Elon Musk recently made a stratospheric jump to being one of the top-five billionaires in the world. It’s only fitting that he be welcomed (roast style) by some of his compadres, Vision Masters Not-Jeff Bezos and Not-Mark Zuckerberg. The other two, Not-Bill Gates and Not-Bernard Arnault could not be reached for comment.
We hope you enjoy our interviews with the powerhouse Vision Masters in our Not series. This one is a tongue-in-cheek roast with the interviewee well researched in all his characters.
Transcript of the interview
Rob Kramarz (host): Hi, this is Robert Steven Kramarz. The Executive Director of Intelliversity. And this is your Vision Master podcast. Today we have a very special event because we’re welcoming Elon Musk into the top five billionaires. And to join us in this kind of celebration or roast, if you will, are two fellow top five billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
There we are. Oh, you got the mask. We couldn’t get the other two here today, Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault. Today, Europe’s richest man at 140 billion. Meanwhile, Elon here with 130 is now above Bill Gates at 127. And second, only to Jeff. Now, these numbers change day-to-day. So it doesn’t really matter, but they’re all in the top five. We didn’t invite Bernard Arnault here today because well, he’s French, he’s into fashion and this is an old boys club and I think you get the drift. So here we are.
Not-Jeff Bezos: You’re an idiot, Rob, you know that, right?
Rob: I realized I’ve just stepped on it, but-
Not-Mark Zuckerberg: Well wait, but in fairness Rob’s not an idiot. He’s a putz.
Rob: Yeah, Mark, to be honest, I’m not the only putz here today. I think you know what a putz is and it’s something that we could fairly apply to you Mark as well.
Not-Elon Musk: Well, we don’t want to talk about that, but let me tell you, this is Elon here, right? Look, a putz is what Jeff’s rocket looks like. Not to mention the Amazon smiling penis logo. You know what I mean?
Rob: Well, this may be going down a path that we would want to avoid. So let’s get back to the reason for this meeting, which is to welcome Elon here into the top five billionaires. So Musk, Elon, what do you have to say about that?
Not-Elon Musk: You know being in the top five, top two, it really doesn’t change anything. None of us are very competitive, but the thing to know is that Jeff and I are still competing to make mankind a spacefaring species.
Rob: And what does that mean?
Not-Jeff Bezos: Well, there’s a difference. What if Mars just doesn’t work. I mean, I want to make sure that mankind is a spacefaring species, no matter what, no matter where, not just Mars. So there.
Rob: And what do you have to say about that? Because you know Jeff is going after you here.
Not-Elon Musk: I’m going to go right back to that rocket design. I don’t know whether he’s going to get anywhere with that [inaudible 00:02:40] stop of a launch pad. How’s your design anyway, Jeff?
Rob: Everybody’s going to run to Google-
Not-Mark Zuckerberg: All right but wait a minute. What about names? Let’s bring something up. So what’s with naming your kid X Æ A-12?
Not-Elon Musk: That was Grime’s idea.
Not-Mark Zuckerberg: Then you changed it, right? I mean, because you can’t legally name somebody with numbers.
Not-Elon Musk: Yeah. Well, now it’s X Æ A-Xii.
Not-Mark Zuckerberg: And what’s with Æ and not being a letter anyway?
Not-Elon Musk: Well, it’s the elven spelling of AI short for artificial intelligence. And it also means love in many languages. I think Japanese is one of them.
Not-Elon Musk: Okay but here look, I’m the only guy here who is making a dent in the universe. All you other guys are just worrying about you’re getting richer.
Not-Jeff Bezos: Well, that’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s just wait and see whether my rocket goes blasting past Mars to the asteroid belt and starts harvesting plutonium.
Rob: Plutonium?
Not-Elon Musk: Yeah.
Rob: Okay.
Not-Mark Zuckerberg: Well, wait a minute, I’m really honest here. I’m just using Facebook to remake the world in my own image.
Not-Elon Musk: In other words, 7 billion people who know each other and don’t give a shit, something like that. And you Jeff, you own just one company. What if people stopped going to the malls you’re screwed. You’re going to be back down in the top 100.
Not-Jeff Bezos: Something like that.
Rob: What your potential, future maybe now vision masters. These are billionaires. I think we can do better than this can’t we, but there is one thing that all these billionaires have in common and that is in addition to being world-class vision masters, they are not just visionaries. They have something beyond visionary and that is the ability to make their visions real in the real world. And that’s what makes them vision masters.
This is not just about passion or clarity. They’ve acquired all of the skills and this is not easy and it’s not obvious either, but they’ve acquired all of the… What is obvious is that it doesn’t matter how jerky they behave because that’s not the issue. What the issue is, do they have the skills to make their visions real in the real world? And the most important such skill is the ability to find and trust and delegate the day-to-day operations of their businesses to execution masters, because that’s what allows them to be the putzes that you see here today, such as Sheryl Sandberg, Gwynne Shotwell, Robyn Denholm, Jeff Wilkie. Jeff’s the longtime execution master at Amazon. So guys, what do you have to say about that?
Not-Elon Musk: Let me say something nice about these two gentlemen that were kind enough to share their thoughts about me. Both of these guys have done and I guess to my own extent, myself is we made our business real. I mean, Mark really did build an incredible business that is shaping humanity and will continue to influence us in the years to come. Jeff has changed the way people shop fundamentally forever. I joke about people going back to the malls, but I think you guys know what happened last Black Friday week or whatever. I mean, I think this guy got 25% of all the dollars spent. That’s incredible. So it’s not just having bright ideas, it’s the ability to make them real. And that’s what all the people in the club really have been able to do. And they’ve done it because as you point out, Mark’s got Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff’s got-
Rob: Jeff Wilkie.
Not-Elon Musk: Yeah. Wilkie. I mean, and I guess that’s changing, but they’ve all been able to supplement their own skills with other people who are able to make the reality happen with them.
Rob: Right. And thank you so much, Elon and that’s more serious than I really normally expected out of you. And so thank you very much, but you can see that these guys and women, there are a number of women in the billionaire class too, at this point, rising up to the top five have been able to do so and they can retain their own putzy personalities because they have world-class execution masters carrying the ball day to day. And on that note, I wish you well, we’ll see you again next week at the vision master podcast, this is Robert Steven Kramarz of Intelliversity and that’s the way it will be.
Not-Elon Musk: I don’t know if Elon would have been that gracious.