As the net worth of Elon Musk crossed two hundred billion dollars last week making him the richest man ever on this planet, I could not stop myself from studying the secret of his success. If you ever felt success is just a stroke of luck or being at the right place at the right time, the following facts will make you rethink:
-Elon had a violent unhappy childhood. His mother was beaten often and he called his father a terrible human being who only thought evil about him
-He could not afford an apartment, so rented an office and slept on the couch and took shower at the gym to save money
-Musk underwent three divorces and had to care for his five children
-He was two days away from bankruptcy in 2008 and had almost lost all of his wealth
So despite all these setbacks what shaped Musk, the person who is reimagining humanity today. Here are the pointers:
1. A Vision for a New World and a Passion to Work for It
Elon could see climate change as a serious threat and he launched Solar City, the biggest supplier for solar power in the USA. He found the banking industry inefficient and created a system to transfer money instantly at PayPal. He saw the space rocket technology has not changed in the last sixty years so he brought innovation and supplied rockets at three percent of the previous price. He saw carmakers not concerned about the impact of fossil fuels, so he changed the status quo with Tesla.
2. Conviction in His Ideas
Musk had put 100 million dollars which was only enough for three flights to space at SpaceX. When all of them failed and had nobody to bet on, he put all his might making the fourth flight a massive success. NASA later rewarded a contract worth 1.6 billion dollars. By 2008 Tesla had burnt 300 million dollars with not a viable product. The Roadster has failed and the global recession had arrived which had badly hit the car companies. That was the time he put his personal 40 million dollars to keep the company going.
3. Admitting the Mistakes and Learning from them
The first car Tesla launched was a sports car that could not take off. So he decided to reinvent the car and make it a practical stylish family sedan Model S. He openly admitted why the three flights had failed to take off at SpaceX and committed to getting that right the next time.
4. Taking Absolute Responsibility for His Aspirations
When he was 10, his father denied buying a computer to him, so he started writing code and selling them. He sold his first game Blaster for 500 dollars. When he failed to get a job in Netscape, he founded Zip2, a company that helped media houses to move content online. He says, ‘If you don’t get a job, create your own job.’
5. Not Sitting on His Laurels
A rare quality he displayed was to raise the bar higher every time he hit a new milestone. He made 20 million dollars by selling Zip2 to Compaq and started x.com that eventually became PayPal. He made 165 million dollars after selling PayPal and launched SpaceX. As soon as SpaceX stabilized, he took over Tesla. Now, he is busy working on sending people to Mars.
6. Integrity
After the automobile companies were collapsing during the 2008 recession, he took a loan of 450 million dollars from the government. Obama administration attracted a lot of criticism for offering loans to electric car companies. The loan was paid off nine years ahead of schedule with twenty million dollars as an interest to the taxpayers.
7. Commitment to Delivering Super value
He felt rocket technology is outdated and produced rockets three percent of the existing price and sold to companies and governments. When people complained about the availability of charging stations, he not only created Supercharger stations across North America, he also made Supercharger access free to Model S and Model X in 2019.
In a world where copycatting is more common than innovation and playing safe is a norm, business leaders like Elon Musk gives us hope for a better world.