Best known for his role as the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest men in the world. He happens to be one of the two individuals in the world to have founded and sold three companies for billions of dollars. The man is often described as a builder and an inventor. He happens to be one of the most creative and innovative men on the planet. His varied and excellent career offers lessons that most people only dream of. His dedication towards innovations, to creating new technologies has benefitted the world. He is the man behind the SpaceX project to explore space with private investment.
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None in the world would turn down a chance to learn from Elon Musk.
He is regarded as “the raddest man alive”. His magnanimous vision of getting humans to Mars and revolutionizing our energy economy happens to be very impressive in the world. His extraordinariness can be the reason to feel that his career is worlds apart and what exactly can we learn from him? This doesn’t stand true, his career offers a lot of lessons to implement and learn from.
James Altucher, a blogger, and recent New York Times profile-ee heard all of Musk’s interviews and compiled the most inspirational quotes which happens to be the best answer on Quora for the question, “What can we learn from Elon Musk?”
Here are some takeaways:
- Don’t Focus on the Odds, but on your Dreams!
Musk’s vision is to dive into the realms of space travel and colonise Mars. He thinks and dreams big with the persisting odds. Looking at his history, the billionaire’s ideas have impacted the entire industry. Our initial reaction might be that our dreams might just be impossible. Altucher reminds the readers that the advice is coming from someone who is dedicated to a space commercialising project, SpaceX. “Are your dreams really more of a long shot than that?
2. Don’t do it for the sake of Money
Not having money can motivate a person, but money is not a sustainable motivator for long-term success. Thus, The focus in life should shift from money and rather prompt a person to investigate what differences he can make in the world (or to himself), and not run behind the financial glory.
Altucher mentioned that over the 100 podcast interviews of top shots, nobody did the amazing things for money. Neither has Musk who says,” Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?'”
3. Start from the First Principle Approach
Elon Musk believes to start from the beginning. This means leaving behind the conventional wisdom and looking at things with new eyes. This is the First Principles Mindset. He prompts people to gather rational, unbiased facts before making up their minds and advises them to leave behind everything they think they know.
Altucher sums it up with his quote, “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”
He himself has emerged with innovative, and affordable ways when working with Tesla. He teaches us to question and challenge how things are done and how to make them better at first-hand experience.
4. Persistence is the Key
Marking on some of Musk’s conventional wisdom where he says, “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
From the journey of Elon Musk, we learn not to be afraid of failing or giving up in life. His quality of not giving up even after risking $100 million to launch a rocket. His first two launches failed and cost him $90 million. The third one cost him$10 million and it succeeded. From this, it becomes clear that giving up should not be an option.
5. Talent Beats Numbers
“It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive”.
He focuses on hiring people with the right talent and skillset rather than focusing on the number of years they have devoted.
6. Talent cannot be a compensation for a lousy personality.
Musk believes that great ability can’t compensate for a lousy personality. For Musk, talent matters the most and not the personality. He prefers to have someone with a good heart.
7. Keep Questioning Yourself
Being Elon Musk doesn’t mean that he has stopped working, he claims that he constantly strives to become better and improve himself. He says, “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100-hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve”.
He also said,”It’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself”.
One thing about musk is that he knows how to use feedback in his favour. Accepting feedback makes you feel uncomfortable but Elon Musk gracefully owns them and that’s what makes him an influencing personality.
8. Find the Right Question to thrive on
Musk’s favourite book as a teenager was ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He shared, “It taught me that the tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but that once you do that, the rest is really easy.”
Musk has worked hard and accomplished a lot, yet he works tirelessly to discover opportunities so he can contribute more to the world. This is what makes him an admirable entrepreneur.
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