This article will spark your curiosity. It will help you in traveling within — how great entrepreneurs think. 

But before that, let’s take a brief look at what these leaders have in common.

What do Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Have in Common?

Elon Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa. Today, he is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX. Co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc. Co-founder and CEO of Neuralink. And founder of The Boring Company. 

On the other hand, Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 in New Mexico, U.S. 

And of course, he’s the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc. He is also the founder of Blue Origin, a rocket company that plans to make space travel possible (yup, just like Elon’s SpaceX). 

Apart from this, he also owns 13 more companies which contribute to his wealth. 

And I know, they are supposed to be rivals on the Internet. Elon doesn’t like Jeff much (Musk called him a “copycat” when Amazon was about to launch internet-beaming satellites) so they don’t really get along…

But hey, they are top businessmen today, they both want to make space travel affordable. And they work really hard to achieve their goals.

What Can We Learn From the Mindsets of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos?

The thing is, they both worked extremely hard to get where they are. In fact, you’ll be amazed to learn about Elon Musk’s daily routine. 

They figured out earlier on in life that thinking in a particular way will stimulate their success. 

This helped them configure their minds and thinking processes in a specific manner. And also perceive problems very differently than everyone else. 

They never saw problems and whined about them. But tried to provide the solutions to solve some of the biggest problems in the world. 

As you already know, they are both incredible innovators who have built extraordinary private companies. They were always ready to take risks to support the passion, ideas, and values they believed in. Even if it takes a lot of time to show results. 

For example, When the financial crisis struck, Musk had a stark choice to make. “I could either keep the money, then the companies are definitely going to die, or invest what I have left, and maybe there is a chance,” he told BBC. 

Musk doesn’t expect that his colony will be self-sustaining anytime soon. He said in a Vox interview: “For a space colony to do any good, humanity has to hold itself together for the next several centuries…”  

They are futuristic and optimistic about relocating humanity to different astronomical bodies. 

In May 2019, Bezos explained how humanity could live in orbiting space colonies similar to those envisioned by physicist Gerard K.

So it’s pretty evident that Elon and Bezos want to change the world by revolutionizing transportation. 

Musk is with his innovative ideas on how to get fast from and to anywhere on this planet, with reusable rockets. 

While Bezos has been pretty passionate about his space company, Blue Origin. he wrote a “Day 1” letter, just as he did for Amazon. “We are a small team committed to seeding an enduring human presence in space,” he wrote. “Blue will pursue this long-term objective patiently, step by step. 

Bezos took it a step further, showing that he wants to go “where no man has gone before” with space travel, and live there one day.

On this day, they keep leapfrogging each other for the title of the world’s richest person. And no matter what you think about Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, you can’t deny their success and impossible innovations. 

Therefore, let’s dig deeper into their mindsets and learn — how they became what they are today. 

Let’s start with Elon Musk. 

How does Elon Musk Think? – The First Principles Approach

Of all good leadership Musk has, Cantrell told Business Insider, “He truly listens to people,” 

In an even broader sense, Elon Musk’s approach to problem-solving is – the ‘first principles’ framework. 

Musk explained first-principle thinking in a 2013 TED talk by using the cost of electric vehicle batteries as an example. 

According to him, first-principles thinking allows you to “boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there… as opposed to reasoning by analogy.” 

Let’s break down the interview. 

– Identify the Problems and Common Assumptions

“Somebody could say, ‘Battery packs are really expensive, and that’s just the way they will always be. Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt-hour,” Musk said, referencing this “common assumption” about electric vehicle batteries.

Therefore, most people simply give up and accept that “it’s not going to be much better than that in the future.” However, there’s a better way to analyze the problem and probe deeper using first principles thinking.

– Break the Problem Down to Fundamental Truths 

The key is to ask the right questions and challenge common assumptions. Keep digging deeper and deeper until you are left with fundamental truths.

“With first principles, you say, ‘What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the stock market value of the material constituents?’ It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation, and a sealed can,” explained Musk.

Then, he continued, “you’d break that down on a material basis and say, ‘If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange what would each of those things cost?’ It’s like $80 per kilowatt hour.”

– Use Fundamental Truths to Plot a New Way Forward

According to Popomaronis, fundamental truths are like building blocks. Once you’ve gathered them, you can use these building blocks to create a completely new, innovative solution.

With EV batteries, “you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell,” Musk said. “Then you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”

In conclusion, Musk wrote in a 2015 Reddit AMA, “I think it’s important to view knowledge as a sort of semantic tree. “Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

How Does Jeff Bezos Think? — the Customer Experience Approach

The customer experience is the heart of Amazon.com’s success. It’s a philosophy that Jeff Bezos has put into practice for more than 20 years. It’s also a lot of what makes Amazon stand apart from its competitors today. 

The customer experience approach focuses on building a great customer experience around the shopping experience through features like fast, free shipping, and same-day delivery. Therefore, Jeff is obsessed with the customer experience approach. 

His impeccable show of growth in the business world today is no doubt boils down to these 5 questions:

– How Can a New Technology Available in the Market Take the Friction Out of People’s Lives? 

No doubt, this question has been a driving force for Bezos and has kept him a bit ahead of the market. 

Think about something like delivery drones that are only available to a handful of customers at the moment.

Moreover, from Bezos, we can learn that it’s better to be too forward-focused than to be unaware of the possibilities offered by new technologies.

– Why Do We Always Do It This Way? 

As Steve Jobs once noted, “everything around you that you call life was made up by people that we’re smarter than you and you can change it… once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Apparently, when Amazon was founded, Bezos was trying to answer the question – Why are books in physical stores and not over the internet?

Is it possible to sell books over the internet? What are the likely challenges and can they be overcome?

Expounding on these questions and giving answers to them have kept Amazon running and ever-innovative in the last decade.

– What Is Causing Pain for My Customers? 

As a recent report from Slice Intelligence noted, “Amazon maintains an obsessive focus on removing every pain point from the buying process.”

By constantly asking this question and proffering solutions to these problems, Amazon, ably led by Bezos has been far ahead of others in the business world.

Certainly, this is one big lesson entrepreneurs can learn – by always identifying the pain points of your customers, and providing services and products that improve their customer experience, you’re growing your customer loyalty.

Read more about the relationship between Customer experience and customer loyalty in our blog – What is the most direct cause of customer loyalty?

– What Functions Can Be Combined? 

In 1997, Philippe Kahn wondered why one had to carry a phone and a camera separately. 

In his quest to create “the 21st Century version of a Polaroid picture,” 

Kahn inserted a camera into a Motorola Startac phone. Now, of course, cameras are a standard smartphone feature. 

Obviously, this is something Bezos has done with Amazon over time.

He has certainly looked out for functions that can be combined. Hence, Amazon has grown today to become a search engine connected to a warehouse. 

 – Am I Too Rooted in One Business?

Amazon’s original business was selling books, thank goodness, they did not go by not Books.com.

If Amazon had done this, it would have been a big hindrance for them to freely start selling all kinds of things.

The advice to entrepreneurs would be – There’s nothing wrong with being the best in your category, but don’t box yourself at the beginning if you can help it. 

Wrapping Up 

Having studied the lives of these two great men, young entrepreneurs should learn these three lessons:

Firstly, it’s okay to have a really big dream but be willing to start small.

Secondly, if you must succeed in business like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, be ready to configure your mind and start thinking like finally.

Thirdly, Musk and Bezos are very innovative, therefore learn how to think critically and adjust to changes.