Zuckerberg vs. Musk: The REAL Main Event

Mark Goulston
3 min readJun 27, 2023

In the high-octane world of tech entrepreneurship, the stakes are always high, the competition fierce, and the pressure relentless. This reality is most vividly personified in the personas of tech moguls like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who seem to exist on a constant adrenaline-fueled high.

Their latest foray into cage fighting may be an effort to keep their adrenaline rushes going, because the only thing more powerful than the thrill of an adrenaline rush is the restlessness and agitation from an adrenaline crash. And as much as vision and visioning their respective companies into the future can provide that adrenaline rush, managing those companies, their stakeholders, the media and constant intense scrutiny is anything but exciting.

While their risk-taking and audacity have catapulted their respective companies — Tesla, SpaceX, Meta, and others — into the stratosphere, they may be missing a key ingredient in their personal and professional development: the hormone oxytocin.

What is oxytocin? It’s a hormone that promotes bonding, empathy, and trust. It’s what enables us to connect emotionally with others, and by extension, understand their needs, desires, and challenges. However, in the high-stakes game of tech entrepreneurship, it appears as though Musk and Zuckerberg have traded in this vital hormone for a constant…

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Mark Goulston

Dr. Goulston is the world's #1 listening coach and author of "Just Listen" which became the top book on listening in the world