Elon Musk's six secrets to business success
Elon Musk has recently surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world.
The Tesla and SpaceX business visionary's total assets has crossed $185bn (£136bn) after an expansion in the offer cost of the electric vehicle organization.
So, how does he achieve success? I recently spoke with him for nearly an hour about exactly this. We decided to republish the interview to commemorate his new milestone. Therefore, here is Elon Musk's guide to business success.
1. It isn't about the money
This plays a crucial role in Elon Musk's approach to business.
He stated that he did not know how wealthy he was when I interviewed him in 2014.
He stated, "It's not as if there is a pile of cash somewhere." It's really just that the market values my votes in Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity to a certain extent.
"If it's done in sort of an ethical and good manner," he said, he doesn't have anything against wealth pursuit, but he said it's not what drives him.
It certainly appears that the strategy is working.
When we spoke in 2014, the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s role as Tony Stark in Iron Man was probably worth $10 billion. Tesla, his company that makes electric cars, has done particularly well. Over the past year, the value of the company's shares has increased to more than $700 million. You could buy Ford, GM, BMW, Volkswagen, and Fiat Chrysler for that, and you would still have enough money left over to buy a Ferrari .However, Musk, who will be 50 this year, does not anticipate a rich end. He stated that he anticipates spending the majority of his funds on the construction of a base on Mars and would not be surprised if the undertaking consumed his entire fortune.
In point of fact, like Bill Gates, he would probably view the fact that he had billions in the bank at the end of his life as evidence of failure because he had not utilized those funds effectively.
2. Pursue your passions
Elon Musk believes that the secret to success lies in that Mars base.He told me, "You want things to get better in the future." You want new and exciting things that improve your life."
Take SpaceX, which he told me he started because he was dissatisfied with the US space program's lack of ambition.
He stated, "I kept expecting us to advance beyond Earth, to put a person on Mars, to have a base on the moon, and to have, you know, very frequent flights to orbit." He added, "I kept expecting us to advance beyond Earth."
He came up with the "Mars Oasis Mission" idea to send a small greenhouse to the red planet when that didn't happen. The thought was to get individuals amped up for space once more, and convince the US government to build Nasa's spending plan.
It was while he was attempting to get that going he understood the issue wasn't "an absence of will, yet rather an absence of way" - space innovation was definitely more costly than it should have been. And viola! The cheapest rocket launch business in the world was established. The important thing to remember is that the goal at its inception was not to make money, but to put a person on Mars.
Musk told me that he is more of an engineer than an investor and that the desire to solve technical problems is what gets him up in the morning.
That's what it is, as opposed to dollars in the bank, that is his measuring stick of progress. He is aware that every obstacle his businesses overcome aids others attempting to resolve the same issue forever. Consequently, just prior to our meeting, the businessman had announced that he would release all of Tesla's patents to accelerate global electric vehicle development.
3. Don't be afraid to think big
The daring nature of Elon Musk's businesses is one of their most striking characteristics.
He wants to upend the solar power and battery industries, colonize Mars, build super-fast trains in vacuum tunnels, integrate artificial intelligence into human brains, and revolutionize the automobile industry.
There is a recurring theme in this. His projects are all fantasies about the future that would have been published in a kid's magazine in the early 1980s.Simply put, his tunneling company is known as The Boring Company.
Musk makes it clear that the books and movies he read as a kid in South Africa served as a source of inspiration for him. This brings us to Musk's third business advice, which is to speak up.
He believes that the incentive structures of most businesses are predicated on low ambition .An excessive number of organizations are "incrementalist ", he said. " He explained to me, "Nobody's gonna blame you if you're the CEO of a large company and you aim for something that's a modest improvement, and it takes longer than expected and doesn't work out quite as well." You can say that the suppliers were to blame, not me.
On the off chance that you are strong, and go for a truly advancement improvement, and it doesn't work, you're certainly going to get terminated, he contends. He asserts that this is the reason why, rather than daring to imagine completely new products, the majority of businesses concentrate on making minor enhancements to their existing products.
As a result, one of his pieces of advice is to ensure that you are working on "stuff that's going to matter." In Musk's personal list of things that matter, two stand out. To begin, he intends to accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels.
The following is what the businessman had to say about that: We're drawing upon profound gas fields and profound oil handles that haven't come around since the Cambrian period. Assuming that the last time something saw light was the point at which the most mind boggling organic entity was a wipe, you truly need to address whether that is an insightful move."
Second, he needs to guarantee the drawn out endurance of mankind by colonizing Mars and "making life multiplanetary".
Think big, as I always say.
4. Be ready to take risks
This is an obvious one. You must have a dog in the fight to do competently, yet Elon Musk has faced a larger number of challenges than most.
He had sold his stakes in his first two businesses, an online city guide called Zip2 and an online payment company called PayPal, by 2002. He was in his 30s and had nearly $200 million in savings.
According to him, his strategy was to invest half of his wealth in the businesses and keep the other half.
That was not how things turned out. He was just coming out of the darkest period of his business life when I met him.
Initially, his new businesses encountered a variety of issues. The first three SpaceX launches had failed, and Tesla had a variety of issues with its design, supply chain, and production. Then came the financial crisis.
Musk claimed that he was faced with a difficult decision. I could either invest the remaining funds and possibly have a chance or keep the money, at which point the businesses will almost certainly fail.
He continued to deposit money.
At a certain point he was so under water he needed to get cash from companions just to pay his everyday costs, he told me.All in all, did the possibility of liquidation scare him?
He claims it did not: My children could need to go to a kind of government school. I mean serious deal, I went to an administration school."
5. Ignore the critics
What truly stunned him - and it was clear in 2014 he was still exceptionally irritated about it - was the enjoyment numerous savants and analysts took in his struggles.
Musk stated, "The liberal schadenfreude was really quite astonishing." There were numerous blog sites keeping an eye on Tesla's demise.
I suggested that because of his ambition and arrogance, people might have wanted him to fail. That's what he dismissed. " I think it would be arrogant of us to say that we were going to do it, rather than that we were just aiming to do it and giving it our best shot." This brings us to Musk's next advice for running a successful business: ignore the critics.
He let me know he didn't really accept that SpaceX or Tesla could at any point bring in cash when he set them up - and the fact of the matter is nor did any other person.
However, he proceeded regardless, disregarding the doomsayers. Why? Keep in mind that this man measures success not by how much money he has made but rather by how important problems he has solved.
Think how freeing that is. Because his big financial bet hasn't paid off, he doesn't care if he looks stupid; what matters is that he pursues important ideas.
Because he can remain focused on what he believes really matters, it makes making decisions much simpler.
Additionally, he seems to be doing well in the market.
SpaceX was valued at $100 billion in October by Morgan Stanley, an American investment bank. Musk will be most proud of his company's efforts to revitalize the US space program, despite the company's transformation of space flight's economics.
Six astronauts were sent to the International Space Station last year by his Crew Dragon rockets, marking the first such mission from the United States since the space shuttles were retired in 2011.
6. Enjoy yourself
If you follow this guide, you can become famous and rich beyond belief. After that, you can begin to emerge from your shell.
Although Elon Musk is well-known for being a workaholic and boasts of working 120-hour weeks to keep production of the Tesla Model 3 on track, he appears to have been having fun since we met.His on-air dope smoking, defamation lawsuits, and erratic social media posts have stoked controversy.
When he tweeted in 2018 that he was planning to take Tesla private, he got into trouble with the US financial regulator. When the Covid-19 pandemic forced Tesla to shut down production at its factory in the San Francisco Bay Area, he became a vocal opponent of coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
On Twitter, he referred to the virus panic as "dumb" and said that stay-at-home orders were "fascist" and a violation of constitutional rights.
In the mid year he reported plans to auction his actual belongings saying they "overload you".
A few days later, he announced on Twitter that the name of his newborn son would be X A-12 Musk.However his eccentric way of behaving doesn't appear to have impacted his organizations, and the business visionary remaining parts as aggressive as could be expected.
In September, Musk said that Tesla would soon have a $25,000 car that was "compelling" and that all new cars would soon be completely self-driving.
In December, SpaceX put its Starship launch vehicle, which it hopes will get the first humans to Mars, through its paces for the year.
When it crashed landed six minutes after taking off, the enormous rocket burst into flames.
Elon Musk hailed the test as an "great" achievement.
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