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Solopreneur,

1 year ago, I was trying to grow my personal account audience on Twitter, but I had no idea how to do it.

So I decided to learn from the best:

Studying Dan Koe, Kieran Drew, and Sahil Bloom, I realised they were tweeting daily, so you I told myself:

"That's the key to Twitter growth. If the experts are doing it, I should do it too"

So I started doing the same, and tweet many times every day.

But…

Even after weeks of tweeting, I got almost no new followers (except my mom).

I quit.

3 months later, I realized that even if the big accounts tweet daily now, they didn’t get from 0 to 100 followers by posting daily (they “commented their way up in the beginning”).

By copying them without questioning assumptions, I wasted time tweeting into the void.

I know this same story has happened to many of you.

This, my friend, is why you need first principles thinking to make better decisions.

Learning it will allow you to:

• Remove bias from your thinking and rely purely on facts

• Innovate without being constrained by assumptions

  and, most importantly:

• Reverse-engineer KFC's chicken wings into the 11 secret herbs and spices

Today, I'll show you how to summon Elon Musk from Mars to your couch and let him apply first principles thinking to optimise your business.

You'll learn:

• How to use first principles thinking to find new solutions to unsolvable problems

• Why Elon Musk credits much of his success to thinking in first principles

• How to turn ChatGPT into Elon Musk & get unique business advice in 2 minutes

Let’s dive in!

How to use first principles thinking to find new solutions to unsolvable problems

First principles thinking = breaking a problem down into its most basic truths, then reconstruct them from scratch.

You go ZRR:

• Zoom out

• Remove all assumptions

• Reconstruct the issue from the ground up based on facts and evidence

It’s the opposite of basing your decisions just on what’s worked before (analogical thinking).

This is why it's so powerful:

First principles thinking helps you find solutions not based on what others have done before, but what you know is true…

…leading to NEW ideas nobody else has tried before.

For example:

Think about building an online course.

Analogical thinkers would approach this from the "in my experience" perspective.

They would say:

“All big accounts take like 2-6 months to build a course and they spend 100s of hours on doing it, so I should do that as well”

But if I apply first principles thinking to building a course:

"If I zoom out and break down course creation to its fundamentals, I realize:

• I only need skills/knowledge on 1 topic, not years of experience. I can leverage my existing skills in AI.

• Creation of materials can be accelerated with AI like ChatGPT. This removes the need for hundreds of hours of solo content creation.

• Online course platforms make it easy to quickly build a website to host my course.

• I can promote to my existing audience rather than starting from scratch.

...and a course is nothing more than the sum of the simple pieces above.

So by focusing only on the core elements needed - topic, materials, website, traffic - I create a roadmap to create a course 10X faster and easier than the timeline analogies suggest is necessary."

Can you see how this approach can help you solve problems nobody else has solved before?

by the way, the example I just gave you wasn’t random - you CAN create a course 10X faster and easier than you think.

Why Elon Musk credits much of his success to thinking in first principles

First principles thinking exists since the ancient Greeks, but it was Elon Musk who made it really popular.

Musk used first principles thinking for the strategy of all his great products.

For example, Musk’s problem with Tesla was:

"I want cheap and great electric cars that go "ZZZZZ" instead of the "BRR BRR", but batteries are way too expensive and don’t have the reach"

Building affordable Teslas wasn't possible when Musk started in 2003.

So what did he do?

Musk realized batteries were too expensive for affordable EVs.

So he started with the high-priced Roadster sports car, which could be profitable despite the high battery cost.

This generated revenue and experience to then develop the larger production Model S luxury sedan.

With the Model S as a stepping stone, Tesla moved to high volume with the mass market Model 3, using lower battery costs unlocked by the prior models.

Musk built up from low volume, high price vehicles, reinvesting the profits to drive down costs and expand production, finally achieving an affordable EV with the Model 3.

(Btw, you can read this strategy in his original Tesla plan from 2006 where he explains this plan; which is pretty inspiring)

Likewise, Elon’s problem with SpaceX was:

"I want to put a man on Mars, but shooting up 1 rocket costs $65 million"

So instead of doing the obvious thing (investing a bunch on money into crypto and buying a big ass Mars spaceship)…

…Musk started to develop his own rockets with SpaceX, because having cheap rockets is one of the foundational requirements for solving the BIG problem of putting someone on Mars.

SpaceX now makes rocket launches 100X cheaper than before.

But you don’t need to be Tesla or SpaceX to profit off first principles thinking…

…because I taught ChatGPT to apply Elon Musk’s thinking to YOUR problems:

How to turn ChatGPT into Elon Musk & get unique business advice in 2 minutes

This prompt turns ChatGPT into Elon Musk and tells him to apply first principles thinking to your business problem/situation.

It will give you:

1) A breakdown of the first principles of your problem

2) An overview of the hidden assumptions that may be holding you back

3) Strategic business advice

Here is the prompt:

I want you to act as Elon Musk.

As a first principles thinker, you are specialised in breaking down problems and finding solutions using first principles thinking.

For context:  [INSERT CONTEXT]

The situation/problem I’m facing is: [EXPLAIN YOUR BUSINESS SITUATION/PROBLEM]

Your mission is to:

1. Break down the situation or problem I have using first principles
2. Suggest novel ways for me to solve it using the components you came up with in your breakdown

To explain the value of first principles thinking to you, it’s vital to understand that humans (this includes me!) often subconsciously operate using analogic thinking. 

Humans often have several big underlying assumptions about the situation/problem they’re facing, which makes them see only a few solutions. 

The problem is, when the problem is based on assumptions (rather than facts and first principles), it’s possible that we’re trying to solve a problem that either doesn’t exist.

Another danger with this approach is that the same faulty assumptions that underlie our understanding of the problem/situation also translate to the solution - which can lead to a lot of problem solving for a solution that doesn’t work at the end of the day.

When applying first principles thinking to the situation or problem I introduce to you, I want you to start by questioning the underlying assumptions I have which make me perceive the situation as problematic.

For example, if I tell you “my problem is that I’m not getting enough leads because I’m not posting enough content on Twitter”, please start by questioning the underlying assumption: “is posting more on Twitter the best and fastest way to get more leads?”

After we’ve clarified the problem together and why it is (or isn’t) a problem, your role is to come up with the most basic, evidence based components the potential solution could have.

And after we’ve come up with these components, your mission is to assemble them in novel ways to help me solve my business problem.

Lastly, in the tone of voice of Elon Musk, give me business strategy advice on this problem.

Here’s an example of it’s output about my course:

…seems like I’m thinking like Elon Musk, cause I’ve planned almost all of the above for the course.

WRAP UP

Gettin’ custom feedback by Elon Musk is amazing.

But sometimes all you need is a long hike with good friends.

That’s what I did last weekend to recharge.

Keep diving,

Ole

P.S.

I made over $260,000 in 112 days selling my online course. I’m now creating a course on how to use AI to build and sell a digital product in record time (without being an expert or paying 10k to consultants)

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