I Turned Elon Musk into My Personal Coach Using AI (Here's How)

Imagine if you could be coached by Elon Musk himself.

I’m talking about the #1 entrepreneur in the world—as your business coach—telling you exactly what to do at every step.

While this isn’t possible, I have discovered the next best thing, and it’s FREE.

I’ve taken Elon Musk’s famous 5-step decision-making framework and trained AI to coach me with it.

(I originally learned this from Alex Hormozi during a group coaching call, who uses the framework for his own decision-making).

Now, this framework has existed for a long time. But it’s been hard to actually apply on your own. Now that we have AI tools, we can train them to learn frameworks and coach us through them.

Side Note: To be honest, AI can walk you through frameworks better than most real coaches. It gives me better answers, faster, for free, and is available 24/7. Any generic life or business coach is going to have to evolve to compete in the future.

In this post, I’m going to: 

1. Give you Elon’s framework as an AI prompt
2. Show you how to train it + have a back-and-forth conversation
3. Identify the most important actions to move you to your goals + eliminate what doesn’t matter.

Warning: You’re going to get called on your shit.

When I first did this, the questions it asked were pointed and challenging. I couldn’t hide. 

The cool part? I actually felt safer sharing my stuff with AI. 

I told it I had confidence issues. That I didn’t feel qualified to reach out to a certain type of client. It challenged me on those points and cleared up some false beliefs I had.

In less than thirty minutes, AI helped me identify the absolute fastest and easiest path to my goals. It also helped me delete a lot of meaningless fluff I was spending time on.

I tried to tell my wife how cool it was, but she didn’t care. You probably won’t either, until you try it for yourself.

First, it’s worth understanding why Elon’s decision-making framework is so powerful, so you understand where this came from. AI is just a way to apply the framework more effectively. But learning to think like Elon is where the real transformation happens.

The foundation of Elon’s approach is called First Principles Thinking. This is a problem-solving approach that breaks down complex problems into their most fundamental elements.

First Principles Thinking involves:

1. Fundamental Deconstruction

• Break a problem down to its most basic, foundational truths
• Strip away assumptions and conventional wisdom
• Understand the core mechanics of the situation
• Reconstruct a solution
• Don’t be constrained by existing approaches
• Create entirely new solutions based on first principles

Here’s an example from Elon’s work:

When he looked at rocket manufacturing, most people assumed rockets were expensive. By breaking it down to first principles, he asked:

• What are the raw materials? (Aluminum, titanium, etc.)
• What’s the actual cost of these materials?
• Why do rockets cost so much?

He discovered that by manufacturing rockets himself and sourcing materials directly, he could dramatically reduce costs — something no one else had done by simply accepting the existing industry model.

Then, he actually did the same thing with electric cars.

Here’s how it went:

Conventional thinking: Electric cars are expensive and have a limited range

First principles: What are the actual constraints? Battery cost, energy density, manufacturing process.

Result: Tesla ended up making more efficient batteries, more cheaply.

Say you have a problem in your business, like “I need clients.” 

This needs to be broken down into smaller chunks so you can see the real constraint.

I asked ChatGPT to “apply first principles thinking” to the statement, “I need clients”. It replied with these 4 steps:

Step 1: Identify the Core Elements

• What is a “client”? A client is someone who values your service or product enough to pay for it.
• Why do you need clients? Clients generate revenue, which sustains and grows your business.
• What is the purpose of needing more clients? To increase income, expand the business, or achieve a particular financial goal.

Step 2: Break Down the Problem

• Assumption: I need clients to earn revenue.
• Question: Are clients the only way to achieve revenue, or are there alternative paths?
• Assumption: More clients equal more revenue.
• Question: Can the revenue goal be achieved differently, like increasing the lifetime value of each client or diversifying income streams?

Step 3: Reframe and Analyze

• Why do clients pay you? Clients pay for a solution to a problem or to gain a desired outcome.
• Fundamental Insight: To attract clients, you must offer a valuable solution that meets a demand in the market. This means the real problem isn’t just “needing clients” but “understanding and fulfilling a market need effectively.”

Step 4: Reconstruct From First Principles

1. Focus on Value Creation: Instead of solely thinking about acquiring clients, concentrate on how to deliver unique and compelling value. This could be improving your product, refining your service, or solving a bigger pain point for your target audience.
2. Assess Your Offerings: Are your current offerings irresistible and differentiated enough in the market? If not, identify what changes can make them stand out.
3. Find Efficient Channels: Once you’ve solidified your value, think of the most efficient ways to reach the right audience. Are there cost-effective ways, like content marketing or partnerships, to connect with potential clients?

How cool is that?

By using first principles thinking, “I need clients” becomes: 

“I need to deeply understand and meet my market’s needs, then effectively communicate and deliver that value.”

A lot of people who “need clients” don’t even have a marketable skill to provide. They definitely don’t have a desirable offer, or even a means to get it in front of the right client.

They may not even be clear on who the client is!

The second reason this framework works so well? It shows you which activities to delete.

For example, when I talked to AI about getting more clients, it challenged me:

Why can’t you approach this client directly?

I realized that, while I should still create content to attract clients and achieve my long-term goal of a big personal brand, I could send well-thought-out Loom videos to people who would be my dream clients and start conversations much more predictably versus posting stuff and hoping they find me.

90% of what entrepreneurs work on daily makes no difference. That energy should be redirected to either a) needle-moving tasks or b) rest and recovery.

Third, the framework forces you to optimize your resources. 

AI asked me: 

“Where are your best clients coming from?

It helped me see that YouTube was the best platform to invest more energy and that a lot of what I was doing (like posting videos on TikTok) was a waste of time.

Reason number four has to do with speed. Speed is the ultimate competitive advantage. The sharks (on Shark Tank) talk about this often. You want to accelerate your timeline when you can. Elon’s framework maximizes for speed and reveals the fastest path to getting there.

Once you see it, you’ll wonder why you missed it in the first place.

And last, the framework identifies what you can automate and delegate. Since scaling through automation is critical, you must determine what you can take OFF your plate, giving you more time to spend on high-leverage activities.

For this one, AI asked me: 

Why haven’t you taken the time to train someone else to repurpose and post your content?

(Picture me, red in the face, without an answer)

When you try this out, here’s what you’ll get:

The most optimal path to getting what you want.

That means getting what you want, faster and easier. No biggie.

How to Actually Use The Framework

Don’t take my word for this. Take five minutes to try it out for yourself. 

Here’s how:

Step #1: Grab the framework using the Google Doc linked below

Step #2: Paste it into AI (I like Claude or ChatGPT) and include the goal you are working on.

Here’s how I told it my goals:

I help experts publish books to get more customers. I want to get a publishing deal, grow my personal brand, and attract more premium clients for my offer. Help me apply the attached decision-making framework to achieve my goals.

Then, it spit out a bunch of questions. And, I really took the time to answer as many as I could. You’ll get hit with a lot of questions at first. Answer as many as you can. The more data you give it, the better.

Pro Tip: Don’t be afraid to tell it your deepest, darkest fears. That’s where the good stuff happens. 

I told AI that I wasn’t sure if I was credible enough to reach out to experts earning seven and eight figures. I didn’t know if I had enough case studies for that type of person. I felt maybe they already knew so much they didn’t need me.

AI challenged me on that and helped me see I was indeed qualified, and it really helped me get over my imposter syndrome and start reaching out. 

Here’s Elon’s framework:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LyDwamQFxtHprFnfsIOSikWzraadchcV8_RxQHPdUMQ/copy

I can’t wait for you to try it out. Share it with someone you love, and thanks for reading.

Brian