrupt the entrenched aerospace incumbents

Build a Team That Believes in the Impossible

SpaceX's earliest team came from humble backgrounds and diverse geographies — from Midwest towns to Lebanon and Germany. Musk chose raw talent and drive over pedigrees, then molded that team to achieve what many considered impossible: reaching orbit with a privately built rocket

Relentless Iteration Wins

Musk pushed his teams to build fast, test constantly, and learn quickly from failure. The first three Falcon 1 launches failed. But each taught vital lessons that improved the fourth — and successful — launch. For instance, after one failure, SpaceX began listing the top 11 risks before each launch (instead of the usual 10), a habit born from a small oversight that had brought down a rocket

Scrappiness Can Beat Scale

In its early years, SpaceX had almost no infrastructure, launching rockets from a remote Pacific island. Yet it succeeded through sheer hustle, creativity, and willingness to do whatever was needed — including makeshift manufacturing, working through the night, and solving problems on the fly

Personal Sacrifice Creates Organizational Culture

Musk didn’t just ask his team to sacrifice — he embodied it. He pushed himself harder than anyone, sleeping in the factory and staying up overnight to weld rocket parts with his engineers. This built a culture of intensity, but also drew criticism and burnout. Musk later admitted that he should have taken a moment to celebrate with the team — even just one drink on the beach

Timing and Luck Matter — But So Does Refusing to Quit

By the time SpaceX finally reached orbit, Musk had poured $100 million of his own money into the venture. If Flight 4 had failed, the company would likely have died. But he persisted where most would have stopped, finding just enough traction to survive and thrive

Legacy Isn’t Given — It’s Earned

The story of SpaceX’s early years is one of constant near-death moments. But those hard-earned victories created something larger: a company that not only transformed commercial spaceflight but redefined what was thought possible. From that DNA, Musk now builds the Starship that could one day carry humans to Mars

Listen to the Full Podcast HERE

I end the program by saying, you've made this day a special day by just your being you. There's no person in the world like you, and I like you just the way you are. And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.

I think that it's much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger, much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. I'm constantly concerned about what our children are seeing, and for fifteen years I have tried, in this country and Canada, to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care. Mr. Rogers paused, hoping that his words were having some impact.

“I think its wonderful, Look like you just earned the 20 million dollars”

Kindness & Wonder Book

See Full Video Here

I think it will be strange to move into a home or apartment in five years that doesn't have a home robot. (Similar to not having plumbing)

What is the Turing test for robotics?

For anyone to be able to go buy a thing, put it in their home, and without any other instruction than, "My clothes are in my bedroom, please put them in the laundry machine and fold them and put them away..."

That, to me, would signify I think we've made it.

In one of our early prototypes, we do this thing where we just like dump a basket full of kids' toys in a room and say, "Hey, robot, clean this up." There's 49 toys on the ground. And over the course of 30 minutes - it took it a long time, this is a prototype-it cleaned up all the toys but one.

And my thought in that moment was,

"What percentage of success is that? That's like 95%, one 9 of reliability."

Yet everyone who was watching that was just like, "Where do I buy this? I need it now."

(In regard to regulations) Waymo or someone is doing all the groundwork in each new city.

The groundwork they're doing is because they don't know which small special interest group, or union, or local government, or city council, or state, you know, whatever it is...

There's probably two dozen lists of organizations that could meaningfully bring the thing to a halt in that community because there is no federal preemption, there's no real federal safety standards for autonomous vehicles.

And so they have to win that battle with every single stakeholder in every single location. So I hope... And there's maybe some signs of this, that the federal government will get ahead of this and establish that it's pretty clear at this point, that the data shows that these cars are saving lives, and reducing crashes.

So if we think that's important as a government, maybe there should be federal preemption, and we should ensure that this is open for everyone in the US.

If that happens, I think we'll see more self-driving cars. Absent that, I think it's gonna continue this really slow sort of city-by-city thing

What I see is really Tesla, as a company who pioneered the end-to-end neural network approach to self-driving, which I think is the right technical bet long-term.

With Waymo, they started off in the DARPA Grand Challenge era of self-driving, which is old-school, classical computer vision, classical motion planning. And they built this highly-validated, robust system that's now on public roads, and it's great, but they know that it's the wrong technical approach, and they need to move more in the direction of Tesla, of more neural networks. Because it is just intractable to maintain a 3D map of every square inch of the planet and update it in real time, and then expect that every time you go somewhere the map is still accurate, on one hand. To Waymo's credit, I think they know this, and they've started moving towards a Tesla-like approach.

The challenge is, they've got a validated safety-critical system on the road, and the last thing you want to do to a system like that is start changing stuff in it because that introduces risk.

You said you're never gonna sell a company again?

Why ?

If you go through all the pain of starting a company, and you do so knowing that you're going to spend 10 plus years of your life on something, and it's that important to you, and you've told everyone you know about this thing, and you've recruited all the best, the smartest people in the world that you know to work with you on this thing, why would you stop or give up control of that thing?

Watch the FULL Video HERE

I became a broken record on the algorithm, Musk says. But I think it's helpful to say it to an annoying degree.

It had five commandments.

First - Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department such as from the legal department or the safety department.

You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous because people are less likely to question them. Always do so even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.

Second - Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.

Third - Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.

Fourth - Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up, but only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.

Fifth - Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries.

Among them, all technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations.

Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can't ride a horse or a general who can't use a sword.

Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other's work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It's okay to be wrong.

Just don't be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you're not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don't just meet with your managers.

Do a skip level where you meet with the level right below your managers.

When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.

Everything else is a recommendation

Elon Musk Book

Focus on Product Knowledge: Trader Joe's emphasized product knowledge, especially in wine and food. ​ This approach differentiated it from traditional supermarkets.

Private Label Products: Trader Joe's built its reputation on private label products, offering unique items like vintage-dated canned corn, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, and handmade tamales.

High Employee Compensation: Trader Joe's prioritized paying its employees well, offering wages above the median family income in California, along with bonuses and benefits.

Limited SKU Strategy: Unlike traditional supermarkets, Trader Joe's focused on a limited number of SKUs (stock-keeping units), ensuring each product was either unique or offered at an outstanding price.

No Direct Store Deliveries: Trader Joe's eliminated direct store deliveries, centralizing its distribution system to improve efficiency and security.

Advertising Approach: The "Fearless Flyer," Trader Joe's quirky and informative newsletter, became a key advertising tool, educating customers about products and creating a cult-like following.

Customer-Centric Philosophy: The store cultivated a loyal customer base by focusing on quality, value, and a unique shopping experience.

Cultural Branding: Trader Joe's used creative branding, such as naming products Trader Giotto's (Italian), Trader José's (Mexican), and Trader Joe San (Japanese), to appeal to its diverse customer base.

Standardization of Parts: Ford standardized parts across all vehicles, ensuring interchangeability and simplifying production and repairs

Division of Labor: He broke down complex tasks into smaller, specialized operations, allowing unskilled workers to perform specific tasks efficiently. Ford had almost 8,000 different types of job.

Man-High Work: Ford designed workstations to be at waist height, reducing unnecessary movements and improving worker comfort and productivity.

Focus on Cost Reduction: Ford continuously sought ways to reduce costs, such as using vanadium steel for strength and lightness, and experimenting with substitute materials to avoid shortages

High Wages for Workers: Ford introduced a $5-a-day wage in 1914, which was double the average pay at the time. ​ This not only improved worker satisfaction but also reduced turnover and increased productivity.

Mass Production: By combining these innovations, Ford made mass production of automobiles possible, drastically lowering costs and making cars affordable for the average person.

Henry Ford - My Life & Work

Deeply Driven Podcast - Henry Ford

(asked why) Time and again, I am asked why no one has successfully replicated Trader Joe's. The answer is that no one has been willing to pay the wages and benefits and thereby attract and keep the quality of people who work at Trader Joe's.

(In a quote from Joe that I love)

"good people pay by their extra productivity."

(Joe offered health insurance) Through our health insurance and income continuation insurance, I think we pretty much pre-solved the problems of family health and living expense bills, problems that very arguably could excuse theft.

If the employees are stressed by medical bills, they may steal. That's one good reason for Trader Joe's generous health and dental plans.

I want to brag about something here. In 30 years, we never had a layoff of full-time employees.

The captains had that salary plus a bonus that theoretically had no limit.

The bonus was based on Trader Joe's overall profit allocated among the stores based on each store's contribution. (One example) In 1988, several captains made bonuses of more than 70% of their base pay and our 15.4% retirement accrual applied to bonuses as well as base pay.

(massive incentive for employee to seek management positions)

Listen to the Full Trader Joe Podcast Here

Becoming Trader Joe - Excellent Book!

I had like two choices like do a do a PhD and watch people build the internet or help build the internet in some small way [4:55]

The hype level on AI is pretty intense as you've seen um you know you see uh companies that are I don't know less than a year old getting sometimes billion dollar or multi-billion-dollar valuations [5:45]

(with the onslaught of AI) we're talking about an economy that is thousands of times maybe millions of times bigger than the economy today [8:42]

If you're trying to build a rocket or cars or you're trying to have software that compiles and runs reliably then you have to be uh maximally truth seeking or your software or your hardware won't work um like math and physics are rigorous judges um so I'm used to being in like a maximally truth seeking environment and that's definitely not politics um so anyway I'm glad to be back in you know technology [10:40]

Starting SpaceX was uh really from the standpoint of like I think there's like a less than 10% chance of being successful maybe 1% I don't know um but um but if a startup doesn't do something to advance uh rocket technology it's definitely not coming from the big defense contractors because they just impeded match to the government and the government just wants to do very conventional things so there's it's either coming from a startup or it's not happening at all so like a small chance of success is better than no chance of success [17:21]

Do whatever you know whether you're CEO or any role in a startup you do whatever it takes to succeed like and just and just always be smash smashing your ego like internalize responsibility [22:34]

If you if your ego to ability ratio is gets too high, then you're going to basically break the feedback loop to reality [23:55]

(talking about building the Memphis data center for x.ai) I was like sleeping in the data center and also doing cabling myself um and there were a lot of other issues to solve um you know nobody had done a training run with 100,000 um H100s training coherently last year [31:12]

Something that's going to be very important in the future is um combining deep AI uh in the data center or supercluster with robotics uh so that uh you know things like the Optimus humanoid robot and Optimus is awesome there's going to be so many humanoid robots and robots of all robots of all sizes and shapes but my prediction is that there will be more humanoid robots by far than all other robots combined by maybe an order of magnitude [34:17]

100 years jeez 100 years man I hope civilization's around in 100 years if it is around it's going to look very different from civilization today um I mean I'd predict that there's going to be at least five times as many humanoid robots as there are humans maybe 10 times [36:42]

I hope we're on the in terms of being multiplanetary like I think I think we'll have enough mass transferred to Mars within like roughly 30 years to make Mars self- sustaining such that Mars can continue to grow and prosper even if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming um and that that greatly increases the probable lifespan of civilization or consciousness or intelligence both biological and digital [37:51]

Being a multiplanet species or making consciousness multiplanetary uh greatly improves the probable lifespan of civilization and it's the next step before going to other star systems um once you once you at least have two planets then you've got a forcing function for the improvement of space travel um and um and that that ultimately is what will lead to uh consciousness expanding to the stars [38:49]

My intuition for what could make AI very dangerous is if um if you force AI to believe things that are not true [40:14]

I think I think we're quite close to digital super intelligence it may happen this year and if it doesn't happen this year next year for sure a digital super intelligence defined as smarter than any human at anything [42:04]

Not that far future the percentage of intelligence that is human will be quite small at some point the collective sum of human intelligence will be less than 1% of all intelligence [46:54]

Hopefully we can understand the nature of the universe that that's really I guess what AI can hopefully tell us maybe AI AI can maybe tell us where are the aliens and what you know how did the universe really start how will it end what are the questions that we don't know that we should ask and um are we in a simulation or what level of simulation are we in well I think we're going to find [45:58]

Full Video can be found here

When he gave his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Mr. Rogers made a request that was important to him. He wanted his listeners to think about the people who had helped them succeed.

“Who are the people who have helped you become who you are today”? he asked.

“Nobody gets to be a human adult without the investment of others all along the way. I'd like to give you a minute in the middle of this meeting to think of those who have trusted you and guided you and loved you into being. A minute of grateful silence.”

In the sprint of Mr. Rogers, I’ll watch the time

“Whomever you've been thinking about, whether they're here today or far away or even in heaven, imagine how grateful they would be to know how you feel about them here and now.”

Book - Kindness & Wonder

In the 1970s, Hallmark invited Mr. Rogers to design a Christmas display for its flagship Manhattan store.

Other celebrities also contributed elaborate Christmas set pieces, what one observer called phantasmagorical decorations. Mr. Rogers' offering didn't sparkle or spin or blink. It was a small Norfolk Island pine tree, planted in a transparent box so that its roots would be visible and completely devoid of any decorations or ornaments.

The display had a plaque with a message that was simple but deep.

I like you just the way you are

And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.

One thing that evil cannot stand, and that is Forgiveness!

What is essential is invisible to the eye

If we can be present to the moment with the person we happen to be with at the moment, that is what is most important

You don’t set out to be rich or famous - what you set out to do it help others - if that comes later it’s ok - but always help others

Sometimes you're right where you need to be.

Book Link - Kindness & Wonder

It ought to be the employer’s ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman’s ambition to make this possible.

But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope, proof that harder work means higher pay, then also they begin to learn that they are part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it.

In 1914 when the plan first went into effect, wet had 14,000 employees and it had been necessary to hire at the rate of about 53,000 a year in order to keep a constant workforce of 14,000. In 1915 we had to hire only 6,508 men and the majority of these new men were taken on because of the growth of the business.

If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus, which bonus used to run around ten millions a year before we changed the system - show that paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business.

Listen to the full podcast on Henry Ford

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The biggest event of those early years was meeting with a road engine about eight miles out of Detroit. One day when we were driving to town, I was then 12 years old. The second biggest event was getting a watch. Which happened in the same year. I remember that engine as though I had seen it only yesterday. It was intended primarily for driving threshing machines and sawmills and was simply a portable engine and boiler mounted on wheels with a water tank and a coal car trailing behind.

The engine had stopped to let us pass with our horses, and I was off the wagon and talking to the engineer before my father who was driving, knew what I was up to. The engineer was very glad to explain the whole affair

There is an immense amount to be learned simply by tinkering with things. It's not possible to learn from books how everything is made, and the real mechanic ought to know how nearly everything is made. Machines are to a mechanic, what books are to a writer. He gets ideas from them, and if he has any brains, he will apply those ideas.

I built a steam car that ran. It had a kerosene heated boiler, and it developed plenty of power and neat control, but the boiler was dangerous. To make it evenly reasonably safe, required an excess of weight that nullified the economy of high pressure. For two years, I kept experimenting with various sorts of boilers, and then I definitely abandoned the whole idea of running a road vehicle by steam.

Listen to Deeply Driven podcast on Henry Ford

My Life & Work - Amazon Link (non-affiliated) simply just a link

Today I wanted to share a mini preview of the podcast that I am working on about Sam Zemurray and his early years in business. How he works his ass off to save money, discovers his purpose in life, and has his first major victory in business.

This content is based off the book The Fish That Ate the Whale - The Life and Time of America’s Banana King - written by Rich Cohen

If you are interested you can buy the book Here - This is a non-affiliate link, just providing in case you would like to pick up a copy.

This book is packed full of lessons that you and I can use in business and life.

If you want to 100x something - then pick up this book for $18 and you can easily do that or possibly even a lot more

Below are a few selections from the book that I share on the mini podcast

Check out the Deeply Driven Podcast if you would like to learn more about some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs.

Sam traveled to America with his aunt in 1892. He landed in New York, He was 14 or 15, but you would guess him much older. The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children. They had to struggle every minute of every day. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead.

Catch and tie that animal, boy. It was a Zemurray's first real job, racing through the slop with a rope in his hand. Paid a dollar a week, he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk, and would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man who owned the hog.

Mobile was a seedy industrial port filled with all the familiar types—the sharpie, the financier, the scoundrel, the chucklehead, the sport. Sam was a bit of everything. He could be shrewd, but he could also be naive. He was greedy for information

The waterfront was crossed by train tracks. Dozens of lines converged here. Boxcars crammed with coal, fruit, cotton, and cane stood on the sidings. The train sheds were crowded with peddlers, most of them Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. They bought merchandise off the decks of ships and sold it from carts in the streets of Mobile. One evening, Sam stood on the wharf watching a Boston Fruit banana boat sail into the harbor.

Sam’s keen observational skills and ability to see treasure where others see trash is soon to kick in. The bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side of the yard, where they were further divided.

Some were designated as turnings, meaning they were on their way to being worthless. At the end of the day they were sold at a discount to store-owners and peddlers. You could see them, with their carts piled high, trundling through the streets, calling, Bananas! Bananas for sale! A nickel a bunch! Yes, we have bananas! We have bananas for sale!

The bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were designated ripes and heaped in a sad pile.

A ripe is a banana you have left in the sun that has become as freckled as a hardy boy. These bananas, though still good to eat, delicious even, would never make it to the market in time.

In less than a week they would begin to soften and stink. As far as the merchants were concerned, they were trash. Sam noticed everything, the care with which the bananas were handled, the way each box car was filled and rolled to a siding, how men from the banana company, college men, moved through the crowd barking orders, but he paid special attention to the growing pile of ripes.

Zemurray’s first cargo consisted of a few thousand bananas. He did not spend all his money, but retained a small balance, which he used to rent part of a boxcar on the Illinois Central. The trip to Selma was scheduled to take three days, meaning he would have just enough time to get the fruit to market before the sun did its worst

You've got good product there. If you could just get word ahead to the towns along the line, I'm sure the grocery owners would meet you at the platforms and buy the bananas right off the boxcars.

During the next delay, Zemurray went into a Western Union office and spoke to a telegraph operator. Having no money, Sam offered a deal. If the man radioed every operator ahead, asking each of them to spread the word to local merchants, dirt-cheap bananas coming through for merchants and peddlers, Sam would share a percentage of his sales.

When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town, the customers were waiting. Zamurray talked terms through the boxcar door, a tower of ripes at his back. Ten for eight, thirteen for ten. He broke off a bunch, put the money in his pocket. The whistle blew, the train rolled on. He sold the last banana in Selma, then went home in the dark.

First one is TLT which for me stands for too little time there's just not enough time to do things and you can't pass it around - (headless chicken syndrome) [2:45]

(Next is the people) - everybody who's ever lead will see like - it's not always about the glorious and shiny things it's all about the little things the little discussions that we have to do [4:06] (these are the important interactions)

(what is the way out) for this one I think we need to travel back in time actually almost 18 1900 years to Rome to a person called Marcus Aurelius [5:29]

Aurelius Marcus Aurelius is one of the predominant figures of the Stoic school of philosophy the Stoics like the Zen of the West almost [5:41]

The historian William Irvine calls him actually the true beacon of enlightened leadership [6:11]

Marcus Aurelius what we know of him said things like this "The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts." He said "So act virtuous use your time well and be cheerful then when you drop from life's tree you will drop like ripe Fruit [6:20]

(What did he do so well) - he was focusing a lot of his time on the self-leadership field leading oneself first! before going out and leading others [6:59]

The founder of visa Dee Hawk once said if you want to lead - invest at least 40% of your time in leading yourself first [7:21]

(The first step is to become self-aware, one thing we can do for this) do the following ask yourself for example what was the worst leader that you ever had and then think what your face does then with this. And then go further and ask like what did he or she do actually to be such a worse leader did he yell or did she yell or did he maybe withhold information [8:36]

here comes now the trick in this tool give yourself a score from one to five for yourself how good are you for example at sharing or withholding information how bad are you at this one [9:01]

(And that can be any bad quality)

(the next big impact we can have) Marcos Aurelius did every day and that is self-reflection. Taking just a couple of minutes during the day and thinking about the challenges that you have achieved but also that you are maybe about to have during the day

Marcus Aurelius was famous for doing that in the night. Its really simple. Just asking a couple of questions

What are the challenges that I'm about to see?

How did my leadership go Yesterday?

How would the leader I would like to be do and face the challenges that I'm about to face today?

then asking this and putting this answer [10:05]

(The final tool is reframing) stop and ask yourself for one to two Seconds on a scale from one to ten - How important is that issue right now with 10 being really it’s my life goal so to speak where is that if it's a 10 well then you better engage really fully in it but maybe very often it's more like a two or three and so on and that reframing that taking a step back can help you enormously and actually addressing the situation [11:32]

When you have a leadership position invest this time in self-awareness self-reflection self-regulation and in self leadership in general before you go out and lead others [10:59]

Hopefully if you all start doing now and somebody asks in 10 20 years maybe in our utopia the question who was the best leader that you've ever worked with then maybe they think of you [12:26]

Full TED Talk Here

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